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15,494 | Incompatible-properties argument | The incompatible-properties argument is the idea that no description of God is consistent with reality. For example, if one takes the definition of God to be described fully from the Bible, then the claims of what properties God has described therein might be argued to lead to a contradiction.
The problem of evil is the argument that the existence of evil is incompatible with the concept of an omnipotent and perfectly good God.
A variation does not depend on the existence of evil. A truly omnipotent God could create all possible worlds. A "good" God can create only "good" worlds. A God that created all possible worlds would have no moral qualities whatsoever, and could be replaced by a random generator. The standard response is to argue a distinction between "could create" and "would create." In other words, God "could" create all possible worlds but that is simply not in God's nature. This has been argued by theologians for centuries. However, the result is that a "good" God is incompatible with some possible worlds, thus incapable of creating them without losing the property of being a totally different God. Yet, it is not necessary for God to be "good". He simply is good, but is capable of evil.
One argument based on incompatible properties rests on a definition of God that includes a will, plan or purpose and an existence outside of time. To say that a being possesses a purpose implies an inclination or tendency to steer events toward some state that does not yet exist. This, in turn, implies a privileged direction, which we may call "time". It may be one direction of causality, the direction of increasing entropy, or some other emergent property of a world. These are not identical, but one must exist in order to progress toward a goal.
In general, God's time would not be related to our time. God might be able to operate within our time without being constrained to do so. However, God could then step outside this game for any purpose. Thus God's time must be aligned with our time if human activities are relevant to God's purpose. (In a relativistic universe, presumably this means—at any point in spacetime—time measured from t=0 at the Big Bang or end of inflation.)
A God existing outside of any sort of time could not create anything because creation substitutes one thing for another, or for nothing. Creation requires a creator that existed, by definition, prior to the thing created.
Another pair of alleged incompatible properties is omniscience and either indeterminacy or free will. Omniscience concerning the past and present (properly defined relative to Earth) is not a problem, but there is an argument that omniscience regarding the future implies it has been determined, what seems possible only in a deterministic world. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The incompatible-properties argument is the idea that no description of God is consistent with reality. For example, if one takes the definition of God to be described fully from the Bible, then the claims of what properties God has described therein might be argued to lead to a contradiction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The problem of evil is the argument that the existence of evil is incompatible with the concept of an omnipotent and perfectly good God.",
"title": "Evil vs. good and omnipotence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A variation does not depend on the existence of evil. A truly omnipotent God could create all possible worlds. A \"good\" God can create only \"good\" worlds. A God that created all possible worlds would have no moral qualities whatsoever, and could be replaced by a random generator. The standard response is to argue a distinction between \"could create\" and \"would create.\" In other words, God \"could\" create all possible worlds but that is simply not in God's nature. This has been argued by theologians for centuries. However, the result is that a \"good\" God is incompatible with some possible worlds, thus incapable of creating them without losing the property of being a totally different God. Yet, it is not necessary for God to be \"good\". He simply is good, but is capable of evil.",
"title": "Evil vs. good and omnipotence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "One argument based on incompatible properties rests on a definition of God that includes a will, plan or purpose and an existence outside of time. To say that a being possesses a purpose implies an inclination or tendency to steer events toward some state that does not yet exist. This, in turn, implies a privileged direction, which we may call \"time\". It may be one direction of causality, the direction of increasing entropy, or some other emergent property of a world. These are not identical, but one must exist in order to progress toward a goal.",
"title": "Purpose vs. timelessness"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In general, God's time would not be related to our time. God might be able to operate within our time without being constrained to do so. However, God could then step outside this game for any purpose. Thus God's time must be aligned with our time if human activities are relevant to God's purpose. (In a relativistic universe, presumably this means—at any point in spacetime—time measured from t=0 at the Big Bang or end of inflation.)",
"title": "Purpose vs. timelessness"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A God existing outside of any sort of time could not create anything because creation substitutes one thing for another, or for nothing. Creation requires a creator that existed, by definition, prior to the thing created.",
"title": "Purpose vs. timelessness"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Another pair of alleged incompatible properties is omniscience and either indeterminacy or free will. Omniscience concerning the past and present (properly defined relative to Earth) is not a problem, but there is an argument that omniscience regarding the future implies it has been determined, what seems possible only in a deterministic world.",
"title": "Omniscience vs. indeterminacy or free will"
}
]
| The incompatible-properties argument is the idea that no description of God is consistent with reality. For example, if one takes the definition of God to be described fully from the Bible, then the claims of what properties God has described therein might be argued to lead to a contradiction. | 2023-03-19T08:16:57Z | [
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15,495 | International Society of Olympic Historians | The International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 with the purpose of promoting and studying the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. The majority of recent books on the Olympic Games have been written by ISOH members. The ISOH publishes the Journal of Olympic History (JOH, formerly Citius, Altius, Fortius) three times a year.
The International Society of Olympic Historians was formed as the result of a meeting in London, England, in December 1991. The idea of forming an Olympic historical society had been the subject of correspondence – mainly between Bill Mallon (United States) and Ture Widlund (Sweden) – for many years. On Thursday, 5 December 1991, a group of potential members met at the Duke of Clarence, a small pub in the Kensington section of London. Those present were Ian Buchanan (Great Britain), Stan Greenberg (Great Britain), Ove Karlsson (Sweden), Bill Mallon (United States), Peter Matthews (Great Britain), David Wallechinsky (United States), and Ture Widlund (Sweden). The invited guests who sent regrets were: Anthony Bijkerk (Netherlands), Peter Diamond (United States), Pim Huurman (Netherlands), Erich Kamper (Austria), Volker Kluge (Germany), John Lucas (United States), and Wolf Lyberg (Sweden).
ISOH was formed with the purpose of promoting and studying the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. This purpose is achieved primarily through research into their history, through the gathering of historical and statistical data concerning the Olympic Movement and Olympic Games, through the publication of the research via journals and other publications, and through the cooperation of the membership.
From its inception to 2000, Ian Buchanan has been the president of the ISOH. In 2000, this function was taken over by Bill Mallon. From 2004 to 2012 Dr. Karl Lennartz (Germany) and from 2012 to 2020 David Wallechinsky (United States) served as presidents. Since 2020 the archaeologist and sports historian Dr. Christian Wacker (Germany) is president.
The ISOH publishes the Journal of Olympic History (formerly Citius, Altius, Fortius).
As of 2007, the ISOH has about 340 members from 48 nations. The membership includes well-known Olympic historians and researchers on Olympic topics. The majority of recent books on the Olympic Games have been written by ISOH members. Over 20 ISOH members have received the Olympic Order for their contributions to the Olympic Movement, and several members of the IOC and several Olympians are members. | [
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"title": ""
},
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"text": "The International Society of Olympic Historians was formed as the result of a meeting in London, England, in December 1991. The idea of forming an Olympic historical society had been the subject of correspondence – mainly between Bill Mallon (United States) and Ture Widlund (Sweden) – for many years. On Thursday, 5 December 1991, a group of potential members met at the Duke of Clarence, a small pub in the Kensington section of London. Those present were Ian Buchanan (Great Britain), Stan Greenberg (Great Britain), Ove Karlsson (Sweden), Bill Mallon (United States), Peter Matthews (Great Britain), David Wallechinsky (United States), and Ture Widlund (Sweden). The invited guests who sent regrets were: Anthony Bijkerk (Netherlands), Peter Diamond (United States), Pim Huurman (Netherlands), Erich Kamper (Austria), Volker Kluge (Germany), John Lucas (United States), and Wolf Lyberg (Sweden).",
"title": "History"
},
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"text": "ISOH was formed with the purpose of promoting and studying the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. This purpose is achieved primarily through research into their history, through the gathering of historical and statistical data concerning the Olympic Movement and Olympic Games, through the publication of the research via journals and other publications, and through the cooperation of the membership.",
"title": "History"
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"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "From its inception to 2000, Ian Buchanan has been the president of the ISOH. In 2000, this function was taken over by Bill Mallon. From 2004 to 2012 Dr. Karl Lennartz (Germany) and from 2012 to 2020 David Wallechinsky (United States) served as presidents. Since 2020 the archaeologist and sports historian Dr. Christian Wacker (Germany) is president.",
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"title": "Journal of Olympic History"
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"title": "Membership"
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| The International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 with the purpose of promoting and studying the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. The majority of recent books on the Olympic Games have been written by ISOH members. The ISOH publishes the Journal of Olympic History three times a year. | 2002-02-25T11:18:03Z | 2023-09-16T18:22:46Z | [
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15,496 | Serie A | The Serie A (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛːrje ˈa]), officially known as Serie A TIM for sponsorship reasons, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winners are awarded the scudetto and the Coppa Campioni d'Italia. It has been operating as a round-robin tournament for over ninety years since the 1929–30 season. It had been organized by the Direttorio Divisioni Superiori until 1943, the Lega Calcio until 2010, and the Lega Serie A ever since. Serie A is regarded as one of the best football leagues in the world and it is often depicted as the most tactical and defensively sound national league. Serie A was the world's strongest national league in 2020 according to IFFHS, and is ranked third among European leagues according to UEFA's league coefficient – behind the La Liga and the Premier League, and ahead of Bundesliga and Ligue 1 – which is based on the performance of Italian clubs in the Champions League and the Europa League during the previous five years. Serie A led the UEFA ranking from 1986 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1999.
In its current format, the Italian Football Championship was revised from having regional and interregional rounds, to a single-tier league from the 1929–30 season onwards. The championship titles won before 1929 are officially recognised by FIGC with the same weighting as titles that were subsequently awarded. Similarly, the 1945–46 season, when the round-robin was suspended and the league was played over two geographical groups due to the ravages of World War II, is not statistically considered, even if its title is fully official.
The league hosts three of the world's most famous clubs as Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan, all founding members of the G-14, a group which represented the largest and most prestigious European football clubs from 2000 to 2008, with the first two also being founding members of its successive organisation, European Club Association (ECA). More players have won the Ballon d'Or award while playing at a Serie A club than any league in the world other than Spain's La Liga, although La Liga has the highest total number of Ballon d'Or winners. Juventus, Italy's most successful club of the 20th century and the most winning Italian team, is tied for sixth in Europe and twelfth in the world with the most official international titles with eleven. Prior the first Europa Conference League final in 2022, it was also the only one in the world to have won all the historical five official confederation competitions, an achievement reached after its triumph in the 1985 Intercontinental Cup and revalidated after winning a sixth tournament, the UEFA Intertoto Cup, fourteen years later. Milan is joint third club overall for official international titles won with eighteen. Inter, following their achievements in the 2009–10 season, became the first Italian team to have achieved a seasonal treble. It is also the team to have competed uninterruptedly for the most time in the top flight of Italian football, having seen its debut in 1909. All these clubs, along with Lazio, Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli, are known as the "seven sisters" (sette sorelle) of Italian football.
Serie A is one of the most storied football leagues in the world. Of the 100 greatest footballers in history chosen by FourFourTwo in 2017, 42 players have played in Serie A, more than any other league in the world. Juventus is the team that has produced the most World Cup champions (27), with Inter (20), Roma (16) and Milan (10), being respectively third, fourth and ninth in that ranking.
Serie A, as it is structured today, began during the 1929–30 season. From 1898 to 1922, the competition was organised into regional groups. Because of ever growing teams attending regional championships, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) split the CCI (Italian Football Confederation) in 1921, which founded in Milan the Lega Nord (Northern Football League), ancestor of present-day Lega Serie A. When CCI teams rejoined the FIGC created two interregional divisions renaming Categories into Divisions and splitting FIGC sections into two north–south leagues. In 1926, due to internal crises and fascist pressures, the FIGC changed internal settings, adding southern teams to the national division, ultimately leading to the 1929–30 final settlement.
The Serie A Championship title is often referred to as the scudetto ("small shield") because since the 1923–24 season, the winning team will bear a small coat of arms with the Italian tricolour on their strip in the following season. The most successful club is Juventus with 36 championships, followed by AC Milan and Inter Milan with 19 championships. From the 2004–05 season onwards, an actual trophy was awarded to club on the pitch after the last turn of the championship. The trophy, called the Coppa Campioni d'Italia, has officially been used since the 1960–61 season, but between 1961 and 2004 was consigned to the winning clubs at the head office of the Lega Nazionale Professionisti.
In April 2009, Serie A announced a split from Serie B. Nineteen of the twenty clubs voted in favour of the move in an argument over television rights; the relegation-threatened Lecce had voted against the decision. Maurizio Beretta, the former head of Italy's employers' association, became president of the new league.
In April 2016, it was announced that Serie A was selected by the International Football Association Board to test video replays, which were initially private for the 2016–17 season, allowing them to become a live pilot phase, with replay assistance implemented in the 2017–18 season. On the decision, FIGC President Carlo Tavecchio said: "We were among the first supporters of using technology on the pitch and we believe we have everything required to offer our contribution to this important experiment."
For most of Serie A's history, there were 16 or 18 clubs competing at the top level. Since 2004–05, however, there have been 20 clubs in total. One season (1947–48) was played with 21 teams for political reasons, following post-war tensions with Yugoslavia. Below is a complete record of how many teams played in each season throughout the league's history;
During the season, which runs from August to May, each club plays each of the other teams twice; once at home and once away, totalling 38 games for each team by the end of the season. Thus, in Italian football a true round-robin format is used. In the first half of the season, called the andata, each team plays once against each league opponent, for a total of 19 games. In the second half of the season, called the ritorno, the teams play another 19 games, once more against each opponent, in which home and away matches are reversed. The two halves of the season had exactly the same order of fixtures until the 2021–22 season, when an asymmetrical calendar was introduced, following the format of the English, Spanish and French leagues. Since the 1994–95 season, teams are awarded three points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a loss. Prior to this, teams were awarded two points for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss. The three lowest-placed teams at the end of the season are relegated to Serie B, and three Serie B teams are promoted to replace them for the next season.
As of 2022, Serie A is ranked as the fourth-best league by UEFA coefficient, therefore the top four teams in the Serie A qualify straight to the UEFA Champions League group stage. The team finishing fifth, along with the Coppa Italia winner (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes outside the top five) or the team finishing sixth (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes inside the top five), qualify for the UEFA Europa League group stage. The sixth or the seventh ranked club, depending on the Coppa Italia winner's league performance, joins the final qualification round of the UEFA Europa Conference League.
If after all 38 games, there are two teams tied on points for first place or for 17th, the last safety spot, the team that wins the scudetto or stays up at 17th is decided by a single-legged play-off game of 90 minutes and penalties (no extra time), to be held at a neutral venue, with the host team decided by the tiebreakers listed below. If at least three teams are tied for one of those spots, then the two teams to play in the match is decided by a mini table between the teams involved using the tiebreakers below. The deciding tie-breakers for any ties on all other positions are as follows:
Between 2006–07 and 2021–22, the tiebreakers currently used for all places to decide the scudetto winner if necessary, though this was never needed. Before 2005–06, a play-off would immediately be used if teams were tied for first place, a European qualification spot, or a relegation spot. In some past years, the playoff was a single game at a neutral site while in others it was a two-legged tie decided by aggregate score. A playoff game has never been needed since the tiebreaking format changed.
The only time a playoff was used to decide the champion occurred in the 1963–64 season when Bologna and Inter both finished on 54 points. Bologna won the playoff 2–0 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome to win the scudetto. Playoff games were used on multiple occasions to decide European competition qualifications (most recently in 1999–2000) and relegation (most recently in 2022–23).
Before 1929, many clubs competed in the top level of Italian football as the earlier rounds were competed up to 1922 on a regional basis then interregional up to 1929. Below is a list of Serie A clubs who have competed in the competition since it has been a league format (68 in total).
The following 20 clubs are competing in the Serie A during the 2023–24 season.
There are 68 teams that have taken part in 92 Serie A championships in a single round that was played from the 1929–30 season until the 2023–24 season. The teams in bold compete in Serie A currently. The year in parentheses represents the most recent year of participation at this level. Inter Milan is the only team that has played Serie A football in every season.
Serie A had logos that featured its sponsor Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM). The logo that was introduced in 2010 had a minor change in 2016 due to the change of the logo of TIM itself. In August 2018, a new logo was announced, and another one in August 2019.
In the past, individual clubs competing in the league had the rights to sell their broadcast rights to specific channels throughout Italy, unlike in most other European countries. Currently, the two broadcasters in Italy are the satellite broadcaster Sky Italia and streaming platform DAZN for its own pay television networks; RAI is allowed to broadcast only highlights (in exclusive from 13:30 to 22:30 CET). This is a list of television rights in Italy (since 2021–22):
Since the 2010–11 season, Serie A clubs have negotiated television rights collectively rather than on an individual club basis, having previously abandoned collective negotiation at the end of the 1998–99 season.
In the 1990s, Serie A was at its most popular in the United Kingdom when it was shown on Football Italia on Channel 4, although it has actually appeared on more UK channels than any other league, rarely staying in one place for long since 2002. Serie A has appeared in the UK on BSB's The Sports Channel (1990–91), Sky Sports (1991–1992), Channel 4 (1992–2002), Eurosport (2002–2004), Setanta Sports and Bravo (2004–2007), Channel 5 (2007–2008), ESPN (2009–2013), Eleven Sports Network (2018), Premier, FreeSports (2019–2021) and currently BT Sport (2013–2018; 2021–present).
In the United States, Serie A is currently shown on CBS Sports and its streaming network Paramount+. Prior to 2021–22 it was shown on the ESPN family of networks.
Although Serie A was not formed until 1929–30, the league recognizes clubs who were named Italian champions before the league's foundation.
Bold indicates clubs which play in the 2023–24 Serie A.
Boldface indicates a player still active in Serie A. Italics indicates a player active outside Serie A.
Unlike La Liga, for example, which has long imposed a quota on the number of players able to play for each club who hold passports from countries that are not in the European Union, Serie A has undergone many rule changes concerning the number of non-EU players clubs could sign.
During the 1980s and 1990s, most Serie A clubs signed a large number of players from foreign nations (both EU and non-EU members). Notable foreign players to play in Serie A during this era included Irish international Liam Brady, England internationals Paul Gascoigne and David Platt, France's Michel Platini and Laurent Blanc, Lothar Matthäus and Jürgen Klinsmann from Germany, Dutchmen Ruud Gullit and Dennis Bergkamp, and Argentina's Diego Maradona.
In the middle of the 2000–01 season, the old quota system, which limited each team to having no more than five non-EU players and using no more than three in each match, was abolished. Concurrent with the abolishment of the quota, the FIGC had investigated footballers that used fake passports. Alberto and Warley, Alejandro Da Silva and Jorginho Paulista of Udinese; Fábio Júnior and Gustavo Bartelt of Roma; Dida of Milan; Álvaro Recoba of Inter; Thomas Job, Francis Zé, Jean Ondoa of Sampdoria; and Jeda and Dede of Vicenza were all banned in July 2001 for lengths ranging from six months to one year. However, most of the bans were subsequently reduced.
At the start of the 2003–04 season, a quota was imposed on each of the clubs limiting the number of non-EU, non-EFTA and non-Swiss players who may be signed from abroad each season, following provisional measures introduced in the 2002–03 season, which allowed Serie A and B clubs to sign only one non-EU player in the 2002 summer transfer window.
The rule underwent minor changes in August 2004, June 2005, June 2006, and June 2007.
The number of non-EU players was reduced from 265 in 2002–03 season to 166 in 2006–07 season. This reduction also included players who received EU status after their respective countries joined the EU (see 2004 and 2007 enlargement), which made players such as Adrian Mutu, Valeri Bojinov, Marek Jankulovski and Marius Stankevičius EU players.
The quota system changed again at the beginning of the 2008–09 season: three quotas were awarded to clubs that do not have non-EU players in their squad (previously only newly promoted clubs could have three quotas); clubs that had one non-EU player had two quotas. Those clubs that had two non-EU players were awarded one quota and one conditional quota, which was awarded after: 1) Transferred 1 non-EU player abroad, or 2) Release 1 non-EU player as free agent, or 3) A non-EU player received EU nationality. Clubs with three or more non-EU players had two conditional quotas, but releasing two non-EU players as free agent only gave one quota instead of two. Serie B and Lega Pro clubs could not sign non-EU players from abroad, except those that followed a club promoted from Serie D.
On 2 July 2010, the above conditional quota was reduced back to one, though if a team did not have any non-EU players, that team could still sign up to three non-EU players. In 2011 the signing quota reverted to two.
Large clubs with many foreigners usually borrow quotas from other clubs that have few foreigners or no foreigners in order to sign more non-EU players. For example, Adrian Mutu joined Juventus via Livorno in 2005, as at the time Romania was not a member of the EU. Other examples include Júlio César, Victor Obinna and Maxwell, who joined Inter from Chievo (first two) and Empoli, respectively.
Serie A also imposed Homegrown players rule, a modification of Homegrown Player Rule (UEFA). Unlike UEFA, Serie A at first did not cap the number of players in first team squad at 25, meaning the club could employ more foreigners by increasing the size of the squad. However, a cap of 25 (under-21 players were excluded) was introduced to 2015–16 season (in 2015–16 season, squad simply require 8 homegrown players but not require 4 of them from their own youth team). In the 2016–17 season, the FIGC sanctioned Sassuolo for fielding ineligible player, Antonino Ragusa. Although the club did not exceed the capacity of 21 players that were not from their own youth team (only Domenico Berardi was eligible as youth product of their own) as well as under 21 of age (born 1995 or after, of which four players were eligible) in their 24-men call-up, It was reported that on Lega Serie A side the squad list was not updated.
In 2015–16 season, the following quota was announced. | [
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"text": "The Serie A (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛːrje ˈa]), officially known as Serie A TIM for sponsorship reasons, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winners are awarded the scudetto and the Coppa Campioni d'Italia. It has been operating as a round-robin tournament for over ninety years since the 1929–30 season. It had been organized by the Direttorio Divisioni Superiori until 1943, the Lega Calcio until 2010, and the Lega Serie A ever since. Serie A is regarded as one of the best football leagues in the world and it is often depicted as the most tactical and defensively sound national league. Serie A was the world's strongest national league in 2020 according to IFFHS, and is ranked third among European leagues according to UEFA's league coefficient – behind the La Liga and the Premier League, and ahead of Bundesliga and Ligue 1 – which is based on the performance of Italian clubs in the Champions League and the Europa League during the previous five years. Serie A led the UEFA ranking from 1986 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1999.",
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"text": "In its current format, the Italian Football Championship was revised from having regional and interregional rounds, to a single-tier league from the 1929–30 season onwards. The championship titles won before 1929 are officially recognised by FIGC with the same weighting as titles that were subsequently awarded. Similarly, the 1945–46 season, when the round-robin was suspended and the league was played over two geographical groups due to the ravages of World War II, is not statistically considered, even if its title is fully official.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "The league hosts three of the world's most famous clubs as Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan, all founding members of the G-14, a group which represented the largest and most prestigious European football clubs from 2000 to 2008, with the first two also being founding members of its successive organisation, European Club Association (ECA). More players have won the Ballon d'Or award while playing at a Serie A club than any league in the world other than Spain's La Liga, although La Liga has the highest total number of Ballon d'Or winners. Juventus, Italy's most successful club of the 20th century and the most winning Italian team, is tied for sixth in Europe and twelfth in the world with the most official international titles with eleven. Prior the first Europa Conference League final in 2022, it was also the only one in the world to have won all the historical five official confederation competitions, an achievement reached after its triumph in the 1985 Intercontinental Cup and revalidated after winning a sixth tournament, the UEFA Intertoto Cup, fourteen years later. Milan is joint third club overall for official international titles won with eighteen. Inter, following their achievements in the 2009–10 season, became the first Italian team to have achieved a seasonal treble. It is also the team to have competed uninterruptedly for the most time in the top flight of Italian football, having seen its debut in 1909. All these clubs, along with Lazio, Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli, are known as the \"seven sisters\" (sette sorelle) of Italian football.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "Serie A is one of the most storied football leagues in the world. Of the 100 greatest footballers in history chosen by FourFourTwo in 2017, 42 players have played in Serie A, more than any other league in the world. Juventus is the team that has produced the most World Cup champions (27), with Inter (20), Roma (16) and Milan (10), being respectively third, fourth and ninth in that ranking.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "Serie A, as it is structured today, began during the 1929–30 season. From 1898 to 1922, the competition was organised into regional groups. Because of ever growing teams attending regional championships, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) split the CCI (Italian Football Confederation) in 1921, which founded in Milan the Lega Nord (Northern Football League), ancestor of present-day Lega Serie A. When CCI teams rejoined the FIGC created two interregional divisions renaming Categories into Divisions and splitting FIGC sections into two north–south leagues. In 1926, due to internal crises and fascist pressures, the FIGC changed internal settings, adding southern teams to the national division, ultimately leading to the 1929–30 final settlement.",
"title": "History"
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{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Serie A Championship title is often referred to as the scudetto (\"small shield\") because since the 1923–24 season, the winning team will bear a small coat of arms with the Italian tricolour on their strip in the following season. The most successful club is Juventus with 36 championships, followed by AC Milan and Inter Milan with 19 championships. From the 2004–05 season onwards, an actual trophy was awarded to club on the pitch after the last turn of the championship. The trophy, called the Coppa Campioni d'Italia, has officially been used since the 1960–61 season, but between 1961 and 2004 was consigned to the winning clubs at the head office of the Lega Nazionale Professionisti.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In April 2009, Serie A announced a split from Serie B. Nineteen of the twenty clubs voted in favour of the move in an argument over television rights; the relegation-threatened Lecce had voted against the decision. Maurizio Beretta, the former head of Italy's employers' association, became president of the new league.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In April 2016, it was announced that Serie A was selected by the International Football Association Board to test video replays, which were initially private for the 2016–17 season, allowing them to become a live pilot phase, with replay assistance implemented in the 2017–18 season. On the decision, FIGC President Carlo Tavecchio said: \"We were among the first supporters of using technology on the pitch and we believe we have everything required to offer our contribution to this important experiment.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "For most of Serie A's history, there were 16 or 18 clubs competing at the top level. Since 2004–05, however, there have been 20 clubs in total. One season (1947–48) was played with 21 teams for political reasons, following post-war tensions with Yugoslavia. Below is a complete record of how many teams played in each season throughout the league's history;",
"title": "Format"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "During the season, which runs from August to May, each club plays each of the other teams twice; once at home and once away, totalling 38 games for each team by the end of the season. Thus, in Italian football a true round-robin format is used. In the first half of the season, called the andata, each team plays once against each league opponent, for a total of 19 games. In the second half of the season, called the ritorno, the teams play another 19 games, once more against each opponent, in which home and away matches are reversed. The two halves of the season had exactly the same order of fixtures until the 2021–22 season, when an asymmetrical calendar was introduced, following the format of the English, Spanish and French leagues. Since the 1994–95 season, teams are awarded three points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a loss. Prior to this, teams were awarded two points for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss. The three lowest-placed teams at the end of the season are relegated to Serie B, and three Serie B teams are promoted to replace them for the next season.",
"title": "Format"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As of 2022, Serie A is ranked as the fourth-best league by UEFA coefficient, therefore the top four teams in the Serie A qualify straight to the UEFA Champions League group stage. The team finishing fifth, along with the Coppa Italia winner (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes outside the top five) or the team finishing sixth (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes inside the top five), qualify for the UEFA Europa League group stage. The sixth or the seventh ranked club, depending on the Coppa Italia winner's league performance, joins the final qualification round of the UEFA Europa Conference League.",
"title": "Format"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "If after all 38 games, there are two teams tied on points for first place or for 17th, the last safety spot, the team that wins the scudetto or stays up at 17th is decided by a single-legged play-off game of 90 minutes and penalties (no extra time), to be held at a neutral venue, with the host team decided by the tiebreakers listed below. If at least three teams are tied for one of those spots, then the two teams to play in the match is decided by a mini table between the teams involved using the tiebreakers below. The deciding tie-breakers for any ties on all other positions are as follows:",
"title": "Format"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Between 2006–07 and 2021–22, the tiebreakers currently used for all places to decide the scudetto winner if necessary, though this was never needed. Before 2005–06, a play-off would immediately be used if teams were tied for first place, a European qualification spot, or a relegation spot. In some past years, the playoff was a single game at a neutral site while in others it was a two-legged tie decided by aggregate score. A playoff game has never been needed since the tiebreaking format changed.",
"title": "Format"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The only time a playoff was used to decide the champion occurred in the 1963–64 season when Bologna and Inter both finished on 54 points. Bologna won the playoff 2–0 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome to win the scudetto. Playoff games were used on multiple occasions to decide European competition qualifications (most recently in 1999–2000) and relegation (most recently in 2022–23).",
"title": "Format"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Before 1929, many clubs competed in the top level of Italian football as the earlier rounds were competed up to 1922 on a regional basis then interregional up to 1929. Below is a list of Serie A clubs who have competed in the competition since it has been a league format (68 in total).",
"title": "Clubs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The following 20 clubs are competing in the Serie A during the 2023–24 season.",
"title": "Clubs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "There are 68 teams that have taken part in 92 Serie A championships in a single round that was played from the 1929–30 season until the 2023–24 season. The teams in bold compete in Serie A currently. The year in parentheses represents the most recent year of participation at this level. Inter Milan is the only team that has played Serie A football in every season.",
"title": "Clubs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Serie A had logos that featured its sponsor Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM). The logo that was introduced in 2010 had a minor change in 2016 due to the change of the logo of TIM itself. In August 2018, a new logo was announced, and another one in August 2019.",
"title": "Logos"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In the past, individual clubs competing in the league had the rights to sell their broadcast rights to specific channels throughout Italy, unlike in most other European countries. Currently, the two broadcasters in Italy are the satellite broadcaster Sky Italia and streaming platform DAZN for its own pay television networks; RAI is allowed to broadcast only highlights (in exclusive from 13:30 to 22:30 CET). This is a list of television rights in Italy (since 2021–22):",
"title": "Television rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Since the 2010–11 season, Serie A clubs have negotiated television rights collectively rather than on an individual club basis, having previously abandoned collective negotiation at the end of the 1998–99 season.",
"title": "Television rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the 1990s, Serie A was at its most popular in the United Kingdom when it was shown on Football Italia on Channel 4, although it has actually appeared on more UK channels than any other league, rarely staying in one place for long since 2002. Serie A has appeared in the UK on BSB's The Sports Channel (1990–91), Sky Sports (1991–1992), Channel 4 (1992–2002), Eurosport (2002–2004), Setanta Sports and Bravo (2004–2007), Channel 5 (2007–2008), ESPN (2009–2013), Eleven Sports Network (2018), Premier, FreeSports (2019–2021) and currently BT Sport (2013–2018; 2021–present).",
"title": "Television rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the United States, Serie A is currently shown on CBS Sports and its streaming network Paramount+. Prior to 2021–22 it was shown on the ESPN family of networks.",
"title": "Television rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Although Serie A was not formed until 1929–30, the league recognizes clubs who were named Italian champions before the league's foundation.",
"title": "Champions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Bold indicates clubs which play in the 2023–24 Serie A.",
"title": "Champions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Boldface indicates a player still active in Serie A. Italics indicates a player active outside Serie A.",
"title": "Records"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Unlike La Liga, for example, which has long imposed a quota on the number of players able to play for each club who hold passports from countries that are not in the European Union, Serie A has undergone many rule changes concerning the number of non-EU players clubs could sign.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "During the 1980s and 1990s, most Serie A clubs signed a large number of players from foreign nations (both EU and non-EU members). Notable foreign players to play in Serie A during this era included Irish international Liam Brady, England internationals Paul Gascoigne and David Platt, France's Michel Platini and Laurent Blanc, Lothar Matthäus and Jürgen Klinsmann from Germany, Dutchmen Ruud Gullit and Dennis Bergkamp, and Argentina's Diego Maradona.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the middle of the 2000–01 season, the old quota system, which limited each team to having no more than five non-EU players and using no more than three in each match, was abolished. Concurrent with the abolishment of the quota, the FIGC had investigated footballers that used fake passports. Alberto and Warley, Alejandro Da Silva and Jorginho Paulista of Udinese; Fábio Júnior and Gustavo Bartelt of Roma; Dida of Milan; Álvaro Recoba of Inter; Thomas Job, Francis Zé, Jean Ondoa of Sampdoria; and Jeda and Dede of Vicenza were all banned in July 2001 for lengths ranging from six months to one year. However, most of the bans were subsequently reduced.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "At the start of the 2003–04 season, a quota was imposed on each of the clubs limiting the number of non-EU, non-EFTA and non-Swiss players who may be signed from abroad each season, following provisional measures introduced in the 2002–03 season, which allowed Serie A and B clubs to sign only one non-EU player in the 2002 summer transfer window.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The rule underwent minor changes in August 2004, June 2005, June 2006, and June 2007.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The number of non-EU players was reduced from 265 in 2002–03 season to 166 in 2006–07 season. This reduction also included players who received EU status after their respective countries joined the EU (see 2004 and 2007 enlargement), which made players such as Adrian Mutu, Valeri Bojinov, Marek Jankulovski and Marius Stankevičius EU players.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The quota system changed again at the beginning of the 2008–09 season: three quotas were awarded to clubs that do not have non-EU players in their squad (previously only newly promoted clubs could have three quotas); clubs that had one non-EU player had two quotas. Those clubs that had two non-EU players were awarded one quota and one conditional quota, which was awarded after: 1) Transferred 1 non-EU player abroad, or 2) Release 1 non-EU player as free agent, or 3) A non-EU player received EU nationality. Clubs with three or more non-EU players had two conditional quotas, but releasing two non-EU players as free agent only gave one quota instead of two. Serie B and Lega Pro clubs could not sign non-EU players from abroad, except those that followed a club promoted from Serie D.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On 2 July 2010, the above conditional quota was reduced back to one, though if a team did not have any non-EU players, that team could still sign up to three non-EU players. In 2011 the signing quota reverted to two.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Large clubs with many foreigners usually borrow quotas from other clubs that have few foreigners or no foreigners in order to sign more non-EU players. For example, Adrian Mutu joined Juventus via Livorno in 2005, as at the time Romania was not a member of the EU. Other examples include Júlio César, Victor Obinna and Maxwell, who joined Inter from Chievo (first two) and Empoli, respectively.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Serie A also imposed Homegrown players rule, a modification of Homegrown Player Rule (UEFA). Unlike UEFA, Serie A at first did not cap the number of players in first team squad at 25, meaning the club could employ more foreigners by increasing the size of the squad. However, a cap of 25 (under-21 players were excluded) was introduced to 2015–16 season (in 2015–16 season, squad simply require 8 homegrown players but not require 4 of them from their own youth team). In the 2016–17 season, the FIGC sanctioned Sassuolo for fielding ineligible player, Antonino Ragusa. Although the club did not exceed the capacity of 21 players that were not from their own youth team (only Domenico Berardi was eligible as youth product of their own) as well as under 21 of age (born 1995 or after, of which four players were eligible) in their 24-men call-up, It was reported that on Lega Serie A side the squad list was not updated.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 2015–16 season, the following quota was announced.",
"title": "Players"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "",
"title": "Players"
}
]
| The Serie A, officially known as Serie A TIM for sponsorship reasons, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winners are awarded the scudetto and the Coppa Campioni d'Italia. It has been operating as a round-robin tournament for over ninety years since the 1929–30 season. It had been organized by the Direttorio Divisioni Superiori until 1943, the Lega Calcio until 2010, and the Lega Serie A ever since. Serie A is regarded as one of the best football leagues in the world and it is often depicted as the most tactical and defensively sound national league. Serie A was the world's strongest national league in 2020 according to IFFHS, and is ranked third among European leagues according to UEFA's league coefficient – behind the La Liga and the Premier League, and ahead of Bundesliga and Ligue 1 – which is based on the performance of Italian clubs in the Champions League and the Europa League during the previous five years. Serie A led the UEFA ranking from 1986 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1999. In its current format, the Italian Football Championship was revised from having regional and interregional rounds, to a single-tier league from the 1929–30 season onwards. The championship titles won before 1929 are officially recognised by FIGC with the same weighting as titles that were subsequently awarded. Similarly, the 1945–46 season, when the round-robin was suspended and the league was played over two geographical groups due to the ravages of World War II, is not statistically considered, even if its title is fully official. The league hosts three of the world's most famous clubs as Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan, all founding members of the G-14, a group which represented the largest and most prestigious European football clubs from 2000 to 2008, with the first two also being founding members of its successive organisation, European Club Association (ECA). More players have won the Ballon d'Or award while playing at a Serie A club than any league in the world other than Spain's La Liga, although La Liga has the highest total number of Ballon d'Or winners. Juventus, Italy's most successful club of the 20th century and the most winning Italian team, is tied for sixth in Europe and twelfth in the world with the most official international titles with eleven. Prior the first Europa Conference League final in 2022, it was also the only one in the world to have won all the historical five official confederation competitions, an achievement reached after its triumph in the 1985 Intercontinental Cup and revalidated after winning a sixth tournament, the UEFA Intertoto Cup, fourteen years later. Milan is joint third club overall for official international titles won with eighteen. Inter, following their achievements in the 2009–10 season, became the first Italian team to have achieved a seasonal treble. It is also the team to have competed uninterruptedly for the most time in the top flight of Italian football, having seen its debut in 1909. All these clubs, along with Lazio, Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli, are known as the "seven sisters" of Italian football. Serie A is one of the most storied football leagues in the world. Of the 100 greatest footballers in history chosen by FourFourTwo in 2017, 42 players have played in Serie A, more than any other league in the world. Juventus is the team that has produced the most World Cup champions (27), with Inter (20), Roma (16) and Milan (10), being respectively third, fourth and ninth in that ranking. | 2002-01-11T12:17:18Z | 2023-12-30T14:25:42Z | [
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15,501 | Inhalant | Inhalants are a broad range of household and industrial chemicals whose volatile vapors or pressurized gases can be concentrated and breathed in via the nose or mouth to produce intoxication, in a manner not intended by the manufacturer. They are inhaled at room temperature through volatilization (in the case of gasoline or acetone) or from a pressurized container (e.g., nitrous oxide or butane), and do not include drugs that are sniffed after burning or heating. For example, amyl nitrite (poppers), nitrous oxide and toluene – a solvent widely used in contact cement, permanent markers, and certain types of glue – are considered inhalants, but smoking tobacco, cannabis, and crack cocaine are not, even though these drugs are inhaled as smoke or vapor.
While a few inhalants are prescribed by medical professionals and used for medical purposes, as in the case of inhaled anesthetics and nitrous oxide (an anxiolytic and pain relief agent prescribed by dentists), this article focuses on inhalant use of household and industrial propellants, glues, fuels, and other products in a manner not intended by the manufacturer, to produce intoxication or other psychoactive effects. These products are used as recreational drugs for their intoxicating effect. According to a 1995 report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the most serious inhalant use occurs among homeless children and teenagers who "... live on the streets completely without family ties." Inhalants are the only substance used more by younger teenagers than by older teenagers. Inhalant users inhale vapor or aerosol propellant gases using plastic bags held over the mouth or by breathing from a solvent-soaked rag or an open container. The practices are known colloquially as "sniffing", "huffing" or "bagging".
The effects of inhalants range from an alcohol-like intoxication and intense euphoria to vivid hallucinations, depending on the substance and the dose. Some inhalant users are injured due to the harmful effects of the solvents or gases or due to other chemicals used in the products that they are inhaling. As with any recreational drug, users can be injured due to dangerous behavior while they are intoxicated, such as driving under the influence. In some cases, users have died from hypoxia (lack of oxygen), pneumonia, heart failure, cardiac arrest, or aspiration of vomit. Brain damage is typically seen with chronic long-term use of solvents as opposed to short-term exposure.
While legal when used as intended, in England, Scotland, and Wales it is illegal to sell inhalants to persons likely to use them as an intoxicant. As of 2017, thirty-seven US states impose criminal penalties on some combination of sale, possession or recreational use of various inhalants. In 15 of these states, such laws apply only to persons under the age of 18.
Inhalants can be classified by their intended function. Most inhalant drugs that are used non-medically are ingredients in household or industrial chemical products that are not intended to be concentrated and inhaled. A small number of recreational inhalant drugs are pharmaceutical products that are used illicitly.
Another way to categorize inhalants is by their product category. There are three main product categories: solvents; gases; and medical drugs which are used illicitly.
A wide range of volatile solvents intended for household or industrial use are inhaled as recreational drugs. This includes petroleum products (gasoline and kerosene), toluene (used in paint thinner, permanent markers, contact cement and model glue), and acetone (used in nail polish remover). These solvents vaporize at room temperature. Ethanol (the alcohol which is normally drunk) is sometimes inhaled, but this cannot be done at room temperature. The ethanol must be converted from liquid into gaseous state (vapor) or aerosol (mist), in some cases using a nebulizer, a machine that agitates the liquid into an aerosol. The sale of nebulizers for inhaling ethanol was banned in some US states due to safety concerns.
A number of gases intended for household or industrial use are inhaled as recreational drugs. This includes chlorofluorocarbons used in aerosols and propellants (e.g., aerosol hair spray, aerosol deodorant). A gas used as a propellant in whipped cream aerosol containers, nitrous oxide, is used as a recreational drug. Pressurized canisters of propane and butane gas, both of which are intended for use as fuels, are used as inhalants.
Several medical anesthetics are used as recreational drugs, including diethyl ether (a drug that is no longer used medically, due to its high flammability and the development of safer alternatives) and nitrous oxide, which is widely used in the 2010s by dentists as an anti-anxiety drug during dental procedures. Diethyl ether has a long history of use as a recreational drug. The effects of ether intoxication are similar to those of alcohol intoxication, but more potent. Also, due to NMDA antagonism, the user may experience all the psychedelic effects present in classical dissociatives such as ketamine in the forms of thought loops and the feeling of the mind being disconnected from one's body. Nitrous oxide is a dental anesthetic that is used as a recreational drug, either by users who have access to medical-grade gas canisters (e.g., dental hygienists or dentists) or by using the gas contained in whipped cream aerosol containers. Nitrous oxide inhalation can cause pain relief, depersonalisation, derealisation, dizziness, euphoria, and some sound distortion.
It is also possible to classify inhalants by the effect they have on the body. Some solvents act as depressants, causing users to feel relaxed or drowsy while others act as stimulants. All commonly abused inhalants act as asphyxiant gases, although a common myth is that their primary effects are only due to oxygen deprivation. In reality, the majority of abused inhalants still exhibit psychoactive effects, although oxygen deprivation does add to the notable effects. Nitrous oxide can be categorized as a dissociative drug, as it can cause visual and auditory hallucinations. Other agents may have more direct effects at receptors, as inhalants exhibit a variety of mechanisms of action. The mechanisms of action of many non-medical inhalants have not been well elucidated. Anesthetic gases used for surgery, such as nitrous oxide or enflurane, are believed to induce anesthesia primarily by acting as NMDA receptor antagonists, open-channel blockers that bind to the inside of the calcium channels on the outer surface of the neuron, and provide high levels of NMDA receptor blockade for a short period of time.
This makes inhaled anesthetic gases different from other NMDA antagonists, such as ketamine, which bind to a regulatory site on the NMDA-sensitive calcium transporter complex and provide slightly lower levels of NMDA blockade, but for a longer and much more predictable duration. This makes a deeper level of anesthesia achievable more easily using anesthetic gases but can also make them more dangerous than other drugs used for this purpose.
Inhalants can also be classified by chemical structure. Classes include:
Inhalant users inhale vapors or aerosol propellant gases using plastic bags held over the mouth or by breathing from an open container of solvents, such as gasoline or paint thinner. Nitrous oxide gases from whipped cream aerosol cans, aerosol hairspray or non-stick frying spray are sprayed into plastic bags. Some nitrous oxide users spray the gas into balloons. When inhaling non-stick cooking spray or other aerosol products, some users may filter the aerosolized particles out with a rag. Some gases, such as propane and butane gases, are inhaled directly from the canister. Once these solvents or gases are inhaled, the extensive capillary surface of the lungs rapidly absorbs the solvent or gas, and blood levels peak rapidly. The intoxication effects occur so quickly that the effects of inhalation can resemble the intensity of effects produced by intravenous injection of other psychoactive drugs.
Ethanol is also inhaled, either by vaporizing it by pouring it over dry ice in a narrow container and inhaling with a straw or by pouring alcohol in a corked bottle with a pipe, and then using a bicycle pump to make a spray. Alcohol can be vaporized using a simple container and open-flame heater. Medical devices such as asthma nebulizers and inhalers were also reported as a means of application. The practice gained popularity in 2004, with the marketing of the device dubbed AWOL (Alcohol without liquid), a play on the military term AWOL (Absent Without Leave). AWOL, created by British businessman Dominic Simler, was first introduced in Asia and Europe, and then in the United States in August 2004. AWOL was used by nightclubs, at gatherings and parties, and it garnered attraction as a novelty, as people 'enjoyed passing it around in a group'. AWOL uses a nebulizer, a machine that agitates the liquid into an aerosol. AWOL's official website states that "AWOL and AWOL 1 are powered by Electrical Air Compressors while AWOL 2 and AWOL 3 are powered by electrical oxygen generators", which refer to a couple of mechanisms used by the nebulizer drug delivery device for inhalation. Although the AWOL machine is marketed as having no downsides, such as the lack of calories or hangovers, Amanda Shaffer of Slate describes these claims as "dubious at best". Although inhaled alcohol does reduce the caloric content, the savings are minimal. After expressed safety and health concerns, sale or use of AWOL machines was banned in a number of American states.
The effects of solvent intoxication can vary widely depending on the dose and what type of solvent or gas is inhaled. A person who has inhaled a small amount of rubber cement or paint thinner vapor may be impaired in a manner resembling alcohol inebriation. A person who has inhaled a larger quantity of solvents or gases, or a stronger chemical, may experience stronger effects such as distortion in perceptions of time and space, hallucinations, and emotional disturbances. The effects of inhalant use are also modified by the combined use of inhalants and alcohol or other drugs.
In the short term, many users experience headaches, nausea and vomiting, slurred speech, loss of motor coordination, and wheezing. A characteristic "glue sniffer's rash" around the nose and mouth is sometimes seen after prolonged use. An odor of paint or solvents on clothes, skin, and breath is sometimes a sign of inhalant abuse, and paint or solvent residues can sometimes emerge in sweat.
According to NIH, even a single session of inhalant use "can disrupt heart rhythms and lower oxygen levels", which can lead to death. "Regular abuse can result in serious harm to the brain, heart, kidneys, and liver."
Statistics on deaths caused by heavy inhalant use are difficult to determine. It may be severely under-reported because death is often attributed to a discrete event such as a stroke or a heart attack, even if the event happened because of inhalant use. Inhalant use was mentioned on 144 death certificates in Texas during the period 1988–1998 and was reported in 39 deaths in Virginia between 1987 and 1996 from acute voluntary exposure to used inhalants.
Regardless of which inhalant is used, inhaling vapors or gases can lead to injury or death. One major risk is hypoxia (lack of oxygen), which can occur due to inhaling fumes from a plastic bag, or from using proper inhalation mask equipment (e.g., a medical mask for nitrous oxide) but not adding oxygen or room air. Another danger is freezing the throat. When a gas that was stored under high pressure is released, it cools abruptly and can cause frostbite if it is inhaled directly from the container. This can occur, for example, with inhaling nitrous oxide. When nitrous oxide is used as an automotive power adder, its cooling effect is used to make the fuel-air charge denser. In a person, this effect is potentially lethal. Many inhalants are volatile organic chemicals and can catch fire or explode, especially when combined with smoking. As with many other drugs, users may also injure themselves due to loss of coordination or impaired judgment, especially if they attempt to operate machinery.
Solvents have many potential risks in common, including pneumonia, cardiac failure or arrest, and aspiration of vomit. The inhaling of some solvents can cause hearing loss, limb spasms, and damage to the central nervous system and brain. Serious but potentially reversible effects include liver and kidney damage and blood-oxygen depletion. Death from inhalants is generally caused by a very high concentration of fumes. Deliberately inhaling solvents from an attached paper or plastic bag or in a closed area greatly increases the chances of suffocation. Brain damage is typically seen with chronic long-term use as opposed to short-term exposure. Parkinsonism (see: Signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease) has been associated with huffing.
Female inhalant users who are pregnant may have adverse effects on the fetus, and the baby may be smaller when it is born and may need additional health care (similar to those seen with alcohol – fetal alcohol syndrome). There is some evidence of birth defects and disabilities in babies born to women who sniffed solvents such as gasoline.
In the short term, death from solvent use occurs most commonly from aspiration of vomit while unconscious or from a combination of respiratory depression and hypoxia, the second cause being especially a risk with heavier-than-air vapors such as butane or gasoline vapor. Deaths typically occur from complications related to excessive sedation and vomiting. Actual overdose from the drug does occur, however, and inhaled solvent use is statistically more likely to result in life-threatening respiratory depression than intravenous use of opioids such as heroin. Most deaths from solvent use could be prevented if individuals were resuscitated quickly when they stopped breathing and their airways cleared if they vomited. However, most inhalant use takes place when people inhale solvents by themselves or in groups of people who are intoxicated. Certain solvents are more hazardous than others, such as gasoline.
In contrast, a few inhalants like amyl nitrate and diethyl ether have medical applications and are not toxic in the same sense as solvents, though they can still be dangerous when used recreationally. Nitrous oxide is thought to be particularly non-toxic, though heavy long-term use can lead to a variety of serious health problems linked to the destruction of vitamin B12 and folic acid.
The hypoxic effect of inhalants can cause damage to many organ systems (particularly the brain, which has a very low tolerance for oxygen deprivation), but there can also be additional toxicity resulting from either the physical properties of the compound itself or additional ingredients present in a product. Organochlorine solvents are particularly hazardous; many of these are now restricted in developed countries due to their environmental impact.
Toxicity may also result from the pharmacological properties of the drug; excess NMDA antagonism can completely block calcium influx into neurons and provoke cell death through apoptosis, although this is more likely to be a long-term result of chronic solvent use than a consequence of short-term use.
Sudden sniffing death syndrome, first described by Millard Bass in 1970, is commonly known as SSDS.
Inhaling butane gas can cause drowsiness, unconsciousness, asphyxia, and cardiac arrhythmia. Butane is the most commonly misused volatile solvent in the UK and caused 52% of solvent-related deaths in 2000. When butane is sprayed directly into the throat, the jet of fluid can cool rapidly to −20 °C by adiabatic expansion, causing prolonged laryngospasm.
Some inhalants can also indirectly cause sudden death by cardiac arrest, in a syndrome known as "sudden sniffing death". The anaesthetic gases present in the inhalants appear to sensitize the user to adrenaline and, in this state, a sudden surge of adrenaline (e.g., from a frightening hallucination or run-in with aggressors), may cause fatal cardiac arrhythmia.
Furthermore, the inhalation of any gas that is capable of displacing oxygen in the lungs (especially gases heavier than oxygen) carries the risk of hypoxia as a result of the very mechanism by which breathing is triggered. Since reflexive breathing is prompted by elevated carbon dioxide levels (rather than diminished blood oxygen levels), breathing a concentrated, relatively inert gas (such as computer-duster tetrafluoroethane or nitrous oxide) that removes carbon dioxide from the blood without replacing it with oxygen will produce no outward signs of suffocation even when the brain is experiencing hypoxia. Once full symptoms of hypoxia appear, it may be too late to breathe without assistance, especially if the gas is heavy enough to lodge in the lungs for extended periods. Even completely inert gases, such as argon, can have this effect if oxygen is largely excluded.
Even though solvent glue is normally a legal product, there is a 1983 case where a court ruled that supplying glue to children is illegal. Khaliq v HM Advocate was a Scottish criminal case decided by the High Court of Justiciary on appeal, in which it was decided that it was an offense at common law to supply glue-sniffing materials that were otherwise legal in the knowledge that they would be used recreationally by children. Two shopkeepers in Glasgow were arrested and charged for supplying children with "glue-sniffing kits" consisting of a quantity of petroleum-based glue in a plastic bag. They argued there was nothing illegal about the items that they had supplied. On appeal, the High Court took the view that, even though glue and plastic bags might be perfectly legal, everyday items, the two shopkeepers knew perfectly well that the children were going to use the articles as inhalants and the charge on the indictment should stand. When the case came to trial at Glasgow High Court the two were sentenced to three years' imprisonment.
As of 2023, in England, Scotland, and Wales it is illegal to sell inhalants, including solvent glues, to persons of any age likely to use them as an intoxicant. As of 2017, thirty-seven US states impose criminal penalties on some combination of sale, possession or recreational use of various inhalants. In 15 of these states, such laws apply only to persons under the age of 18.
"New Jersey... prohibits selling or offering to sell minors products containing chlorofluorocarbon that is used in refrigerant."
The sale of alkyl nitrite-based poppers was banned in Canada in 2013. Although not considered a narcotic and not illegal to possess or use, they are considered a drug. Sales that are not authorized can now be punished with fines and prison. Since 2007, reformulated poppers containing isopropyl nitrite are sold in Europe because only isobutyl nitrite is prohibited. In France, the sale of products containing butyl nitrite, pentyl nitrite, or isomers thereof, has been prohibited since 1990 on grounds of danger to consumers. In 2007, the government extended this prohibition to all alkyl nitrites that were not authorized for sale as drugs. After litigation by sex shop owners, this extension was quashed by the Council of State on the grounds that the government had failed to justify such a blanket prohibition: according to the court, the risks cited, concerning rare accidents often following abnormal usage, rather justified compulsory warnings on the packaging.
In the United Kingdom, poppers are widely available and frequently (legally) sold in gay clubs/bars, sex shops, drug paraphernalia head shops, over the Internet and on markets. It is illegal under Medicines Act 1968 to sell them advertised for human consumption, and to bypass this, they are usually sold as odorizers. In the U.S., originally marketed as a prescription drug in 1937, amyl nitrite remained so until 1960, when the Food and Drug Administration removed the prescription requirement due to its safety record. This requirement was reinstated in 1969, after observation of an increase in recreational use. Other alkyl nitrites were outlawed in the U.S. by Congress through the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The law includes an exception for commercial purposes. The term commercial purpose is defined to mean any use other than for the production of consumer products containing volatile alkyl nitrites meant for inhaling or otherwise introducing volatile alkyl nitrites into the human body for euphoric or physical effects. The law came into effect in 1990. Visits to retail outlets selling these products reveal that some manufacturers have since reformulated their products to abide by the regulations, through the use of the legal cyclohexyl nitrite as the primary ingredient in their products, which are sold as video head cleaners, polish removers, or room odorants.
In the United States, possession of nitrous oxide is legal under federal law and is not subject to DEA purview. It is, however, regulated by the Food and Drug Administration under the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act; prosecution is possible under its "misbranding" clauses, prohibiting the sale or distribution of nitrous oxide for the purpose of human consumption as a recreational drug. Many states have laws regulating the possession, sale, and distribution of nitrous oxide. Such laws usually ban distribution to minors or limit the amount of nitrous oxide that may be sold without a special license. For example, in the state of California, possession for recreational use is prohibited and qualifies as a misdemeanor. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has warned that nitrous oxide is a prescription medicine, and its sale or possession without a prescription is an offense under the Medicines Act. This statement would seemingly prohibit all non-medicinal uses of the chemical, though it is implied that only recreational use will be legally targeted. In India, for general anesthesia purposes, nitrous oxide is available as Nitrous Oxide IP. India's gas cylinder rules (1985) prohibit the transfer of gas from one cylinder to another for breathing purposes. Because India's Food & Drug Authority (FDA-India) rules state that transferring a drug from one container to another (refilling) is equivalent to manufacturing, anyone found doing so must possess a drug manufacturing license.
Inhalant drugs are often used by children, teenagers, incarcerated or institutionalized people, and impoverished people, because these solvents and gases are ingredients in hundreds of legally available, inexpensive products, such as deodorant sprays, hair spray, contact cement and aerosol air fresheners. However, most users tend to be "... adolescents (between the ages of 12 and 17)." In some countries, chronic, heavy inhalant use is concentrated in marginalized, impoverished communities. Young people who become used to heavy amounts of inhalants chronically are also more likely to be those who are isolated from their families and community. The article "Epidemiology of Inhalant Abuse: An International Perspective" notes that "[t]he most serious form of obsession with inhalant use probably occurs in countries other than the United States where young children live on the streets completely without family ties. These groups almost always use inhalants at very high levels (Leal et al. 1978). This isolation can make it harder to keep in touch with the sniffer and encourage him or her to stop sniffing."
The article also states that "... high [inhalant use] rates among barrio Hispanics almost undoubtedly are related to the poverty, lack of opportunity, and social dysfunction that occur in barrios" and states that the "... same general tendency appears for Native-American youth" because "... Indian reservations are among the most disadvantaged environments in the United States; there are high rates of unemployment, little opportunity, and high rates of alcoholism and other health problems." There are a wide range of social problems associated with inhalant use, such as feelings of distress, anxiety and grief for the community; violence and damage to property; violent crime; stresses on the juvenile justice system; and stresses on youth agencies and support services.
Glue and gasoline (petrol) sniffing is also a problem in parts of Africa, especially with street children. In India and South Asia, three of the most widely used inhalants are the Dendrite brand and other forms of contact adhesives and rubber cement manufactured in Kolkata, and toluenes in paint thinners. Genkem is a brand of glue, which had become the generic name for all the glues used by glue-sniffing children in Africa before the manufacturer replaced n-hexane in its ingredients in 2000.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that glue sniffing is at the core of "street culture" in Nairobi, Kenya, and that the majority of street children in the city are habitual solvent users. Research conducted by Cottrell-Boyce for the African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies found that glue sniffing amongst Kenyan street children was primarily functional – dulling the senses against the hardship of life on the street – but it also provided a link to the support structure of the "street family" as a potent symbol of shared experience.
Similar incidents of glue sniffing among destitute youth in the Philippines have also been reported, most commonly from groups of street children and teenagers collectively known as "Rugby" boys, which were named after a brand of toluene-laden contact cement. Other toluene-containing substances have also been used, most notably the Vulca Seal brand of roof sealants. Bostik Philippines, which currently owns the Rugby and Vulca Seal brands, has since responded to the issue by adding bitterants such as mustard oil to their Rugby line, as well as reformulating it by replacing toluene with xylene. Several other manufacturers have also followed suit.
Another very common inhalant is Erase-X, a correction fluid that contains toluene. It has become very common for school and college students to use it, because it is easily available in stationery shops in India. This fluid is also used by street and working children in Delhi.
In the UK, marginalized youth use a number of inhalants, such as solvents and propellants. In Russia and Eastern Europe, gasoline sniffing became common on Russian ships following attempts to limit the supply of alcohol to ship crews in the 1980s. The documentary Children Underground depicts the huffing of a solvent called Aurolac (a product used in chroming) by Romanian homeless children. During the interwar period, the inhalation of ether (etheromania) was widespread in some regions of Poland, especially in Upper Silesia. Tens of thousands of people were affected by this problem.
In Canada, Native children in the isolated Northern Labrador community of Davis Inlet were the focus of national concern in 1993, when many were found to be sniffing gasoline. The Canadian and provincial Newfoundland and Labrador governments intervened on a number of occasions, sending many children away for treatment. Despite being moved to the new community of Natuashish in 2002, serious inhalant use problems have continued. Similar problems were reported in Sheshatshiu in 2000 and also in Pikangikum First Nation. In 2012, the issue once again made the news media in Canada. In Mexico, the inhaling of a mixture of gasoline and industrial solvents, known locally as "Activo" or "Chemo", has risen in popularity among the homeless and among the street children of Mexico City in recent years. The mixture is poured onto a handkerchief and inhaled while held in one's fist.
In the US, ether was used as a recreational drug during the 1930s Prohibition era, when alcohol was made illegal. Ether was either sniffed or drunk and, in some towns, replaced alcohol entirely. However, the risk of death from excessive sedation or overdose is greater than that with alcohol, and ether drinking is associated with damage to the stomach and gastrointestinal tract. Use of glue, paint and gasoline became more common after the 1950s. Model airplane glue-sniffing as problematic behavior among youth was first reported in 1959 and increased in the 1960s. Use of aerosol sprays became more common in the 1980s, as older propellants such as CFCs were phased out and replaced by more environmentally friendly compounds such as propane and butane. Most inhalant solvents and gases are not regulated under drug laws such as the United States Controlled Substances Act. However, many US states and Canadian cities have placed restrictions on the sale of some solvent-containing products to minors, particularly for products widely associated with sniffing, such as model cement. The practice of inhaling such substances is sometimes colloquially referred to as huffing, sniffing (or glue sniffing), dusting, or chroming.
Australia has long faced a petrol (gasoline) sniffing problem in isolated and impoverished aboriginal communities. Although some sources argue that sniffing was introduced by United States servicemen stationed in the nation's Top End during World War II or through experimentation by 1940s-era Cobourg Peninsula sawmill workers, other sources claim that inhalant abuse (such as glue inhalation) emerged in Australia in the late 1960s. Chronic, heavy petrol sniffing appears to occur among remote, impoverished indigenous communities, where the ready accessibility of petrol has helped to make it a common addictive substance.
In Australia, petrol sniffing now occurs widely throughout remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, northern parts of South Australia, and Queensland. The number of people sniffing petrol goes up and down over time as young people experiment or sniff occasionally. "Boss", or chronic, sniffers may move in and out of communities; they are often responsible for encouraging young people to take it up.
A 1983 survey of 4,165 secondary students in New South Wales showed that solvents and aerosols ranked just after analgesics (e.g., codeine pills) and alcohol for drugs that were inappropriately used. This 1983 study did not find any common usage patterns or social class factors. The causes of death for inhalant users in Australia included pneumonia, cardiac failure/arrest, aspiration of vomit, and burns. In 1985, there were 14 communities in Central Australia reporting young people sniffing. In July 1997, it was estimated that there were around 200 young people sniffing petrol across 10 communities in Central Australia. Approximately 40 were classified as chronic sniffers. There have been reports of young Aboriginal people sniffing petrol in the urban areas around Darwin and Alice Springs.
In 2005, the Government of Australia and BP Australia began the usage of opal fuel in remote areas prone to petrol sniffing. Opal is a non-sniffable fuel (which is much less likely to cause a high) and has made a difference in some indigenous communities.
One of the early musical references to inhalant use occurs in the 1974 Elton John song "The Bitch Is Back", in the line "I get high in the evening sniffing pots of glue." Inhalant use, especially glue-sniffing, is widely associated with the late-1970s punk youth subculture in the UK and North America. Raymond Cochrane and Douglas Carroll claim that when glue sniffing became widespread in the late 1970s, it was "adopted by punks because public [negative] perceptions of sniffing fitted in with their self-image" as rebels against societal values. While punks at first used inhalants "experimentally and as a cheap high, adult disgust and hostility [to the practice] encouraged punks to use glue sniffing as a way of shocking society." As well, using inhalants was a way of expressing their anti-corporatist DIY (do it yourself) credo; by using inexpensive household products as inhalants, punks did not have to purchase industrially manufactured liquor or beer.
One history of the punk subculture argues that "substance abuse was often referred to in the music and did become synonymous with the genre, glue-sniffing especially" because the youths' "faith in the future had died and that the youth just didn't care anymore" due to the "awareness of the threat of nuclear war and a pervasive sense of doom." In a BBC interview with a person who was a punk in the late 1970s, they said that "there was a real fear of imminent nuclear war—people were sniffing glue knowing that it could kill them, but they didn't care because they believed that very soon everybody would be dead anyway."
A number of 1970s punk rock and 1980s hardcore punk songs refer to inhalant use. The Ramones, an influential early US punk band, referred to inhalant use in several of their songs. The song "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" describes adolescent boredom, and the song "Carbona not Glue" states, "My brain is stuck from shooting glue." An influential punk fanzine about the subculture and music took its name (Sniffin' Glue) from the Ramones song. The 1980s punk band The Dead Milkmen wrote a song, "Life is Shit" from their album Beelzebubba, about two friends hallucinating after sniffing glue. Punk-band-turned-hip-hop group the Beastie Boys penned a song "Hold it Now – Hit It", which includes the line "cause I'm beer drinkin, breath stinkin, sniffing glue." Their song "Shake Your Rump" includes the lines, "Should I have another sip no skip it/In the back of the ride and bust with the whippits". Pop punk band Sum 41 wrote a song, "Fat Lip", which refers to a character who does not "make sense from all the gas you be huffing..." The song "Lança-Perfume", written and performed by Brazilian pop star Rita Lee, became a national hit in 1980. The song is about chloroethane and its widespread recreational sale and use during the rise of Brazil's carnivals.
Inhalants are referred to by bands from other genres, including several grunge bands—an early 1990s genre that was influenced by punk rock. The 1990s grunge band Nirvana, which was influenced by punk music, penned a song, "Dumb", in which Kurt Cobain sings "my heart is broke / But I have some glue / help me inhale / And mend it with you". L7, an all-female grunge band, penned a song titled "Scrap" about a skinhead who inhales spray-paint fumes until his mind "starts to gel". Also in the 1990s, the Britpop band Suede had a UK hit with their song "Animal Nitrate" whose title is a thinly veiled reference to amyl nitrite. The Beck song "Fume" from his "Fresh Meat and Old Slabs" release is about inhaling nitrous oxide. Another Beck song, "Cold Ass Fashion", contains the line "O.G. – Original Gluesniffer!" Primus's 1999 song "Lacquer Head" is about adolescents who use inhalants to get high. Hip hop performer Eminem wrote a song, "Bad Meets Evil", which refers to breathing "... ether in three lethal amounts." The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a retro-rock band from the 1990s, has a song, "Hyperventilation", which is about sniffing model-airplane cement. Frank Zappa's song "Teenage Wind" from 1981 has a reference to glue sniffing: "Nothing left to do but get out the 'ol glue; Parents, parents; Sniff it good now..."
A number of films have depicted or referred to the use of solvent inhalants. In the 1980 comedy film Airplane!, the character of McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) refers to his inhalant use when he states, "I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue." In the 1996 film Citizen Ruth, the character Ruth (Laura Dern), a homeless drifter, is depicted inhaling patio sealant from a paper bag in an alleyway. In the tragicomedy Love Liza, the main character, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, plays a man who takes up building remote-controlled airplanes as a hobby to give him an excuse to sniff the fuel in the wake of his wife's suicide.
Harmony Korine's 1997 Gummo depicts adolescent boys inhaling contact cement for a high. Edet Belzberg's 2001 documentary Children Underground chronicles the lives of Romanian street children addicted to inhaling paint. In The Basketball Diaries, a group of boys is huffing Carbona cleaning liquid at 3 minutes and 27 seconds into the movie; further on, a boy is reading a diary describing the experience of sniffing the cleaning liquid.
In the David Lynch film Blue Velvet, the bizarre and manipulative character played by Dennis Hopper uses a mask to inhale amyl nitrite. In Little Shop of Horrors, Steve Martin's character dies from nitrous oxide inhalation. The 1999 independent film Boys Don't Cry depicts two young low-income women inhaling aerosol computer cleaner (compressed gas) for a buzz. In The Cider House Rules, Michael Caine's character is addicted to inhaling ether vapors.
In Thirteen, the main character, a teen, uses a can of aerosol computer cleaner to get high. In the action movie Shooter, an ex-serviceman on the run from the law (Mark Wahlberg) inhales nitrous oxide gas from a number of Whip-It! whipped cream canisters until he becomes unconscious. The South African film The Wooden Camera also depicts the use of inhalants by one of the main characters, a homeless teen, and their use in terms of socio-economic stratification. The title characters in Samson and Delilah sniff petrol; in Samson's case, possibly causing brain damage.
In the 2004 film Taxi, Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon are trapped in a room with a burst tank containing nitrous oxide. Queen Latifah's character curses at Fallon while they both laugh hysterically. Fallon's character asks if it is possible to die from nitrous oxide, to which Queen Latifah's character responds with "It's laughing gas, stupid!" Neither of them had any side effects other than their voices becoming much deeper while in the room.
In the French horror film Them, (2006) a French couple living in Romania are pursued by a gang of street children who break into their home at night. Olivia Bonamy's character is later tortured and forced to inhale aurolac from a silver-colored bag. During a flashback scene in the 2001 film Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter gets Mason Verger high on amyl nitrite poppers, then convinces Verger to cut off his own face and feed it to his dogs.
The science fiction story "Waterspider" by Philip K. Dick (first published in January 1964 in If magazine) contains a scene in which characters from the future are discussing the culture of the early 1950s. One character says: "You mean he sniffed what they called 'airplane dope'? He was a 'glue-sniffer'?", to which another character replies: "Hardly. That was a mania among adolescents and did not become widespread in fact until a decade later. No, I am speaking about imbibing alcohol."
The book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas describes how the two main characters inhale diethyl ether and amyl nitrite.
In the comedy series Newman and Baddiel in Pieces, Rob Newman's inhaling gas from a foghorn was a running joke in the series. One episode of the Jeremy Kyle Show featured a woman with a 20-year butane gas addiction. In the series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Charlie Kelly has an addiction to huffing glue. Additionally, season nine episode 8 shows Dennis, Mac, and Dee getting a can of gasoline to use as a solvent, but instead end up taking turns huffing from the canister.
A 2008 episode of the reality show Intervention (season 5, episode 9) featured Allison, who was addicted to huffing computer duster for the short-lived, psychoactive effects. Allison has since achieved a small but significant cult following among bloggers and YouTube users. Several remixes of scenes from Allison's episode can be found online. Since 2009, Allison has worked with drug and alcohol treatment centers in Los Angeles County. In the third episode of season 5 of American Dad!, titled "Home Adrone", Roger asks a flight attendant to bring him industrial adhesive and a plastic bag. In the seventh episode of the fourteenth season of South Park, Towelie, an anthropomorphic towel, develops an addiction to inhaling computer duster. In the show Squidbillies, the main character Early Cuyler is often seen inhaling gas or other substances. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Inhalants are a broad range of household and industrial chemicals whose volatile vapors or pressurized gases can be concentrated and breathed in via the nose or mouth to produce intoxication, in a manner not intended by the manufacturer. They are inhaled at room temperature through volatilization (in the case of gasoline or acetone) or from a pressurized container (e.g., nitrous oxide or butane), and do not include drugs that are sniffed after burning or heating. For example, amyl nitrite (poppers), nitrous oxide and toluene – a solvent widely used in contact cement, permanent markers, and certain types of glue – are considered inhalants, but smoking tobacco, cannabis, and crack cocaine are not, even though these drugs are inhaled as smoke or vapor.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "While a few inhalants are prescribed by medical professionals and used for medical purposes, as in the case of inhaled anesthetics and nitrous oxide (an anxiolytic and pain relief agent prescribed by dentists), this article focuses on inhalant use of household and industrial propellants, glues, fuels, and other products in a manner not intended by the manufacturer, to produce intoxication or other psychoactive effects. These products are used as recreational drugs for their intoxicating effect. According to a 1995 report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the most serious inhalant use occurs among homeless children and teenagers who \"... live on the streets completely without family ties.\" Inhalants are the only substance used more by younger teenagers than by older teenagers. Inhalant users inhale vapor or aerosol propellant gases using plastic bags held over the mouth or by breathing from a solvent-soaked rag or an open container. The practices are known colloquially as \"sniffing\", \"huffing\" or \"bagging\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The effects of inhalants range from an alcohol-like intoxication and intense euphoria to vivid hallucinations, depending on the substance and the dose. Some inhalant users are injured due to the harmful effects of the solvents or gases or due to other chemicals used in the products that they are inhaling. As with any recreational drug, users can be injured due to dangerous behavior while they are intoxicated, such as driving under the influence. In some cases, users have died from hypoxia (lack of oxygen), pneumonia, heart failure, cardiac arrest, or aspiration of vomit. Brain damage is typically seen with chronic long-term use of solvents as opposed to short-term exposure.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "While legal when used as intended, in England, Scotland, and Wales it is illegal to sell inhalants to persons likely to use them as an intoxicant. As of 2017, thirty-seven US states impose criminal penalties on some combination of sale, possession or recreational use of various inhalants. In 15 of these states, such laws apply only to persons under the age of 18.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Inhalants can be classified by their intended function. Most inhalant drugs that are used non-medically are ingredients in household or industrial chemical products that are not intended to be concentrated and inhaled. A small number of recreational inhalant drugs are pharmaceutical products that are used illicitly.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Another way to categorize inhalants is by their product category. There are three main product categories: solvents; gases; and medical drugs which are used illicitly.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A wide range of volatile solvents intended for household or industrial use are inhaled as recreational drugs. This includes petroleum products (gasoline and kerosene), toluene (used in paint thinner, permanent markers, contact cement and model glue), and acetone (used in nail polish remover). These solvents vaporize at room temperature. Ethanol (the alcohol which is normally drunk) is sometimes inhaled, but this cannot be done at room temperature. The ethanol must be converted from liquid into gaseous state (vapor) or aerosol (mist), in some cases using a nebulizer, a machine that agitates the liquid into an aerosol. The sale of nebulizers for inhaling ethanol was banned in some US states due to safety concerns.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A number of gases intended for household or industrial use are inhaled as recreational drugs. This includes chlorofluorocarbons used in aerosols and propellants (e.g., aerosol hair spray, aerosol deodorant). A gas used as a propellant in whipped cream aerosol containers, nitrous oxide, is used as a recreational drug. Pressurized canisters of propane and butane gas, both of which are intended for use as fuels, are used as inhalants.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Several medical anesthetics are used as recreational drugs, including diethyl ether (a drug that is no longer used medically, due to its high flammability and the development of safer alternatives) and nitrous oxide, which is widely used in the 2010s by dentists as an anti-anxiety drug during dental procedures. Diethyl ether has a long history of use as a recreational drug. The effects of ether intoxication are similar to those of alcohol intoxication, but more potent. Also, due to NMDA antagonism, the user may experience all the psychedelic effects present in classical dissociatives such as ketamine in the forms of thought loops and the feeling of the mind being disconnected from one's body. Nitrous oxide is a dental anesthetic that is used as a recreational drug, either by users who have access to medical-grade gas canisters (e.g., dental hygienists or dentists) or by using the gas contained in whipped cream aerosol containers. Nitrous oxide inhalation can cause pain relief, depersonalisation, derealisation, dizziness, euphoria, and some sound distortion.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "It is also possible to classify inhalants by the effect they have on the body. Some solvents act as depressants, causing users to feel relaxed or drowsy while others act as stimulants. All commonly abused inhalants act as asphyxiant gases, although a common myth is that their primary effects are only due to oxygen deprivation. In reality, the majority of abused inhalants still exhibit psychoactive effects, although oxygen deprivation does add to the notable effects. Nitrous oxide can be categorized as a dissociative drug, as it can cause visual and auditory hallucinations. Other agents may have more direct effects at receptors, as inhalants exhibit a variety of mechanisms of action. The mechanisms of action of many non-medical inhalants have not been well elucidated. Anesthetic gases used for surgery, such as nitrous oxide or enflurane, are believed to induce anesthesia primarily by acting as NMDA receptor antagonists, open-channel blockers that bind to the inside of the calcium channels on the outer surface of the neuron, and provide high levels of NMDA receptor blockade for a short period of time.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "This makes inhaled anesthetic gases different from other NMDA antagonists, such as ketamine, which bind to a regulatory site on the NMDA-sensitive calcium transporter complex and provide slightly lower levels of NMDA blockade, but for a longer and much more predictable duration. This makes a deeper level of anesthesia achievable more easily using anesthetic gases but can also make them more dangerous than other drugs used for this purpose.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Inhalants can also be classified by chemical structure. Classes include:",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Inhalant users inhale vapors or aerosol propellant gases using plastic bags held over the mouth or by breathing from an open container of solvents, such as gasoline or paint thinner. Nitrous oxide gases from whipped cream aerosol cans, aerosol hairspray or non-stick frying spray are sprayed into plastic bags. Some nitrous oxide users spray the gas into balloons. When inhaling non-stick cooking spray or other aerosol products, some users may filter the aerosolized particles out with a rag. Some gases, such as propane and butane gases, are inhaled directly from the canister. Once these solvents or gases are inhaled, the extensive capillary surface of the lungs rapidly absorbs the solvent or gas, and blood levels peak rapidly. The intoxication effects occur so quickly that the effects of inhalation can resemble the intensity of effects produced by intravenous injection of other psychoactive drugs.",
"title": "Administration and effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Ethanol is also inhaled, either by vaporizing it by pouring it over dry ice in a narrow container and inhaling with a straw or by pouring alcohol in a corked bottle with a pipe, and then using a bicycle pump to make a spray. Alcohol can be vaporized using a simple container and open-flame heater. Medical devices such as asthma nebulizers and inhalers were also reported as a means of application. The practice gained popularity in 2004, with the marketing of the device dubbed AWOL (Alcohol without liquid), a play on the military term AWOL (Absent Without Leave). AWOL, created by British businessman Dominic Simler, was first introduced in Asia and Europe, and then in the United States in August 2004. AWOL was used by nightclubs, at gatherings and parties, and it garnered attraction as a novelty, as people 'enjoyed passing it around in a group'. AWOL uses a nebulizer, a machine that agitates the liquid into an aerosol. AWOL's official website states that \"AWOL and AWOL 1 are powered by Electrical Air Compressors while AWOL 2 and AWOL 3 are powered by electrical oxygen generators\", which refer to a couple of mechanisms used by the nebulizer drug delivery device for inhalation. Although the AWOL machine is marketed as having no downsides, such as the lack of calories or hangovers, Amanda Shaffer of Slate describes these claims as \"dubious at best\". Although inhaled alcohol does reduce the caloric content, the savings are minimal. After expressed safety and health concerns, sale or use of AWOL machines was banned in a number of American states.",
"title": "Administration and effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The effects of solvent intoxication can vary widely depending on the dose and what type of solvent or gas is inhaled. A person who has inhaled a small amount of rubber cement or paint thinner vapor may be impaired in a manner resembling alcohol inebriation. A person who has inhaled a larger quantity of solvents or gases, or a stronger chemical, may experience stronger effects such as distortion in perceptions of time and space, hallucinations, and emotional disturbances. The effects of inhalant use are also modified by the combined use of inhalants and alcohol or other drugs.",
"title": "Administration and effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the short term, many users experience headaches, nausea and vomiting, slurred speech, loss of motor coordination, and wheezing. A characteristic \"glue sniffer's rash\" around the nose and mouth is sometimes seen after prolonged use. An odor of paint or solvents on clothes, skin, and breath is sometimes a sign of inhalant abuse, and paint or solvent residues can sometimes emerge in sweat.",
"title": "Administration and effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "According to NIH, even a single session of inhalant use \"can disrupt heart rhythms and lower oxygen levels\", which can lead to death. \"Regular abuse can result in serious harm to the brain, heart, kidneys, and liver.\"",
"title": "Administration and effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Statistics on deaths caused by heavy inhalant use are difficult to determine. It may be severely under-reported because death is often attributed to a discrete event such as a stroke or a heart attack, even if the event happened because of inhalant use. Inhalant use was mentioned on 144 death certificates in Texas during the period 1988–1998 and was reported in 39 deaths in Virginia between 1987 and 1996 from acute voluntary exposure to used inhalants.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Regardless of which inhalant is used, inhaling vapors or gases can lead to injury or death. One major risk is hypoxia (lack of oxygen), which can occur due to inhaling fumes from a plastic bag, or from using proper inhalation mask equipment (e.g., a medical mask for nitrous oxide) but not adding oxygen or room air. Another danger is freezing the throat. When a gas that was stored under high pressure is released, it cools abruptly and can cause frostbite if it is inhaled directly from the container. This can occur, for example, with inhaling nitrous oxide. When nitrous oxide is used as an automotive power adder, its cooling effect is used to make the fuel-air charge denser. In a person, this effect is potentially lethal. Many inhalants are volatile organic chemicals and can catch fire or explode, especially when combined with smoking. As with many other drugs, users may also injure themselves due to loss of coordination or impaired judgment, especially if they attempt to operate machinery.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Solvents have many potential risks in common, including pneumonia, cardiac failure or arrest, and aspiration of vomit. The inhaling of some solvents can cause hearing loss, limb spasms, and damage to the central nervous system and brain. Serious but potentially reversible effects include liver and kidney damage and blood-oxygen depletion. Death from inhalants is generally caused by a very high concentration of fumes. Deliberately inhaling solvents from an attached paper or plastic bag or in a closed area greatly increases the chances of suffocation. Brain damage is typically seen with chronic long-term use as opposed to short-term exposure. Parkinsonism (see: Signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease) has been associated with huffing.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Female inhalant users who are pregnant may have adverse effects on the fetus, and the baby may be smaller when it is born and may need additional health care (similar to those seen with alcohol – fetal alcohol syndrome). There is some evidence of birth defects and disabilities in babies born to women who sniffed solvents such as gasoline.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the short term, death from solvent use occurs most commonly from aspiration of vomit while unconscious or from a combination of respiratory depression and hypoxia, the second cause being especially a risk with heavier-than-air vapors such as butane or gasoline vapor. Deaths typically occur from complications related to excessive sedation and vomiting. Actual overdose from the drug does occur, however, and inhaled solvent use is statistically more likely to result in life-threatening respiratory depression than intravenous use of opioids such as heroin. Most deaths from solvent use could be prevented if individuals were resuscitated quickly when they stopped breathing and their airways cleared if they vomited. However, most inhalant use takes place when people inhale solvents by themselves or in groups of people who are intoxicated. Certain solvents are more hazardous than others, such as gasoline.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In contrast, a few inhalants like amyl nitrate and diethyl ether have medical applications and are not toxic in the same sense as solvents, though they can still be dangerous when used recreationally. Nitrous oxide is thought to be particularly non-toxic, though heavy long-term use can lead to a variety of serious health problems linked to the destruction of vitamin B12 and folic acid.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The hypoxic effect of inhalants can cause damage to many organ systems (particularly the brain, which has a very low tolerance for oxygen deprivation), but there can also be additional toxicity resulting from either the physical properties of the compound itself or additional ingredients present in a product. Organochlorine solvents are particularly hazardous; many of these are now restricted in developed countries due to their environmental impact.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Toxicity may also result from the pharmacological properties of the drug; excess NMDA antagonism can completely block calcium influx into neurons and provoke cell death through apoptosis, although this is more likely to be a long-term result of chronic solvent use than a consequence of short-term use.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Sudden sniffing death syndrome, first described by Millard Bass in 1970, is commonly known as SSDS.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Inhaling butane gas can cause drowsiness, unconsciousness, asphyxia, and cardiac arrhythmia. Butane is the most commonly misused volatile solvent in the UK and caused 52% of solvent-related deaths in 2000. When butane is sprayed directly into the throat, the jet of fluid can cool rapidly to −20 °C by adiabatic expansion, causing prolonged laryngospasm.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Some inhalants can also indirectly cause sudden death by cardiac arrest, in a syndrome known as \"sudden sniffing death\". The anaesthetic gases present in the inhalants appear to sensitize the user to adrenaline and, in this state, a sudden surge of adrenaline (e.g., from a frightening hallucination or run-in with aggressors), may cause fatal cardiac arrhythmia.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Furthermore, the inhalation of any gas that is capable of displacing oxygen in the lungs (especially gases heavier than oxygen) carries the risk of hypoxia as a result of the very mechanism by which breathing is triggered. Since reflexive breathing is prompted by elevated carbon dioxide levels (rather than diminished blood oxygen levels), breathing a concentrated, relatively inert gas (such as computer-duster tetrafluoroethane or nitrous oxide) that removes carbon dioxide from the blood without replacing it with oxygen will produce no outward signs of suffocation even when the brain is experiencing hypoxia. Once full symptoms of hypoxia appear, it may be too late to breathe without assistance, especially if the gas is heavy enough to lodge in the lungs for extended periods. Even completely inert gases, such as argon, can have this effect if oxygen is largely excluded.",
"title": "Dangers and health problems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Even though solvent glue is normally a legal product, there is a 1983 case where a court ruled that supplying glue to children is illegal. Khaliq v HM Advocate was a Scottish criminal case decided by the High Court of Justiciary on appeal, in which it was decided that it was an offense at common law to supply glue-sniffing materials that were otherwise legal in the knowledge that they would be used recreationally by children. Two shopkeepers in Glasgow were arrested and charged for supplying children with \"glue-sniffing kits\" consisting of a quantity of petroleum-based glue in a plastic bag. They argued there was nothing illegal about the items that they had supplied. On appeal, the High Court took the view that, even though glue and plastic bags might be perfectly legal, everyday items, the two shopkeepers knew perfectly well that the children were going to use the articles as inhalants and the charge on the indictment should stand. When the case came to trial at Glasgow High Court the two were sentenced to three years' imprisonment.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "As of 2023, in England, Scotland, and Wales it is illegal to sell inhalants, including solvent glues, to persons of any age likely to use them as an intoxicant. As of 2017, thirty-seven US states impose criminal penalties on some combination of sale, possession or recreational use of various inhalants. In 15 of these states, such laws apply only to persons under the age of 18.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "\"New Jersey... prohibits selling or offering to sell minors products containing chlorofluorocarbon that is used in refrigerant.\"",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The sale of alkyl nitrite-based poppers was banned in Canada in 2013. Although not considered a narcotic and not illegal to possess or use, they are considered a drug. Sales that are not authorized can now be punished with fines and prison. Since 2007, reformulated poppers containing isopropyl nitrite are sold in Europe because only isobutyl nitrite is prohibited. In France, the sale of products containing butyl nitrite, pentyl nitrite, or isomers thereof, has been prohibited since 1990 on grounds of danger to consumers. In 2007, the government extended this prohibition to all alkyl nitrites that were not authorized for sale as drugs. After litigation by sex shop owners, this extension was quashed by the Council of State on the grounds that the government had failed to justify such a blanket prohibition: according to the court, the risks cited, concerning rare accidents often following abnormal usage, rather justified compulsory warnings on the packaging.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the United Kingdom, poppers are widely available and frequently (legally) sold in gay clubs/bars, sex shops, drug paraphernalia head shops, over the Internet and on markets. It is illegal under Medicines Act 1968 to sell them advertised for human consumption, and to bypass this, they are usually sold as odorizers. In the U.S., originally marketed as a prescription drug in 1937, amyl nitrite remained so until 1960, when the Food and Drug Administration removed the prescription requirement due to its safety record. This requirement was reinstated in 1969, after observation of an increase in recreational use. Other alkyl nitrites were outlawed in the U.S. by Congress through the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The law includes an exception for commercial purposes. The term commercial purpose is defined to mean any use other than for the production of consumer products containing volatile alkyl nitrites meant for inhaling or otherwise introducing volatile alkyl nitrites into the human body for euphoric or physical effects. The law came into effect in 1990. Visits to retail outlets selling these products reveal that some manufacturers have since reformulated their products to abide by the regulations, through the use of the legal cyclohexyl nitrite as the primary ingredient in their products, which are sold as video head cleaners, polish removers, or room odorants.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In the United States, possession of nitrous oxide is legal under federal law and is not subject to DEA purview. It is, however, regulated by the Food and Drug Administration under the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act; prosecution is possible under its \"misbranding\" clauses, prohibiting the sale or distribution of nitrous oxide for the purpose of human consumption as a recreational drug. Many states have laws regulating the possession, sale, and distribution of nitrous oxide. Such laws usually ban distribution to minors or limit the amount of nitrous oxide that may be sold without a special license. For example, in the state of California, possession for recreational use is prohibited and qualifies as a misdemeanor. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has warned that nitrous oxide is a prescription medicine, and its sale or possession without a prescription is an offense under the Medicines Act. This statement would seemingly prohibit all non-medicinal uses of the chemical, though it is implied that only recreational use will be legally targeted. In India, for general anesthesia purposes, nitrous oxide is available as Nitrous Oxide IP. India's gas cylinder rules (1985) prohibit the transfer of gas from one cylinder to another for breathing purposes. Because India's Food & Drug Authority (FDA-India) rules state that transferring a drug from one container to another (refilling) is equivalent to manufacturing, anyone found doing so must possess a drug manufacturing license.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Inhalant drugs are often used by children, teenagers, incarcerated or institutionalized people, and impoverished people, because these solvents and gases are ingredients in hundreds of legally available, inexpensive products, such as deodorant sprays, hair spray, contact cement and aerosol air fresheners. However, most users tend to be \"... adolescents (between the ages of 12 and 17).\" In some countries, chronic, heavy inhalant use is concentrated in marginalized, impoverished communities. Young people who become used to heavy amounts of inhalants chronically are also more likely to be those who are isolated from their families and community. The article \"Epidemiology of Inhalant Abuse: An International Perspective\" notes that \"[t]he most serious form of obsession with inhalant use probably occurs in countries other than the United States where young children live on the streets completely without family ties. These groups almost always use inhalants at very high levels (Leal et al. 1978). This isolation can make it harder to keep in touch with the sniffer and encourage him or her to stop sniffing.\"",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The article also states that \"... high [inhalant use] rates among barrio Hispanics almost undoubtedly are related to the poverty, lack of opportunity, and social dysfunction that occur in barrios\" and states that the \"... same general tendency appears for Native-American youth\" because \"... Indian reservations are among the most disadvantaged environments in the United States; there are high rates of unemployment, little opportunity, and high rates of alcoholism and other health problems.\" There are a wide range of social problems associated with inhalant use, such as feelings of distress, anxiety and grief for the community; violence and damage to property; violent crime; stresses on the juvenile justice system; and stresses on youth agencies and support services.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Glue and gasoline (petrol) sniffing is also a problem in parts of Africa, especially with street children. In India and South Asia, three of the most widely used inhalants are the Dendrite brand and other forms of contact adhesives and rubber cement manufactured in Kolkata, and toluenes in paint thinners. Genkem is a brand of glue, which had become the generic name for all the glues used by glue-sniffing children in Africa before the manufacturer replaced n-hexane in its ingredients in 2000.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that glue sniffing is at the core of \"street culture\" in Nairobi, Kenya, and that the majority of street children in the city are habitual solvent users. Research conducted by Cottrell-Boyce for the African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies found that glue sniffing amongst Kenyan street children was primarily functional – dulling the senses against the hardship of life on the street – but it also provided a link to the support structure of the \"street family\" as a potent symbol of shared experience.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Similar incidents of glue sniffing among destitute youth in the Philippines have also been reported, most commonly from groups of street children and teenagers collectively known as \"Rugby\" boys, which were named after a brand of toluene-laden contact cement. Other toluene-containing substances have also been used, most notably the Vulca Seal brand of roof sealants. Bostik Philippines, which currently owns the Rugby and Vulca Seal brands, has since responded to the issue by adding bitterants such as mustard oil to their Rugby line, as well as reformulating it by replacing toluene with xylene. Several other manufacturers have also followed suit.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Another very common inhalant is Erase-X, a correction fluid that contains toluene. It has become very common for school and college students to use it, because it is easily available in stationery shops in India. This fluid is also used by street and working children in Delhi.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the UK, marginalized youth use a number of inhalants, such as solvents and propellants. In Russia and Eastern Europe, gasoline sniffing became common on Russian ships following attempts to limit the supply of alcohol to ship crews in the 1980s. The documentary Children Underground depicts the huffing of a solvent called Aurolac (a product used in chroming) by Romanian homeless children. During the interwar period, the inhalation of ether (etheromania) was widespread in some regions of Poland, especially in Upper Silesia. Tens of thousands of people were affected by this problem.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In Canada, Native children in the isolated Northern Labrador community of Davis Inlet were the focus of national concern in 1993, when many were found to be sniffing gasoline. The Canadian and provincial Newfoundland and Labrador governments intervened on a number of occasions, sending many children away for treatment. Despite being moved to the new community of Natuashish in 2002, serious inhalant use problems have continued. Similar problems were reported in Sheshatshiu in 2000 and also in Pikangikum First Nation. In 2012, the issue once again made the news media in Canada. In Mexico, the inhaling of a mixture of gasoline and industrial solvents, known locally as \"Activo\" or \"Chemo\", has risen in popularity among the homeless and among the street children of Mexico City in recent years. The mixture is poured onto a handkerchief and inhaled while held in one's fist.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In the US, ether was used as a recreational drug during the 1930s Prohibition era, when alcohol was made illegal. Ether was either sniffed or drunk and, in some towns, replaced alcohol entirely. However, the risk of death from excessive sedation or overdose is greater than that with alcohol, and ether drinking is associated with damage to the stomach and gastrointestinal tract. Use of glue, paint and gasoline became more common after the 1950s. Model airplane glue-sniffing as problematic behavior among youth was first reported in 1959 and increased in the 1960s. Use of aerosol sprays became more common in the 1980s, as older propellants such as CFCs were phased out and replaced by more environmentally friendly compounds such as propane and butane. Most inhalant solvents and gases are not regulated under drug laws such as the United States Controlled Substances Act. However, many US states and Canadian cities have placed restrictions on the sale of some solvent-containing products to minors, particularly for products widely associated with sniffing, such as model cement. The practice of inhaling such substances is sometimes colloquially referred to as huffing, sniffing (or glue sniffing), dusting, or chroming.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Australia has long faced a petrol (gasoline) sniffing problem in isolated and impoverished aboriginal communities. Although some sources argue that sniffing was introduced by United States servicemen stationed in the nation's Top End during World War II or through experimentation by 1940s-era Cobourg Peninsula sawmill workers, other sources claim that inhalant abuse (such as glue inhalation) emerged in Australia in the late 1960s. Chronic, heavy petrol sniffing appears to occur among remote, impoverished indigenous communities, where the ready accessibility of petrol has helped to make it a common addictive substance.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In Australia, petrol sniffing now occurs widely throughout remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, northern parts of South Australia, and Queensland. The number of people sniffing petrol goes up and down over time as young people experiment or sniff occasionally. \"Boss\", or chronic, sniffers may move in and out of communities; they are often responsible for encouraging young people to take it up.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "A 1983 survey of 4,165 secondary students in New South Wales showed that solvents and aerosols ranked just after analgesics (e.g., codeine pills) and alcohol for drugs that were inappropriately used. This 1983 study did not find any common usage patterns or social class factors. The causes of death for inhalant users in Australia included pneumonia, cardiac failure/arrest, aspiration of vomit, and burns. In 1985, there were 14 communities in Central Australia reporting young people sniffing. In July 1997, it was estimated that there were around 200 young people sniffing petrol across 10 communities in Central Australia. Approximately 40 were classified as chronic sniffers. There have been reports of young Aboriginal people sniffing petrol in the urban areas around Darwin and Alice Springs.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In 2005, the Government of Australia and BP Australia began the usage of opal fuel in remote areas prone to petrol sniffing. Opal is a non-sniffable fuel (which is much less likely to cause a high) and has made a difference in some indigenous communities.",
"title": "Patterns of non-medical use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "One of the early musical references to inhalant use occurs in the 1974 Elton John song \"The Bitch Is Back\", in the line \"I get high in the evening sniffing pots of glue.\" Inhalant use, especially glue-sniffing, is widely associated with the late-1970s punk youth subculture in the UK and North America. Raymond Cochrane and Douglas Carroll claim that when glue sniffing became widespread in the late 1970s, it was \"adopted by punks because public [negative] perceptions of sniffing fitted in with their self-image\" as rebels against societal values. While punks at first used inhalants \"experimentally and as a cheap high, adult disgust and hostility [to the practice] encouraged punks to use glue sniffing as a way of shocking society.\" As well, using inhalants was a way of expressing their anti-corporatist DIY (do it yourself) credo; by using inexpensive household products as inhalants, punks did not have to purchase industrially manufactured liquor or beer.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "One history of the punk subculture argues that \"substance abuse was often referred to in the music and did become synonymous with the genre, glue-sniffing especially\" because the youths' \"faith in the future had died and that the youth just didn't care anymore\" due to the \"awareness of the threat of nuclear war and a pervasive sense of doom.\" In a BBC interview with a person who was a punk in the late 1970s, they said that \"there was a real fear of imminent nuclear war—people were sniffing glue knowing that it could kill them, but they didn't care because they believed that very soon everybody would be dead anyway.\"",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "A number of 1970s punk rock and 1980s hardcore punk songs refer to inhalant use. The Ramones, an influential early US punk band, referred to inhalant use in several of their songs. The song \"Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue\" describes adolescent boredom, and the song \"Carbona not Glue\" states, \"My brain is stuck from shooting glue.\" An influential punk fanzine about the subculture and music took its name (Sniffin' Glue) from the Ramones song. The 1980s punk band The Dead Milkmen wrote a song, \"Life is Shit\" from their album Beelzebubba, about two friends hallucinating after sniffing glue. Punk-band-turned-hip-hop group the Beastie Boys penned a song \"Hold it Now – Hit It\", which includes the line \"cause I'm beer drinkin, breath stinkin, sniffing glue.\" Their song \"Shake Your Rump\" includes the lines, \"Should I have another sip no skip it/In the back of the ride and bust with the whippits\". Pop punk band Sum 41 wrote a song, \"Fat Lip\", which refers to a character who does not \"make sense from all the gas you be huffing...\" The song \"Lança-Perfume\", written and performed by Brazilian pop star Rita Lee, became a national hit in 1980. The song is about chloroethane and its widespread recreational sale and use during the rise of Brazil's carnivals.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Inhalants are referred to by bands from other genres, including several grunge bands—an early 1990s genre that was influenced by punk rock. The 1990s grunge band Nirvana, which was influenced by punk music, penned a song, \"Dumb\", in which Kurt Cobain sings \"my heart is broke / But I have some glue / help me inhale / And mend it with you\". L7, an all-female grunge band, penned a song titled \"Scrap\" about a skinhead who inhales spray-paint fumes until his mind \"starts to gel\". Also in the 1990s, the Britpop band Suede had a UK hit with their song \"Animal Nitrate\" whose title is a thinly veiled reference to amyl nitrite. The Beck song \"Fume\" from his \"Fresh Meat and Old Slabs\" release is about inhaling nitrous oxide. Another Beck song, \"Cold Ass Fashion\", contains the line \"O.G. – Original Gluesniffer!\" Primus's 1999 song \"Lacquer Head\" is about adolescents who use inhalants to get high. Hip hop performer Eminem wrote a song, \"Bad Meets Evil\", which refers to breathing \"... ether in three lethal amounts.\" The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a retro-rock band from the 1990s, has a song, \"Hyperventilation\", which is about sniffing model-airplane cement. Frank Zappa's song \"Teenage Wind\" from 1981 has a reference to glue sniffing: \"Nothing left to do but get out the 'ol glue; Parents, parents; Sniff it good now...\"",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "A number of films have depicted or referred to the use of solvent inhalants. In the 1980 comedy film Airplane!, the character of McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) refers to his inhalant use when he states, \"I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.\" In the 1996 film Citizen Ruth, the character Ruth (Laura Dern), a homeless drifter, is depicted inhaling patio sealant from a paper bag in an alleyway. In the tragicomedy Love Liza, the main character, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, plays a man who takes up building remote-controlled airplanes as a hobby to give him an excuse to sniff the fuel in the wake of his wife's suicide.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Harmony Korine's 1997 Gummo depicts adolescent boys inhaling contact cement for a high. Edet Belzberg's 2001 documentary Children Underground chronicles the lives of Romanian street children addicted to inhaling paint. In The Basketball Diaries, a group of boys is huffing Carbona cleaning liquid at 3 minutes and 27 seconds into the movie; further on, a boy is reading a diary describing the experience of sniffing the cleaning liquid.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In the David Lynch film Blue Velvet, the bizarre and manipulative character played by Dennis Hopper uses a mask to inhale amyl nitrite. In Little Shop of Horrors, Steve Martin's character dies from nitrous oxide inhalation. The 1999 independent film Boys Don't Cry depicts two young low-income women inhaling aerosol computer cleaner (compressed gas) for a buzz. In The Cider House Rules, Michael Caine's character is addicted to inhaling ether vapors.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In Thirteen, the main character, a teen, uses a can of aerosol computer cleaner to get high. In the action movie Shooter, an ex-serviceman on the run from the law (Mark Wahlberg) inhales nitrous oxide gas from a number of Whip-It! whipped cream canisters until he becomes unconscious. The South African film The Wooden Camera also depicts the use of inhalants by one of the main characters, a homeless teen, and their use in terms of socio-economic stratification. The title characters in Samson and Delilah sniff petrol; in Samson's case, possibly causing brain damage.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In the 2004 film Taxi, Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon are trapped in a room with a burst tank containing nitrous oxide. Queen Latifah's character curses at Fallon while they both laugh hysterically. Fallon's character asks if it is possible to die from nitrous oxide, to which Queen Latifah's character responds with \"It's laughing gas, stupid!\" Neither of them had any side effects other than their voices becoming much deeper while in the room.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In the French horror film Them, (2006) a French couple living in Romania are pursued by a gang of street children who break into their home at night. Olivia Bonamy's character is later tortured and forced to inhale aurolac from a silver-colored bag. During a flashback scene in the 2001 film Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter gets Mason Verger high on amyl nitrite poppers, then convinces Verger to cut off his own face and feed it to his dogs.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The science fiction story \"Waterspider\" by Philip K. Dick (first published in January 1964 in If magazine) contains a scene in which characters from the future are discussing the culture of the early 1950s. One character says: \"You mean he sniffed what they called 'airplane dope'? He was a 'glue-sniffer'?\", to which another character replies: \"Hardly. That was a mania among adolescents and did not become widespread in fact until a decade later. No, I am speaking about imbibing alcohol.\"",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas describes how the two main characters inhale diethyl ether and amyl nitrite.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In the comedy series Newman and Baddiel in Pieces, Rob Newman's inhaling gas from a foghorn was a running joke in the series. One episode of the Jeremy Kyle Show featured a woman with a 20-year butane gas addiction. In the series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Charlie Kelly has an addiction to huffing glue. Additionally, season nine episode 8 shows Dennis, Mac, and Dee getting a can of gasoline to use as a solvent, but instead end up taking turns huffing from the canister.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "A 2008 episode of the reality show Intervention (season 5, episode 9) featured Allison, who was addicted to huffing computer duster for the short-lived, psychoactive effects. Allison has since achieved a small but significant cult following among bloggers and YouTube users. Several remixes of scenes from Allison's episode can be found online. Since 2009, Allison has worked with drug and alcohol treatment centers in Los Angeles County. In the third episode of season 5 of American Dad!, titled \"Home Adrone\", Roger asks a flight attendant to bring him industrial adhesive and a plastic bag. In the seventh episode of the fourteenth season of South Park, Towelie, an anthropomorphic towel, develops an addiction to inhaling computer duster. In the show Squidbillies, the main character Early Cuyler is often seen inhaling gas or other substances.",
"title": "In popular culture"
}
]
| Inhalants are a broad range of household and industrial chemicals whose volatile vapors or pressurized gases can be concentrated and breathed in via the nose or mouth to produce intoxication, in a manner not intended by the manufacturer. They are inhaled at room temperature through volatilization or from a pressurized container, and do not include drugs that are sniffed after burning or heating. For example, amyl nitrite (poppers), nitrous oxide and toluene – a solvent widely used in contact cement, permanent markers, and certain types of glue – are considered inhalants, but smoking tobacco, cannabis, and crack cocaine are not, even though these drugs are inhaled as smoke or vapor. While a few inhalants are prescribed by medical professionals and used for medical purposes, as in the case of inhaled anesthetics and nitrous oxide, this article focuses on inhalant use of household and industrial propellants, glues, fuels, and other products in a manner not intended by the manufacturer, to produce intoxication or other psychoactive effects. These products are used as recreational drugs for their intoxicating effect. According to a 1995 report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the most serious inhalant use occurs among homeless children and teenagers who "... live on the streets completely without family ties." Inhalants are the only substance used more by younger teenagers than by older teenagers. Inhalant users inhale vapor or aerosol propellant gases using plastic bags held over the mouth or by breathing from a solvent-soaked rag or an open container. The practices are known colloquially as "sniffing", "huffing" or "bagging". The effects of inhalants range from an alcohol-like intoxication and intense euphoria to vivid hallucinations, depending on the substance and the dose. Some inhalant users are injured due to the harmful effects of the solvents or gases or due to other chemicals used in the products that they are inhaling. As with any recreational drug, users can be injured due to dangerous behavior while they are intoxicated, such as driving under the influence. In some cases, users have died from hypoxia, pneumonia, heart failure, cardiac arrest, or aspiration of vomit. Brain damage is typically seen with chronic long-term use of solvents as opposed to short-term exposure. While legal when used as intended, in England, Scotland, and Wales it is illegal to sell inhalants to persons likely to use them as an intoxicant. As of 2017, thirty-seven US states impose criminal penalties on some combination of sale, possession or recreational use of various inhalants. In 15 of these states, such laws apply only to persons under the age of 18. | 2002-01-12T14:58:14Z | 2023-12-24T01:54:36Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhalant |
15,505 | Iceman (Marvel Comics) | Iceman (Robert Louis "Bobby" Drake) is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics and is a founding member of the X-Men. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #1 (Sept. 1963). Iceman is a mutant born with superhuman abilities. He has the ability to manipulate ice and cold by freezing water vapor around him. This allows him to freeze objects, as well as cover his body with ice.
Iceman has a relatively high profile among X-Men characters due to being frequently adapted into X-Men and Spider-Man-related media, including video games, animated series, and films. The character later received widespread media attention when a storyline retconned the character as a closeted gay man in All-New X-Men #40 (April 2015), leading to his coming out.
Iceman has been described as one of the most notable and powerful gay characters in comic books.
From 2000 to 2014, Shawn Ashmore portrayed Iceman in the 20th Century Fox X-Men films and voiced the character in The Super Hero Squad Show.
Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in X-Men #1 (September 1963). Lee later admitted that Iceman was created essentially as a copy of the Human Torch, only using the opposite element for his power.
Iceman was featured in two self-titled limited comic book miniseries, one in 1984–85 written by J. M. DeMatteis and another in the 2000s by Andy Lanning and Dan Abnett, with art by Karl Kerschl. DeMatteis said of the first series, "It was my idea, so there was no one to blame but myself. I'll just say that it was a mistake and if the series made any sense whatsoever it was due to [editor] Bob Budiansky. That was a case where the editor's input was really needed—and Bob was a big help."
A mainstay in most X-Men titles, Iceman has been a main character in both Uncanny X-Men and the second volume of X-Men and was also featured in The Champions from 1975 to 1978 and The New Defenders from 1983 to 1986 as a member. He was a main character in the first volume of X-Factor, and a star in flashback stories when he was a teenager in X-Men: The Hidden Years and X-Men: First Class.
In April 2015, in issue 40 of All-New X-Men, a time-displaced version of the teenaged Iceman was revealed as gay by his teammate, Jean Grey, who discerned this with her telepathic ability. This raised questions, because the character's adult, present-day counterpart had previously been portrayed dating women. In Uncanny X-Men #600, which was published in November that year, the young Iceman confronts his older self, who confirms that he is gay as well but repressed his true self, not wanting to be both gay and a mutant. In 2017, Iceman received his first ongoing solo series, which focused on the adult Bobby Drake coming to terms with life as an out gay man, his Omega-level superpowers, his legacy as a hero and fighting some of the biggest villains in the Marvel Universe. The book had been cancelled, with its last issue being in early 2018. However, Marvel later reversed the decision and announced that a new book written by original writer Sina Grace as a part of their Fresh Start initiative and was released in 2019.
Robert Louis "Bobby" Drake was born in Floral Park, Long Island, New York, to William Robert Drake and Madeline Beatrice Bass-Drake. His father is Irish-American Catholic, and his mother is Jewish. Bobby's powers first manifested when he was on a date with Judy Harmon, and a local bully by the name of Rocky Beasely tried to take Judy away for himself. Knowing Judy could not put up a good fight, Bobby pointed his hand at Beasely and encased him in a block of ice. Later, the local townspeople, having heard of the incident, came looking for him in the form of an angry mob. The local sheriff had no choice but to put Bobby in jail for his own "protection". While Bobby sat in his cell at the sheriff station, the outer wall was blown open, and a young man named Scott Summers walked in and offered to take Bobby with him. After Bobby turned him down, the two mutants got into a short battle, which was soon ended by the arrival of Professor Charles Xavier.
After Xavier spoke with Bobby and his parents, Bobby's parents suggested that he go with Professor Xavier to his "school for gifted youngsters". Bobby took the suggestion and left with Professor Xavier and Cyclops to become the second member of the X-Men. He is later joined by Henry "Hank" McCoy, Jean Grey, and Warren Worthington III as the founding members of the X-Men. Drake remains self-conscious regarding the fact that he is the youngest member of the group. Appearing in his original snow covered form, he first battles Magneto along with the rest of the team, and later the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Bobby Drake's first girlfriend is Zelda. Not long after, he takes on a new ice-covered form. He then teams up with the Human Torch for the first time. The two would become close friends as time went on. With the X-Men, he visits the Savage Land and meets Ka-Zar for the first time. He then battles the Juggernaut, and is badly injured in his first battle against the Sentinels. He next battles Magneto by himself. Later, he visits Subterranea for the first time. Then, he and Beast battle the Maha Yogi. During his original stint with the X-Men, Drake pursues a relationship with Lorna Dane, although the relationship does not last. Iceman is among the original X-Men captured by Krakoa, leading to a new incarnation of X-Men of which he is not a member. With most of the original team, he quits the X-Men.
Iceman moves to the American west coast to attend UCLA and becomes a founding member of The Champions of Los Angeles. However, the Champions soon dissolve.
Iceman is then abducted by Master Mold, and alongside Angel, he encounters the Hulk. Iceman next aids the Thing in battling the Circus of Crime. Drake retires from life as a superhero to earn a college degree in accounting – but apparently at a college on the east coast, not UCLA. While in college, he briefly rejoins the X-Men to rescue the captives of Arcade's henchman, Miss Locke.
Iceman is reunited with Beast, encounters Cloud, and then returns as a full-time superhero in an incarnation of the Defenders alongside his former teammates, Angel and Beast. He also battles Professor Power's Secret Empire while with the Defenders. After the Defenders disband, Drake embarks on his career as an accountant.
Some time later, Iceman encounters Mirage, the "daughter" of Oblivion. Iceman journeys back in time and meets his parents before he was born, and battles Oblivion and Mirage. He then reconciles with his parents.
The original X-Men, including Iceman, reunite to form the superhero team X-Factor. With this new team, he encounters Apocalypse for the first time.
During his time with the team, Loki captures Bobby, hoping to use him to gain control over the Frost Giants. Loki enhances Bobby's powers and then extracts them to restore the size of the Frost Giants. Iceman is rescued by Thor. Loki's tampering increases Bobby's powers to such an extent that he begins to lose control of his abilities. During a later battle with the Right, he is fitted with a power-dampening belt which actually helps him control his abilities. Once able only to sheathe his own body in a protective coating of ice, Bobby finds he can encase the entirety of the Empire State Building. With time, Bobby gains sufficient control over his augmented powers and is able to stop using the inhibitor belt. Believing he has achieved his full potential, Bobby does not attempt to develop his abilities further.
With X-Factor, Bobby then defeats Apocalypse's Horsemen. Iceman helps watch over many of the younger superheroes, something he once was. Most notably, he and Beast help Boom Boom gain a more normal life. For a brief while, he also helps supervise the New Mutants and their sister team, the X-Terminators. They, in turn, save him from the deadly kiss of Infectia.
Bobby also develops a romantic relationship with Opal Tanaka. After a session of ice sledding, she discovers threatening mail in her mailbox, a precursor to harassment by her cybernetically enhanced relatives of the Tatsu Clan of the Yakuza, which Bobby helps her out with.
After the "Muir Island Saga", Iceman rejoins the X-Men along with the rest of X-Factor.
When he rejoined the X-Men it seemed that he learned to control his powers and no longer needed the inhibitor belt, this made him believe he reached the limit of his powers. The X-Men were separated into two groups, Iceman was placed in the gold team, led by Storm, along with fellow original X-Men Jean Grey (now without a code name) and Archangel.
One day he took Opal to eat with his parents, however his dad began humiliating her because of her Japanese heritage. The four are attacked by the Cyber-Samurai, which added to William Drake's prejudices about the girl. When Bobby came across Mikhail Rasputin he used his mutant abilities on him. Bobby discovered that his potential was still far from being reached as he converted his body into ice, not just covered by it. By turning his entire body to ice, instead of just wearing an icy exterior, Bobby now was capable of using his power in new, aggressive ways, adding spikes and padding to his ice structure.
Too busy with the many threats that the X-Men faced every day, Bobby let his relationship with Opal deteriorate and, when they finally saw each other again after weeks, it was only to save her from an attack by mutant haters. Annoyed that she could only gain his attention by nearly getting killed, Opal broke off their relationship.
Later, as he was checking on Emma Frost who was in a comatose state after the mutant Trevor Fitzroy unleashed the mutant-hunting Sentinels on Emma Frost and her students known as the Hellions, the mansion was hit by an electricity breakdown. Emma woke up disoriented, possessed Bobby's mind, and used his powers in ways Bobby never had; she froze an entire river and traveled through water. She was looking for her pupils but after finding out they were dead, she left Bobby's body.
Bobby invites Rogue to tag along on a visit to his parents. Wrongly assuming a romantic relation, his father disapproves of Rogue, verbally attacking them with the same prejudices he expressed with Opal. This time, Bobby had enough and left after telling his father that he should just accept the fact that he is a mutant and he would never fit the definition he has of normal. He was upset that Emma exhibited greater control of his powers than he had. Since Rogue was having problems with Gambit, the two of them go on a road trip to ease their minds.
During the Legion Quest, Iceman was one of the X-Men who went back in time to stop Legion from killing Magneto. They succeed, but only partially. Legion does not kill Magneto, but instead accidentally murdered Xavier, his own father, years before Legion had been conceived much less born. This paradox caused the events of the Age of Apocalypse. At the last moment before the original reality ended, Iceman's fellow X-Men, Rogue and Gambit shared a kiss. When reality resumed, Rogue's mind-absorbing touch renders Gambit comatose. Having absorbed some secret haunting memories, she needs to get away from the X-Men and Iceman volunteers to join her on a road trip, though at the same time he was starting to see visions of Emma Frost. When Gambit awoke from his coma, he tracked them down and confronted Rogue about what she saw in his mind. She broke off their relationship, Iceman and Gambit returned to the X-Men.
When the entity known as Onslaught first appeared, Iceman was chosen as one of his test subjects, along with Storm, Cyclops and Wolverine. They were pitted against a servant of Onslaught named Post, in a specific battle area of harsh environment to test the extent of their abilities. They won and were returned to the mansion. However, Iceman's chest had been shattered in his ice form during battle, making it impossible to change back to human form. He confronted Emma Frost and demanded to know what she did to his powers in his body and how to save himself. She refused to help since she knew that Bobby would have to do it himself. When he captured her with his ice powers, she telepathically showed him his insecurities. By confronting Opal and his father in her simulation, Iceman realized that Emma was right and managed to transform back to his human body with his chest fully intact.
When Graydon Creed was running for President (with a heavy anti mutant campaign), Bobby was chosen to infiltrate in the campaign. His father stood out in a crowd and spoke in favor of the mutants, which came as a surprise to Bobby. His father's connection with Bobby was discovered, so the people that worked for Graydon captured him and almost beat him to death. Bobby decided to stay away from the X-Men for a while to be with his dad.
Zero Tolerance came across and Bobby found and helped Cecilia Reyes who was trying to keep a secret that she was a mutant. They also joined with Charlotte Jones and the Morlock Marrow. After Bastion was defeated, he took Cecilia and Marrow to the mansion, and soon left the X-Men again for a while to be with his parents.
Much later, the X-Men found evidence in one of Destiny's journals of a group known as the Twelve, including Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, Phoenix, Iceman, Polaris, Storm, Cable, Bishop, Sunfire, Mikhail Rasputin and the Living Monolith. They also learned that the Apocalypse's Horsemen had been kidnapping these mutants from around the globe. Iceman was captured in the woods near his home by Deathbird, who had become the Horseman War. Gathering the remaining Twelve, the X-Men traveled to Egypt and confronted Apocalypse and the Skrulls. Apocalypse and his forces captured all of the Twelve during the battle, using them in a ritual to give the Chaos-Bringer a new body and incredible power. Magneto and Polaris created opposite magnetic polarities, Iceman, Storm, and Sunfire provided elemental extremes, Cyclops, Phoenix, and Cable gave the sheer power of family, Xavier represented the power of mind and Bishop and Mikhail stood for time and space, while the Monolith linked all their energies together. Nate Grey was to be Apocalypse's new host, a powerhouse to store his massive lifeforce. The Twelve managed to free themselves and Cyclops sacrificed his own body and life force to keep Apocalypse from getting Nate. Though the new Apocalypse was defeated, Cyclops seemed lost forever.
After that incident, Iceman helped the Beast to secretly enter Genosha, as he wanted to study the legacy-infected mutates. When the High Evolutionary released his anti-mutation wave, they were trapped in the war-ravaged country. With the aid of Magneto, they escaped and joined forces with the rest of the scattered X-Men. They raided the Evolutionary's satellite, disabled the mutation field and defeated Sinister, who had been manipulating the Evolutionary.
Iceman was recruited by the living ship Prosh, along with other mutants, like Jean Grey, Mystique, Toad and Juggernaut, to preserve evolution and save it. In this journey Iceman developed his powers even further, which led him to no longer be afraid of the natural course of his powers and he returned to the X-Men. He joined a new team of X-Men, consisting of Angel, Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Chamber. He was using his abilities in a whole new way now, just channelling the power and not turning his body into ice.
During a heated battle with a recently evolved Black Tom Cassidy, he received a chest wound. After returning to normal his chest did not fully recover and some parts of it remained icy, and he was unable to return them to normal. At first he became afraid of it but in time it made him gain a new attitude in life, even rude at some times.
Nobody seemed to realize it at the time, but evidently this was an early sign of Iceman undergoing a secondary mutation of his own. When he repeatedly tried to evade his regular medical check-ups, school nurse Annie Ghazikhanian recognized that something odd was going on with him and pressured him to show her the wound. Bobby made her promise not to tell anyone and showed her that parts of his chest are now made of ice and he is unable to change them back to flesh and blood. Iceman wonders if he will entirely turn into ice on a permanent basis.
He developed an attitude that, to some of the newer addition to the X-Men, like Stacy X, Juggernaut and Northstar, he comes across as rather arrogant, denouncing their status as team members, as they have not been around as long as he. Iceman even went as far as offending Nightcrawler by claiming that only the original five, and no one else, has the right to call themselves an X-Man.
Bobby was further frustrated when Havok and Polaris announced their imminent wedding, him having carried a torch for Lorna for quite some time. In his frustration he turned to Annie, who had problems with the wedding too, as she was secretly in love with Havok. The nurse surprised him with the accusation of him being a racist – feeling comfortable as a mutant who could pass like a human when needed, opposed to being a fully obvious mutant or a "mere" human. With his secondary mutation manifesting, though, Iceman was in danger of losing this status. Shocked by the truth of her words, Bobby fully opened up about his fears, that as a man fully made of ice he could never feel the warmth of a physical relationship again. Touched, Annie allowed him to kiss her, but when Havok called off the wedding, wanting to be with Annie instead, she quickly dumped Bobby.
Upon encountering Azazel and his followers, Iceman's body is shattered from the neck down. Afterward, he regains his entire ice form, but cannot change back to his human appearance. As a result, Bobby becomes both bitter and despondent because of this drastic change.
Iceman joins Rogue's team after she tells him that she wants him as a member. Their first mission as a team is to fight a new threat, a powerful group known as the Children of the Vault. The team is successful and during this time, Bobby learns that he can be completely destroyed but then pull himself back together again. It was shown several times during the arc.
The next mission for the team was to locate a man called Pandemic and defeat him. The team was again successful, but Rogue was infected with a virus called Strain 88. Cable took the team, including Bobby, to his island so Rogue could get treatment.
While on Cable's island, the team and Iceman began working to defeat the Shi'ar weapon known as the Hecatomb. During the chaos, he shared a passionate kiss with Mystique. Even as he did so, he saved many lives by containing the explosion of the Conquistador, and, later, the Hecatomb itself.
As the team recovers from Hecatomb attack in Rogue's childhood home, it appears that Mystique and Iceman begin a romantic relationship. This was a front, as Mystique was using Iceman and the X-Men as a Marauder spy for Mister Sinister. Marauders soon infiltrated the house; they attempt to gain access to Destiny's Diaries on the order of Mr. Sinister (who has been gathering information about the future from anybody and anything that could foretell the future). Bobby and Cannonball escape from the Marauders in the X-Jet, with help from Emma Frost. They are pursued by Sunfire; they manage to get the better of him and take him prisoner, but not before he manages to cripple the jet. While Sunfire is unconscious, Iceman and Sam discuss the Mauraders' plan to eliminate all precognitive mutants and anyone with knowledge of the future as well as retrieving Destiny's Diaries before the Marauders can. During this time, Bobby displayed sub-atomic control of energy transfers when he prevented Sunfire from using his fire-based powers.
Cannonball and Bobby, telepathically prompted by Emma Frost, attempt to recover the diaries which are hidden in a dilapidated brewery. Mr. Sinister uses the reverse-engineered version of Xavier's Cerebro to track the pair of X-Men to the brewery. The Marauders attack Cannonball and Iceman and overtake them. Bobby, while in his ice form, suffers a gunshot wound from Mystique, which severs one of his arms above the elbow. Mister Sinister, who takes Cannonball prisoner, attempts to telepathically erase his mind so that the X-Men will find him as an empty shell. Iceman attacks Sinister, distracting him, which allows both of the X-Men to escape.
The New X-Men team decided to raid the headquarters of the Purifiers in Washington, D.C., but were forced to retreat. Pixie teleported them back to the mansion in a rush, but the entire team was scattered between D.C. and Westchester. Iceman, after recovering from his injuries, volunteered to go look for them and was given telepathic directions by Emma Frost.
Iceman was successful in finding the New X-Men, most of them injured. On the way back, they found that the O*N*E* Sentinels guarding the Xavier Institute had become infected by nano-Sentinels and attacked the school. Iceman and New X-Man X-23 helped out in the battle with the O*N*E* Sentinels. With the help of Dust and X-23, the X-Men were able to survive this battle but the nano-Sentinel infected human escaped.
Soon, Iceman participated in the final battle against the Marauders, the Acolytes, and Predator X. He was one of the X-Men who came running in to fight Predator X after it swallowed Wolverine whole. However, he also witnesses his mentor, Professor Xavier, "killed" by Bishop's bullet, which was not meant for him.
Iceman arrives in San Francisco, where he was set to meet Hepzibah, Warpath, and Angel. All four are caught in the effects of a citywide illusion created by Martinique Jason, who used her powers to transform the city into a hippie paradise. Now calling himself "Frosty", he and the others are sent by Martinique to confront Scott Summers and Emma Frost. Emma Frost is able to break up the illusion and free everyone. They eventually set up their base of operations in San Francisco as X-Men.
Iceman is one of the X-Men that assists in fighting the Skrull invasion in San Francisco.
Iceman rescues Colossus from Venom and is later made a part of a team to battle Emma Frost's Dark X-Men. During the final battle on Utopia, Iceman teams up with the X-Students to take on Mimic. Iceman had the labor of providing water to the population. He attempted to use humor to keep everyone's spirits up even though he believed that the situation was helpless and that the X-Men were living in the last days of mutantkind. Bobby then helped defeat Predator X and also helped stop Selene's resurrected army's invasion of Utopia.
During the battle with Bastion's Nimrod Sentinels, Iceman is severely injured following an attack from one of them that reversed his ice form and left him with burns on his body. He is only there for a short time because his mutant powers help him minimize the injuries he suffered and he is seen back in battle alongside Psylocke and the other X-Men.
Early solicitations show that after Wolverine and Cyclops have a major falling out, Wolverine decides to branch off and open The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning back in New York. Iceman is the first person Wolverine approaches and recruits to his new X-Men squad as both a professor and teammate. Iceman is chosen because Wolverine feels he has the kind of spirit the new school needs. He also has an off-and-on romantic relationship with Kitty Pryde.
When the Terrigen became toxic for mutants, Iceman was one of the recruits in Storm's new team dedicated to protecting mutants from the Terrigen by leading them to X-haven. Iceman mostly works alongside Nightcrawler, helping him search for Colossus after he is transformed into one of Apocalypse's new horsemen. Iceman and Nightcrawler manage to track Colossus to Egypt, where he ambushes them and almost kills them until another squad of X-Men comes in to help. After that Iceman joins the X-Men when they declare war against the Inhumans after discovering that in a matter of weeks the Terrigen will render earth as completely uninhabitable for mutants.
Iceman is among the heroes summoned by Mr. Fantastic - a group consisting of former substitute members of the Fantastic Four - to help the Future Foundation against the cosmic entity known as the Griever. However, the Human Torch objects to Iceman's presence during the battle, emphatically asserting that Iceman was never a member of the FF. Iceman states that he was made a member during an adventure involving Namor. The Torch simply counters with "That didn't COUNT!"
As recounted in Fantastic Four vol. 6 #24, Iceman's induction into the FF did not feature Namor, but occurred during the early days of the FF and the original X-Men. One morning years ago, the youthful Torch 'quit' the FF in an immature fit of pique. That same day, the sensitive teen-aged Iceman left the X-Men after being laughed at by his peers for his poor showing in a Danger Room exercise. Iceman encountered the remaining FF members and assisted them with a day-long series of crises, being casually admitted to the team as a result. When the Torch discovered that he had been replaced, he attacked Iceman during the FF's current battle and forcefully declared that Iceman was not an FF member. The Invisible Girl forced the pair to work together to help defeat the FF's final opponent of the day. Iceman was then telepathically summoned back to the X-Men by Professor X, who praised his student's performance. Mr. Fantastic told the departing Iceman that he could return to the FF whenever he wanted. The Torch was also 'readmitted', with a penance of a week's laundry detail.
In the present time, Iceman returns the teen-aged Franklin Richards to the FF's Yancy Street home/headquarters from Krakoa and is recognized by the building's security system as an FF member. This angers the Torch once again, and he declares that Iceman had never been a member of the team. The two men bicker over the issue until Iceman realizes that the Torch was never upset about Iceman replacing him on the team, but believes that he was trying to take his place in the FF family. The Torch finally admits that what bothered him most was that other substitute members—who were also considered family by the FF—were always brought in due to major events, and that if Iceman was the actual first substitute member, that meant the Torch had given up his place "over nothing." The Torch ultimately drops the matter of Iceman's legitimacy and says that he was an official substitute FF member, and is also a part of the FF 'family'.
After being outed as gay by the time-displaced Jean Grey, the younger time-displaced Iceman confronts his older self, asking him why he has been presenting as straight for most of his adult life. The older Bobby breaks down and admits that he has known he was gay for a long time but forcibly repressed that part of himself, fearful of how others would react. He further acknowledges that he was scared to reveal his true self to the world due to already facing prejudice for being a mutant and not wanting to receive hatred for another part of himself. Following all of this, Bobby decides to take a break from the limelight and focus on himself, declining to join the new X-team formed by Kitty Pryde, instead acting as a reserve member and teaching classes at the Xavier School. After a training session with his younger self, Bobby sees the time-displaced Iceman head out for a date with his boyfriend Romeo while he tries to set up an online dating profile to meet guys. He receives a text from his mother stating that his father has had a heart attack so Bobby rushes to the hospital only to be chastises by his father for missing family events due to his commitments as a superhero. Following a brief battle in the hospital, Bobby's parents ask him to leave, angry that their mutant son is bringing yet more trouble into their lives. On a mission with Kitty to rescue a new mutant, she confronts Bobby about being gay, asking why he could not tell her himself, meaning she had to find out from a secondary source. She reassures him that she only wants to help him and lets him know she is there if he ever wants to talk but suggests he should come out to his parents. Bobby arranges dinner with his family but he is constantly subjected anti-mutant rhetoric from his parents. The dinner is interrupted by a gang of Purifiers but, although Iceman takes them down quickly and the lives of his parents, they are angry that their house has been destroyed because of him and send him away (although his mother promises to try and convince his father to visit him at the X-Mansion). When the mutant that he and Kitty rescues goes missing, Iceman tracks him to a nearby nightclub where he discovers that Daken is responsible for luring him away. Daken tries to flirt with Bobby to distract him but Iceman freezes him and attempts to convince the mutant to return to the Xavier School, though he refuses. Daken mocks Bobby, saying that he can smell his fear and insecurity. Upon returning, Kitty surprises Bobby by revealing that his parents have arrived for a visit. He tells them he is gay and they both react negatively, angry that their son is both a mutant and a gay man. They chastise him for letting everyone else find out before them and try to convince him that he is straight, due to having been with women in the past. The family argument is interrupted by Juggernaut, who attacks the school looking for the young X-Men. Iceman defeats him by pushing his powers and returns to the mansion to find his father is still there. He had obtained Bobby's draft of a coming out letter from Kitty and the two men begin to reconcile.
Bobby reconnects with his former Champions teammates, Angel, Hercules, Ghost Rider and Darkstar, so they reminisce about their time with Black Widow. Bobby runs into a guy, Judah, while out shopping and he agrees to meet him that night at a local gay bar, with the rest of the Champions acting as his wingmen. The date appears to be going well but is interrupted by an attack by some Sentinels. Bobby's relationship with Judah continues to develop and he decides to move to L.A. to be closer to him. While fighting Pyro with his younger self, Bobby explains that his mother has finally made contact with him for the first time since he came out and that she wants to invite both of them to dinner. Time-displaced Iceman agrees on the condition that Bobby tries to talk sense into Romeo, who hasn't called him in weeks. Meanwhile, Daken begins training his new mutant protégée for a secret mission. When both the younger Bobby and the older Bobby arrive at the restaurant, their parents see the younger Bobby as a chance to raise a new son in a way that suits them but the time-displaced Iceman refuses, saying that he is still gay and wants to live life on his own terms before they both storm out. During Bobby's moving away party at the X-Mansion, Daken uses the Purifiers to distract the other X-Men while he and his apprentice infiltrate the school and ambush Bobby. The young mutant uses his levelled-up powers to increase Daken's strength by turning him into Apocalypse's horseman Death and he mortally wounds Judah with his claws before engaging Iceman in combat. Bobby manages to defeat Daken with a kiss which freezes Death's powers but Daken escapes and Judah breaks up with Bobby because his life is too much for him to deal with.
After teaming with Bishop to help the Morlocks who came under threat by Mister Sinister, Bobby finds himself approached by Emma Frost who asks him for his help. Ignoring Kitty's protests, he agrees and Emma explains that her Father, who subjected her brother Christian to conversion therapy before having him institutionalized, has recently let him out and reinstalled him as the new heir to the Frost business empire. When they arrive, they discover that Christian has murdered their Father and is exhibiting his own powers. Bobby and Emma help to free Christian from his mental breakdown and Emma decides to stay with him. Joining with his friends Spider-Man and Firestar, Bobby discovers that Sinister was behind the attack on the Morlocks and confronts him in his safehouse. Sinister, intent on trying to unlock the secrets of Iceman's DNA by dissecting him, sends forth an army of experimental ice creatures but Bobby's Omega Level powers absorb them all into him and he fires Mister Sinister into space. Celebrating his birthday, Bobby is confronted by Ice Wizard, a future version of himself from an alternate timeline. Ice Wizard warns Bobby that he must quit the X-Men and stop using his powers to avoid a world-destroying series of events happening. He explains that Daken seduces him and manipulates him into sacrificing the other X-Men before betraying him and gaining Thanos-level powers. Bobby is adamant that this won't happen and the two engage in battle. Jean Grey arrives and Bobby finally confronts her for the actions of her younger self when she outed him. Bobby explains to Ice Wizard that he is going to live life on his terms and that nobody, not even his future self, is going to decide for him. Bobby returns to his birthday celebration where Christian arrives and hands him a large sum of money which Bobby gives to the Morlocks. A content Bobby messages Judah, asking if he would like to meet up as friends.
Bobby was one of the first casualties of the third annual Hellfire Gala, in which he did battle with Nimrod. He had gained the upper hand in the fight at first, only to be injected with cellular napalm that literally melted him into nothing before the horrified eyes of Kitty Pryde and Romeo. But sometime later, it was shown that Romeo had used his Inhuman powers and his emotional connection to Bobby to re-integrate him and restore him to life. However, his physical and mental cohesion is reliant on his proximity to Romeo.
Iceman possesses the power to instantly decrease the temperature of ambient water vapor in his immediate environment to below zero degrees Celsius, thereby freezing it into ice. He is able to make ice that will not break unless he wills it to. In this manner he is able to quickly form a great variety of ice structures, including projectiles, shields, ladders, baseball bats, etc. Iceman often makes ice slides which form rapidly beneath and behind his feet, moving him along the slick surface at high speeds. He is also able to form exceedingly complicated structures within relative short time, such as miniature cities. Originally, Iceman's own body temperature would lower dramatically when his powers were active, reaching −105 °F (−76 °C) within a few tenths of a second (now his body usually converts to organic ice; see below). Iceman is immune to sub-zero temperatures; he is also able to perceive the thermal energy level of objects around him. Because cold is the absence of heat, Iceman does not actually 'emanate' cold; rather, he decreases thermal energy. As mentioned by writer Mike Carey, Iceman is "an Omega-level mutant ... [and] has powers that can influence the ecosystem of the entire world." Iceman has yet to tap into his full mutant potential, but over the years he has taken more interest in developing his abilities.
In his early appearances, Iceman generally covered his body in a thick layer of what appeared to be snow; hence he looked more like a traditional snowman than an ice-man. Upon further training in the use of his powers, he was able to fashion an armor of solid ice around his body when using his powers, which afforded him some degree of protection against concussive force and projectiles. Later on, he manifested the ability to convert the tissue of his body into organic ice. He sometimes augments his organic ice form with razor sharp adornments to his shoulders, elbows, knees, and fists. Iceman has also been able to move rapidly to another distant location while in his organic ice form, being able to deposit his bodily mass into a river and reconstitute his entire mass a great distance away in a matter of minutes (by temporarily merging his molecules with those of the river). On one occasion, Iceman suffered a severe chest injury while in his ice form and was able to heal himself by converting back into his normal human form.
Iceman is also able to reconstitute his organic ice form if any part of it is damaged, or even if it is completely shattered, without permanently harming himself. He can temporarily add the mass of a body of water to his own, increasing his mass, size, and strength. He can survive not only as ice, but as liquid water and water vapor. He can also transform his body from a gaseous state back to a solid, although it is physically and mentally taxing. Iceman can also freeze sea water, as seen during the "Operation: Zero Tolerance" story arc. While he usually does not use his powers in lethal ways, his powers are so vast that they extend to the molecular level, to the point that he can freeze all of the molecules of an object/being with a thought; he once froze every single molecule of water within the body of David Haller. Iceman is also able to dissolve his own icy constructs.
Iceman's powers were pushed to their limit while possessed by Emma Frost, who used Iceman to discover the fate of her Hellions. During this time Iceman was able to control all forms of moisture, freeze fluids inside people's bodies, travel as a liquid, solid or gas. Not even the combined might of the X-Men Gold team was able to stop Emma Frost in Iceman's body. Following this, Bobby confronted Emma about how she was able to use his powers so effectively. While together they made some initial progress, she refused to train him further. Instead he turned to Storm because they share similar elemental powers and she agreed to tutor him.
When Iceman was injected with Mister Sinister's neuro-inhibiter by Mystique, he was able to save himself by drawing in all of the ambient moisture around him, rapidly replacing his poisoned cells with healthy material before the injection could kill him.
During the 2013–2014 "Battle of the Atom" storyline, Iceman's future self revealed that he has the ability to create semi-independent ice structures that can act on their own, although one of these structures—demonstrating a Hulk-like physique and intellect—has gone on to join the future version of the Brotherhood.
Aside from his superhuman powers, Iceman is also a fair hand-to-hand combatant, and received combat training at Xavier's School as well as coaching from the Black Widow and Hercules while serving with the Champions of Los Angeles. Iceman has taken as much combat training as Cyclops or Beast.
According to writer Mike Carey "one of Iceman's best personality traits is that emotionally Bobby Drake is like the ice he manipulates—not cold but transparent. 'He's devastatingly honest. He is very up-front with his emotions and his thoughts all the time.'" "Also, he's obviously incredibly brave both in terms of facing external, physical danger as well as facing up to unpleasant situations and admitting his own mistakes."
Iceman had a brief relationship with a Japanese-American New Yorker named Opal Tanaka. He subsequently exhibited strong feelings for his fellow X-Man Polaris, but she did not return those feelings, due to her feelings towards Havok. Northstar developed an unrequited crush for Iceman during their time on the same team, though Iceman never did find out about this. Iceman later had a brief relationship with the Xavier School's nurse, Annie, but she eventually left him for Havok, who had just left Polaris at the altar. When Iceman attempted to rekindle his relationship with Polaris, that too ended abruptly, and Polaris returned to Havok. Iceman then had a relationship with the X-Men's enemy Mystique, who later betrayed him, despite her continued fixation on him, in as much as she stated that she would either kill him or cure him of his personal uncertainty.
Iceman has long-lasting friendships with Spider-Man, Firestar and the Human Torch.
In All-New X-Men #40, the time-displaced Iceman is revealed to be gay, which eventually forces the youth to confront the adult version of himself about the matter. As both speak, the adult Iceman confirms the fact and that he had put all his energy into just being an X-Man as he couldn't cope with being a mutant and gay simultaneously. With the help of his younger self and Jean Grey, however, he finally comes to terms with his own sexuality, and comes out to fellow gay X-Man Anole in Extraordinary X-Men #6. The end of the Extermination X-Men event saw the redirecting of the time displaced version of Bobby back into the "closet" when he returned to his original timeline alongside the other X-Men, due to a mind lock by Jean Grey. In the present day, the current version retains both sets of memories and remains an out gay man.
Peter Eckhardt of CBR.com referred to Iceman as "the biggest name amongst queer X-Men," writing, "Iceman is an Omega-Level mutant and a longtime fan-favorite character. Iceman was only recently revealed as gay in a story handled somewhat clumsily in 2014's All-New X-Men #40 (written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Mahmud Asrar). Nevertheless, writers as far back as the 1980s hinted that Bobby was gay, particularly in the 1990s when Iceman struggled with his sense of identity. Today, Iceman's story inspires and excites those looking for anything from understanding their own identity to epic, ice-based colossi." Mey Rude of Out stated, "While Northstar was the first out gay superhero in a Marvel comic, Iceman is his more famous gay X-Men teammate. Bobby Drake didn't come out until just recently in the comics, following some time travel shenanigans, but he’s already become a gay favorite." Alyssa Gawaran of MovieWeb said, "Iceman, also a big part of the X-Men in the Marvel Comics, is one of the more groundbreaking LGBTQ+ characters in Marvel. Iceman broke boundaries in the franchise as he became the first-ever gay leading superhero to headline a comic, the "coming out moment" reported in a 2015 Vox article. Marvel has recently released Marauders Annual #1 that features a very heartwarming prom segment between Bobby Drake (Iceman) and his boyfriend, a new face to the comics, Christian Frost." Joshua Yehl of IGN described Iceman as "the perfect gay boyfriend," saying, "Bobby isn’t out to be the biggest, baddest guy around. He’s a more grounded and relatable guy, and while he often broadcasts his cocky attitude and wisecracking humor during battle, he’s proven time and time again that his heart is in the right place when it comes to being there for his teammates. There’s something incredibly charming about a guy who could become the Indomitable Iceman, laying waste to enemies with his icy wrath, yet he chooses to stay boy-next-door Bobby Drake, a funny, self-sacrificing guy who values being a friend and hero over becoming the most powerful guy in the room. Being gay has a lot in common with being a mutant, as excellently displayed during Iceman’s “coming out” scene in X2: X-Men United. You’re born that way, you will face bullying and discrimination for it, and those who claim to be your friends and family may turn their backs on you because of it. Bobby’s experiences as both a mutant and an out gay man would make him an incredibly empathetic and understanding partner, one who would share his feelings and be there to help with yours. So even though he may not be the strongest mutant around, he’d be a hero to you in every way that counts."
According to Diamond Comic Distributors, Iceman and Angel #1 was the 161st best selling comic book in March 2011.
Ryan K. Lindsay of CBR.com called Iceman and Angel #1 "as much fun as you want, but as pithy as you expect too," asserting, "A one-shot should be a comic that stands on its own, and this issue certainly does that. It needs to give you enough narrative meat to feel like the money was well invested, and this issue mostly does that. It should elicit some form of strong reaction from you in the few pages it has, and this issue works hard to make you laugh and is more successful than not. See Namor score some bagels and Googam become a broheim. It's not earth shattering but it is solid fun and sometimes that's just what you need. Pick up this comic and feel the freedom of old funny done-in-one comics just like they did when you were a kid where the parts add up to greater than the actual whole." David Brothers of ComicsAlliance ranked Iceman and Angel #1 10th in their "10 Top Marvel Comics Coming in March 2011," saying, "One of the best things we don't see much of any more is the relationship between the original X-Men. The modern series is all about hard decisions, hard edges, and hard core self protection, but back in the day, they were just a bunch of kids who hung out together. Iceman and Angel in particular were pretty fun together, because one was a goofball and the other was a self-styled ladies man. Brian Clevinger has proven that he can do stories like this, where he takes a slice of time and expands on it in a meaningful way, and Juan Doe is a pretty great artist. Add in GOOM, a classic Marvel villain, and you've got a story that I think is going to be a pretty good read. X-Men First Class may be dead in name, but these one-shots are doing a pretty good job of keeping the feeling alive."
According to Diamond Comic Distributors, Iceman #1 was the 62nd best selling comic book in June 2017. Iceman #1 was the 655-656th best selling comic book in 2017.
Matthew Aguilar of ComicBook.com gave Iceman #1 a grade of 4 out of 5 stars, writing, "On the art side of things, the book is a mixed bag. Alessandro Vitti's pencils and Rachelle Rosenberg's colors shine when ice is involved in some form or fashion, as referenced early and later in the book. In the middle, though things get a bit muddy, and the facial expressions suffer. Not enough to detract in a huge way, but the book definitely improves when Drake is in his ice form. Overall writer Sina Grace is off to an excellent start here, providing a refreshing look into a fan favorite character that has always been more than his powers but needed someone to bring that out of him. It looks like this time is up for the task." Jesse Schedeen of IGN gave Iceman #1 a grade of 7.8 out of 10, stating, "Iceman #1 doesn't make the strongest case for this series as an ongoing story, as it could just as easily be a standalone one-shot starring the frozen X-Man. But it's a very well-executed story regardless, one that showcases Bobby Drake's crazy personal life while still making the most of his incredible powers. Iceman is shaping up to be a worthy addition to the ResurrXion lineup."
According to Diamond Comic Distributors, Iceman #1 was the 43rd best selling comic book in September 2018. Iceman #1 was the 508th best selling comic book in 2018.
Jamie Lovett of Comicook.com called Iceman #1 a "well-crafted book," saying,"Iceman #1 is a stellar return. Most impressive is how the issue is completely capable of standing alone, but also seeds an exciting story to come. Even a casual X-Men fan will recognize the deadliness of the threat behind this issue's attempts to recreate the "Mutant Massacre." Longtime X-Men fans, and fans of Iceman, in particular, will get something extra out of the last page reveal of who's waiting for Bobby at home. Iceman #1 is a triumphant return for an underappreciated series. The longer Sina Grace writes Bobby Drake, the more Iceman develops into a truly compelling, relatable leading man. Grace found the perfect artistic partners in Nathan Stockman and Frederico Blee. Here's hoping Iceman gets more of the attention it deserves the second time around." Maite Molina of ComicsVerse gave Iceman #1 a score of 80%, asserting, "Iceman #1 is a resolute start to a new run. Thanks to some palpable character development and an intriguing plot, the issue succeeds in gripping a reader’s attention. The stage has been set for some intriguing new story arcs, ones that will feature some familiar, sinister villains. Hopefully, Bobby Drake is ready for these impending challenges, ones that he may not even see coming."
Following the war with the Phoenix Five, as Cyclops begins to lash out against government oppression of mutants, a chance comment by Bobby about how the old Cyclops wouldn't tolerate what he is currently doing inspires Beast to travel back in time and recruit the original five X-Men to stop Cyclops. The team decides to stay in the present instead of returning into the past. They are now called the All-New X-Men and led by Kitty Pryde. The past and present Bobby are particularly shocked when they see each other. The younger Bobby is especially shocked by the older Bobby's Omega level powers, like creating ice golems, and especially his future "Ice Wizard" self in the Battle of the Atom. Eventually he and the All-New X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy travel to the Shiar Empire to rescue Jean Grey from a trial for the genocide that her future Dark Phoenix self committed. The team is then teleported into the Ultimate Marvel universe, where he stumbles into Mole Man's lair. He proudly creates his first ice golem in order to escape.
Returning to their universe, the team are reunited with Cyclops when they are called upon to aid the Guardians of the Galaxy again in retrieving the fabled Black Vortex. Cyclops, Iceman and Groot become superpowered by the Vortex before returning it to Captain Marvel.
Later, the younger, time-displaced Bobby is forced to confront being gay by his teammate, Jean, who privately asks him why he calls women "hot", when she knows via her psychic abilities that he is gay. This causes the younger Bobby to speculate as to the complicated identity issues faced by his older self and the decisions his older self may have made in the time between them. Together with the young Jean, the young Bobby confronts his older self, who admits to being gay, having 'concealed' that part of himself so that he could have avoid being prejudiced against for another part of himself.
Bobby joins the time-displaced Cyclops, Angel and Beast, as well as Kid Apocalypse, All-New Wolverine and Oya as they road-trip around America trying to make their own mark on the world. Bobby is initially reluctant to talk about his sexuality with his teammates until Oya and Kid Apocalypse take him to a gay club in an attempt to make him more comfortable. He embarrasses himself and runs into Romeo, an Inhuman with the ability to manipulate and feel others' emotions. Romeo makes Bobby more comfortable and the two begin a relationship. The two are later caught in the middle when the X-Men declare war on the Inhumans. Bobby joins the X-Men when they attack New Attilan but quickly breaks off from the battle to find Romeo, with the two escaping together.
After the X-Men's war against the Inhumans for the Terrigen ends, Iceman joins the rest of the young X-Men on an attempted return to their original timeline but they quickly realize that theirs isn't part of the Earth 616 timeline, leaving them stuck in that present time with no knowledge where they were originally from. Upon learning this, Iceman joins the rest of the young X-Men and leaves the rest of the X-Men to find their place in the world. Iceman then joins Magneto in Madripoor along with the rest of the time-displaced X-Men; however, due to a lack of trust in their new leader, the X-Men make plans and train in case Magneto returns to his former villainous ways to kill them. Instead of training with his teammates, Iceman spends most of his time trying to reach out Romeo unsuccessfully, placing him into a stupor.
The time-displaced X-Men continue fighting crime in the present day although following a battle with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from an alternate timeline, they are disheartened to realize that they must eventually return to their original time. This particularly upsets Bobby who is sad that all of their growth as people will be undone once they go back. While the team are in space working alongside Venom to defeat the Poisons, a race of mind-controlling symbiotes, Magneto attacks several Hellfire Club parties searching for Emma Frost. The X-Men find her first and offer to protect her from Magneto although they quickly discover that he had taken mutant growth hormones to enhance his powers and, rather than kill the team he has mentored, Magneto leaves. Young Jean senses that they must return to their own time period soon and the X-Men have heart-to-hearts with their adult selves. During a game of pool with older Iceman, Bobby breaks down, knowing that his memory of the present must be erased and he will be forced back into the closet and, despite Iceman's best efforts to convince his younger self that he will grow up to be someone awesome, Bobby admits that he likes the person he has already become but that remaining that person is no longer an option. As the team prepare to leave, a news report announces that Magneto has formed a new brotherhood, leading the X-Men to decide to stay in the present for a little while longer.
While en route to help young Cyclops, Bobby is attacked by a mysterious assailant but is rescued by Cable, who urges him to flee. Iceman refuses but is incapacitated and captured while Cable is killed. Young Jean attempts to use Cerebro to locate Bobby but states that she is unable to find him. In a secret lab, the man who attacked Bobby is revealed to be a time-displaced version of Cable who has him locked up in a tube. Kitty gathers all of the X-Men, who split into four teams tasked with protecting one of the remaining time-displaced X-Men. Young Jean uses her telepathy to guide her team to young Cable's base, where he admits to murdering his older self because he had failed in his mission to maintain the timeline by allowing the young X-Men to stay in the present for so long. They discover that Cable has been genetically modifying young Iceman so that he looks the way he looked when he left his original time period. He releases Bobby and teleports them all to Atlantis, where Ahab is attempting to kill young Cyclops so that the timeline can never be restored. The X-Men find themselves overwhelmed by Ahab's forces and Cable convinces the young X-Men that they must return home immediately in order to save the others. Young Iceman breaks down to his older self, admitting he doesn't want to be forced back into the closet but the present day Bobby tells him that his younger self finally allowed him to accept that he was gay and promises that he will be finally be able to truly be himself when he grows up. Cable then sends the X-Men back to their original time, informing them that everything will return to normal once they officially close the time loop. In 1964, the young X-Men change into their original clothes and young Jean performs a mind wipe so that they won't remember their time in the present day although she informs them that she is able to lock their memories away so that, once the loop is closed, their older selves will regain those memories. Back in modern day, the founding X-Men inherit the memories of their younger selves allowing them to defeat Ahab. Returned to their original time, the young X-Men forget about their adventures in the present and are greeted by Professor Xavier.
Iceman is Roberto Trefusis in the miniseries Marvel 1602, a member of the group of "witchbreeds" founded by Carlos Javier and led by Scotius Summerisle. He is the nephew of naval commander Sir Francis Drake. As in the Marvel Universe, he generates ice and can assume a physical ice form.
In the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, Bobby, along with the rest of the X-Men, is trained by Magneto. Because Magneto is harder on his students than Professor X, Bobby lacks his 616-counterpart's sense of humor. Instead, Bobby becomes very cold and inhuman, making his teammates feel uncomfortable. In addition to his normal abilities, Bobby is capable of breaking down his body and merging it with another body of water to travel great distances in a matter of seconds. He can bring others along through a process that he calls "moisture molecular inversion", though it is a painful process for the passengers. Bobby is also able to reconstitute his body from broken pieces. Just before Apocalypse's defeat, Colossus stormed right through Iceman, causing him to fall into pieces in an attempt to reach his sister. A couple of months later, Iceman, Exodus, Wild Child, and Morph were sent on a secret mission by Magneto; for a time, only Wild Child's fate was revealed.
Iceman returned in the Uncanny X-Force arc "The Dark Angel Saga", when the title team was forced to travel to the AoA reality. He abandoned the X-Men during a battle with the minions of Weapon X, who had by this time been transformed into that world's new Apocalypse, a defection later revealed to be the result of Iceman's having lost faith in his X-Men's ability to save their world. He was soon brought to Earth-616 by the Dark Beast, where he joined forces with Archangel on his quest to eradicate all life on Earth so he could create a new evolution process. Tired of seeing the people he cared about being killed fighting what he thought to be an unwinnable war, Drake agreed to help Archangel – despite the latter's now being the mainstream Marvel Universe's version of Drake's X-Men's arch-enemy, Apocalypse – in exchange for transport to the relative paradise that was Earth-616.
After X-Force defeated Archangel, Bobby managed to escape with McCoy and most of Archangel's other minions, but eventually broke away from them and went into hiding, living a life of hedonistic bliss in Madripoor. The "Age of Apocalypse" version of Nightcrawler – who, after being brought to Earth-616 along with the rest of his world's X-Men to help take down Archangel, decided to stay behind there in order to track down and kill the various villains who also came to the mainstream Marvel Universe – eventually tracked Bobby down to execute him for his treason. Nightcrawler is quickly overwhelmed by Drake's avatars, but eventually forces Iceman into a factory boiler room, where there's not enough moisture in the air for him to effectively use his powers. Nightcrawler quickly disables his former friend, and shoves him into an incinerator, killing the once noble hero.
During the miniseries Earth X, Bobby had become trapped in his ice form, making him vulnerable to melting. He moves to the Arctic regions of Earth, and made an ice city for himself and the Inuit. Due to a series of events where Earth's orbital path moves, Bobby is able to return to the United States to aid in the battle against the demon Mephisto.
In the alternate timeline of the "House of M" storyline, Iceman was seen in Magneto's army during his rise to power. Bobby later appears as one of the Horsemen of Apocalypse because Apocalypse rescued Bobby from a mutant internment camp that his parents had sent him to. Magneto sends Apocalypse to dispose of his rival Black Panther; when Apocalypse is attacked en route by Black Panther's allies, Iceman aids him by freezing Namor solid and attempting to attack Storm, but he is severely injured by Sunfire.
A zombified Iceman appears in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days alongside zombies Wolverine and Cyclops. Ultimately, he is seen attacking Magneto. But Iceman perished at the hands of the Master Of Magnetism himself when Iceman is cut apart.
In the Mutant X universe, the Asgardian god Loki amplified Bobby's powers to a dangerous level, leaving him unable to touch any living thing without killing it. Despite this, he retains a jovial and optimistic personality. When Havok has a disagreement with Magneto and decides to leave the X-Men, Ice-Man is one of those who follow him, becoming a founding member of the Six, who eventually come to be considered the world's premiere mutant team.
After the New Exiles land on the world of warring empires, they encounter Dame Emma Frost, head of Britain's Department X and founder of Force-X. This team includes Roberta "Bobby" Drake, a female version of Bobby who is code named Aurion and displays ice-based abilities.
In the alternate future witnessed in the "Battle of the Atom" storyline, Iceman's had truly evolved to become Sir Robert, the wizard-like Icemaster. As one of the most respected X-Men, he had incredible control over his powers and could even grow a beard! Though never outright mentioned, he may had a relationship with Kitty Pryde and even fathered a son with her, denoting the existence of Carmen Drake, a boy with the powers of both Iceman and Shadowcat. He has also developed the ability to create semi-independent ice structures that can act on their own, although one of these structures, possessing a Hulk-like physique and intellect, has gone on to join the future version of the Brotherhood, resulting in the Brotherhood using the duplicate to reinforce the illusion of themselves as the future X-Men. The duplicate Iceman was defeated by the O5 Iceman, the present Iceman, and the future Iceman during the battle in the past (Prompting the youngest Iceman to note that they only needed one more Iceman for a five-a-side basketball team).
Icemaster later returned to the mainstream marvel universe and confronts Iceman about trusts and decisions. He does it in order to prevent him from doing the same mistakes Icemaster did in the future. Knowing he had little time left, Icemaster eventually revealed to Iceman that after beginning a relationship with Daken, they both led the X-Men to space in order to prevent the Shi'ar from overwhelm the Earth and lay waste to it. However Icemaster would discover that Daken's plan was actually to obtain the M'Kraan Crystal in the first place, killing in the process the other X-Men and later Deathbird herself. Icemaster attempts to stop Daken, but he is seconds too late as having the Nexus of all Realities made Daken a Thanos-level player in the cosmos, and he acted as such. Icemaster eventually became convinced, after seeing Bobby's character growth, that his present self had matured beyond what he remembered, leaving the future open for new decisions to be made. With his mission apparently completed, Icemaster turns into thin air soon afterwards.
In the alternate reality of X-Men: Ronin Iceman is a murderous ninja in the employ of the Hellfire Club. He works with Pyro and Avalanche as part of the 'Shadowcat Clan' and battles the X-Men.
New Excalibur battles an evil counterpart of Iceman, who is a member of the Shadow-X, the X-Men of an alternate reality in which Professor X was possessed by the Shadow King. They are brought to Earth-616 as a result of M-Day. He appeared to be mute and died during the final battle against Albion.
In Edge of Spider-verse: Web of Fear, a Spider-Man who is a member of the Captain Britain Corps witnesses Morlun about to kill Spider-Man. Later, a larger picture is shown of Firestar and Iceman lying dead, with Ms. Lion being left out, mourning her comrades.
Iceman appears in X-Men Noir as one of the X Men, a crew of talented criminals. He is depicted as being very short-tempered and paranoid. He is dubbed "Iceman", and angrily insists others refer to him that way, due to his custom of using an icepick as a weapon.
In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Bobby Drake is the youngest founding member of the X-Men. He ran away from his family at the peak of government-supported Sentinel attacks, fearing his family would be killed in such an attack.
Ultimate Iceman never had the snowman look of his counterpart, instead generating a flexible ice armor from the beginning. Bobby establishes himself as a valuable asset, single-handedly taking out the Ultimates once with a gigantic ice wall (see Ultimate War), as well as single-handedly halting an invasion by Colonel Wraith and Weapon X. He was only able to be stopped by Rogue, who was in temporary possession of Marvel Girl's telepathy. Professor X has stated that Bobby is one of the three most powerful X-Men. During the World Tour arc, after enlarging his armor to form a gigantic ice troll, Bobby is greatly injured by Proteus, which resulted in a lawsuit issued by his parents against Xavier. Bobby eventually rebels against his parents, and later returns to the X-Men.
While Bobby was away from the X-Men on a vacation, he had a girlfriend, but Professor Xavier erased all memories of her from Bobby's mind when he told her too much about the X-Men (he presumably also erased the girl's memories). Upon her acceptance into the X-Men, Bobby begins to date Rogue. The pair date for a considerable amount of time, but eventually break up due to Bobby's growing feelings for Shadowcat and Rogue's feelings for Gambit. Eventually Rogue leaves, and Bobby starts to date Kitty. After this, the two rekindle their relationship, but problems erupted.
In Ultimate X-Men #80, Bishop and Hammer, time-travelers from the future, comment on how powerful Bobby will one day become. Cyclops disbanded the X-Men in Ultimate X-Men #81 and Bishop and Storm created a new team. Iceman stayed at the Institute as a student only until Xavier returned and reformed his X-Men.
Professor X is later revealed to be alive and the X-Men return to the Xavier Institute, which is also when Iceman rejoins the X-Men line up. Jean Grey soon discovers that fellow X-Man, Colossus, is using a drug called Banshee to enhance his mutant abilities. The X-Men are highly against this, but Colossus manages to convince Rogue, Dazzler, Angel, Nightcrawler, and Cyclops to join him on his own X-Men team. Iceman remains on Professor X's drug-free X-Men and fights the Banshee enhanced X-Men. Xavier's X-Men win and the two teams combine again with nobody using drugs.
The Ultimatum Wave hits the X-Men next killing several of the X-Men (Beast, Dazzler, and Nightcrawler). Magneto and the Brotherhood attack the world and Iceman helps the world's heroes fight them off. Most of the X-Men die, but Iceman (alongside Rogue, Storm, Colossus, and Jean Grey) is able to survive Magneto's attack. He is last seen demolishing the X-Mansion alongside Rogue and Jean Grey and burying the deceased X-Men in its place. He finds it hard to destroy their home, but he feels it to be the right thing to do now that Professor Xavier is dead.
Later, Bobby Drake is kicked out of his home for being a mutant. With nowhere else to go, Kitty suggests to Peter Parkers' Aunt May that he move in with her, Peter, Gwen Stacy, and Johnny Storm (who also recently moved in their household). Aunt May agrees and enrolls Bobby at Midtown High under the guise of Bobby Parker, one of Peters' cousins and shaves his hair off to help keep his, Peter's and Johnny's secret identities safe.
Without knowing where to go after Peter's death, Bobby Drake asked Kitty Pride if Johnny could come with them searching for a place where to live and hide from authorities. They found the Morlock Tunnels where they live now and help mutants in danger. Firstly they rescued Rogue, who joined them, and later Jimmy Hudson (the son of Wolverine), came to them for help after escaping Stryker's imprisonment along with other mutants he freed.
In X-Men Fairy Tales #1, Iceman appears as a white wolf with icy breath named Kori (Japanese for ice). Before he is reached by Cyclops, he appears to have lost faith in friendship.
In X-Men: The End, Iceman appears as one of the instrumental characters in the defeat of Cassandra Nova and Khan and one of the few surviving X-Men.
In the "Old Man Logan" storyline, Iceman is among the X-Men who perish at the hands of Wolverine when he is tricked by Mysterio into believing his friends are super-villains attacking the mansion.
Iceman appears in 20th Century Fox's X-Men film series, portrayed by Shawn Ashmore. This version is a student at the Xavier Institute. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Iceman (Robert Louis \"Bobby\" Drake) is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics and is a founding member of the X-Men. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #1 (Sept. 1963). Iceman is a mutant born with superhuman abilities. He has the ability to manipulate ice and cold by freezing water vapor around him. This allows him to freeze objects, as well as cover his body with ice.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Iceman has a relatively high profile among X-Men characters due to being frequently adapted into X-Men and Spider-Man-related media, including video games, animated series, and films. The character later received widespread media attention when a storyline retconned the character as a closeted gay man in All-New X-Men #40 (April 2015), leading to his coming out.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Iceman has been described as one of the most notable and powerful gay characters in comic books.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "From 2000 to 2014, Shawn Ashmore portrayed Iceman in the 20th Century Fox X-Men films and voiced the character in The Super Hero Squad Show.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in X-Men #1 (September 1963). Lee later admitted that Iceman was created essentially as a copy of the Human Torch, only using the opposite element for his power.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Iceman was featured in two self-titled limited comic book miniseries, one in 1984–85 written by J. M. DeMatteis and another in the 2000s by Andy Lanning and Dan Abnett, with art by Karl Kerschl. DeMatteis said of the first series, \"It was my idea, so there was no one to blame but myself. I'll just say that it was a mistake and if the series made any sense whatsoever it was due to [editor] Bob Budiansky. That was a case where the editor's input was really needed—and Bob was a big help.\"",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A mainstay in most X-Men titles, Iceman has been a main character in both Uncanny X-Men and the second volume of X-Men and was also featured in The Champions from 1975 to 1978 and The New Defenders from 1983 to 1986 as a member. He was a main character in the first volume of X-Factor, and a star in flashback stories when he was a teenager in X-Men: The Hidden Years and X-Men: First Class.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In April 2015, in issue 40 of All-New X-Men, a time-displaced version of the teenaged Iceman was revealed as gay by his teammate, Jean Grey, who discerned this with her telepathic ability. This raised questions, because the character's adult, present-day counterpart had previously been portrayed dating women. In Uncanny X-Men #600, which was published in November that year, the young Iceman confronts his older self, who confirms that he is gay as well but repressed his true self, not wanting to be both gay and a mutant. In 2017, Iceman received his first ongoing solo series, which focused on the adult Bobby Drake coming to terms with life as an out gay man, his Omega-level superpowers, his legacy as a hero and fighting some of the biggest villains in the Marvel Universe. The book had been cancelled, with its last issue being in early 2018. However, Marvel later reversed the decision and announced that a new book written by original writer Sina Grace as a part of their Fresh Start initiative and was released in 2019.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Robert Louis \"Bobby\" Drake was born in Floral Park, Long Island, New York, to William Robert Drake and Madeline Beatrice Bass-Drake. His father is Irish-American Catholic, and his mother is Jewish. Bobby's powers first manifested when he was on a date with Judy Harmon, and a local bully by the name of Rocky Beasely tried to take Judy away for himself. Knowing Judy could not put up a good fight, Bobby pointed his hand at Beasely and encased him in a block of ice. Later, the local townspeople, having heard of the incident, came looking for him in the form of an angry mob. The local sheriff had no choice but to put Bobby in jail for his own \"protection\". While Bobby sat in his cell at the sheriff station, the outer wall was blown open, and a young man named Scott Summers walked in and offered to take Bobby with him. After Bobby turned him down, the two mutants got into a short battle, which was soon ended by the arrival of Professor Charles Xavier.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After Xavier spoke with Bobby and his parents, Bobby's parents suggested that he go with Professor Xavier to his \"school for gifted youngsters\". Bobby took the suggestion and left with Professor Xavier and Cyclops to become the second member of the X-Men. He is later joined by Henry \"Hank\" McCoy, Jean Grey, and Warren Worthington III as the founding members of the X-Men. Drake remains self-conscious regarding the fact that he is the youngest member of the group. Appearing in his original snow covered form, he first battles Magneto along with the rest of the team, and later the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Bobby Drake's first girlfriend is Zelda. Not long after, he takes on a new ice-covered form. He then teams up with the Human Torch for the first time. The two would become close friends as time went on. With the X-Men, he visits the Savage Land and meets Ka-Zar for the first time. He then battles the Juggernaut, and is badly injured in his first battle against the Sentinels. He next battles Magneto by himself. Later, he visits Subterranea for the first time. Then, he and Beast battle the Maha Yogi. During his original stint with the X-Men, Drake pursues a relationship with Lorna Dane, although the relationship does not last. Iceman is among the original X-Men captured by Krakoa, leading to a new incarnation of X-Men of which he is not a member. With most of the original team, he quits the X-Men.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Iceman moves to the American west coast to attend UCLA and becomes a founding member of The Champions of Los Angeles. However, the Champions soon dissolve.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Iceman is then abducted by Master Mold, and alongside Angel, he encounters the Hulk. Iceman next aids the Thing in battling the Circus of Crime. Drake retires from life as a superhero to earn a college degree in accounting – but apparently at a college on the east coast, not UCLA. While in college, he briefly rejoins the X-Men to rescue the captives of Arcade's henchman, Miss Locke.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Iceman is reunited with Beast, encounters Cloud, and then returns as a full-time superhero in an incarnation of the Defenders alongside his former teammates, Angel and Beast. He also battles Professor Power's Secret Empire while with the Defenders. After the Defenders disband, Drake embarks on his career as an accountant.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Some time later, Iceman encounters Mirage, the \"daughter\" of Oblivion. Iceman journeys back in time and meets his parents before he was born, and battles Oblivion and Mirage. He then reconciles with his parents.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The original X-Men, including Iceman, reunite to form the superhero team X-Factor. With this new team, he encounters Apocalypse for the first time.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "During his time with the team, Loki captures Bobby, hoping to use him to gain control over the Frost Giants. Loki enhances Bobby's powers and then extracts them to restore the size of the Frost Giants. Iceman is rescued by Thor. Loki's tampering increases Bobby's powers to such an extent that he begins to lose control of his abilities. During a later battle with the Right, he is fitted with a power-dampening belt which actually helps him control his abilities. Once able only to sheathe his own body in a protective coating of ice, Bobby finds he can encase the entirety of the Empire State Building. With time, Bobby gains sufficient control over his augmented powers and is able to stop using the inhibitor belt. Believing he has achieved his full potential, Bobby does not attempt to develop his abilities further.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "With X-Factor, Bobby then defeats Apocalypse's Horsemen. Iceman helps watch over many of the younger superheroes, something he once was. Most notably, he and Beast help Boom Boom gain a more normal life. For a brief while, he also helps supervise the New Mutants and their sister team, the X-Terminators. They, in turn, save him from the deadly kiss of Infectia.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Bobby also develops a romantic relationship with Opal Tanaka. After a session of ice sledding, she discovers threatening mail in her mailbox, a precursor to harassment by her cybernetically enhanced relatives of the Tatsu Clan of the Yakuza, which Bobby helps her out with.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After the \"Muir Island Saga\", Iceman rejoins the X-Men along with the rest of X-Factor.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "When he rejoined the X-Men it seemed that he learned to control his powers and no longer needed the inhibitor belt, this made him believe he reached the limit of his powers. The X-Men were separated into two groups, Iceman was placed in the gold team, led by Storm, along with fellow original X-Men Jean Grey (now without a code name) and Archangel.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "One day he took Opal to eat with his parents, however his dad began humiliating her because of her Japanese heritage. The four are attacked by the Cyber-Samurai, which added to William Drake's prejudices about the girl. When Bobby came across Mikhail Rasputin he used his mutant abilities on him. Bobby discovered that his potential was still far from being reached as he converted his body into ice, not just covered by it. By turning his entire body to ice, instead of just wearing an icy exterior, Bobby now was capable of using his power in new, aggressive ways, adding spikes and padding to his ice structure.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Too busy with the many threats that the X-Men faced every day, Bobby let his relationship with Opal deteriorate and, when they finally saw each other again after weeks, it was only to save her from an attack by mutant haters. Annoyed that she could only gain his attention by nearly getting killed, Opal broke off their relationship.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Later, as he was checking on Emma Frost who was in a comatose state after the mutant Trevor Fitzroy unleashed the mutant-hunting Sentinels on Emma Frost and her students known as the Hellions, the mansion was hit by an electricity breakdown. Emma woke up disoriented, possessed Bobby's mind, and used his powers in ways Bobby never had; she froze an entire river and traveled through water. She was looking for her pupils but after finding out they were dead, she left Bobby's body.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Bobby invites Rogue to tag along on a visit to his parents. Wrongly assuming a romantic relation, his father disapproves of Rogue, verbally attacking them with the same prejudices he expressed with Opal. This time, Bobby had enough and left after telling his father that he should just accept the fact that he is a mutant and he would never fit the definition he has of normal. He was upset that Emma exhibited greater control of his powers than he had. Since Rogue was having problems with Gambit, the two of them go on a road trip to ease their minds.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "During the Legion Quest, Iceman was one of the X-Men who went back in time to stop Legion from killing Magneto. They succeed, but only partially. Legion does not kill Magneto, but instead accidentally murdered Xavier, his own father, years before Legion had been conceived much less born. This paradox caused the events of the Age of Apocalypse. At the last moment before the original reality ended, Iceman's fellow X-Men, Rogue and Gambit shared a kiss. When reality resumed, Rogue's mind-absorbing touch renders Gambit comatose. Having absorbed some secret haunting memories, she needs to get away from the X-Men and Iceman volunteers to join her on a road trip, though at the same time he was starting to see visions of Emma Frost. When Gambit awoke from his coma, he tracked them down and confronted Rogue about what she saw in his mind. She broke off their relationship, Iceman and Gambit returned to the X-Men.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "When the entity known as Onslaught first appeared, Iceman was chosen as one of his test subjects, along with Storm, Cyclops and Wolverine. They were pitted against a servant of Onslaught named Post, in a specific battle area of harsh environment to test the extent of their abilities. They won and were returned to the mansion. However, Iceman's chest had been shattered in his ice form during battle, making it impossible to change back to human form. He confronted Emma Frost and demanded to know what she did to his powers in his body and how to save himself. She refused to help since she knew that Bobby would have to do it himself. When he captured her with his ice powers, she telepathically showed him his insecurities. By confronting Opal and his father in her simulation, Iceman realized that Emma was right and managed to transform back to his human body with his chest fully intact.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "When Graydon Creed was running for President (with a heavy anti mutant campaign), Bobby was chosen to infiltrate in the campaign. His father stood out in a crowd and spoke in favor of the mutants, which came as a surprise to Bobby. His father's connection with Bobby was discovered, so the people that worked for Graydon captured him and almost beat him to death. Bobby decided to stay away from the X-Men for a while to be with his dad.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Zero Tolerance came across and Bobby found and helped Cecilia Reyes who was trying to keep a secret that she was a mutant. They also joined with Charlotte Jones and the Morlock Marrow. After Bastion was defeated, he took Cecilia and Marrow to the mansion, and soon left the X-Men again for a while to be with his parents.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Much later, the X-Men found evidence in one of Destiny's journals of a group known as the Twelve, including Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, Phoenix, Iceman, Polaris, Storm, Cable, Bishop, Sunfire, Mikhail Rasputin and the Living Monolith. They also learned that the Apocalypse's Horsemen had been kidnapping these mutants from around the globe. Iceman was captured in the woods near his home by Deathbird, who had become the Horseman War. Gathering the remaining Twelve, the X-Men traveled to Egypt and confronted Apocalypse and the Skrulls. Apocalypse and his forces captured all of the Twelve during the battle, using them in a ritual to give the Chaos-Bringer a new body and incredible power. Magneto and Polaris created opposite magnetic polarities, Iceman, Storm, and Sunfire provided elemental extremes, Cyclops, Phoenix, and Cable gave the sheer power of family, Xavier represented the power of mind and Bishop and Mikhail stood for time and space, while the Monolith linked all their energies together. Nate Grey was to be Apocalypse's new host, a powerhouse to store his massive lifeforce. The Twelve managed to free themselves and Cyclops sacrificed his own body and life force to keep Apocalypse from getting Nate. Though the new Apocalypse was defeated, Cyclops seemed lost forever.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "After that incident, Iceman helped the Beast to secretly enter Genosha, as he wanted to study the legacy-infected mutates. When the High Evolutionary released his anti-mutation wave, they were trapped in the war-ravaged country. With the aid of Magneto, they escaped and joined forces with the rest of the scattered X-Men. They raided the Evolutionary's satellite, disabled the mutation field and defeated Sinister, who had been manipulating the Evolutionary.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Iceman was recruited by the living ship Prosh, along with other mutants, like Jean Grey, Mystique, Toad and Juggernaut, to preserve evolution and save it. In this journey Iceman developed his powers even further, which led him to no longer be afraid of the natural course of his powers and he returned to the X-Men. He joined a new team of X-Men, consisting of Angel, Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Chamber. He was using his abilities in a whole new way now, just channelling the power and not turning his body into ice.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "During a heated battle with a recently evolved Black Tom Cassidy, he received a chest wound. After returning to normal his chest did not fully recover and some parts of it remained icy, and he was unable to return them to normal. At first he became afraid of it but in time it made him gain a new attitude in life, even rude at some times.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Nobody seemed to realize it at the time, but evidently this was an early sign of Iceman undergoing a secondary mutation of his own. When he repeatedly tried to evade his regular medical check-ups, school nurse Annie Ghazikhanian recognized that something odd was going on with him and pressured him to show her the wound. Bobby made her promise not to tell anyone and showed her that parts of his chest are now made of ice and he is unable to change them back to flesh and blood. Iceman wonders if he will entirely turn into ice on a permanent basis.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "He developed an attitude that, to some of the newer addition to the X-Men, like Stacy X, Juggernaut and Northstar, he comes across as rather arrogant, denouncing their status as team members, as they have not been around as long as he. Iceman even went as far as offending Nightcrawler by claiming that only the original five, and no one else, has the right to call themselves an X-Man.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Bobby was further frustrated when Havok and Polaris announced their imminent wedding, him having carried a torch for Lorna for quite some time. In his frustration he turned to Annie, who had problems with the wedding too, as she was secretly in love with Havok. The nurse surprised him with the accusation of him being a racist – feeling comfortable as a mutant who could pass like a human when needed, opposed to being a fully obvious mutant or a \"mere\" human. With his secondary mutation manifesting, though, Iceman was in danger of losing this status. Shocked by the truth of her words, Bobby fully opened up about his fears, that as a man fully made of ice he could never feel the warmth of a physical relationship again. Touched, Annie allowed him to kiss her, but when Havok called off the wedding, wanting to be with Annie instead, she quickly dumped Bobby.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Upon encountering Azazel and his followers, Iceman's body is shattered from the neck down. Afterward, he regains his entire ice form, but cannot change back to his human appearance. As a result, Bobby becomes both bitter and despondent because of this drastic change.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Iceman joins Rogue's team after she tells him that she wants him as a member. Their first mission as a team is to fight a new threat, a powerful group known as the Children of the Vault. The team is successful and during this time, Bobby learns that he can be completely destroyed but then pull himself back together again. It was shown several times during the arc.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The next mission for the team was to locate a man called Pandemic and defeat him. The team was again successful, but Rogue was infected with a virus called Strain 88. Cable took the team, including Bobby, to his island so Rogue could get treatment.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "While on Cable's island, the team and Iceman began working to defeat the Shi'ar weapon known as the Hecatomb. During the chaos, he shared a passionate kiss with Mystique. Even as he did so, he saved many lives by containing the explosion of the Conquistador, and, later, the Hecatomb itself.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "As the team recovers from Hecatomb attack in Rogue's childhood home, it appears that Mystique and Iceman begin a romantic relationship. This was a front, as Mystique was using Iceman and the X-Men as a Marauder spy for Mister Sinister. Marauders soon infiltrated the house; they attempt to gain access to Destiny's Diaries on the order of Mr. Sinister (who has been gathering information about the future from anybody and anything that could foretell the future). Bobby and Cannonball escape from the Marauders in the X-Jet, with help from Emma Frost. They are pursued by Sunfire; they manage to get the better of him and take him prisoner, but not before he manages to cripple the jet. While Sunfire is unconscious, Iceman and Sam discuss the Mauraders' plan to eliminate all precognitive mutants and anyone with knowledge of the future as well as retrieving Destiny's Diaries before the Marauders can. During this time, Bobby displayed sub-atomic control of energy transfers when he prevented Sunfire from using his fire-based powers.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Cannonball and Bobby, telepathically prompted by Emma Frost, attempt to recover the diaries which are hidden in a dilapidated brewery. Mr. Sinister uses the reverse-engineered version of Xavier's Cerebro to track the pair of X-Men to the brewery. The Marauders attack Cannonball and Iceman and overtake them. Bobby, while in his ice form, suffers a gunshot wound from Mystique, which severs one of his arms above the elbow. Mister Sinister, who takes Cannonball prisoner, attempts to telepathically erase his mind so that the X-Men will find him as an empty shell. Iceman attacks Sinister, distracting him, which allows both of the X-Men to escape.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The New X-Men team decided to raid the headquarters of the Purifiers in Washington, D.C., but were forced to retreat. Pixie teleported them back to the mansion in a rush, but the entire team was scattered between D.C. and Westchester. Iceman, after recovering from his injuries, volunteered to go look for them and was given telepathic directions by Emma Frost.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Iceman was successful in finding the New X-Men, most of them injured. On the way back, they found that the O*N*E* Sentinels guarding the Xavier Institute had become infected by nano-Sentinels and attacked the school. Iceman and New X-Man X-23 helped out in the battle with the O*N*E* Sentinels. With the help of Dust and X-23, the X-Men were able to survive this battle but the nano-Sentinel infected human escaped.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Soon, Iceman participated in the final battle against the Marauders, the Acolytes, and Predator X. He was one of the X-Men who came running in to fight Predator X after it swallowed Wolverine whole. However, he also witnesses his mentor, Professor Xavier, \"killed\" by Bishop's bullet, which was not meant for him.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Iceman arrives in San Francisco, where he was set to meet Hepzibah, Warpath, and Angel. All four are caught in the effects of a citywide illusion created by Martinique Jason, who used her powers to transform the city into a hippie paradise. Now calling himself \"Frosty\", he and the others are sent by Martinique to confront Scott Summers and Emma Frost. Emma Frost is able to break up the illusion and free everyone. They eventually set up their base of operations in San Francisco as X-Men.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Iceman is one of the X-Men that assists in fighting the Skrull invasion in San Francisco.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Iceman rescues Colossus from Venom and is later made a part of a team to battle Emma Frost's Dark X-Men. During the final battle on Utopia, Iceman teams up with the X-Students to take on Mimic. Iceman had the labor of providing water to the population. He attempted to use humor to keep everyone's spirits up even though he believed that the situation was helpless and that the X-Men were living in the last days of mutantkind. Bobby then helped defeat Predator X and also helped stop Selene's resurrected army's invasion of Utopia.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "During the battle with Bastion's Nimrod Sentinels, Iceman is severely injured following an attack from one of them that reversed his ice form and left him with burns on his body. He is only there for a short time because his mutant powers help him minimize the injuries he suffered and he is seen back in battle alongside Psylocke and the other X-Men.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Early solicitations show that after Wolverine and Cyclops have a major falling out, Wolverine decides to branch off and open The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning back in New York. Iceman is the first person Wolverine approaches and recruits to his new X-Men squad as both a professor and teammate. Iceman is chosen because Wolverine feels he has the kind of spirit the new school needs. He also has an off-and-on romantic relationship with Kitty Pryde.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "When the Terrigen became toxic for mutants, Iceman was one of the recruits in Storm's new team dedicated to protecting mutants from the Terrigen by leading them to X-haven. Iceman mostly works alongside Nightcrawler, helping him search for Colossus after he is transformed into one of Apocalypse's new horsemen. Iceman and Nightcrawler manage to track Colossus to Egypt, where he ambushes them and almost kills them until another squad of X-Men comes in to help. After that Iceman joins the X-Men when they declare war against the Inhumans after discovering that in a matter of weeks the Terrigen will render earth as completely uninhabitable for mutants.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Iceman is among the heroes summoned by Mr. Fantastic - a group consisting of former substitute members of the Fantastic Four - to help the Future Foundation against the cosmic entity known as the Griever. However, the Human Torch objects to Iceman's presence during the battle, emphatically asserting that Iceman was never a member of the FF. Iceman states that he was made a member during an adventure involving Namor. The Torch simply counters with \"That didn't COUNT!\"",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "As recounted in Fantastic Four vol. 6 #24, Iceman's induction into the FF did not feature Namor, but occurred during the early days of the FF and the original X-Men. One morning years ago, the youthful Torch 'quit' the FF in an immature fit of pique. That same day, the sensitive teen-aged Iceman left the X-Men after being laughed at by his peers for his poor showing in a Danger Room exercise. Iceman encountered the remaining FF members and assisted them with a day-long series of crises, being casually admitted to the team as a result. When the Torch discovered that he had been replaced, he attacked Iceman during the FF's current battle and forcefully declared that Iceman was not an FF member. The Invisible Girl forced the pair to work together to help defeat the FF's final opponent of the day. Iceman was then telepathically summoned back to the X-Men by Professor X, who praised his student's performance. Mr. Fantastic told the departing Iceman that he could return to the FF whenever he wanted. The Torch was also 'readmitted', with a penance of a week's laundry detail.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In the present time, Iceman returns the teen-aged Franklin Richards to the FF's Yancy Street home/headquarters from Krakoa and is recognized by the building's security system as an FF member. This angers the Torch once again, and he declares that Iceman had never been a member of the team. The two men bicker over the issue until Iceman realizes that the Torch was never upset about Iceman replacing him on the team, but believes that he was trying to take his place in the FF family. The Torch finally admits that what bothered him most was that other substitute members—who were also considered family by the FF—were always brought in due to major events, and that if Iceman was the actual first substitute member, that meant the Torch had given up his place \"over nothing.\" The Torch ultimately drops the matter of Iceman's legitimacy and says that he was an official substitute FF member, and is also a part of the FF 'family'.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "After being outed as gay by the time-displaced Jean Grey, the younger time-displaced Iceman confronts his older self, asking him why he has been presenting as straight for most of his adult life. The older Bobby breaks down and admits that he has known he was gay for a long time but forcibly repressed that part of himself, fearful of how others would react. He further acknowledges that he was scared to reveal his true self to the world due to already facing prejudice for being a mutant and not wanting to receive hatred for another part of himself. Following all of this, Bobby decides to take a break from the limelight and focus on himself, declining to join the new X-team formed by Kitty Pryde, instead acting as a reserve member and teaching classes at the Xavier School. After a training session with his younger self, Bobby sees the time-displaced Iceman head out for a date with his boyfriend Romeo while he tries to set up an online dating profile to meet guys. He receives a text from his mother stating that his father has had a heart attack so Bobby rushes to the hospital only to be chastises by his father for missing family events due to his commitments as a superhero. Following a brief battle in the hospital, Bobby's parents ask him to leave, angry that their mutant son is bringing yet more trouble into their lives. On a mission with Kitty to rescue a new mutant, she confronts Bobby about being gay, asking why he could not tell her himself, meaning she had to find out from a secondary source. She reassures him that she only wants to help him and lets him know she is there if he ever wants to talk but suggests he should come out to his parents. Bobby arranges dinner with his family but he is constantly subjected anti-mutant rhetoric from his parents. The dinner is interrupted by a gang of Purifiers but, although Iceman takes them down quickly and the lives of his parents, they are angry that their house has been destroyed because of him and send him away (although his mother promises to try and convince his father to visit him at the X-Mansion). When the mutant that he and Kitty rescues goes missing, Iceman tracks him to a nearby nightclub where he discovers that Daken is responsible for luring him away. Daken tries to flirt with Bobby to distract him but Iceman freezes him and attempts to convince the mutant to return to the Xavier School, though he refuses. Daken mocks Bobby, saying that he can smell his fear and insecurity. Upon returning, Kitty surprises Bobby by revealing that his parents have arrived for a visit. He tells them he is gay and they both react negatively, angry that their son is both a mutant and a gay man. They chastise him for letting everyone else find out before them and try to convince him that he is straight, due to having been with women in the past. The family argument is interrupted by Juggernaut, who attacks the school looking for the young X-Men. Iceman defeats him by pushing his powers and returns to the mansion to find his father is still there. He had obtained Bobby's draft of a coming out letter from Kitty and the two men begin to reconcile.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Bobby reconnects with his former Champions teammates, Angel, Hercules, Ghost Rider and Darkstar, so they reminisce about their time with Black Widow. Bobby runs into a guy, Judah, while out shopping and he agrees to meet him that night at a local gay bar, with the rest of the Champions acting as his wingmen. The date appears to be going well but is interrupted by an attack by some Sentinels. Bobby's relationship with Judah continues to develop and he decides to move to L.A. to be closer to him. While fighting Pyro with his younger self, Bobby explains that his mother has finally made contact with him for the first time since he came out and that she wants to invite both of them to dinner. Time-displaced Iceman agrees on the condition that Bobby tries to talk sense into Romeo, who hasn't called him in weeks. Meanwhile, Daken begins training his new mutant protégée for a secret mission. When both the younger Bobby and the older Bobby arrive at the restaurant, their parents see the younger Bobby as a chance to raise a new son in a way that suits them but the time-displaced Iceman refuses, saying that he is still gay and wants to live life on his own terms before they both storm out. During Bobby's moving away party at the X-Mansion, Daken uses the Purifiers to distract the other X-Men while he and his apprentice infiltrate the school and ambush Bobby. The young mutant uses his levelled-up powers to increase Daken's strength by turning him into Apocalypse's horseman Death and he mortally wounds Judah with his claws before engaging Iceman in combat. Bobby manages to defeat Daken with a kiss which freezes Death's powers but Daken escapes and Judah breaks up with Bobby because his life is too much for him to deal with.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "After teaming with Bishop to help the Morlocks who came under threat by Mister Sinister, Bobby finds himself approached by Emma Frost who asks him for his help. Ignoring Kitty's protests, he agrees and Emma explains that her Father, who subjected her brother Christian to conversion therapy before having him institutionalized, has recently let him out and reinstalled him as the new heir to the Frost business empire. When they arrive, they discover that Christian has murdered their Father and is exhibiting his own powers. Bobby and Emma help to free Christian from his mental breakdown and Emma decides to stay with him. Joining with his friends Spider-Man and Firestar, Bobby discovers that Sinister was behind the attack on the Morlocks and confronts him in his safehouse. Sinister, intent on trying to unlock the secrets of Iceman's DNA by dissecting him, sends forth an army of experimental ice creatures but Bobby's Omega Level powers absorb them all into him and he fires Mister Sinister into space. Celebrating his birthday, Bobby is confronted by Ice Wizard, a future version of himself from an alternate timeline. Ice Wizard warns Bobby that he must quit the X-Men and stop using his powers to avoid a world-destroying series of events happening. He explains that Daken seduces him and manipulates him into sacrificing the other X-Men before betraying him and gaining Thanos-level powers. Bobby is adamant that this won't happen and the two engage in battle. Jean Grey arrives and Bobby finally confronts her for the actions of her younger self when she outed him. Bobby explains to Ice Wizard that he is going to live life on his terms and that nobody, not even his future self, is going to decide for him. Bobby returns to his birthday celebration where Christian arrives and hands him a large sum of money which Bobby gives to the Morlocks. A content Bobby messages Judah, asking if he would like to meet up as friends.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Bobby was one of the first casualties of the third annual Hellfire Gala, in which he did battle with Nimrod. He had gained the upper hand in the fight at first, only to be injected with cellular napalm that literally melted him into nothing before the horrified eyes of Kitty Pryde and Romeo. But sometime later, it was shown that Romeo had used his Inhuman powers and his emotional connection to Bobby to re-integrate him and restore him to life. However, his physical and mental cohesion is reliant on his proximity to Romeo.",
"title": "Fictional character biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Iceman possesses the power to instantly decrease the temperature of ambient water vapor in his immediate environment to below zero degrees Celsius, thereby freezing it into ice. He is able to make ice that will not break unless he wills it to. In this manner he is able to quickly form a great variety of ice structures, including projectiles, shields, ladders, baseball bats, etc. Iceman often makes ice slides which form rapidly beneath and behind his feet, moving him along the slick surface at high speeds. He is also able to form exceedingly complicated structures within relative short time, such as miniature cities. Originally, Iceman's own body temperature would lower dramatically when his powers were active, reaching −105 °F (−76 °C) within a few tenths of a second (now his body usually converts to organic ice; see below). Iceman is immune to sub-zero temperatures; he is also able to perceive the thermal energy level of objects around him. Because cold is the absence of heat, Iceman does not actually 'emanate' cold; rather, he decreases thermal energy. As mentioned by writer Mike Carey, Iceman is \"an Omega-level mutant ... [and] has powers that can influence the ecosystem of the entire world.\" Iceman has yet to tap into his full mutant potential, but over the years he has taken more interest in developing his abilities.",
"title": "Powers and abilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In his early appearances, Iceman generally covered his body in a thick layer of what appeared to be snow; hence he looked more like a traditional snowman than an ice-man. Upon further training in the use of his powers, he was able to fashion an armor of solid ice around his body when using his powers, which afforded him some degree of protection against concussive force and projectiles. Later on, he manifested the ability to convert the tissue of his body into organic ice. He sometimes augments his organic ice form with razor sharp adornments to his shoulders, elbows, knees, and fists. Iceman has also been able to move rapidly to another distant location while in his organic ice form, being able to deposit his bodily mass into a river and reconstitute his entire mass a great distance away in a matter of minutes (by temporarily merging his molecules with those of the river). On one occasion, Iceman suffered a severe chest injury while in his ice form and was able to heal himself by converting back into his normal human form.",
"title": "Powers and abilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Iceman is also able to reconstitute his organic ice form if any part of it is damaged, or even if it is completely shattered, without permanently harming himself. He can temporarily add the mass of a body of water to his own, increasing his mass, size, and strength. He can survive not only as ice, but as liquid water and water vapor. He can also transform his body from a gaseous state back to a solid, although it is physically and mentally taxing. Iceman can also freeze sea water, as seen during the \"Operation: Zero Tolerance\" story arc. While he usually does not use his powers in lethal ways, his powers are so vast that they extend to the molecular level, to the point that he can freeze all of the molecules of an object/being with a thought; he once froze every single molecule of water within the body of David Haller. Iceman is also able to dissolve his own icy constructs.",
"title": "Powers and abilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Iceman's powers were pushed to their limit while possessed by Emma Frost, who used Iceman to discover the fate of her Hellions. During this time Iceman was able to control all forms of moisture, freeze fluids inside people's bodies, travel as a liquid, solid or gas. Not even the combined might of the X-Men Gold team was able to stop Emma Frost in Iceman's body. Following this, Bobby confronted Emma about how she was able to use his powers so effectively. While together they made some initial progress, she refused to train him further. Instead he turned to Storm because they share similar elemental powers and she agreed to tutor him.",
"title": "Powers and abilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "When Iceman was injected with Mister Sinister's neuro-inhibiter by Mystique, he was able to save himself by drawing in all of the ambient moisture around him, rapidly replacing his poisoned cells with healthy material before the injection could kill him.",
"title": "Powers and abilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "During the 2013–2014 \"Battle of the Atom\" storyline, Iceman's future self revealed that he has the ability to create semi-independent ice structures that can act on their own, although one of these structures—demonstrating a Hulk-like physique and intellect—has gone on to join the future version of the Brotherhood.",
"title": "Powers and abilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Aside from his superhuman powers, Iceman is also a fair hand-to-hand combatant, and received combat training at Xavier's School as well as coaching from the Black Widow and Hercules while serving with the Champions of Los Angeles. Iceman has taken as much combat training as Cyclops or Beast.",
"title": "Powers and abilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "According to writer Mike Carey \"one of Iceman's best personality traits is that emotionally Bobby Drake is like the ice he manipulates—not cold but transparent. 'He's devastatingly honest. He is very up-front with his emotions and his thoughts all the time.'\" \"Also, he's obviously incredibly brave both in terms of facing external, physical danger as well as facing up to unpleasant situations and admitting his own mistakes.\"",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Iceman had a brief relationship with a Japanese-American New Yorker named Opal Tanaka. He subsequently exhibited strong feelings for his fellow X-Man Polaris, but she did not return those feelings, due to her feelings towards Havok. Northstar developed an unrequited crush for Iceman during their time on the same team, though Iceman never did find out about this. Iceman later had a brief relationship with the Xavier School's nurse, Annie, but she eventually left him for Havok, who had just left Polaris at the altar. When Iceman attempted to rekindle his relationship with Polaris, that too ended abruptly, and Polaris returned to Havok. Iceman then had a relationship with the X-Men's enemy Mystique, who later betrayed him, despite her continued fixation on him, in as much as she stated that she would either kill him or cure him of his personal uncertainty.",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Iceman has long-lasting friendships with Spider-Man, Firestar and the Human Torch.",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In All-New X-Men #40, the time-displaced Iceman is revealed to be gay, which eventually forces the youth to confront the adult version of himself about the matter. As both speak, the adult Iceman confirms the fact and that he had put all his energy into just being an X-Man as he couldn't cope with being a mutant and gay simultaneously. With the help of his younger self and Jean Grey, however, he finally comes to terms with his own sexuality, and comes out to fellow gay X-Man Anole in Extraordinary X-Men #6. The end of the Extermination X-Men event saw the redirecting of the time displaced version of Bobby back into the \"closet\" when he returned to his original timeline alongside the other X-Men, due to a mind lock by Jean Grey. In the present day, the current version retains both sets of memories and remains an out gay man.",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Peter Eckhardt of CBR.com referred to Iceman as \"the biggest name amongst queer X-Men,\" writing, \"Iceman is an Omega-Level mutant and a longtime fan-favorite character. Iceman was only recently revealed as gay in a story handled somewhat clumsily in 2014's All-New X-Men #40 (written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Mahmud Asrar). Nevertheless, writers as far back as the 1980s hinted that Bobby was gay, particularly in the 1990s when Iceman struggled with his sense of identity. Today, Iceman's story inspires and excites those looking for anything from understanding their own identity to epic, ice-based colossi.\" Mey Rude of Out stated, \"While Northstar was the first out gay superhero in a Marvel comic, Iceman is his more famous gay X-Men teammate. Bobby Drake didn't come out until just recently in the comics, following some time travel shenanigans, but he’s already become a gay favorite.\" Alyssa Gawaran of MovieWeb said, \"Iceman, also a big part of the X-Men in the Marvel Comics, is one of the more groundbreaking LGBTQ+ characters in Marvel. Iceman broke boundaries in the franchise as he became the first-ever gay leading superhero to headline a comic, the \"coming out moment\" reported in a 2015 Vox article. Marvel has recently released Marauders Annual #1 that features a very heartwarming prom segment between Bobby Drake (Iceman) and his boyfriend, a new face to the comics, Christian Frost.\" Joshua Yehl of IGN described Iceman as \"the perfect gay boyfriend,\" saying, \"Bobby isn’t out to be the biggest, baddest guy around. He’s a more grounded and relatable guy, and while he often broadcasts his cocky attitude and wisecracking humor during battle, he’s proven time and time again that his heart is in the right place when it comes to being there for his teammates. There’s something incredibly charming about a guy who could become the Indomitable Iceman, laying waste to enemies with his icy wrath, yet he chooses to stay boy-next-door Bobby Drake, a funny, self-sacrificing guy who values being a friend and hero over becoming the most powerful guy in the room. Being gay has a lot in common with being a mutant, as excellently displayed during Iceman’s “coming out” scene in X2: X-Men United. You’re born that way, you will face bullying and discrimination for it, and those who claim to be your friends and family may turn their backs on you because of it. Bobby’s experiences as both a mutant and an out gay man would make him an incredibly empathetic and understanding partner, one who would share his feelings and be there to help with yours. So even though he may not be the strongest mutant around, he’d be a hero to you in every way that counts.\"",
"title": "Cultural impact and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "According to Diamond Comic Distributors, Iceman and Angel #1 was the 161st best selling comic book in March 2011.",
"title": "Literary reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Ryan K. Lindsay of CBR.com called Iceman and Angel #1 \"as much fun as you want, but as pithy as you expect too,\" asserting, \"A one-shot should be a comic that stands on its own, and this issue certainly does that. It needs to give you enough narrative meat to feel like the money was well invested, and this issue mostly does that. It should elicit some form of strong reaction from you in the few pages it has, and this issue works hard to make you laugh and is more successful than not. See Namor score some bagels and Googam become a broheim. It's not earth shattering but it is solid fun and sometimes that's just what you need. Pick up this comic and feel the freedom of old funny done-in-one comics just like they did when you were a kid where the parts add up to greater than the actual whole.\" David Brothers of ComicsAlliance ranked Iceman and Angel #1 10th in their \"10 Top Marvel Comics Coming in March 2011,\" saying, \"One of the best things we don't see much of any more is the relationship between the original X-Men. The modern series is all about hard decisions, hard edges, and hard core self protection, but back in the day, they were just a bunch of kids who hung out together. Iceman and Angel in particular were pretty fun together, because one was a goofball and the other was a self-styled ladies man. Brian Clevinger has proven that he can do stories like this, where he takes a slice of time and expands on it in a meaningful way, and Juan Doe is a pretty great artist. Add in GOOM, a classic Marvel villain, and you've got a story that I think is going to be a pretty good read. X-Men First Class may be dead in name, but these one-shots are doing a pretty good job of keeping the feeling alive.\"",
"title": "Literary reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "According to Diamond Comic Distributors, Iceman #1 was the 62nd best selling comic book in June 2017. Iceman #1 was the 655-656th best selling comic book in 2017.",
"title": "Literary reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Matthew Aguilar of ComicBook.com gave Iceman #1 a grade of 4 out of 5 stars, writing, \"On the art side of things, the book is a mixed bag. Alessandro Vitti's pencils and Rachelle Rosenberg's colors shine when ice is involved in some form or fashion, as referenced early and later in the book. In the middle, though things get a bit muddy, and the facial expressions suffer. Not enough to detract in a huge way, but the book definitely improves when Drake is in his ice form. Overall writer Sina Grace is off to an excellent start here, providing a refreshing look into a fan favorite character that has always been more than his powers but needed someone to bring that out of him. It looks like this time is up for the task.\" Jesse Schedeen of IGN gave Iceman #1 a grade of 7.8 out of 10, stating, \"Iceman #1 doesn't make the strongest case for this series as an ongoing story, as it could just as easily be a standalone one-shot starring the frozen X-Man. But it's a very well-executed story regardless, one that showcases Bobby Drake's crazy personal life while still making the most of his incredible powers. Iceman is shaping up to be a worthy addition to the ResurrXion lineup.\"",
"title": "Literary reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "According to Diamond Comic Distributors, Iceman #1 was the 43rd best selling comic book in September 2018. Iceman #1 was the 508th best selling comic book in 2018.",
"title": "Literary reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Jamie Lovett of Comicook.com called Iceman #1 a \"well-crafted book,\" saying,\"Iceman #1 is a stellar return. Most impressive is how the issue is completely capable of standing alone, but also seeds an exciting story to come. Even a casual X-Men fan will recognize the deadliness of the threat behind this issue's attempts to recreate the \"Mutant Massacre.\" Longtime X-Men fans, and fans of Iceman, in particular, will get something extra out of the last page reveal of who's waiting for Bobby at home. Iceman #1 is a triumphant return for an underappreciated series. The longer Sina Grace writes Bobby Drake, the more Iceman develops into a truly compelling, relatable leading man. Grace found the perfect artistic partners in Nathan Stockman and Frederico Blee. Here's hoping Iceman gets more of the attention it deserves the second time around.\" Maite Molina of ComicsVerse gave Iceman #1 a score of 80%, asserting, \"Iceman #1 is a resolute start to a new run. Thanks to some palpable character development and an intriguing plot, the issue succeeds in gripping a reader’s attention. The stage has been set for some intriguing new story arcs, ones that will feature some familiar, sinister villains. Hopefully, Bobby Drake is ready for these impending challenges, ones that he may not even see coming.\"",
"title": "Literary reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Following the war with the Phoenix Five, as Cyclops begins to lash out against government oppression of mutants, a chance comment by Bobby about how the old Cyclops wouldn't tolerate what he is currently doing inspires Beast to travel back in time and recruit the original five X-Men to stop Cyclops. The team decides to stay in the present instead of returning into the past. They are now called the All-New X-Men and led by Kitty Pryde. The past and present Bobby are particularly shocked when they see each other. The younger Bobby is especially shocked by the older Bobby's Omega level powers, like creating ice golems, and especially his future \"Ice Wizard\" self in the Battle of the Atom. Eventually he and the All-New X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy travel to the Shiar Empire to rescue Jean Grey from a trial for the genocide that her future Dark Phoenix self committed. The team is then teleported into the Ultimate Marvel universe, where he stumbles into Mole Man's lair. He proudly creates his first ice golem in order to escape.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Returning to their universe, the team are reunited with Cyclops when they are called upon to aid the Guardians of the Galaxy again in retrieving the fabled Black Vortex. Cyclops, Iceman and Groot become superpowered by the Vortex before returning it to Captain Marvel.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Later, the younger, time-displaced Bobby is forced to confront being gay by his teammate, Jean, who privately asks him why he calls women \"hot\", when she knows via her psychic abilities that he is gay. This causes the younger Bobby to speculate as to the complicated identity issues faced by his older self and the decisions his older self may have made in the time between them. Together with the young Jean, the young Bobby confronts his older self, who admits to being gay, having 'concealed' that part of himself so that he could have avoid being prejudiced against for another part of himself.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Bobby joins the time-displaced Cyclops, Angel and Beast, as well as Kid Apocalypse, All-New Wolverine and Oya as they road-trip around America trying to make their own mark on the world. Bobby is initially reluctant to talk about his sexuality with his teammates until Oya and Kid Apocalypse take him to a gay club in an attempt to make him more comfortable. He embarrasses himself and runs into Romeo, an Inhuman with the ability to manipulate and feel others' emotions. Romeo makes Bobby more comfortable and the two begin a relationship. The two are later caught in the middle when the X-Men declare war on the Inhumans. Bobby joins the X-Men when they attack New Attilan but quickly breaks off from the battle to find Romeo, with the two escaping together.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "After the X-Men's war against the Inhumans for the Terrigen ends, Iceman joins the rest of the young X-Men on an attempted return to their original timeline but they quickly realize that theirs isn't part of the Earth 616 timeline, leaving them stuck in that present time with no knowledge where they were originally from. Upon learning this, Iceman joins the rest of the young X-Men and leaves the rest of the X-Men to find their place in the world. Iceman then joins Magneto in Madripoor along with the rest of the time-displaced X-Men; however, due to a lack of trust in their new leader, the X-Men make plans and train in case Magneto returns to his former villainous ways to kill them. Instead of training with his teammates, Iceman spends most of his time trying to reach out Romeo unsuccessfully, placing him into a stupor.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The time-displaced X-Men continue fighting crime in the present day although following a battle with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from an alternate timeline, they are disheartened to realize that they must eventually return to their original time. This particularly upsets Bobby who is sad that all of their growth as people will be undone once they go back. While the team are in space working alongside Venom to defeat the Poisons, a race of mind-controlling symbiotes, Magneto attacks several Hellfire Club parties searching for Emma Frost. The X-Men find her first and offer to protect her from Magneto although they quickly discover that he had taken mutant growth hormones to enhance his powers and, rather than kill the team he has mentored, Magneto leaves. Young Jean senses that they must return to their own time period soon and the X-Men have heart-to-hearts with their adult selves. During a game of pool with older Iceman, Bobby breaks down, knowing that his memory of the present must be erased and he will be forced back into the closet and, despite Iceman's best efforts to convince his younger self that he will grow up to be someone awesome, Bobby admits that he likes the person he has already become but that remaining that person is no longer an option. As the team prepare to leave, a news report announces that Magneto has formed a new brotherhood, leading the X-Men to decide to stay in the present for a little while longer.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "While en route to help young Cyclops, Bobby is attacked by a mysterious assailant but is rescued by Cable, who urges him to flee. Iceman refuses but is incapacitated and captured while Cable is killed. Young Jean attempts to use Cerebro to locate Bobby but states that she is unable to find him. In a secret lab, the man who attacked Bobby is revealed to be a time-displaced version of Cable who has him locked up in a tube. Kitty gathers all of the X-Men, who split into four teams tasked with protecting one of the remaining time-displaced X-Men. Young Jean uses her telepathy to guide her team to young Cable's base, where he admits to murdering his older self because he had failed in his mission to maintain the timeline by allowing the young X-Men to stay in the present for so long. They discover that Cable has been genetically modifying young Iceman so that he looks the way he looked when he left his original time period. He releases Bobby and teleports them all to Atlantis, where Ahab is attempting to kill young Cyclops so that the timeline can never be restored. The X-Men find themselves overwhelmed by Ahab's forces and Cable convinces the young X-Men that they must return home immediately in order to save the others. Young Iceman breaks down to his older self, admitting he doesn't want to be forced back into the closet but the present day Bobby tells him that his younger self finally allowed him to accept that he was gay and promises that he will be finally be able to truly be himself when he grows up. Cable then sends the X-Men back to their original time, informing them that everything will return to normal once they officially close the time loop. In 1964, the young X-Men change into their original clothes and young Jean performs a mind wipe so that they won't remember their time in the present day although she informs them that she is able to lock their memories away so that, once the loop is closed, their older selves will regain those memories. Back in modern day, the founding X-Men inherit the memories of their younger selves allowing them to defeat Ahab. Returned to their original time, the young X-Men forget about their adventures in the present and are greeted by Professor Xavier.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Iceman is Roberto Trefusis in the miniseries Marvel 1602, a member of the group of \"witchbreeds\" founded by Carlos Javier and led by Scotius Summerisle. He is the nephew of naval commander Sir Francis Drake. As in the Marvel Universe, he generates ice and can assume a physical ice form.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In the \"Age of Apocalypse\" storyline, Bobby, along with the rest of the X-Men, is trained by Magneto. Because Magneto is harder on his students than Professor X, Bobby lacks his 616-counterpart's sense of humor. Instead, Bobby becomes very cold and inhuman, making his teammates feel uncomfortable. In addition to his normal abilities, Bobby is capable of breaking down his body and merging it with another body of water to travel great distances in a matter of seconds. He can bring others along through a process that he calls \"moisture molecular inversion\", though it is a painful process for the passengers. Bobby is also able to reconstitute his body from broken pieces. Just before Apocalypse's defeat, Colossus stormed right through Iceman, causing him to fall into pieces in an attempt to reach his sister. A couple of months later, Iceman, Exodus, Wild Child, and Morph were sent on a secret mission by Magneto; for a time, only Wild Child's fate was revealed.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Iceman returned in the Uncanny X-Force arc \"The Dark Angel Saga\", when the title team was forced to travel to the AoA reality. He abandoned the X-Men during a battle with the minions of Weapon X, who had by this time been transformed into that world's new Apocalypse, a defection later revealed to be the result of Iceman's having lost faith in his X-Men's ability to save their world. He was soon brought to Earth-616 by the Dark Beast, where he joined forces with Archangel on his quest to eradicate all life on Earth so he could create a new evolution process. Tired of seeing the people he cared about being killed fighting what he thought to be an unwinnable war, Drake agreed to help Archangel – despite the latter's now being the mainstream Marvel Universe's version of Drake's X-Men's arch-enemy, Apocalypse – in exchange for transport to the relative paradise that was Earth-616.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "After X-Force defeated Archangel, Bobby managed to escape with McCoy and most of Archangel's other minions, but eventually broke away from them and went into hiding, living a life of hedonistic bliss in Madripoor. The \"Age of Apocalypse\" version of Nightcrawler – who, after being brought to Earth-616 along with the rest of his world's X-Men to help take down Archangel, decided to stay behind there in order to track down and kill the various villains who also came to the mainstream Marvel Universe – eventually tracked Bobby down to execute him for his treason. Nightcrawler is quickly overwhelmed by Drake's avatars, but eventually forces Iceman into a factory boiler room, where there's not enough moisture in the air for him to effectively use his powers. Nightcrawler quickly disables his former friend, and shoves him into an incinerator, killing the once noble hero.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "During the miniseries Earth X, Bobby had become trapped in his ice form, making him vulnerable to melting. He moves to the Arctic regions of Earth, and made an ice city for himself and the Inuit. Due to a series of events where Earth's orbital path moves, Bobby is able to return to the United States to aid in the battle against the demon Mephisto.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In the alternate timeline of the \"House of M\" storyline, Iceman was seen in Magneto's army during his rise to power. Bobby later appears as one of the Horsemen of Apocalypse because Apocalypse rescued Bobby from a mutant internment camp that his parents had sent him to. Magneto sends Apocalypse to dispose of his rival Black Panther; when Apocalypse is attacked en route by Black Panther's allies, Iceman aids him by freezing Namor solid and attempting to attack Storm, but he is severely injured by Sunfire.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "A zombified Iceman appears in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days alongside zombies Wolverine and Cyclops. Ultimately, he is seen attacking Magneto. But Iceman perished at the hands of the Master Of Magnetism himself when Iceman is cut apart.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In the Mutant X universe, the Asgardian god Loki amplified Bobby's powers to a dangerous level, leaving him unable to touch any living thing without killing it. Despite this, he retains a jovial and optimistic personality. When Havok has a disagreement with Magneto and decides to leave the X-Men, Ice-Man is one of those who follow him, becoming a founding member of the Six, who eventually come to be considered the world's premiere mutant team.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "After the New Exiles land on the world of warring empires, they encounter Dame Emma Frost, head of Britain's Department X and founder of Force-X. This team includes Roberta \"Bobby\" Drake, a female version of Bobby who is code named Aurion and displays ice-based abilities.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In the alternate future witnessed in the \"Battle of the Atom\" storyline, Iceman's had truly evolved to become Sir Robert, the wizard-like Icemaster. As one of the most respected X-Men, he had incredible control over his powers and could even grow a beard! Though never outright mentioned, he may had a relationship with Kitty Pryde and even fathered a son with her, denoting the existence of Carmen Drake, a boy with the powers of both Iceman and Shadowcat. He has also developed the ability to create semi-independent ice structures that can act on their own, although one of these structures, possessing a Hulk-like physique and intellect, has gone on to join the future version of the Brotherhood, resulting in the Brotherhood using the duplicate to reinforce the illusion of themselves as the future X-Men. The duplicate Iceman was defeated by the O5 Iceman, the present Iceman, and the future Iceman during the battle in the past (Prompting the youngest Iceman to note that they only needed one more Iceman for a five-a-side basketball team).",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Icemaster later returned to the mainstream marvel universe and confronts Iceman about trusts and decisions. He does it in order to prevent him from doing the same mistakes Icemaster did in the future. Knowing he had little time left, Icemaster eventually revealed to Iceman that after beginning a relationship with Daken, they both led the X-Men to space in order to prevent the Shi'ar from overwhelm the Earth and lay waste to it. However Icemaster would discover that Daken's plan was actually to obtain the M'Kraan Crystal in the first place, killing in the process the other X-Men and later Deathbird herself. Icemaster attempts to stop Daken, but he is seconds too late as having the Nexus of all Realities made Daken a Thanos-level player in the cosmos, and he acted as such. Icemaster eventually became convinced, after seeing Bobby's character growth, that his present self had matured beyond what he remembered, leaving the future open for new decisions to be made. With his mission apparently completed, Icemaster turns into thin air soon afterwards.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In the alternate reality of X-Men: Ronin Iceman is a murderous ninja in the employ of the Hellfire Club. He works with Pyro and Avalanche as part of the 'Shadowcat Clan' and battles the X-Men.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "New Excalibur battles an evil counterpart of Iceman, who is a member of the Shadow-X, the X-Men of an alternate reality in which Professor X was possessed by the Shadow King. They are brought to Earth-616 as a result of M-Day. He appeared to be mute and died during the final battle against Albion.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In Edge of Spider-verse: Web of Fear, a Spider-Man who is a member of the Captain Britain Corps witnesses Morlun about to kill Spider-Man. Later, a larger picture is shown of Firestar and Iceman lying dead, with Ms. Lion being left out, mourning her comrades.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Iceman appears in X-Men Noir as one of the X Men, a crew of talented criminals. He is depicted as being very short-tempered and paranoid. He is dubbed \"Iceman\", and angrily insists others refer to him that way, due to his custom of using an icepick as a weapon.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Bobby Drake is the youngest founding member of the X-Men. He ran away from his family at the peak of government-supported Sentinel attacks, fearing his family would be killed in such an attack.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Ultimate Iceman never had the snowman look of his counterpart, instead generating a flexible ice armor from the beginning. Bobby establishes himself as a valuable asset, single-handedly taking out the Ultimates once with a gigantic ice wall (see Ultimate War), as well as single-handedly halting an invasion by Colonel Wraith and Weapon X. He was only able to be stopped by Rogue, who was in temporary possession of Marvel Girl's telepathy. Professor X has stated that Bobby is one of the three most powerful X-Men. During the World Tour arc, after enlarging his armor to form a gigantic ice troll, Bobby is greatly injured by Proteus, which resulted in a lawsuit issued by his parents against Xavier. Bobby eventually rebels against his parents, and later returns to the X-Men.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "While Bobby was away from the X-Men on a vacation, he had a girlfriend, but Professor Xavier erased all memories of her from Bobby's mind when he told her too much about the X-Men (he presumably also erased the girl's memories). Upon her acceptance into the X-Men, Bobby begins to date Rogue. The pair date for a considerable amount of time, but eventually break up due to Bobby's growing feelings for Shadowcat and Rogue's feelings for Gambit. Eventually Rogue leaves, and Bobby starts to date Kitty. After this, the two rekindle their relationship, but problems erupted.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In Ultimate X-Men #80, Bishop and Hammer, time-travelers from the future, comment on how powerful Bobby will one day become. Cyclops disbanded the X-Men in Ultimate X-Men #81 and Bishop and Storm created a new team. Iceman stayed at the Institute as a student only until Xavier returned and reformed his X-Men.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Professor X is later revealed to be alive and the X-Men return to the Xavier Institute, which is also when Iceman rejoins the X-Men line up. Jean Grey soon discovers that fellow X-Man, Colossus, is using a drug called Banshee to enhance his mutant abilities. The X-Men are highly against this, but Colossus manages to convince Rogue, Dazzler, Angel, Nightcrawler, and Cyclops to join him on his own X-Men team. Iceman remains on Professor X's drug-free X-Men and fights the Banshee enhanced X-Men. Xavier's X-Men win and the two teams combine again with nobody using drugs.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The Ultimatum Wave hits the X-Men next killing several of the X-Men (Beast, Dazzler, and Nightcrawler). Magneto and the Brotherhood attack the world and Iceman helps the world's heroes fight them off. Most of the X-Men die, but Iceman (alongside Rogue, Storm, Colossus, and Jean Grey) is able to survive Magneto's attack. He is last seen demolishing the X-Mansion alongside Rogue and Jean Grey and burying the deceased X-Men in its place. He finds it hard to destroy their home, but he feels it to be the right thing to do now that Professor Xavier is dead.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Later, Bobby Drake is kicked out of his home for being a mutant. With nowhere else to go, Kitty suggests to Peter Parkers' Aunt May that he move in with her, Peter, Gwen Stacy, and Johnny Storm (who also recently moved in their household). Aunt May agrees and enrolls Bobby at Midtown High under the guise of Bobby Parker, one of Peters' cousins and shaves his hair off to help keep his, Peter's and Johnny's secret identities safe.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Without knowing where to go after Peter's death, Bobby Drake asked Kitty Pride if Johnny could come with them searching for a place where to live and hide from authorities. They found the Morlock Tunnels where they live now and help mutants in danger. Firstly they rescued Rogue, who joined them, and later Jimmy Hudson (the son of Wolverine), came to them for help after escaping Stryker's imprisonment along with other mutants he freed.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In X-Men Fairy Tales #1, Iceman appears as a white wolf with icy breath named Kori (Japanese for ice). Before he is reached by Cyclops, he appears to have lost faith in friendship.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "In X-Men: The End, Iceman appears as one of the instrumental characters in the defeat of Cassandra Nova and Khan and one of the few surviving X-Men.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In the \"Old Man Logan\" storyline, Iceman is among the X-Men who perish at the hands of Wolverine when he is tricked by Mysterio into believing his friends are super-villains attacking the mansion.",
"title": "Other versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Iceman appears in 20th Century Fox's X-Men film series, portrayed by Shawn Ashmore. This version is a student at the Xavier Institute.",
"title": "In other media"
}
]
| Iceman is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics and is a founding member of the X-Men. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #1. Iceman is a mutant born with superhuman abilities. He has the ability to manipulate ice and cold by freezing water vapor around him. This allows him to freeze objects, as well as cover his body with ice. Iceman has a relatively high profile among X-Men characters due to being frequently adapted into X-Men and Spider-Man-related media, including video games, animated series, and films. The character later received widespread media attention when a storyline retconned the character as a closeted gay man in All-New X-Men #40, leading to his coming out. Iceman has been described as one of the most notable and powerful gay characters in comic books. From 2000 to 2014, Shawn Ashmore portrayed Iceman in the 20th Century Fox X-Men films and voiced the character in The Super Hero Squad Show. | 2002-01-12T20:22:27Z | 2023-12-18T01:37:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_(Marvel_Comics) |
15,506 | Isidore of Seville | Isidore of Seville (Latin: Isidorus Hispalensis; c. 560 – 4 April 636) was a Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of the ancient world".
At a time of disintegration of classical culture, aristocratic violence, and widespread illiteracy, Isidore was involved in the conversion of the Arian Visigothic kings to Chalcedonian Christianity, both assisting his brother Leander of Seville and continuing after his brother's death. He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo and Seville.
His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an etymological encyclopedia that assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. This work also helped standardize the use of the period (full stop), comma, and colon.
Since the early Middle Ages, Isidore has sometimes been called Isidore the Younger or Isidore Junior (Latin: Isidorus iunior), because of the earlier history purportedly written by Isidore of Córdoba.
Isidore was born in Cartagena, Spain, a former Carthaginian colony, to Severianus and Theodora. Both Severian and Theodora belonged to notable Hispano-Roman families of high social rank. His parents were members of an influential family who were instrumental in the political-religious manoeuvring that converted the Visigothic kings from Arianism to Chalcedonian Christianity. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches celebrate him and all his siblings as known saints:
Isidore received his elementary education in the Cathedral school of Seville. In this institution, the first of its kind in Spania, a body of learned men including Archbishop Leander of Seville taught the trivium and quadrivium, the classic liberal arts. Isidore applied himself to study diligently enough that he quickly mastered classical Latin, and acquired some Greek and Hebrew.
Two centuries of Gothic control of Iberia incrementally suppressed the ancient institutions, classical learning, and manners of the Roman Empire. The associated culture entered a period of long-term decline. The ruling Visigoths nevertheless showed some respect for the outward trappings of Roman culture. Arianism meanwhile took deep root among the Visigoths as the form of Christianity that they received.
Scholars may debate whether Isidore ever personally embraced monastic life or affiliated with any religious order, but he undoubtedly esteemed the monks highly.
After the death of Leander of Seville on 13 March 600 or 601, Isidore succeeded to the See of Seville. On his elevation to the episcopate, he immediately constituted himself as the protector of monks.
Recognizing that the spiritual and material welfare of the people of his see depended on the assimilation of remnant Roman and ruling barbarian cultures, Isidore attempted to weld the peoples and subcultures of the Visigothic kingdom into a united nation. He used all available religious resources toward this end and succeeded. Isidore practically eradicated the heresy of Arianism and completely stifled the new heresy of Acephali at its outset. Archbishop Isidore strengthened religious discipline throughout his see.
Archbishop Isidore also used resources of education to counteract increasingly influential Gothic barbarism throughout his episcopal jurisdiction. His quickening spirit animated the educational movement centered on Seville. Isidore introduced his countrymen to Aristotle long before the Arabs studied Greek philosophy extensively.
In 619, Isidore of Seville pronounced anathema against any ecclesiastic who in any way should molest the monasteries.
Isidore presided over the Second Council of Seville, begun on 13 November 619 in the reign of King Sisebut, a provincial council attended by eight other bishops, all from the ecclesiastical province of Baetica in southern Spain. The Acts of the Council fully set forth the nature of Christ, countering the conceptions of Gregory, a Syrian representing the heretical Acephali.
Based on a few surviving canons found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Isidore is known to have presided over an additional provincial council around 624.
The council dealt with a conflict over the See of Écija and wrongfully stripped bishop Martianus of his see, a situation that was rectified by the Fourth Council of Toledo. It also addressed a concern over Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity.
The records of the council, unlike the First and Second Councils of Seville, were not preserved in the Hispana, a collection of canons and decretals likely edited by Isidore himself.
All bishops of Hispania attended the Fourth National Council of Toledo, begun on 5 December 633. The aged Archbishop Isidore presided over its deliberations and originated most enactments of the council.
Through Isidore's influence, this Council of Toledo promulgated a decree commanding all bishops to establish seminaries in their cathedral cities along the lines of the cathedral school at Seville, which had educated Isidore decades earlier. The decree prescribed the study of Greek, Hebrew, and the liberal arts and encouraged interest in law and medicine. The authority of the council made this education policy obligatory upon all bishops of the Kingdom of the Visigoths. The council granted remarkable position and deference to the king of the Visigoths. The independent Church bound itself in allegiance to the acknowledged king; it said nothing of allegiance to the Bishop of Rome.
Isidore of Seville died on 4 April 636 after serving more than 32 years as archbishop of Seville.
Isidore's Latin style in the Etymologiae and elsewhere, though simple and lucid, reveals increasing local Visigothic traditions.
Isidore was the first Christian writer to try to compile a summa of universal knowledge, in his most important work, the Etymologiae (taking its title from the method he uncritically used in the transcription of his era's knowledge). It is also known by classicists as the Origines (the standard abbreviation being Orig.). This encyclopedia—the first such Christian epitome—formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes.
In it, Isidore entered his own terse digest of Roman handbooks, miscellanies and compendia, he continued the trend towards abridgements and summaries that had characterised Roman learning in Late Antiquity. In the process, many fragments of classical learning are preserved that otherwise would have been hopelessly lost; "in fact, in the majority of his works, including the Origines, he contributes little more than the mortar which connects excerpts from other authors, as if he was aware of his deficiencies and had more confidence in the stilus maiorum than his own," his translator Katherine Nell MacFarlane remarks.
Some of these fragments were lost in the first place because Isidore's work was so highly regarded—Braulio called it quaecunque fere sciri debentur, "practically everything that it is necessary to know"—that it superseded the use of many individual works of the classics themselves, which were not recopied and have therefore been lost: "all secular knowledge that was of use to the Christian scholar had been winnowed out and contained in one handy volume; the scholar need search no further".
The fame of this work imparted a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore abundant fruit in the subsequent centuries of the Middle Ages. It was the most popular compendium in medieval libraries. It was printed in at least ten editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works of Aristotle and other Greeks, although he understood only a limited amount of Greek. The Etymologiae was much copied, particularly into medieval bestiaries.
Isidore's De fide catholica contra Iudaeos furthers Augustine of Hippo's ideas on the Jewish presence in the Christian society of the ancient world. Like Augustine, Isidore held an acceptance of the Jewish presence as necessary to society because of their expected role in the anticipated Second Coming of Christ.
But Isidore had access to Augustine's works, out of which one finds more than forced acceptance of but rather broader reasons than just an endtime role for Jews in society:
According to Jeremy Cohen's account in a Berkeley, California publication, De fide catholica contra Iudaeos, Isidore exceeds the anti-rabbinic polemics of earlier theologians by criticizing Jewish practice as deliberately disingenuous.
But once again Isidore's same predecessor, Augustine, seems to have written of at least the possibility of Jewish rabbinical practice along that subject's content's purportedly deceptive lines in the same work cited above:
He contributed two decisions to the Fourth Council of Toledo: Canon 60 calling for the forced removal of children from parents practising Crypto-Judaism and their education by Christians on the basis that while their parents were concealing themselves under the guise of Christians, they had presumably allowed their children to be baptised with intent to deceive. This removal was an exception to the general rule of the treatment of Jewish children according to the 13th century Summa Theologica, "[I]t was never the custom of the Church to baptize the children of Jews against the will of their parents...."
He also contributed Canon 65 thought to forbid Jews and Christians of Jewish origin from holding public office.
Isidore's authored more than a dozen major works on various topics including mathematics, holy scripture, and monastic life, all in Latin:
Isidore was one of the last of the ancient Christian philosophers and was contemporary with Maximus the Confessor. He has been called the most learned man of his age by some scholars, and he exercised a far-reaching and immeasurable influence on the educational life of the Middle Ages. His contemporary and friend, Braulio of Zaragoza, regarded him as a man raised up by God to save the Spanish peoples from the tidal wave of barbarism that threatened to inundate the ancient civilization of Hispania.
The Eighth Council of Toledo (653) recorded its admiration of his character in these glowing terms: "The extraordinary doctor, the latest ornament of the Catholic Church, the most learned man of the latter ages, always to be named with reverence, Isidore". This tribute was endorsed by the Fifteenth Council of Toledo, held in 688. Isidore was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1722 by Pope Innocent XIII.
Isidore was interred in Seville. His tomb represented an important place of veneration for the Mozarabs during the centuries after the Arab conquest of Visigothic Hispania. In the middle of the 11th century, with the division of Al Andalus into taifas and the strengthening of the Christian holdings in the Iberian peninsula, Ferdinand I of León and Castile found himself in a position to extract tribute from the fractured Arab states. In addition to money, Abbad II al-Mu'tadid, the Abbadid ruler of Seville (1042–1069), agreed to turn over St. Isidore's remains to Ferdinand I. A Catholic poet described al-Mutatid placing a brocaded cover over Isidore's sarcophagus, and remarked, "Now you are leaving here, revered Isidore. You know well how much your fame was mine!" Ferdinand had Isidore's remains reinterred in the then-recently constructed Basilica of San Isidoro in León. Today, many of his bones are buried in the cathedral of Murcia, Spain.
The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is set to open in August 2024. On 5 June 2023, the school was approved as the first religious public charter school in the United States. The lawsuit OKPLAC, Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board was filed on July 31 of the same year by "Americans United[...,] the American Civil Liberties Union, Education Law Center and Freedom From Religion Foundation, plus Oklahoma-based attorneys Odom & Sparks PLLC and J. Douglas Mann, [...] on behalf of nine Oklahoma residents and a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting public education in Oklahoma." The plaintiffs allege that providing this school with public funding is "in violation of Oklahoma law, as well as [the] country's promises of church-state separation and public schools that are open to all."
In Dante's Paradiso (X.130), Isidore is mentioned among theologians and Doctors of the Church alongside the Scot Richard of St. Victor and the Englishman Bede the Venerable.
The University of Dayton has named their implementation of the Sakai Project in honour of Saint Isidore.
His supposed likeness and crosier, along with that of Leander of Seville and Ferdinand III of Castile, is depicted on the crest badge of Sevilla FC.
The Order of St. Isidore of Seville is a chivalric order formed on 1 January 2000. An international organisation, the order aims to honour Saint Isidore as patron saint of the Internet, alongside promoting Christian chivalry online. (This honour is unofficial: the Holy See considered naming Isidore as patron saint of the Internet but has not done so.)
Contemporary researchers have criticized Isidore. Specifically, the point of contention is his work in the Etymologies. Historian Sandro D'Onofrio has argued that "job consisted here and there of restating, recapitulating, and sometimes simply transliterating both data and theories that lacked research and originality."
In this view, Isidore—considering the large popularity his works enjoyed during the Middle Ages and the founding role he had in Scholasticism—would be less a brilliant thinker than a Christian gatekeeper making etymologies fit into the Christian worldview. "[H]e prescribed what they should mean," asserts D'Onofrio.
Researcher Victor Bruno has countered this argument. According to him, it was not the meaning of the Etymologies, or of Isidore's work as a whole, to give a scientific or philological account of the words, as a modern researcher would do. "It is obvious that, from a material point of view," argues Bruno, "Isidore's practical knowledge on etymology, geography, and history are considered outdated; his methods, from the current academic and scientific standpoint, are questionable, and some of his conclusions are indeed incorrect. But Isidore is less concerned about being etymologically or philologically right than being ontologically right."
Therefore, Isidore, despite living in the early Middle Ages, is an archaic or "traditional" thinker. Being religiously inclined, Isidore would be concerned with the redeeming meaning of words and history, the ultimate quest of religions. The same researcher also found parallels between Isidore's interpretation of the word "year" (annus) and the meaning of the same words in the Jāiminīya-Upaniṣad-Brāmaṇa.
St. Isidore Island in Antarctica is named after the saint. | [
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"title": ""
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"title": ""
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"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Since the early Middle Ages, Isidore has sometimes been called Isidore the Younger or Isidore Junior (Latin: Isidorus iunior), because of the earlier history purportedly written by Isidore of Córdoba.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Isidore was born in Cartagena, Spain, a former Carthaginian colony, to Severianus and Theodora. Both Severian and Theodora belonged to notable Hispano-Roman families of high social rank. His parents were members of an influential family who were instrumental in the political-religious manoeuvring that converted the Visigothic kings from Arianism to Chalcedonian Christianity. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches celebrate him and all his siblings as known saints:",
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"text": "Isidore received his elementary education in the Cathedral school of Seville. In this institution, the first of its kind in Spania, a body of learned men including Archbishop Leander of Seville taught the trivium and quadrivium, the classic liberal arts. Isidore applied himself to study diligently enough that he quickly mastered classical Latin, and acquired some Greek and Hebrew.",
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},
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"text": "Two centuries of Gothic control of Iberia incrementally suppressed the ancient institutions, classical learning, and manners of the Roman Empire. The associated culture entered a period of long-term decline. The ruling Visigoths nevertheless showed some respect for the outward trappings of Roman culture. Arianism meanwhile took deep root among the Visigoths as the form of Christianity that they received.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Scholars may debate whether Isidore ever personally embraced monastic life or affiliated with any religious order, but he undoubtedly esteemed the monks highly.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "After the death of Leander of Seville on 13 March 600 or 601, Isidore succeeded to the See of Seville. On his elevation to the episcopate, he immediately constituted himself as the protector of monks.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Recognizing that the spiritual and material welfare of the people of his see depended on the assimilation of remnant Roman and ruling barbarian cultures, Isidore attempted to weld the peoples and subcultures of the Visigothic kingdom into a united nation. He used all available religious resources toward this end and succeeded. Isidore practically eradicated the heresy of Arianism and completely stifled the new heresy of Acephali at its outset. Archbishop Isidore strengthened religious discipline throughout his see.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Archbishop Isidore also used resources of education to counteract increasingly influential Gothic barbarism throughout his episcopal jurisdiction. His quickening spirit animated the educational movement centered on Seville. Isidore introduced his countrymen to Aristotle long before the Arabs studied Greek philosophy extensively.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 619, Isidore of Seville pronounced anathema against any ecclesiastic who in any way should molest the monasteries.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Isidore presided over the Second Council of Seville, begun on 13 November 619 in the reign of King Sisebut, a provincial council attended by eight other bishops, all from the ecclesiastical province of Baetica in southern Spain. The Acts of the Council fully set forth the nature of Christ, countering the conceptions of Gregory, a Syrian representing the heretical Acephali.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Based on a few surviving canons found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Isidore is known to have presided over an additional provincial council around 624.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The council dealt with a conflict over the See of Écija and wrongfully stripped bishop Martianus of his see, a situation that was rectified by the Fourth Council of Toledo. It also addressed a concern over Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The records of the council, unlike the First and Second Councils of Seville, were not preserved in the Hispana, a collection of canons and decretals likely edited by Isidore himself.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "All bishops of Hispania attended the Fourth National Council of Toledo, begun on 5 December 633. The aged Archbishop Isidore presided over its deliberations and originated most enactments of the council.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Through Isidore's influence, this Council of Toledo promulgated a decree commanding all bishops to establish seminaries in their cathedral cities along the lines of the cathedral school at Seville, which had educated Isidore decades earlier. The decree prescribed the study of Greek, Hebrew, and the liberal arts and encouraged interest in law and medicine. The authority of the council made this education policy obligatory upon all bishops of the Kingdom of the Visigoths. The council granted remarkable position and deference to the king of the Visigoths. The independent Church bound itself in allegiance to the acknowledged king; it said nothing of allegiance to the Bishop of Rome.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Isidore of Seville died on 4 April 636 after serving more than 32 years as archbishop of Seville.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Isidore's Latin style in the Etymologiae and elsewhere, though simple and lucid, reveals increasing local Visigothic traditions.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Isidore was the first Christian writer to try to compile a summa of universal knowledge, in his most important work, the Etymologiae (taking its title from the method he uncritically used in the transcription of his era's knowledge). It is also known by classicists as the Origines (the standard abbreviation being Orig.). This encyclopedia—the first such Christian epitome—formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In it, Isidore entered his own terse digest of Roman handbooks, miscellanies and compendia, he continued the trend towards abridgements and summaries that had characterised Roman learning in Late Antiquity. In the process, many fragments of classical learning are preserved that otherwise would have been hopelessly lost; \"in fact, in the majority of his works, including the Origines, he contributes little more than the mortar which connects excerpts from other authors, as if he was aware of his deficiencies and had more confidence in the stilus maiorum than his own,\" his translator Katherine Nell MacFarlane remarks.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Some of these fragments were lost in the first place because Isidore's work was so highly regarded—Braulio called it quaecunque fere sciri debentur, \"practically everything that it is necessary to know\"—that it superseded the use of many individual works of the classics themselves, which were not recopied and have therefore been lost: \"all secular knowledge that was of use to the Christian scholar had been winnowed out and contained in one handy volume; the scholar need search no further\".",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The fame of this work imparted a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore abundant fruit in the subsequent centuries of the Middle Ages. It was the most popular compendium in medieval libraries. It was printed in at least ten editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works of Aristotle and other Greeks, although he understood only a limited amount of Greek. The Etymologiae was much copied, particularly into medieval bestiaries.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Isidore's De fide catholica contra Iudaeos furthers Augustine of Hippo's ideas on the Jewish presence in the Christian society of the ancient world. Like Augustine, Isidore held an acceptance of the Jewish presence as necessary to society because of their expected role in the anticipated Second Coming of Christ.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "But Isidore had access to Augustine's works, out of which one finds more than forced acceptance of but rather broader reasons than just an endtime role for Jews in society:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "According to Jeremy Cohen's account in a Berkeley, California publication, De fide catholica contra Iudaeos, Isidore exceeds the anti-rabbinic polemics of earlier theologians by criticizing Jewish practice as deliberately disingenuous.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "But once again Isidore's same predecessor, Augustine, seems to have written of at least the possibility of Jewish rabbinical practice along that subject's content's purportedly deceptive lines in the same work cited above:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "He contributed two decisions to the Fourth Council of Toledo: Canon 60 calling for the forced removal of children from parents practising Crypto-Judaism and their education by Christians on the basis that while their parents were concealing themselves under the guise of Christians, they had presumably allowed their children to be baptised with intent to deceive. This removal was an exception to the general rule of the treatment of Jewish children according to the 13th century Summa Theologica, \"[I]t was never the custom of the Church to baptize the children of Jews against the will of their parents....\"",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "He also contributed Canon 65 thought to forbid Jews and Christians of Jewish origin from holding public office.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Isidore's authored more than a dozen major works on various topics including mathematics, holy scripture, and monastic life, all in Latin:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Isidore was one of the last of the ancient Christian philosophers and was contemporary with Maximus the Confessor. He has been called the most learned man of his age by some scholars, and he exercised a far-reaching and immeasurable influence on the educational life of the Middle Ages. His contemporary and friend, Braulio of Zaragoza, regarded him as a man raised up by God to save the Spanish peoples from the tidal wave of barbarism that threatened to inundate the ancient civilization of Hispania.",
"title": "Veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Eighth Council of Toledo (653) recorded its admiration of his character in these glowing terms: \"The extraordinary doctor, the latest ornament of the Catholic Church, the most learned man of the latter ages, always to be named with reverence, Isidore\". This tribute was endorsed by the Fifteenth Council of Toledo, held in 688. Isidore was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1722 by Pope Innocent XIII.",
"title": "Veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Isidore was interred in Seville. His tomb represented an important place of veneration for the Mozarabs during the centuries after the Arab conquest of Visigothic Hispania. In the middle of the 11th century, with the division of Al Andalus into taifas and the strengthening of the Christian holdings in the Iberian peninsula, Ferdinand I of León and Castile found himself in a position to extract tribute from the fractured Arab states. In addition to money, Abbad II al-Mu'tadid, the Abbadid ruler of Seville (1042–1069), agreed to turn over St. Isidore's remains to Ferdinand I. A Catholic poet described al-Mutatid placing a brocaded cover over Isidore's sarcophagus, and remarked, \"Now you are leaving here, revered Isidore. You know well how much your fame was mine!\" Ferdinand had Isidore's remains reinterred in the then-recently constructed Basilica of San Isidoro in León. Today, many of his bones are buried in the cathedral of Murcia, Spain.",
"title": "Veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is set to open in August 2024. On 5 June 2023, the school was approved as the first religious public charter school in the United States. The lawsuit OKPLAC, Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board was filed on July 31 of the same year by \"Americans United[...,] the American Civil Liberties Union, Education Law Center and Freedom From Religion Foundation, plus Oklahoma-based attorneys Odom & Sparks PLLC and J. Douglas Mann, [...] on behalf of nine Oklahoma residents and a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting public education in Oklahoma.\" The plaintiffs allege that providing this school with public funding is \"in violation of Oklahoma law, as well as [the] country's promises of church-state separation and public schools that are open to all.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In Dante's Paradiso (X.130), Isidore is mentioned among theologians and Doctors of the Church alongside the Scot Richard of St. Victor and the Englishman Bede the Venerable.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The University of Dayton has named their implementation of the Sakai Project in honour of Saint Isidore.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "His supposed likeness and crosier, along with that of Leander of Seville and Ferdinand III of Castile, is depicted on the crest badge of Sevilla FC.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Order of St. Isidore of Seville is a chivalric order formed on 1 January 2000. An international organisation, the order aims to honour Saint Isidore as patron saint of the Internet, alongside promoting Christian chivalry online. (This honour is unofficial: the Holy See considered naming Isidore as patron saint of the Internet but has not done so.)",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Contemporary researchers have criticized Isidore. Specifically, the point of contention is his work in the Etymologies. Historian Sandro D'Onofrio has argued that \"job consisted here and there of restating, recapitulating, and sometimes simply transliterating both data and theories that lacked research and originality.\"",
"title": "Criticisms and contemporary appraisal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In this view, Isidore—considering the large popularity his works enjoyed during the Middle Ages and the founding role he had in Scholasticism—would be less a brilliant thinker than a Christian gatekeeper making etymologies fit into the Christian worldview. \"[H]e prescribed what they should mean,\" asserts D'Onofrio.",
"title": "Criticisms and contemporary appraisal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Researcher Victor Bruno has countered this argument. According to him, it was not the meaning of the Etymologies, or of Isidore's work as a whole, to give a scientific or philological account of the words, as a modern researcher would do. \"It is obvious that, from a material point of view,\" argues Bruno, \"Isidore's practical knowledge on etymology, geography, and history are considered outdated; his methods, from the current academic and scientific standpoint, are questionable, and some of his conclusions are indeed incorrect. But Isidore is less concerned about being etymologically or philologically right than being ontologically right.\"",
"title": "Criticisms and contemporary appraisal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Therefore, Isidore, despite living in the early Middle Ages, is an archaic or \"traditional\" thinker. Being religiously inclined, Isidore would be concerned with the redeeming meaning of words and history, the ultimate quest of religions. The same researcher also found parallels between Isidore's interpretation of the word \"year\" (annus) and the meaning of the same words in the Jāiminīya-Upaniṣad-Brāmaṇa.",
"title": "Criticisms and contemporary appraisal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "St. Isidore Island in Antarctica is named after the saint.",
"title": "Honours"
}
]
| Isidore of Seville was a Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of the ancient world". At a time of disintegration of classical culture, aristocratic violence, and widespread illiteracy, Isidore was involved in the conversion of the Arian Visigothic kings to Chalcedonian Christianity, both assisting his brother Leander of Seville and continuing after his brother's death. He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo and Seville. His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an etymological encyclopedia that assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. This work also helped standardize the use of the period, comma, and colon. Since the early Middle Ages, Isidore has sometimes been called Isidore the Younger or Isidore Junior, because of the earlier history purportedly written by Isidore of Córdoba. | 2002-01-13T01:36:48Z | 2023-12-30T01:02:07Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Seville |
15,507 | Carbon compounds | Carbon compounds are defined as chemical substances containing carbon. More compounds of carbon exist than any other chemical element except for hydrogen. Organic carbon compounds are far more numerous than inorganic carbon compounds. In general bonds of carbon with other elements are covalent bonds. Carbon is tetravalent but carbon free radicals and carbenes occur as short-lived intermediates. Ions of carbon are carbocations and carbanions are also short-lived. An important carbon property is catenation as the ability to form long carbon chains and rings.
The known inorganic chemistry of the allotropes of carbon (diamond, graphite, and the fullerenes) blossomed with the discovery of buckminsterfullerene in 1985, as additional fullerenes and their various derivatives were discovered. One such class of derivatives is inclusion compounds, in which an ion is enclosed by the all-carbon shell of the fullerene. This inclusion is denoted by the "@"symbol in endohedral fullerenes. For example, an ion consisting of a lithium ion trapped within buckminsterfullerene would be denoted Li@C60. As with any other ionic compound, this complex ion could in principle pair with a counterion to form a salt. Other elements are also incorporated in so-called graphite intercalation compounds.
Carbides are binary compounds of carbon with an element that is less electronegative than it. The most important are Al4C3, B4C, CaC2, Fe3C, HfC, SiC, TaC, TiC, and WC.
It was once thought that organic compounds could only be created by living organisms. Over time, however, scientists learned how to synthesize organic compounds in the lab. The number of organic compounds is immense and the known number of defined compounds is close to 10 million. However, an indefinitely large number of such compounds is theoretically possible. By definition, an organic compound must contain at least one atom of carbon, but this criterion is not generally regarded as sufficient. Indeed, the distinction between organic and inorganic compounds is ultimately a matter of convention, and there are several compounds that have been classified either way, such as: COCl2, CSCl2, CS(NH2)2, CO(NH2)2. With carbon bonded to metals the field of organic chemistry crosses over into organometallic chemistry.
There is a rich variety of carbon chemistry that does not fall within the realm of organic chemistry and is thus called inorganic carbon chemistry.
There are many oxides of carbon (oxocarbons), of which the most common are carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO). Other less known oxides include carbon suboxide (C3O2) and mellitic anhydride (C12O9). There are also numerous unstable or elusive oxides, such as dicarbon monoxide (C2O), oxalic anhydride (C2O4), and carbon trioxide (CO3).
There are several oxocarbon anions, negative ions that consist solely of oxygen and carbon. The most common are the carbonate (CO3) and oxalate (C2O4). The corresponding acids are the highly unstable carbonic acid (H2CO3) and the quite stable oxalic acid (H2C2O4), respectively. These anions can be partially deprotonated to give the bicarbonate (HCO3) and hydrogenoxalate (HC2O4). Other more exotic carbon–oxygen anions exist, such as acetylenedicarboxylate (O2C–C≡C–CO2), mellitate (C12O9), squarate (C4O4), and rhodizonate (C6O6). The anhydrides of some of these acids are oxides of carbon; carbon dioxide, for instance, can be seen as the anhydride of carbonic acid.
Some important carbonates are Ag2CO3, BaCO3, CaCO3, CdCO3, Ce2(CO3)3, CoCO3, Cs2CO3, CuCO3, FeCO3, K2CO3, La2(CO3)3, Li2CO3, MgCO3, MnCO3, (NH4)2CO3, Na2CO3, NiCO3, PbCO3, SrCO3, and ZnCO3.
The most important bicarbonates include NH4HCO3, Ca(HCO3)2, KHCO3, and NaHCO3.
The most important oxalates include Ag2C2O4, BaC2O4, CaC2O4, Ce2(C2O4)3, K2C2O4, and Na2C2O4.
Carbonyls are coordination complexes between transition metals and carbonyl ligands. Metal carbonyls are complexes that are formed with the neutral ligand CO. These complexes are covalent. Here is a list of some carbonyls: Cr(CO)6, Co2(CO)8, Fe(CO)5, Mn2(CO)10, Mo(CO)6, Ni(CO)4, W(CO)6.
Important inorganic carbon-sulfur compounds are the carbon sulfides carbon disulfide (CS2) and carbonyl sulfide (OCS). Carbon monosulfide (CS) unlike carbon monoxide is very unstable. Important compound classes are thiocarbonates, thiocarbamates, dithiocarbamates and trithiocarbonates.
Small inorganic carbon – nitrogen compounds are cyanogen, hydrogen cyanide, cyanamide, isocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.
Paracyanogen is the polymerization product of cyanogen. Cyanuric chloride is the trimer of cyanogen chloride and 2-cyanoguanidine is the dimer of cyanamide.
Other types of inorganic compounds include the inorganic salts and complexes of the carbon-containing cyanide, cyanate, fulminate, thiocyanate and cyanamide ions. Examples of cyanides are copper cyanide (CuCN) and potassium cyanide (KCN), examples of cyanates are potassium cyanate (KNCO) and silver cyanate (AgNCO), examples of fulminates are silver fulminate (AgOCN) and mercury fulminate (HgOCN) and an example of a thiocyanate is potassium thiocyanate (KSCN).
The common carbon halides are carbon tetrafluoride (CF4), carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), carbon tetrabromide (CBr4), carbon tetraiodide (CI4), and a large number of other carbon-halogen compounds.
A carborane is a cluster composed of boron and carbon atoms such as H2C2B10H10.
There are hundreds of alloys that contain carbon. The most common of these alloys is steel, sometimes called "carbon steel" (see Category:Steels). All kinds of steel contain some amount of carbon, by definition, and all ferrous alloys contain some carbon.
Some other common alloys that are based on iron and carbon include anthracite iron, cast iron, pig iron, and wrought iron.
In more technical uses, there are also spiegeleisen, an alloy of iron, manganese, and carbon; and stellite, an alloy of cobalt, chromium, tungsten, and carbon.
Whether it was placed there deliberately or not, some traces of carbon is also found in these common metals and their alloys: aluminum, chromium, magnesium, molybdenum, niobium, thorium, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, zinc, and zirconium. For example, many of these metals are smelted with coke, a form of carbon; and aluminum and magnesium are made in electrolytic cells with carbon electrodes. Some distribution of carbon into all of these metals is inevitable. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Carbon compounds are defined as chemical substances containing carbon. More compounds of carbon exist than any other chemical element except for hydrogen. Organic carbon compounds are far more numerous than inorganic carbon compounds. In general bonds of carbon with other elements are covalent bonds. Carbon is tetravalent but carbon free radicals and carbenes occur as short-lived intermediates. Ions of carbon are carbocations and carbanions are also short-lived. An important carbon property is catenation as the ability to form long carbon chains and rings.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The known inorganic chemistry of the allotropes of carbon (diamond, graphite, and the fullerenes) blossomed with the discovery of buckminsterfullerene in 1985, as additional fullerenes and their various derivatives were discovered. One such class of derivatives is inclusion compounds, in which an ion is enclosed by the all-carbon shell of the fullerene. This inclusion is denoted by the \"@\"symbol in endohedral fullerenes. For example, an ion consisting of a lithium ion trapped within buckminsterfullerene would be denoted Li@C60. As with any other ionic compound, this complex ion could in principle pair with a counterion to form a salt. Other elements are also incorporated in so-called graphite intercalation compounds.",
"title": "Allotropes of carbon"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Carbides are binary compounds of carbon with an element that is less electronegative than it. The most important are Al4C3, B4C, CaC2, Fe3C, HfC, SiC, TaC, TiC, and WC.",
"title": "Carbides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "It was once thought that organic compounds could only be created by living organisms. Over time, however, scientists learned how to synthesize organic compounds in the lab. The number of organic compounds is immense and the known number of defined compounds is close to 10 million. However, an indefinitely large number of such compounds is theoretically possible. By definition, an organic compound must contain at least one atom of carbon, but this criterion is not generally regarded as sufficient. Indeed, the distinction between organic and inorganic compounds is ultimately a matter of convention, and there are several compounds that have been classified either way, such as: COCl2, CSCl2, CS(NH2)2, CO(NH2)2. With carbon bonded to metals the field of organic chemistry crosses over into organometallic chemistry.",
"title": "Organic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "There is a rich variety of carbon chemistry that does not fall within the realm of organic chemistry and is thus called inorganic carbon chemistry.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "There are many oxides of carbon (oxocarbons), of which the most common are carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO). Other less known oxides include carbon suboxide (C3O2) and mellitic anhydride (C12O9). There are also numerous unstable or elusive oxides, such as dicarbon monoxide (C2O), oxalic anhydride (C2O4), and carbon trioxide (CO3).",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "There are several oxocarbon anions, negative ions that consist solely of oxygen and carbon. The most common are the carbonate (CO3) and oxalate (C2O4). The corresponding acids are the highly unstable carbonic acid (H2CO3) and the quite stable oxalic acid (H2C2O4), respectively. These anions can be partially deprotonated to give the bicarbonate (HCO3) and hydrogenoxalate (HC2O4). Other more exotic carbon–oxygen anions exist, such as acetylenedicarboxylate (O2C–C≡C–CO2), mellitate (C12O9), squarate (C4O4), and rhodizonate (C6O6). The anhydrides of some of these acids are oxides of carbon; carbon dioxide, for instance, can be seen as the anhydride of carbonic acid.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Some important carbonates are Ag2CO3, BaCO3, CaCO3, CdCO3, Ce2(CO3)3, CoCO3, Cs2CO3, CuCO3, FeCO3, K2CO3, La2(CO3)3, Li2CO3, MgCO3, MnCO3, (NH4)2CO3, Na2CO3, NiCO3, PbCO3, SrCO3, and ZnCO3.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The most important bicarbonates include NH4HCO3, Ca(HCO3)2, KHCO3, and NaHCO3.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The most important oxalates include Ag2C2O4, BaC2O4, CaC2O4, Ce2(C2O4)3, K2C2O4, and Na2C2O4.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Carbonyls are coordination complexes between transition metals and carbonyl ligands. Metal carbonyls are complexes that are formed with the neutral ligand CO. These complexes are covalent. Here is a list of some carbonyls: Cr(CO)6, Co2(CO)8, Fe(CO)5, Mn2(CO)10, Mo(CO)6, Ni(CO)4, W(CO)6.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Important inorganic carbon-sulfur compounds are the carbon sulfides carbon disulfide (CS2) and carbonyl sulfide (OCS). Carbon monosulfide (CS) unlike carbon monoxide is very unstable. Important compound classes are thiocarbonates, thiocarbamates, dithiocarbamates and trithiocarbonates.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Small inorganic carbon – nitrogen compounds are cyanogen, hydrogen cyanide, cyanamide, isocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Paracyanogen is the polymerization product of cyanogen. Cyanuric chloride is the trimer of cyanogen chloride and 2-cyanoguanidine is the dimer of cyanamide.",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Other types of inorganic compounds include the inorganic salts and complexes of the carbon-containing cyanide, cyanate, fulminate, thiocyanate and cyanamide ions. Examples of cyanides are copper cyanide (CuCN) and potassium cyanide (KCN), examples of cyanates are potassium cyanate (KNCO) and silver cyanate (AgNCO), examples of fulminates are silver fulminate (AgOCN) and mercury fulminate (HgOCN) and an example of a thiocyanate is potassium thiocyanate (KSCN).",
"title": "Inorganic compounds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The common carbon halides are carbon tetrafluoride (CF4), carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), carbon tetrabromide (CBr4), carbon tetraiodide (CI4), and a large number of other carbon-halogen compounds.",
"title": "Carbon halides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A carborane is a cluster composed of boron and carbon atoms such as H2C2B10H10.",
"title": "Carboranes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There are hundreds of alloys that contain carbon. The most common of these alloys is steel, sometimes called \"carbon steel\" (see Category:Steels). All kinds of steel contain some amount of carbon, by definition, and all ferrous alloys contain some carbon.",
"title": "Alloys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Some other common alloys that are based on iron and carbon include anthracite iron, cast iron, pig iron, and wrought iron.",
"title": "Alloys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In more technical uses, there are also spiegeleisen, an alloy of iron, manganese, and carbon; and stellite, an alloy of cobalt, chromium, tungsten, and carbon.",
"title": "Alloys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Whether it was placed there deliberately or not, some traces of carbon is also found in these common metals and their alloys: aluminum, chromium, magnesium, molybdenum, niobium, thorium, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, zinc, and zirconium. For example, many of these metals are smelted with coke, a form of carbon; and aluminum and magnesium are made in electrolytic cells with carbon electrodes. Some distribution of carbon into all of these metals is inevitable.",
"title": "Alloys"
}
]
| Carbon compounds are defined as chemical substances containing carbon. More compounds of carbon exist than any other chemical element except for hydrogen. Organic carbon compounds are far more numerous than inorganic carbon compounds. In general bonds of carbon with other elements are covalent bonds. Carbon is tetravalent but carbon free radicals and carbenes occur as short-lived intermediates. Ions of carbon are carbocations and carbanions are also short-lived. An important carbon property is catenation as the ability to form long carbon chains and rings. | 2002-01-13T20:28:25Z | 2023-10-01T11:56:17Z | [
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"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Carbon compounds",
"Template:ChemicalBondsToCarbon",
"Template:Chemical compounds by element",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:More citations needed",
"Template:Main"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_compounds |
15,508 | Industrial espionage | Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security.
While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more often national and occurs between companies or corporations.
Economic or industrial espionage takes place in two main forms. In short, the purpose of espionage is to gather knowledge about one or more organizations. It may include the acquisition of intellectual property, such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas, techniques and processes, recipes and formulas. Or it could include sequestration of proprietary or operational information, such as that on customer datasets, pricing, sales, marketing, research and development, policies, prospective bids, planning or marketing strategies or the changing compositions and locations of production. It may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery, blackmail and technological surveillance. As well as orchestrating espionage on commercial organizations, governments can also be targets – for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract.
Economic and industrial espionage is most commonly associated with technology-heavy industries, including computer software and hardware, biotechnology, aerospace, telecommunications, transportation and engine technology, automobiles, machine tools, energy, materials and coatings and so on. Silicon Valley is known to be one of the world's most targeted areas for espionage, though any industry with information of use to competitors may be a target.
Information can make the difference between success and failure; if a trade secret is stolen, the competitive playing field is leveled or even tipped in favor of a competitor. Although a lot of information-gathering is accomplished legally through competitive intelligence, at times corporations feel the best way to get information is to take it. Economic or industrial espionage is a threat to any business whose livelihood depends on information.
In recent years, economic or industrial espionage has taken on an expanded definition. For instance, attempts to sabotage a corporation may be considered industrial espionage; in this sense, the term takes on the wider connotations of its parent word. That espionage and sabotage (corporate or otherwise) have become more clearly associated with each other is also demonstrated by a number of profiling studies, some government, some corporate. The United States government currently has a polygraph examination entitled the "Test of Espionage and Sabotage" (TES), contributing to the notion of the interrelationship between espionage and sabotage countermeasures. In practice, particularly by "trusted insiders", they are generally considered functionally identical for the purpose of informing countermeasures.
Economic or industrial espionage commonly occurs in one of two ways. Firstly, a dissatisfied employee appropriates information to advance interests or to damage the company. Secondly, a competitor or foreign government seeks information to advance its own technological or financial interest. "Moles", or trusted insiders, are generally considered the best sources for economic or industrial espionage. Historically known as a "patsy", an insider can be induced, willingly or under duress, to provide information. A patsy may be initially asked to hand over inconsequential information and, once compromised by committing a crime, blackmailed into handing over more sensitive material. Individuals may leave one company to take up employment with another and take sensitive information with them. Such apparent behavior has been the focus of numerous industrial espionage cases that have resulted in legal battles. Some countries hire individuals to do spying rather than the use of their own intelligence agencies. Academics, business delegates, and students are often thought to be used by governments in gathering information. Some countries, such as Japan, have been reported to expect students to be debriefed on returning home. A spy may follow a guided tour of a factory and then get "lost". A spy could be an engineer, a maintenance man, a cleaner, an insurance salesman, or an inspector: anyone who has legitimate access to the premises.
A spy may break into the premises to steal data and may search through waste paper and refuse, known as "dumpster diving". Information may be compromised via unsolicited requests for information, marketing surveys, or use of technical support or research or software facilities. Outsourced industrial producers may ask for information outside the agreed-upon contract.
Computers have facilitated the process of collecting information because of the ease of access to large amounts of information through physical contact or the Internet.
Economic and industrial espionage has a long history. Father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles, who visited Jingdezhen, China in 1712 and later used this visit to reveal the manufacturing methods of Chinese porcelain to Europe, is sometimes considered to have conducted an early case of industrial espionage.
Historical accounts have been written of industrial espionage between Britain and France. Attributed to Britain's emergence as an "industrial creditor", the second decade of the 18th century saw the emergence of a large-scale state-sponsored effort to surreptitiously take British industrial technology to France. Witnesses confirmed both the inveigling of tradespersons abroad and the placing of apprentices in England. Protests by those such as ironworkers in Sheffield and steelworkers in Newcastle, about skilled industrial workers being enticed abroad, led to the first English legislation aimed at preventing this method of economic and industrial espionage. This did not prevent Samuel Slater from bringing British textile technology to the United States in 1789. In order to catch up with technological advances of European powers, the US government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries actively encouraged intellectual piracy.
American founding father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton advocated rewarding those bringing "improvements and secrets of extraordinary value" into the United States. This was instrumental in making the United States a haven for industrial spies.
East-West commercial development opportunities after World War I saw a rise in Soviet interest in American and European manufacturing know-how, exploited by Amtorg Corporation. Later, with Western restrictions on the export of items thought likely to increase military capabilities to the USSR, Soviet industrial espionage was a well known adjunct to other spying activities up until the 1980s. BYTE reported in April 1984, for example, that although the Soviets sought to develop their own microelectronics, their technology appeared to be several years behind the West's. Soviet CPUs required multiple chips and appeared to be close or exact copies of American products such as the Intel 3000 and DEC LSI-11/2.
Some of these activities were directed via the East German Stasi (Ministry for State Security). One such operation, "Operation Brunnhilde," operated from the mid-1950s until early 1966 and made use of spies from many Communist Bloc countries. Through at least 20 forays, many western European industrial secrets were compromised. One member of the "Brunnhilde" ring was a Swiss chemical engineer, Dr. Jean Paul Soupert (also known as "Air Bubble"), living in Brussels. He was described by Peter Wright in Spycatcher as having been "doubled" by the Belgian Sûreté de l'État. He revealed information about industrial espionage conducted by the ring, including the fact that Russian agents had obtained details of Concorde's advanced electronics system. He testified against two Kodak employees, living and working in Britain, during a trial in which they were accused of passing information on industrial processes to him, though they were eventually acquitted.
According to a 2020 American Economic Review study, East German industrial espionage in West Germany significantly reduced the gap in total factor productivity between the two countries.
A secret report from the Military-Industrial Commission of the USSR (VPK), from 1979–80, detailed how spetsinformatsiya (Russian: специнформация, "special records") could be utilised in twelve different military industrial areas. Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Philip Hanson detailed a spetsinformatsiya system in which 12 industrial branch ministries formulated requests for information to aid technological development in their military programs. Acquisition plans were described as operating on 2-year and 5-year cycles with about 3000 tasks underway each year. Efforts were aimed at civilian and military industrial targets, such as in the petrochemical industries. Some information was gathered to compare Soviet technological advancement with that of their competitors. Much unclassified information was also gathered, blurring the boundary with "competitive intelligence".
The Soviet military was recognised as making much better use of acquired information than civilian industries, where their record in replicating and developing industrial technology was poor.
Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, commentators, including the US Congressional Intelligence Committee, noted a redirection amongst the espionage community from military to industrial targets, with Western and former communist countries making use of "underemployed" spies and expanding programs directed at stealing such information.
The legacy of Cold War spying included not just the redirection of personnel but the use of spying apparatus such as computer databases, scanners for eavesdropping, spy satellites, bugs and wires.
According to an article from news website theintercept.com, "potentially sabotaging another country's hi-tech industries and their top companies has long been a sanctioned American strategy." The article was based on a leaked report issued from former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper's office that evaluated a theoretical scenario on how intelligence could be used to overcome a loss of the United States' technological and innovative edge. The report did not show any actual occurrence of U.S. conducted industrial espionage, and when contacted the Director of National Intelligence office responded with, "the United States—unlike our adversaries—does not steal proprietary corporate information to further private American companies' bottom lines", and that "the Intelligence Community regularly engages in analytic exercises to identify potential future global environments, and how the IC could help the United States Government respond". The report, he said, "is not intended to be, and is not, a reflection of current policy or operations".
Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner stated in 1991 "Nevertheless, as we increase emphasis on securing economic intelligence, we will have to spy on the more developed countries-our allies and friends with whom we compete economically-but to whom we turn first for political and military assistance in a crisis. This means that rather than instinctively reaching for human, on-site spying, the United States will want to look to those impersonal technical systems, primarily satellite photography and intercepts".
Former CIA Director James Woolsey acknowledged in 2000 that the United States steals economic secrets from foreign firms and their governments "with espionage, with communications, with reconnaissance satellites". He also stated it is "not to provide secrets, technological secrets to American industry." He listed the three reasons as understanding whether sanctions are functioning for countries under sanction, monitoring dual-use technology that could be used to produce or develop weapons of mass destruction, and to spy on bribery to uphold the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
In 2013 The United States was accused of spying on Brazilian oil company Petrobras. Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff stated that it was tantamount to industrial espionage and had no security justification.
In 2014 former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden stated that America's National Security Agency was engaged in industrial espionage and that they spied on German companies that compete with US firms. He also highlighted the fact the NSA uses mobile phone apps such as Angry Birds to gather personal data.
In September 2019, security firm Qi An Xin published report linking the CIA to a series of attacks targeting Chinese aviation agencies between 2012 and 2017.
Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel's sizable armaments industry.
Israel was accused by the US government of selling US military technology and secrets to China.
In 2014 American counter-intelligence officials told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees that Israel's current espionage activities in America are "unrivaled".
Computers have become key in exercising industrial espionage due to the enormous amount of information they contain and the ease at which it can be copied and transmitted. The use of computers for espionage increased rapidly in the 1990s. Information has commonly been stolen by individuals posing as subsidiary workers, such as cleaners or repairmen, gaining access to unattended computers and copying information from them. Laptops were, and still are, a prime target, with those traveling abroad on business being warned not to leave them for any period of time. Perpetrators of espionage have been known to find many ways of conning unsuspecting individuals into parting, often only temporarily, from their possessions, enabling others to access and steal information. A "bag-op" refers to the use of hotel staff to access data, such as through laptops, in hotel rooms. Information may be stolen in transit, in taxis, at airport baggage counters, baggage carousels, on trains and so on.
The rise of the Internet and computer networks has expanded the range and detail of information available and the ease of access for the purpose of industrial espionage. This type of operation is generally identified as state backed or sponsored, because the "access to personal, financial or analytic resources" identified exceed that which could be accessed by cybercriminals or individual hackers. Sensitive military or defense engineering or other industrial information may not have immediate monetary value to criminals, compared with, say, bank details. Analysis of cyberattacks suggests deep knowledge of networks, with targeted attacks, obtained by numerous individuals operating in a sustained organized way.
The rising use of the internet has also extended opportunities for industrial espionage with the aim of sabotage. In the early 2000s, it was noticed that energy companies were increasingly coming under attack from hackers. Energy power systems, doing jobs like monitoring power grids or water flow, once isolated from the other computer networks, were now being connected to the internet, leaving them more vulnerable, having historically few built-in security features. The use of these methods of industrial espionage have increasingly become a concern for governments, due to potential attacks by terrorist groups or hostile foreign governments.
One of the means of perpetrators conducting industrial espionage is by exploiting vulnerabilities in computer software. Malware and spyware are "tool[s] for industrial espionage", in "transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer plans, future plans and contacts". Newer forms of malware include devices which surreptitiously switch on mobile phones camera and recording devices. In attempts to tackle such attacks on their intellectual property, companies are increasingly keeping important information off network, leaving an "air gap", with some companies building Faraday cages to shield from electromagnetic or cellphone transmissions.
The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack uses compromised computer systems to orchestrate a flood of requests on the target system, causing it to shut down and deny service to other users. It could potentially be used for economic or industrial espionage with the purpose of sabotage. This method was allegedly utilized by Russian secret services, over a period of two weeks on a cyberattack on Estonia in May 2007, in response to the removal of a Soviet era war memorial.
In 1848, the British East India Company broke Qing China's global near-monopoly on tea production by smuggling Chinese tea out of the nation and copying Chinese tea-making processes. The British Empire had previously run a considerable trade deficit with China by importing the nation's tea and other goods. The British attempted to rectify the deficit by trading opium to the Chinese, but encountered difficulties after the Daoguang Emperor banned the opium trade and the First Opium War broke out. To avoid further issues in trading tea with China, the East India Company hired Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to travel to China under the guise of a Chinese nobleman and obtain Chinese trade secrets and tea plants for replanting. Infiltrating Chinese tea-making facilities, Fortune recorded the Chinese process for creating tea and smuggled tea leaves and seeds back to the East India Company. These tea plants were later introduced into India, helping it surpass China as the world's largest tea producer.
Between 1987 and 1989, IBM and Texas Instruments were thought to have been targeted by French DGSE with the intention of helping France's Groupe Bull. In 1993, U.S. aerospace companies were also thought to have been targeted by French interests. During the early 1990s, France was described as one of the most aggressive pursuers of espionage to garner foreign industrial and technological secrets. France accused the U.S. of attempting to sabotage its high tech industrial base. The government of France has been alleged to have conducted ongoing industrial espionage against American aerodynamics and satellite companies.
In 1993, car manufacturer Opel, the German division of General Motors, accused Volkswagen of industrial espionage after Opel's chief of production, Jose Ignacio Lopez, and seven other executives moved to Volkswagen. Volkswagen subsequently threatened to sue for defamation, resulting in a four-year legal battle. The case, which was finally settled in 1997, resulted in one of the largest settlements in the history of industrial espionage, with Volkswagen agreeing to pay General Motors $100 million and to buy at least $1 billion of car parts from the company over 7 years, although it did not explicitly apologize for Lopez's behavior.
In April 2009, Starwood accused its rival Hilton Worldwide of a "massive" case of industrial espionage. After being acquired by The Blackstone Group, Hilton employed 10 managers and executives from Starwood. Starwood accused Hilton of stealing corporate information relating to its luxury brand concepts, used in setting up its Denizen hotels. Specifically, former head of its luxury brands group, Ron Klein, was accused of downloading "truckloads of documents" from a laptop to his personal email account.
On 13 January 2010, Google announced that operators, from within China, had hacked into their Google China operation, stealing intellectual property and, in particular, accessing the email accounts of human rights activists. The attack was thought to have been part of a more widespread cyber attack on companies within China which has become known as Operation Aurora. Intruders were thought to have launched a zero-day attack, exploiting a weakness in the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, the malware used being a modification of the trojan "Hydraq". Concerned about the possibility of hackers taking advantage of this previously unknown weakness in Internet Explorer, the governments of Germany and, subsequently France, issued warnings not to use the browser.
There was speculation that "insiders" had been involved in the attack, with some Google China employees being denied access to the company's internal networks after the company's announcement. In February 2010, computer experts from the U.S. National Security Agency claimed that the attacks on Google probably originated from two Chinese universities associated with expertise in computer science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School, the latter having close links to the Chinese military.
Google claimed at least 20 other companies had also been targeted in the cyber attack, said by the London Times, to have been part of an "ambitious and sophisticated attempt to steal secrets from unwitting corporate victims" including "defence contractors, finance and technology companies". Rather than being the work of individuals or organised criminals, the level of sophistication of the attack was thought to have been "more typical of a nation state". Some commentators speculated as to whether the attack was part of what is thought to be a concerted Chinese industrial espionage operation aimed at getting "high-tech information to jump-start China's economy". Critics pointed to what was alleged to be a lax attitude to the intellectual property of foreign businesses in China, letting them operate but then seeking to copy or reverse engineer their technology for the benefit of Chinese "national champions". In Google's case, they may have (also) been concerned about the possible misappropriation of source code or other technology for the benefit of Chinese rival Baidu. In March 2010 Google subsequently decided to cease offering censored results in China, leading to the closing of its Chinese operation.
The United States charged two former NetLogic Inc. engineers, Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge, of committing economic espionage against TSMC and NetLogic, Inc. A jury acquitted the defendants of the charges with regard to TSMC and deadlocked on the charges with regard to NetLogic. In May 2010, a federal judge dismissed all the espionage charges against the two defendants. The judge ruled that the U.S. government presented no evidence of espionage.
In May 2010, the federal jury convicted Chordiant Software, Inc., a U.S. corporation, of stealing Dongxiao Yue's JRPC technologies and used them in a product called Chordiant Marketing Director. Yue previously filed lawsuits against Symantec Corporation for a similar theft.
Revelations from the Snowden documents have provided information to the effect that the United States, notably vis-à-vis the NSA, has been conducting aggressive economic espionage against Brazil. Canadian intelligence has apparently supported U.S. economic espionage efforts.
The Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 accused Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of an 11-year-long hacking campaign that targeted several industries including aviation organizations, scientific research institutions, petroleum firms, internet companies, and government agencies.
A 2009 report to the US government, by aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, describes Chinese economic espionage as comprising "the single greatest threat to U.S. technology". Blogging on the 2009 cyber attack on Google, Joe Stewart of SecureWorks referred to a "persistent campaign of 'espionage-by-malware' emanating from the People's Republic of China (PRC)" with both corporate and state secrets being "Shanghaied" over the past 5 or 6 years. The Northrop Grumman report states that the collection of US defense engineering data stolen through cyberattacks is regarded as having "saved the recipient of the information years of R&D and significant amounts of funding". Concerns about the extent of cyberattacks on the US emanating from China has led to the situation being described as the dawn of a "new cold cyberwar".
According to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency spies on foreign companies. In June 2015 Wikileaks published documents about the National Security Agency spying on French companies.
During December of 2007, this was suddenly revealed that Jonathan Evans, head of the United Kingdom's MI5, had sent out confidential letters to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at the country's banks, accountants and legal firms warning of attacks from Chinese 'state organisations'. A summary was also posted on the secure website of the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure, accessed by some of the nation's 'critical infrastructure' companies, including 'telecoms firms, banks and water and electricity companies'. One security expert warned about the use of 'custom trojans,' software specifically designed to hack into a particular firm and feed back data. Whilst China was identified as the country most active in the use of internet spying, up to 120 other countries were said to be using similar techniques. The Chinese government responded to UK accusations of economic espionage by saying that the report of such activities was 'slanderous' and that the government opposed hacking which is prohibited by law.
German counter-intelligence experts have maintained the German economy is losing around €53 billion or the equivalent of 30,000 jobs to economic espionage yearly.
In Operation Eikonal, German BND agents received "selector lists" from the NSA – search terms for their dragnet surveillance. They contain IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and email accounts with the BND surveillance system containing hundreds of thousands and possibly more than a million such targets. These lists have been subject of controversy as in 2008 it was revealed that they contained some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the Eurocopter project as well as French administration, which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005. After the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the BND decided to investigate the issue whose October 2013 conclusion was that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests which has been a violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. After reports emerged in 2014 that EADS and Eurocopter had been surveillance targets the Left Party and the Greens filed an official request to obtain evidence of the violations.
The BND's project group charged with supporting the NSA investigative committee in German parliament set up in spring 2014, reviewed the selectors and discovered 40,000 suspicious search parameters, including espionage targets in Western European governments and numerous companies. The group also confirmed suspicions that the NSA had systematically violated German interests and concluded that the Americans could have perpetrated economic espionage directly under the Germans' noses. The investigative parliamentary committee was not granted access to the NSA's selectors list as an appeal led by opposition politicians failed at Germany's top court. Instead the ruling coalition appointed an administrative judge, Kurt Graulich [de], as a "person of trust" who was granted access to the list and briefed the investigative commission on its contents after analyzing the 40,000 parameters. In his almost 300-paged report Graulich concluded that European government agencies were targeted massively and that Americans hence broke contractual agreements. He also found that German targets which received special protection from surveillance of domestic intelligence agencies by Germany's Basic Law (Grundgesetz) − including numerous enterprises based in Germany – were featured in the NSA's wishlist in a surprising plenitude.
"Competitive intelligence" involves the legal and ethical activity of systematically gathering, analyzing and managing information on industrial competitors. It may include activities such as examining newspaper articles, corporate publications, websites, patent filings, specialised databases, information at trade shows and the like to determine information on a corporation. The compilation of these crucial elements is sometimes termed CIS or CRS, a Competitive Intelligence Solution or Competitive Response Solution, with its roots in market research. Douglas Bernhardt has characterised "competitive intelligence" as involving "the application of principles and practices from military and national intelligence to the domain of global business"; it is the commercial equivalent of open-source intelligence.
The difference between competitive intelligence and economic or industrial espionage is not clear; one needs to understand the legal basics to recognize how to draw the line between the two. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more often national and occurs between companies or corporations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Economic or industrial espionage takes place in two main forms. In short, the purpose of espionage is to gather knowledge about one or more organizations. It may include the acquisition of intellectual property, such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas, techniques and processes, recipes and formulas. Or it could include sequestration of proprietary or operational information, such as that on customer datasets, pricing, sales, marketing, research and development, policies, prospective bids, planning or marketing strategies or the changing compositions and locations of production. It may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery, blackmail and technological surveillance. As well as orchestrating espionage on commercial organizations, governments can also be targets – for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract.",
"title": "Forms of economic and industrial espionage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Economic and industrial espionage is most commonly associated with technology-heavy industries, including computer software and hardware, biotechnology, aerospace, telecommunications, transportation and engine technology, automobiles, machine tools, energy, materials and coatings and so on. Silicon Valley is known to be one of the world's most targeted areas for espionage, though any industry with information of use to competitors may be a target.",
"title": "Target industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Information can make the difference between success and failure; if a trade secret is stolen, the competitive playing field is leveled or even tipped in favor of a competitor. Although a lot of information-gathering is accomplished legally through competitive intelligence, at times corporations feel the best way to get information is to take it. Economic or industrial espionage is a threat to any business whose livelihood depends on information.",
"title": "Information theft and sabotage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In recent years, economic or industrial espionage has taken on an expanded definition. For instance, attempts to sabotage a corporation may be considered industrial espionage; in this sense, the term takes on the wider connotations of its parent word. That espionage and sabotage (corporate or otherwise) have become more clearly associated with each other is also demonstrated by a number of profiling studies, some government, some corporate. The United States government currently has a polygraph examination entitled the \"Test of Espionage and Sabotage\" (TES), contributing to the notion of the interrelationship between espionage and sabotage countermeasures. In practice, particularly by \"trusted insiders\", they are generally considered functionally identical for the purpose of informing countermeasures.",
"title": "Information theft and sabotage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Economic or industrial espionage commonly occurs in one of two ways. Firstly, a dissatisfied employee appropriates information to advance interests or to damage the company. Secondly, a competitor or foreign government seeks information to advance its own technological or financial interest. \"Moles\", or trusted insiders, are generally considered the best sources for economic or industrial espionage. Historically known as a \"patsy\", an insider can be induced, willingly or under duress, to provide information. A patsy may be initially asked to hand over inconsequential information and, once compromised by committing a crime, blackmailed into handing over more sensitive material. Individuals may leave one company to take up employment with another and take sensitive information with them. Such apparent behavior has been the focus of numerous industrial espionage cases that have resulted in legal battles. Some countries hire individuals to do spying rather than the use of their own intelligence agencies. Academics, business delegates, and students are often thought to be used by governments in gathering information. Some countries, such as Japan, have been reported to expect students to be debriefed on returning home. A spy may follow a guided tour of a factory and then get \"lost\". A spy could be an engineer, a maintenance man, a cleaner, an insurance salesman, or an inspector: anyone who has legitimate access to the premises.",
"title": "Agents and the process of collection"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A spy may break into the premises to steal data and may search through waste paper and refuse, known as \"dumpster diving\". Information may be compromised via unsolicited requests for information, marketing surveys, or use of technical support or research or software facilities. Outsourced industrial producers may ask for information outside the agreed-upon contract.",
"title": "Agents and the process of collection"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Computers have facilitated the process of collecting information because of the ease of access to large amounts of information through physical contact or the Internet.",
"title": "Agents and the process of collection"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Economic and industrial espionage has a long history. Father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles, who visited Jingdezhen, China in 1712 and later used this visit to reveal the manufacturing methods of Chinese porcelain to Europe, is sometimes considered to have conducted an early case of industrial espionage.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Historical accounts have been written of industrial espionage between Britain and France. Attributed to Britain's emergence as an \"industrial creditor\", the second decade of the 18th century saw the emergence of a large-scale state-sponsored effort to surreptitiously take British industrial technology to France. Witnesses confirmed both the inveigling of tradespersons abroad and the placing of apprentices in England. Protests by those such as ironworkers in Sheffield and steelworkers in Newcastle, about skilled industrial workers being enticed abroad, led to the first English legislation aimed at preventing this method of economic and industrial espionage. This did not prevent Samuel Slater from bringing British textile technology to the United States in 1789. In order to catch up with technological advances of European powers, the US government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries actively encouraged intellectual piracy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "American founding father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton advocated rewarding those bringing \"improvements and secrets of extraordinary value\" into the United States. This was instrumental in making the United States a haven for industrial spies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "East-West commercial development opportunities after World War I saw a rise in Soviet interest in American and European manufacturing know-how, exploited by Amtorg Corporation. Later, with Western restrictions on the export of items thought likely to increase military capabilities to the USSR, Soviet industrial espionage was a well known adjunct to other spying activities up until the 1980s. BYTE reported in April 1984, for example, that although the Soviets sought to develop their own microelectronics, their technology appeared to be several years behind the West's. Soviet CPUs required multiple chips and appeared to be close or exact copies of American products such as the Intel 3000 and DEC LSI-11/2.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Some of these activities were directed via the East German Stasi (Ministry for State Security). One such operation, \"Operation Brunnhilde,\" operated from the mid-1950s until early 1966 and made use of spies from many Communist Bloc countries. Through at least 20 forays, many western European industrial secrets were compromised. One member of the \"Brunnhilde\" ring was a Swiss chemical engineer, Dr. Jean Paul Soupert (also known as \"Air Bubble\"), living in Brussels. He was described by Peter Wright in Spycatcher as having been \"doubled\" by the Belgian Sûreté de l'État. He revealed information about industrial espionage conducted by the ring, including the fact that Russian agents had obtained details of Concorde's advanced electronics system. He testified against two Kodak employees, living and working in Britain, during a trial in which they were accused of passing information on industrial processes to him, though they were eventually acquitted.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "According to a 2020 American Economic Review study, East German industrial espionage in West Germany significantly reduced the gap in total factor productivity between the two countries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "A secret report from the Military-Industrial Commission of the USSR (VPK), from 1979–80, detailed how spetsinformatsiya (Russian: специнформация, \"special records\") could be utilised in twelve different military industrial areas. Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Philip Hanson detailed a spetsinformatsiya system in which 12 industrial branch ministries formulated requests for information to aid technological development in their military programs. Acquisition plans were described as operating on 2-year and 5-year cycles with about 3000 tasks underway each year. Efforts were aimed at civilian and military industrial targets, such as in the petrochemical industries. Some information was gathered to compare Soviet technological advancement with that of their competitors. Much unclassified information was also gathered, blurring the boundary with \"competitive intelligence\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Soviet military was recognised as making much better use of acquired information than civilian industries, where their record in replicating and developing industrial technology was poor.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, commentators, including the US Congressional Intelligence Committee, noted a redirection amongst the espionage community from military to industrial targets, with Western and former communist countries making use of \"underemployed\" spies and expanding programs directed at stealing such information.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The legacy of Cold War spying included not just the redirection of personnel but the use of spying apparatus such as computer databases, scanners for eavesdropping, spy satellites, bugs and wires.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "According to an article from news website theintercept.com, \"potentially sabotaging another country's hi-tech industries and their top companies has long been a sanctioned American strategy.\" The article was based on a leaked report issued from former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper's office that evaluated a theoretical scenario on how intelligence could be used to overcome a loss of the United States' technological and innovative edge. The report did not show any actual occurrence of U.S. conducted industrial espionage, and when contacted the Director of National Intelligence office responded with, \"the United States—unlike our adversaries—does not steal proprietary corporate information to further private American companies' bottom lines\", and that \"the Intelligence Community regularly engages in analytic exercises to identify potential future global environments, and how the IC could help the United States Government respond\". The report, he said, \"is not intended to be, and is not, a reflection of current policy or operations\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner stated in 1991 \"Nevertheless, as we increase emphasis on securing economic intelligence, we will have to spy on the more developed countries-our allies and friends with whom we compete economically-but to whom we turn first for political and military assistance in a crisis. This means that rather than instinctively reaching for human, on-site spying, the United States will want to look to those impersonal technical systems, primarily satellite photography and intercepts\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Former CIA Director James Woolsey acknowledged in 2000 that the United States steals economic secrets from foreign firms and their governments \"with espionage, with communications, with reconnaissance satellites\". He also stated it is \"not to provide secrets, technological secrets to American industry.\" He listed the three reasons as understanding whether sanctions are functioning for countries under sanction, monitoring dual-use technology that could be used to produce or develop weapons of mass destruction, and to spy on bribery to uphold the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2013 The United States was accused of spying on Brazilian oil company Petrobras. Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff stated that it was tantamount to industrial espionage and had no security justification.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 2014 former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden stated that America's National Security Agency was engaged in industrial espionage and that they spied on German companies that compete with US firms. He also highlighted the fact the NSA uses mobile phone apps such as Angry Birds to gather personal data.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In September 2019, security firm Qi An Xin published report linking the CIA to a series of attacks targeting Chinese aviation agencies between 2012 and 2017.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel's sizable armaments industry.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Israel was accused by the US government of selling US military technology and secrets to China.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 2014 American counter-intelligence officials told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees that Israel's current espionage activities in America are \"unrivaled\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Computers have become key in exercising industrial espionage due to the enormous amount of information they contain and the ease at which it can be copied and transmitted. The use of computers for espionage increased rapidly in the 1990s. Information has commonly been stolen by individuals posing as subsidiary workers, such as cleaners or repairmen, gaining access to unattended computers and copying information from them. Laptops were, and still are, a prime target, with those traveling abroad on business being warned not to leave them for any period of time. Perpetrators of espionage have been known to find many ways of conning unsuspecting individuals into parting, often only temporarily, from their possessions, enabling others to access and steal information. A \"bag-op\" refers to the use of hotel staff to access data, such as through laptops, in hotel rooms. Information may be stolen in transit, in taxis, at airport baggage counters, baggage carousels, on trains and so on.",
"title": "Use of computers and the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The rise of the Internet and computer networks has expanded the range and detail of information available and the ease of access for the purpose of industrial espionage. This type of operation is generally identified as state backed or sponsored, because the \"access to personal, financial or analytic resources\" identified exceed that which could be accessed by cybercriminals or individual hackers. Sensitive military or defense engineering or other industrial information may not have immediate monetary value to criminals, compared with, say, bank details. Analysis of cyberattacks suggests deep knowledge of networks, with targeted attacks, obtained by numerous individuals operating in a sustained organized way.",
"title": "Use of computers and the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The rising use of the internet has also extended opportunities for industrial espionage with the aim of sabotage. In the early 2000s, it was noticed that energy companies were increasingly coming under attack from hackers. Energy power systems, doing jobs like monitoring power grids or water flow, once isolated from the other computer networks, were now being connected to the internet, leaving them more vulnerable, having historically few built-in security features. The use of these methods of industrial espionage have increasingly become a concern for governments, due to potential attacks by terrorist groups or hostile foreign governments.",
"title": "Use of computers and the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "One of the means of perpetrators conducting industrial espionage is by exploiting vulnerabilities in computer software. Malware and spyware are \"tool[s] for industrial espionage\", in \"transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer plans, future plans and contacts\". Newer forms of malware include devices which surreptitiously switch on mobile phones camera and recording devices. In attempts to tackle such attacks on their intellectual property, companies are increasingly keeping important information off network, leaving an \"air gap\", with some companies building Faraday cages to shield from electromagnetic or cellphone transmissions.",
"title": "Use of computers and the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack uses compromised computer systems to orchestrate a flood of requests on the target system, causing it to shut down and deny service to other users. It could potentially be used for economic or industrial espionage with the purpose of sabotage. This method was allegedly utilized by Russian secret services, over a period of two weeks on a cyberattack on Estonia in May 2007, in response to the removal of a Soviet era war memorial.",
"title": "Use of computers and the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 1848, the British East India Company broke Qing China's global near-monopoly on tea production by smuggling Chinese tea out of the nation and copying Chinese tea-making processes. The British Empire had previously run a considerable trade deficit with China by importing the nation's tea and other goods. The British attempted to rectify the deficit by trading opium to the Chinese, but encountered difficulties after the Daoguang Emperor banned the opium trade and the First Opium War broke out. To avoid further issues in trading tea with China, the East India Company hired Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to travel to China under the guise of a Chinese nobleman and obtain Chinese trade secrets and tea plants for replanting. Infiltrating Chinese tea-making facilities, Fortune recorded the Chinese process for creating tea and smuggled tea leaves and seeds back to the East India Company. These tea plants were later introduced into India, helping it surpass China as the world's largest tea producer.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Between 1987 and 1989, IBM and Texas Instruments were thought to have been targeted by French DGSE with the intention of helping France's Groupe Bull. In 1993, U.S. aerospace companies were also thought to have been targeted by French interests. During the early 1990s, France was described as one of the most aggressive pursuers of espionage to garner foreign industrial and technological secrets. France accused the U.S. of attempting to sabotage its high tech industrial base. The government of France has been alleged to have conducted ongoing industrial espionage against American aerodynamics and satellite companies.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1993, car manufacturer Opel, the German division of General Motors, accused Volkswagen of industrial espionage after Opel's chief of production, Jose Ignacio Lopez, and seven other executives moved to Volkswagen. Volkswagen subsequently threatened to sue for defamation, resulting in a four-year legal battle. The case, which was finally settled in 1997, resulted in one of the largest settlements in the history of industrial espionage, with Volkswagen agreeing to pay General Motors $100 million and to buy at least $1 billion of car parts from the company over 7 years, although it did not explicitly apologize for Lopez's behavior.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In April 2009, Starwood accused its rival Hilton Worldwide of a \"massive\" case of industrial espionage. After being acquired by The Blackstone Group, Hilton employed 10 managers and executives from Starwood. Starwood accused Hilton of stealing corporate information relating to its luxury brand concepts, used in setting up its Denizen hotels. Specifically, former head of its luxury brands group, Ron Klein, was accused of downloading \"truckloads of documents\" from a laptop to his personal email account.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "On 13 January 2010, Google announced that operators, from within China, had hacked into their Google China operation, stealing intellectual property and, in particular, accessing the email accounts of human rights activists. The attack was thought to have been part of a more widespread cyber attack on companies within China which has become known as Operation Aurora. Intruders were thought to have launched a zero-day attack, exploiting a weakness in the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, the malware used being a modification of the trojan \"Hydraq\". Concerned about the possibility of hackers taking advantage of this previously unknown weakness in Internet Explorer, the governments of Germany and, subsequently France, issued warnings not to use the browser.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "There was speculation that \"insiders\" had been involved in the attack, with some Google China employees being denied access to the company's internal networks after the company's announcement. In February 2010, computer experts from the U.S. National Security Agency claimed that the attacks on Google probably originated from two Chinese universities associated with expertise in computer science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School, the latter having close links to the Chinese military.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Google claimed at least 20 other companies had also been targeted in the cyber attack, said by the London Times, to have been part of an \"ambitious and sophisticated attempt to steal secrets from unwitting corporate victims\" including \"defence contractors, finance and technology companies\". Rather than being the work of individuals or organised criminals, the level of sophistication of the attack was thought to have been \"more typical of a nation state\". Some commentators speculated as to whether the attack was part of what is thought to be a concerted Chinese industrial espionage operation aimed at getting \"high-tech information to jump-start China's economy\". Critics pointed to what was alleged to be a lax attitude to the intellectual property of foreign businesses in China, letting them operate but then seeking to copy or reverse engineer their technology for the benefit of Chinese \"national champions\". In Google's case, they may have (also) been concerned about the possible misappropriation of source code or other technology for the benefit of Chinese rival Baidu. In March 2010 Google subsequently decided to cease offering censored results in China, leading to the closing of its Chinese operation.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The United States charged two former NetLogic Inc. engineers, Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge, of committing economic espionage against TSMC and NetLogic, Inc. A jury acquitted the defendants of the charges with regard to TSMC and deadlocked on the charges with regard to NetLogic. In May 2010, a federal judge dismissed all the espionage charges against the two defendants. The judge ruled that the U.S. government presented no evidence of espionage.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In May 2010, the federal jury convicted Chordiant Software, Inc., a U.S. corporation, of stealing Dongxiao Yue's JRPC technologies and used them in a product called Chordiant Marketing Director. Yue previously filed lawsuits against Symantec Corporation for a similar theft.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Revelations from the Snowden documents have provided information to the effect that the United States, notably vis-à-vis the NSA, has been conducting aggressive economic espionage against Brazil. Canadian intelligence has apparently supported U.S. economic espionage efforts.",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 accused Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of an 11-year-long hacking campaign that targeted several industries including aviation organizations, scientific research institutions, petroleum firms, internet companies, and government agencies.",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "A 2009 report to the US government, by aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, describes Chinese economic espionage as comprising \"the single greatest threat to U.S. technology\". Blogging on the 2009 cyber attack on Google, Joe Stewart of SecureWorks referred to a \"persistent campaign of 'espionage-by-malware' emanating from the People's Republic of China (PRC)\" with both corporate and state secrets being \"Shanghaied\" over the past 5 or 6 years. The Northrop Grumman report states that the collection of US defense engineering data stolen through cyberattacks is regarded as having \"saved the recipient of the information years of R&D and significant amounts of funding\". Concerns about the extent of cyberattacks on the US emanating from China has led to the situation being described as the dawn of a \"new cold cyberwar\".",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "According to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency spies on foreign companies. In June 2015 Wikileaks published documents about the National Security Agency spying on French companies.",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "During December of 2007, this was suddenly revealed that Jonathan Evans, head of the United Kingdom's MI5, had sent out confidential letters to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at the country's banks, accountants and legal firms warning of attacks from Chinese 'state organisations'. A summary was also posted on the secure website of the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure, accessed by some of the nation's 'critical infrastructure' companies, including 'telecoms firms, banks and water and electricity companies'. One security expert warned about the use of 'custom trojans,' software specifically designed to hack into a particular firm and feed back data. Whilst China was identified as the country most active in the use of internet spying, up to 120 other countries were said to be using similar techniques. The Chinese government responded to UK accusations of economic espionage by saying that the report of such activities was 'slanderous' and that the government opposed hacking which is prohibited by law.",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "German counter-intelligence experts have maintained the German economy is losing around €53 billion or the equivalent of 30,000 jobs to economic espionage yearly.",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In Operation Eikonal, German BND agents received \"selector lists\" from the NSA – search terms for their dragnet surveillance. They contain IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and email accounts with the BND surveillance system containing hundreds of thousands and possibly more than a million such targets. These lists have been subject of controversy as in 2008 it was revealed that they contained some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the Eurocopter project as well as French administration, which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005. After the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the BND decided to investigate the issue whose October 2013 conclusion was that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests which has been a violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. After reports emerged in 2014 that EADS and Eurocopter had been surveillance targets the Left Party and the Greens filed an official request to obtain evidence of the violations.",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The BND's project group charged with supporting the NSA investigative committee in German parliament set up in spring 2014, reviewed the selectors and discovered 40,000 suspicious search parameters, including espionage targets in Western European governments and numerous companies. The group also confirmed suspicions that the NSA had systematically violated German interests and concluded that the Americans could have perpetrated economic espionage directly under the Germans' noses. The investigative parliamentary committee was not granted access to the NSA's selectors list as an appeal led by opposition politicians failed at Germany's top court. Instead the ruling coalition appointed an administrative judge, Kurt Graulich [de], as a \"person of trust\" who was granted access to the list and briefed the investigative commission on its contents after analyzing the 40,000 parameters. In his almost 300-paged report Graulich concluded that European government agencies were targeted massively and that Americans hence broke contractual agreements. He also found that German targets which received special protection from surveillance of domestic intelligence agencies by Germany's Basic Law (Grundgesetz) − including numerous enterprises based in Germany – were featured in the NSA's wishlist in a surprising plenitude.",
"title": "Concerns of national governments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "\"Competitive intelligence\" involves the legal and ethical activity of systematically gathering, analyzing and managing information on industrial competitors. It may include activities such as examining newspaper articles, corporate publications, websites, patent filings, specialised databases, information at trade shows and the like to determine information on a corporation. The compilation of these crucial elements is sometimes termed CIS or CRS, a Competitive Intelligence Solution or Competitive Response Solution, with its roots in market research. Douglas Bernhardt has characterised \"competitive intelligence\" as involving \"the application of principles and practices from military and national intelligence to the domain of global business\"; it is the commercial equivalent of open-source intelligence.",
"title": "Competitive intelligence and economic or industrial espionage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The difference between competitive intelligence and economic or industrial espionage is not clear; one needs to understand the legal basics to recognize how to draw the line between the two.",
"title": "Competitive intelligence and economic or industrial espionage"
}
]
| Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more often national and occurs between companies or corporations. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-09T17:47:47Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage |
15,511 | Isaac Bashevis Singer | Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, essayist, and translator. Some of his works were adapted for the theater. He wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated his own works into English with the help of editors and collaborators. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. A leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, he was awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, one in Children's Literature for his memoir A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw (1970) and one in Fiction for his collection A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1974).
Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1903 to a Jewish family in Leoncin village near Warsaw, Poland. The Polish form of his birth name was Icek Hersz Zynger. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but most sources say it was probably November 11, a date similar to the one that Singer gave to his official biographer Paul Kresh, his secretary Dvorah Telushkin, and Rabbi William Berkowitz. The year 1903 is consistent with the historical events that his brother refers to in their childhood memoirs, including the death of Theodor Herzl. The often-quoted birth date, July 14, 1904, was made up by the author in his youth, possibly to make himself younger to avoid the draft.
His father was a Hasidic rabbi and his mother, Bathsheba, was the daughter of the rabbi of Biłgoraj. Singer later used her first name in an initial literary pseudonym, Izaak Baszewis, which he later expanded. Both his older siblings, sister Esther Kreitman (1891–1954) and brother Israel Joshua Singer (1893–1944), became writers as well. Esther was the first of the family to write stories.
The family moved to the court of the Rabbi of Radzymin in 1907, where his father became head of the Yeshiva. After the Yeshiva building burned down in 1908, the family moved to Warsaw, a flat at Krochmalna Street 10. In the spring of 1914, the Singers moved to No. 12.
The street where Singer grew up was located in the impoverished, Yiddish-speaking Jewish quarter of Warsaw. There his father served as a rabbi, and was called on to be a judge, arbitrator, religious authority and spiritual leader in the Jewish community. The unique atmosphere of pre-war Krochmalna Street can be found both in the collection of Varshavsky-stories, which tell stories from Singer's childhood, as well as in those novels and stories which take place in pre-war Warsaw.
In 1917, because of the hardships of World War I, the family split up. Singer moved with his mother and younger brother Moshe to his mother's hometown of Biłgoraj, a traditional shtetl, where his mother's brothers had followed his grandfather as rabbis. When his father became a village rabbi again in 1921, Singer returned to Warsaw. He entered the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary and soon decided that neither the school nor the profession suited him. He returned to Biłgoraj, where he tried to support himself by giving Hebrew lessons, but soon gave up and joined his parents, considering himself a failure. In 1923, his older brother Israel Joshua arranged for him to move to Warsaw to work as a proofreader for the Jewish magazine Literarishe Bleter [he], of which the brother was an editor.
In 1935, four years before the Nazi invasion, Singer emigrated from Poland to the United States. He was fearful of the growing threat in neighboring Germany. The move separated the author from his common-law first wife Runia Pontsch and son Israel Zamir (1929–2014); they emigrated to Moscow and then Palestine. The three met again in 1955.
Singer settled in New York City, where he took up work as a journalist and columnist for The Jewish Daily Forward (פֿאָרװערטס), a Yiddish-language newspaper. After a promising start, he became despondent and for some years felt "Lost in America" (title of his 1974 memoir published in Yiddish; published in English in 1981).
In 1938, he met Alma Wassermann née Haimann (1907–1996), a German-Jewish refugee from Munich. They married in 1940, and their union seemed to release energy in him; he returned to prolific writing and to contributing to the Forward. In addition to his pen name of "Bashevis", he published under the pen names of "Warszawski" (pron. Varshavsky) during World War II, and "D. Segal". They lived for many years in the Belnord apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
In 1981, Singer delivered a commencement address at the University at Albany and was presented with an honorary doctorate.
Singer died on July 24, 1991, in Surfside, Florida, after suffering a series of strokes. He was buried in Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, New Jersey. A street in Surfside, Florida is named Isaac Singer Boulevard in his honor, as is a city square in Lublin, Poland, and a street in Tel-Aviv. The full academic scholarship for undergraduate students at the University of Miami is also named in his honor.
Singer's first published story "Oyf der elter" ("In Old Age", 1925) won the literary competition of the Literarishe Bletter, where he worked as a proofreader. A reflection of his formative years in "the kitchen of literature" can be found in many of his later works. Singer published his first novel, Satan in Goray, in installments in the literary magazine Globus, which he had co-founded with his lifelong friend, the Yiddish poet Aaron Zeitlin in 1935. It is set in the years following 1648, when the Chmielnicki massacres, considered one of the greatest Jewish catastrophes, occurred. The story describes the Jewish messianic cult that arose in the village of Goraj. It explores the effects of the faraway false messiah, Shabbatai Zvi, on the local population. Its last chapter imitates the style of a medieval Yiddish chronicle. With a stark depiction of innocence crushed by circumstance, the novel appears to foreshadow coming danger. In his later work The Slave (1962), Singer returns to the aftermath of 1648 in a love story between a Jewish man and a gentile woman. He portrays the traumatized and desperate survivors of the historic catastrophe with even deeper understanding.
Singer became a literary contributor to The Jewish Daily Forward only after his older brother Israel died in 1944. That year, Singer published The Family Moskat in his brother's honor. His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening of Yom Kippur (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945). He was nearly forced to stop writing the novel by his editor-in-chief, Abraham Cahan, but was saved by readers who wanted the story to continue. After this, his stories—which he had published in Yiddish literary newspapers before—were printed in the Forward as well. Throughout the 1940s, Singer's reputation grew.
Singer believed in the power of his native language and thought that there was still a large audience, including in New York, who longed to read in Yiddish. In an interview in Encounter (February 1979), he said that although the Jews of Poland had died, "something—call it spirit or whatever—is still somewhere in the universe. This is a mystical kind of feeling, but I feel there is truth in it."
Some of his colleagues and readers were shocked by his all-encompassing view of human nature. He wrote about female homosexuality ("Zeitl and Rickel", "Tseytl un Rikl"), published in The Seance and Other Stories, transvestism ("Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" in Short Friday), and of rabbis corrupted by demons ("Zeidlus the Pope" in Short Friday). In those novels and stories which refer to events in his own life, he portrays himself unflatteringly (with some degree of accuracy) as an artist who is self-centered yet has a keen eye for the sufferings and tribulations of others.
Singer had many literary influences. Besides the religious texts he studied, he grew up with a rich array of Jewish folktales and worldly Yiddish detective-stories about "Max Spitzkopf" and his assistant "Fuchs". He read Russian, including Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment at the age of fourteen. He wrote in memoirs about the importance of the Yiddish translations donated in book-crates from America, which he studied as a teenager in Bilgoraj: "I read everything: Stories, novels, plays, essays... I read Rajsen, Strindberg, Don Kaplanowitsch, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Maupassant and Chekhov." He studied the philosophers Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Otto Weininger. Among his Yiddish contemporaries, Singer considered his elder brother to be his greatest artistic example. He was also a life-long friend and admirer of the author and poet Aaron Zeitlin.
His short stories, which some critics feel contain his most lasting contributions, were influenced by Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant. From Maupassant, Singer developed a finely grained sense of drama. Like those of the French master, Singer's stories can pack enormous visceral excitement in the space of a few pages. From Chekhov, Singer developed his ability to draw characters of enormous complexity and dignity in the briefest of spaces. In the foreword to his personally selected volume of his finest short stories he describes the two aforementioned writers as the greatest masters of the short story form.
Of his non-Yiddish-contemporaries, he was strongly influenced by the writings of Knut Hamsun, many of whose works he later translated, while he had a more critical attitude towards Thomas Mann, whose approach to writing he considered opposed to his own. Contrary to Hamsun's approach, Singer shaped his world not only with the egos of his characters, but also from Jewish moral tradition embodied by his father in the stories about Singer's youth. There was a dichotomy between the life his heroes lead and the life they feel they should lead—which gives his art a modernity his predecessors did not express. His themes of witchcraft, mystery and legend draw on traditional sources, but they are contrasted with a modern and ironic consciousness. They are also concerned with the bizarre and the grotesque.
An important strand of his art is intra-familial strife, which he experienced when taking refuge with his mother and younger brother at his uncle's home in Biłgoraj. This is the central theme in Singer's family chronicles such as The Family Moskat (1950), The Manor (1967), and The Estate (1969). Some critics believe these show the influence of Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks; Singer had translated Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) into Yiddish as a young writer.
Singer always wrote and published in Yiddish. His novels were serialized in newspapers, which also published his short stories. He edited his novels and stories for publication in English, which was used as the basis for translation into other languages. He referred to his English versions as his "second original". This has led to an ongoing controversy whether the "real Singer" is the Yiddish original, with its finely tuned language and sometimes rambling construction, or in the more tightly edited American versions, where the language is usually simpler and more direct. Some of Singer's stories and novels have not been translated.
The artists who have illustrated Singer's novels, short stories, and children's books, include Raphael Soyer, Maurice Sendak, Larry Rivers, and Irene Lieblich. Singer personally selected Lieblich to illustrate two of his books for children, A Tale of Three Wishes and The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah, after seeing her paintings at an Artists Equity exhibition in New York City. A Holocaust survivor, Lieblich was from Zamosc, Poland, a town adjacent to the area where Singer was raised. As their memories of shtetl life were so similar, Singer found Lieblich's images ideally suited to illustrate his texts. Of her style, Singer wrote that "her works are rooted in Jewish folklore and are faithful to Jewish life and the Jewish spirit."
Singer published at least 18 novels, 14 children's books, a number of memoirs, essays and articles. He is best known as a writer of short stories, which have been published in more than a dozen collections. The first collection of Singer's short stories in English, Gimpel the Fool, was published in 1957. The title story was translated by Saul Bellow and published in May 1953 in the Partisan Review. Selections from Singer's "Varshavsky-stories" in the Daily Forward were later published in anthologies such as My Father's Court (1966). Later collections include A Crown of Feathers (1973), with notable masterpieces in between, such as The Spinoza of Market Street (1961) and A Friend of Kafka (1970). His stories and novels reflect the world of the East European Jewry in which he grew up. After his many years in America, his stories also portrayed the world of the immigrants and their pursuit of an elusive American dream, which seems always beyond reach.
Prior to Singer's winning the Nobel Prize, English translations of dozens of his stories were published in popular magazines such as Playboy and Esquire that published literary works.
Throughout the 1960s, Singer continued to write about questions of personal morality. Because of the controversial aspects of his plots, he was a target of scathing criticism from many quarters, some of it for not being "moral" enough, some for writing stories that no one wanted to hear. To his critics, he replied, "Literature must spring from the past, from the love of the uniform force that wrote it, and not from the uncertainty of the future."
Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978.
Between 1981 and 1989, Singer contributed articles to Moment, an independent magazine which focuses on the life of the American Jewish community.
His novel Enemies, a Love Story was adapted as a film by the same name (1989) and was quite popular, bringing new readers to his work. It features a Holocaust survivor who deals with varying desires, complex family relationships, and a loss of faith.
Singer's story, "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" was adapted into a stage version by Leah Napolin (with Singer), which was the basis for the film Yentl (1983) starring and directed by Barbra Streisand.
Alan Arkin starred as Yasha, the principal character in the film version of The Magician of Lublin (1979), which also featured Shelley Winters, Louise Fletcher, Valerie Perrine and Lou Jacobi. In the final scene, Yasha achieves his lifelong ambition of being able to fly, though not as the magic trick he had originally planned.
Perhaps the most fascinating Singer-inspired film is Mr. Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupkos Beard (1974) directed by Bruce Davidson, a renowned photographer who became Singer's neighbor. This unique film is a half-hour mixture of documentary and fantasy for which Singer wrote the script and played the leading role.
The 2007 film Love Comes Lately, starring Otto Tausig, was adapted from several of Singer's stories.
Singer's relationship to Judaism was complex and unconventional. He identified as a skeptic and a loner, though he felt a connection to his Orthodox roots. Ultimately, he developed a view of religion and philosophy which he called "private mysticism". As he put it, "Since God was completely unknown and eternally silent, He could be endowed with whatever traits one elected to hang upon Him."
Singer was raised Orthodox and learned all the Jewish prayers, studied Hebrew and learned Torah and Talmud. As he recounted in the autobiographical short story "In My Father's Court", he broke away from his parents in his early twenties. Influenced by his older brother, who had done the same, he began spending time with non-religious Bohemian artists in Warsaw. Although Singer believed in a God, as in traditional Judaism, he stopped attending Jewish religious services of any kind, even on the High Holy Days. He struggled throughout his life with the feeling that a kind and compassionate God would never support the great suffering he saw around him, especially the Holocaust deaths of so many of the Polish Jews from his childhood. In one interview with the photographer Richard Kaplan, he said, "I am angry at God because of what happened to my brothers": Singer's older brother died suddenly in February 1944, in New York, of a thrombosis; his younger brother perished in Soviet Russia around 1945, after being deported with his mother and wife to Southern Kazakhstan in Stalin's purges.
Despite the complexities of his religious outlook, Singer lived in the midst of the Jewish community throughout his life. He did not seem to be comfortable unless he was surrounded by Jews; particularly Jews born in Europe. Although he spoke English, Hebrew, and Polish fluently, he always considered Yiddish his natural tongue. He always wrote in Yiddish and he was the last notable American author to be writing in this language. After he had achieved success as a writer in New York, Singer and his wife began spending time during the winters in Miami with its Jewish community, many of them New Yorkers.
Eventually, as senior citizens, they moved to Miami. They identified closely with the Ashkenazi Jewish community. After his death, Singer was buried in a traditional Jewish ceremony in a Jewish cemetery in Paramus, New Jersey.
Singer was a prominent Jewish vegetarian for the last 35 years of his life and often included vegetarian themes in his works. In his short story The Slaughterer, he described the anguish of an appointed slaughterer trying to reconcile his compassion for animals with his job of killing them. He felt that the ingestion of meat was a denial of all ideals and all religions: "How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?" When asked if he had become a vegetarian for health reasons, he replied: "I did it for the health of the chickens."
Vegetarianism is a recurrent theme in Singer's novel Enemies, a Love Story. One character, a Holocaust survivor, declares that "God himself eats meat—human flesh. There are no vegetarians—none. If you had seen what I have seen, you would know that God approves of slaughter," and another character points out "that what the Nazis had done to the Jews, man was doing to animals." In The Letter Writer, Singer wrote "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka," which became a classic reference in the comparison of animal exploitation with the Holocaust.
In the preface to Steven Rosen's Food for Spirit: Vegetarianism and the World Religions (1986), Singer wrote, "When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard."
Singer described himself as "conservative," adding that "I don't believe by flattering the masses all the time we really achieve much." His conservative side was most apparent in his Yiddish writing and journalism, where he was openly hostile to Marxist sociopolitical agendas. In Forverts he once wrote, "It may seem like terrible apikorses [heresy], but conservative governments in America, England, France, have handled Jews no worse than liberal governments.... The Jew's worst enemies were always those elements that the modern Jew convinced himself (really hypnotized himself) were his friends."
Issac Bashevis was ambivalent on the question of Zionism, and he viewed the immigration of Jews to Palestine critically. As a Polish Jew from Warsaw, he was historically confronted with the question of the Jewish fate during Nazi persecution. He exercised social responsibility towards the immigration of European and American Jewish groups to Israel after World War II. Strictly based on Jewish family doctrine rather than politics and socialism, his former partner Runya Pontsch and his son Israel Zamir emigrated to Palestine in 1938, in order to live a typical kibbutz life there. In his story The Certificate (1967), which has autobiographical character, he fictionalizes this question from a time in the mid-1920s when he was himself considering moving to the British Mandate Palestine. The protagonist of the story decides to leave Palestine, however, to move back into his shtetl. For Singer then, Zionism becomes the "road not taken". However, through his journalistic assignments in late 1955, Singer made his first trip to Israel, accompanied by his wife Alma. Describing the trip to his Yiddish readers, he introduces the world for the first time to the young state of Israel. In a change of mind, he then describes the Land of Israel as a "reality, and part of everyday life." Interestingly enough, he notes the cultural tensions between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish people during the boat trip from Naples to Haifa and during his stay in the new nation. With the description of Jewish immigration camps in the new land, he foresaw the difficulties and socio-economic tensions in Israel, and hence turned back to his critical views of Zionism. He scrutinized the ideology further, as he was advancing his thought of critical Zionism.
Singer is the only American Nobel Laureate in Literature to not receive a Pulitzer Prize award or citation.
Note: Publication dates refer to English editions, not the Yiddish originals, which often predate the versions in translation by 10 to 20 years. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, essayist, and translator. Some of his works were adapted for the theater. He wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated his own works into English with the help of editors and collaborators. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. A leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, he was awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, one in Children's Literature for his memoir A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw (1970) and one in Fiction for his collection A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1974).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1903 to a Jewish family in Leoncin village near Warsaw, Poland. The Polish form of his birth name was Icek Hersz Zynger. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but most sources say it was probably November 11, a date similar to the one that Singer gave to his official biographer Paul Kresh, his secretary Dvorah Telushkin, and Rabbi William Berkowitz. The year 1903 is consistent with the historical events that his brother refers to in their childhood memoirs, including the death of Theodor Herzl. The often-quoted birth date, July 14, 1904, was made up by the author in his youth, possibly to make himself younger to avoid the draft.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "His father was a Hasidic rabbi and his mother, Bathsheba, was the daughter of the rabbi of Biłgoraj. Singer later used her first name in an initial literary pseudonym, Izaak Baszewis, which he later expanded. Both his older siblings, sister Esther Kreitman (1891–1954) and brother Israel Joshua Singer (1893–1944), became writers as well. Esther was the first of the family to write stories.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The family moved to the court of the Rabbi of Radzymin in 1907, where his father became head of the Yeshiva. After the Yeshiva building burned down in 1908, the family moved to Warsaw, a flat at Krochmalna Street 10. In the spring of 1914, the Singers moved to No. 12.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The street where Singer grew up was located in the impoverished, Yiddish-speaking Jewish quarter of Warsaw. There his father served as a rabbi, and was called on to be a judge, arbitrator, religious authority and spiritual leader in the Jewish community. The unique atmosphere of pre-war Krochmalna Street can be found both in the collection of Varshavsky-stories, which tell stories from Singer's childhood, as well as in those novels and stories which take place in pre-war Warsaw.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1917, because of the hardships of World War I, the family split up. Singer moved with his mother and younger brother Moshe to his mother's hometown of Biłgoraj, a traditional shtetl, where his mother's brothers had followed his grandfather as rabbis. When his father became a village rabbi again in 1921, Singer returned to Warsaw. He entered the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary and soon decided that neither the school nor the profession suited him. He returned to Biłgoraj, where he tried to support himself by giving Hebrew lessons, but soon gave up and joined his parents, considering himself a failure. In 1923, his older brother Israel Joshua arranged for him to move to Warsaw to work as a proofreader for the Jewish magazine Literarishe Bleter [he], of which the brother was an editor.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1935, four years before the Nazi invasion, Singer emigrated from Poland to the United States. He was fearful of the growing threat in neighboring Germany. The move separated the author from his common-law first wife Runia Pontsch and son Israel Zamir (1929–2014); they emigrated to Moscow and then Palestine. The three met again in 1955.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Singer settled in New York City, where he took up work as a journalist and columnist for The Jewish Daily Forward (פֿאָרװערטס), a Yiddish-language newspaper. After a promising start, he became despondent and for some years felt \"Lost in America\" (title of his 1974 memoir published in Yiddish; published in English in 1981).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1938, he met Alma Wassermann née Haimann (1907–1996), a German-Jewish refugee from Munich. They married in 1940, and their union seemed to release energy in him; he returned to prolific writing and to contributing to the Forward. In addition to his pen name of \"Bashevis\", he published under the pen names of \"Warszawski\" (pron. Varshavsky) during World War II, and \"D. Segal\". They lived for many years in the Belnord apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1981, Singer delivered a commencement address at the University at Albany and was presented with an honorary doctorate.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Singer died on July 24, 1991, in Surfside, Florida, after suffering a series of strokes. He was buried in Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, New Jersey. A street in Surfside, Florida is named Isaac Singer Boulevard in his honor, as is a city square in Lublin, Poland, and a street in Tel-Aviv. The full academic scholarship for undergraduate students at the University of Miami is also named in his honor.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Singer's first published story \"Oyf der elter\" (\"In Old Age\", 1925) won the literary competition of the Literarishe Bletter, where he worked as a proofreader. A reflection of his formative years in \"the kitchen of literature\" can be found in many of his later works. Singer published his first novel, Satan in Goray, in installments in the literary magazine Globus, which he had co-founded with his lifelong friend, the Yiddish poet Aaron Zeitlin in 1935. It is set in the years following 1648, when the Chmielnicki massacres, considered one of the greatest Jewish catastrophes, occurred. The story describes the Jewish messianic cult that arose in the village of Goraj. It explores the effects of the faraway false messiah, Shabbatai Zvi, on the local population. Its last chapter imitates the style of a medieval Yiddish chronicle. With a stark depiction of innocence crushed by circumstance, the novel appears to foreshadow coming danger. In his later work The Slave (1962), Singer returns to the aftermath of 1648 in a love story between a Jewish man and a gentile woman. He portrays the traumatized and desperate survivors of the historic catastrophe with even deeper understanding.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Singer became a literary contributor to The Jewish Daily Forward only after his older brother Israel died in 1944. That year, Singer published The Family Moskat in his brother's honor. His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening of Yom Kippur (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945). He was nearly forced to stop writing the novel by his editor-in-chief, Abraham Cahan, but was saved by readers who wanted the story to continue. After this, his stories—which he had published in Yiddish literary newspapers before—were printed in the Forward as well. Throughout the 1940s, Singer's reputation grew.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Singer believed in the power of his native language and thought that there was still a large audience, including in New York, who longed to read in Yiddish. In an interview in Encounter (February 1979), he said that although the Jews of Poland had died, \"something—call it spirit or whatever—is still somewhere in the universe. This is a mystical kind of feeling, but I feel there is truth in it.\"",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Some of his colleagues and readers were shocked by his all-encompassing view of human nature. He wrote about female homosexuality (\"Zeitl and Rickel\", \"Tseytl un Rikl\"), published in The Seance and Other Stories, transvestism (\"Yentl the Yeshiva Boy\" in Short Friday), and of rabbis corrupted by demons (\"Zeidlus the Pope\" in Short Friday). In those novels and stories which refer to events in his own life, he portrays himself unflatteringly (with some degree of accuracy) as an artist who is self-centered yet has a keen eye for the sufferings and tribulations of others.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Singer had many literary influences. Besides the religious texts he studied, he grew up with a rich array of Jewish folktales and worldly Yiddish detective-stories about \"Max Spitzkopf\" and his assistant \"Fuchs\". He read Russian, including Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment at the age of fourteen. He wrote in memoirs about the importance of the Yiddish translations donated in book-crates from America, which he studied as a teenager in Bilgoraj: \"I read everything: Stories, novels, plays, essays... I read Rajsen, Strindberg, Don Kaplanowitsch, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Maupassant and Chekhov.\" He studied the philosophers Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Otto Weininger. Among his Yiddish contemporaries, Singer considered his elder brother to be his greatest artistic example. He was also a life-long friend and admirer of the author and poet Aaron Zeitlin.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "His short stories, which some critics feel contain his most lasting contributions, were influenced by Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant. From Maupassant, Singer developed a finely grained sense of drama. Like those of the French master, Singer's stories can pack enormous visceral excitement in the space of a few pages. From Chekhov, Singer developed his ability to draw characters of enormous complexity and dignity in the briefest of spaces. In the foreword to his personally selected volume of his finest short stories he describes the two aforementioned writers as the greatest masters of the short story form.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Of his non-Yiddish-contemporaries, he was strongly influenced by the writings of Knut Hamsun, many of whose works he later translated, while he had a more critical attitude towards Thomas Mann, whose approach to writing he considered opposed to his own. Contrary to Hamsun's approach, Singer shaped his world not only with the egos of his characters, but also from Jewish moral tradition embodied by his father in the stories about Singer's youth. There was a dichotomy between the life his heroes lead and the life they feel they should lead—which gives his art a modernity his predecessors did not express. His themes of witchcraft, mystery and legend draw on traditional sources, but they are contrasted with a modern and ironic consciousness. They are also concerned with the bizarre and the grotesque.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "An important strand of his art is intra-familial strife, which he experienced when taking refuge with his mother and younger brother at his uncle's home in Biłgoraj. This is the central theme in Singer's family chronicles such as The Family Moskat (1950), The Manor (1967), and The Estate (1969). Some critics believe these show the influence of Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks; Singer had translated Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) into Yiddish as a young writer.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Singer always wrote and published in Yiddish. His novels were serialized in newspapers, which also published his short stories. He edited his novels and stories for publication in English, which was used as the basis for translation into other languages. He referred to his English versions as his \"second original\". This has led to an ongoing controversy whether the \"real Singer\" is the Yiddish original, with its finely tuned language and sometimes rambling construction, or in the more tightly edited American versions, where the language is usually simpler and more direct. Some of Singer's stories and novels have not been translated.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The artists who have illustrated Singer's novels, short stories, and children's books, include Raphael Soyer, Maurice Sendak, Larry Rivers, and Irene Lieblich. Singer personally selected Lieblich to illustrate two of his books for children, A Tale of Three Wishes and The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah, after seeing her paintings at an Artists Equity exhibition in New York City. A Holocaust survivor, Lieblich was from Zamosc, Poland, a town adjacent to the area where Singer was raised. As their memories of shtetl life were so similar, Singer found Lieblich's images ideally suited to illustrate his texts. Of her style, Singer wrote that \"her works are rooted in Jewish folklore and are faithful to Jewish life and the Jewish spirit.\"",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Singer published at least 18 novels, 14 children's books, a number of memoirs, essays and articles. He is best known as a writer of short stories, which have been published in more than a dozen collections. The first collection of Singer's short stories in English, Gimpel the Fool, was published in 1957. The title story was translated by Saul Bellow and published in May 1953 in the Partisan Review. Selections from Singer's \"Varshavsky-stories\" in the Daily Forward were later published in anthologies such as My Father's Court (1966). Later collections include A Crown of Feathers (1973), with notable masterpieces in between, such as The Spinoza of Market Street (1961) and A Friend of Kafka (1970). His stories and novels reflect the world of the East European Jewry in which he grew up. After his many years in America, his stories also portrayed the world of the immigrants and their pursuit of an elusive American dream, which seems always beyond reach.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Prior to Singer's winning the Nobel Prize, English translations of dozens of his stories were published in popular magazines such as Playboy and Esquire that published literary works.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Throughout the 1960s, Singer continued to write about questions of personal morality. Because of the controversial aspects of his plots, he was a target of scathing criticism from many quarters, some of it for not being \"moral\" enough, some for writing stories that no one wanted to hear. To his critics, he replied, \"Literature must spring from the past, from the love of the uniform force that wrote it, and not from the uncertainty of the future.\"",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Between 1981 and 1989, Singer contributed articles to Moment, an independent magazine which focuses on the life of the American Jewish community.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "His novel Enemies, a Love Story was adapted as a film by the same name (1989) and was quite popular, bringing new readers to his work. It features a Holocaust survivor who deals with varying desires, complex family relationships, and a loss of faith.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Singer's story, \"Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy\" was adapted into a stage version by Leah Napolin (with Singer), which was the basis for the film Yentl (1983) starring and directed by Barbra Streisand.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Alan Arkin starred as Yasha, the principal character in the film version of The Magician of Lublin (1979), which also featured Shelley Winters, Louise Fletcher, Valerie Perrine and Lou Jacobi. In the final scene, Yasha achieves his lifelong ambition of being able to fly, though not as the magic trick he had originally planned.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Perhaps the most fascinating Singer-inspired film is Mr. Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupkos Beard (1974) directed by Bruce Davidson, a renowned photographer who became Singer's neighbor. This unique film is a half-hour mixture of documentary and fantasy for which Singer wrote the script and played the leading role.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The 2007 film Love Comes Lately, starring Otto Tausig, was adapted from several of Singer's stories.",
"title": "Literary career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Singer's relationship to Judaism was complex and unconventional. He identified as a skeptic and a loner, though he felt a connection to his Orthodox roots. Ultimately, he developed a view of religion and philosophy which he called \"private mysticism\". As he put it, \"Since God was completely unknown and eternally silent, He could be endowed with whatever traits one elected to hang upon Him.\"",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Singer was raised Orthodox and learned all the Jewish prayers, studied Hebrew and learned Torah and Talmud. As he recounted in the autobiographical short story \"In My Father's Court\", he broke away from his parents in his early twenties. Influenced by his older brother, who had done the same, he began spending time with non-religious Bohemian artists in Warsaw. Although Singer believed in a God, as in traditional Judaism, he stopped attending Jewish religious services of any kind, even on the High Holy Days. He struggled throughout his life with the feeling that a kind and compassionate God would never support the great suffering he saw around him, especially the Holocaust deaths of so many of the Polish Jews from his childhood. In one interview with the photographer Richard Kaplan, he said, \"I am angry at God because of what happened to my brothers\": Singer's older brother died suddenly in February 1944, in New York, of a thrombosis; his younger brother perished in Soviet Russia around 1945, after being deported with his mother and wife to Southern Kazakhstan in Stalin's purges.",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Despite the complexities of his religious outlook, Singer lived in the midst of the Jewish community throughout his life. He did not seem to be comfortable unless he was surrounded by Jews; particularly Jews born in Europe. Although he spoke English, Hebrew, and Polish fluently, he always considered Yiddish his natural tongue. He always wrote in Yiddish and he was the last notable American author to be writing in this language. After he had achieved success as a writer in New York, Singer and his wife began spending time during the winters in Miami with its Jewish community, many of them New Yorkers.",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Eventually, as senior citizens, they moved to Miami. They identified closely with the Ashkenazi Jewish community. After his death, Singer was buried in a traditional Jewish ceremony in a Jewish cemetery in Paramus, New Jersey.",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Singer was a prominent Jewish vegetarian for the last 35 years of his life and often included vegetarian themes in his works. In his short story The Slaughterer, he described the anguish of an appointed slaughterer trying to reconcile his compassion for animals with his job of killing them. He felt that the ingestion of meat was a denial of all ideals and all religions: \"How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?\" When asked if he had become a vegetarian for health reasons, he replied: \"I did it for the health of the chickens.\"",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Vegetarianism is a recurrent theme in Singer's novel Enemies, a Love Story. One character, a Holocaust survivor, declares that \"God himself eats meat—human flesh. There are no vegetarians—none. If you had seen what I have seen, you would know that God approves of slaughter,\" and another character points out \"that what the Nazis had done to the Jews, man was doing to animals.\" In The Letter Writer, Singer wrote \"In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka,\" which became a classic reference in the comparison of animal exploitation with the Holocaust.",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the preface to Steven Rosen's Food for Spirit: Vegetarianism and the World Religions (1986), Singer wrote, \"When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard.\"",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Singer described himself as \"conservative,\" adding that \"I don't believe by flattering the masses all the time we really achieve much.\" His conservative side was most apparent in his Yiddish writing and journalism, where he was openly hostile to Marxist sociopolitical agendas. In Forverts he once wrote, \"It may seem like terrible apikorses [heresy], but conservative governments in America, England, France, have handled Jews no worse than liberal governments.... The Jew's worst enemies were always those elements that the modern Jew convinced himself (really hypnotized himself) were his friends.\"",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Issac Bashevis was ambivalent on the question of Zionism, and he viewed the immigration of Jews to Palestine critically. As a Polish Jew from Warsaw, he was historically confronted with the question of the Jewish fate during Nazi persecution. He exercised social responsibility towards the immigration of European and American Jewish groups to Israel after World War II. Strictly based on Jewish family doctrine rather than politics and socialism, his former partner Runya Pontsch and his son Israel Zamir emigrated to Palestine in 1938, in order to live a typical kibbutz life there. In his story The Certificate (1967), which has autobiographical character, he fictionalizes this question from a time in the mid-1920s when he was himself considering moving to the British Mandate Palestine. The protagonist of the story decides to leave Palestine, however, to move back into his shtetl. For Singer then, Zionism becomes the \"road not taken\". However, through his journalistic assignments in late 1955, Singer made his first trip to Israel, accompanied by his wife Alma. Describing the trip to his Yiddish readers, he introduces the world for the first time to the young state of Israel. In a change of mind, he then describes the Land of Israel as a \"reality, and part of everyday life.\" Interestingly enough, he notes the cultural tensions between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish people during the boat trip from Naples to Haifa and during his stay in the new nation. With the description of Jewish immigration camps in the new land, he foresaw the difficulties and socio-economic tensions in Israel, and hence turned back to his critical views of Zionism. He scrutinized the ideology further, as he was advancing his thought of critical Zionism.",
"title": "Views and opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Singer is the only American Nobel Laureate in Literature to not receive a Pulitzer Prize award or citation.",
"title": "Legacy and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Note: Publication dates refer to English editions, not the Yiddish originals, which often predate the versions in translation by 10 to 20 years.",
"title": "Published works"
}
]
| Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish-born Jewish-American novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, essayist, and translator. Some of his works were adapted for the theater. He wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated his own works into English with the help of editors and collaborators. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. A leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, he was awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, one in Children's Literature for his memoir A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw (1970) and one in Fiction for his collection A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1974). | 2002-01-14T22:29:47Z | 2023-12-29T07:43:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Bashevis_Singer |
15,513 | Islamic eschatology | Islamic eschatology (Arabic: عِلْم آخر الزمان في الإسلام, ‘ilm ākhir az-zamān fī al-islām) is a field of study in Islam concerning future events that would happen in the end times. It is primarily based on sources from the Quran and Sunnah. Aspects from this field of study include the signs of the final age, the destruction of the universe and Judgement Day.
The general consensus of Muslim scholars agree there would be tremendous and distinctive signs before the world ends. Among which would be an era of trials and tribulations, a time of immorality followed by mighty wars, worldwide unnatural phenomena and the return of justice to the world. Defining figures are also prophesied such as the Mahdi, and the Second Coming of Isa (known as Jesus in Christianity) who bring about a heavenly victory against Dajjal (Antichrist according to Christianity) ending with the release of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) to the world. Once all the events are completed, the universe shall be destroyed and every human being would be resurrected to be held accountable for their deeds.
Alike with other tenets of Islamic faith, sources of Islamic eschatology are taken from two primary sources, namely the Quran itself and Sunnah literature, which are accounts of the traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad during his lifetime. These two foundational sources would pave the way for interpretations by later scholars such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Kathir, and Muhammad al-Bukhari.
The arrival of Judgement Day is prophesied to be preceded by apocalyptic signs of its arrival in various hadith collections.
The signs are divided into two categories. Minor signs are uneventful signs that happen in the timeframe of centuries. Major signs are seismic events that happen very rapidly and is the immediate precursor to the end.
Savior and evil-doing figures that appear in the major signs include:
Small Resurrection (al-qiyamah al-sughra) happens, when the soul is separated from the body. The soul then turns to the afterlife (akhira or malakut), where it is interrogated by two angels, Munkar and Nakir.
In Islam, "the promise and threat" (waʿd wa-waʿīd) of Judgement Day (Arabic: یوم القيامة, romanized: Yawm al-qiyāmah, lit. 'Day of Resurrection' or Arabic: یوم الدین, romanized: Yawm ad-din, lit. 'Day of Judgement'), has been called "the dominant message" of the Quran, and is considered a fundamental tenet of faith by all Muslims, and one of the six articles of Islamic faith.
The two themes "central to the understanding of Islamic eschatology" are:
The trials, tribulations and details associated with it are detailed in the Quran and the hadith (sayings of Muhammad); these have been elaborated on in creeds, Quranic commentaries (tafsịrs), theological writing, eschatological manuals to provide more details and a sequence of events on the Day. Islamic expositors and scholarly authorities who have explained the subject in detail include al-Ghazali, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Majah, Muhammad al-Bukhari, and Ibn Khuzaymah.
After the final signs of The Hour – the defeat of the Sufyani; the end of the just reign of the Mahdi and/or Jesus; the rising of the sun from the west; the peaceful death all believers from inhalation of a lethal breeze – a trumpet will blast, signaling the destruction of earth (Q.69:13–16). A second blast will signal the death of any being still living.
The dead will then be resurrected and Afterlife commence with yet another trumpet blast, (different sources give different numbers of trumpet blasts) The first to arise will be Muhammad, followed by the other members of the Muslim community, with all gathering at the place of assembly [al-maḥshar]. In between resurrection and the actual judgement will be an agonizing time of waiting (Q.21:103, Q.37:20) for unbelievers.
At divine judgement, the resurrected will stand in a grand assembly, each person's Book of Deeds – where "every small and great thing is recorded" – will be read, and ultimate judgement made. The resurrected will then walk over the bridge of As-Sirāt, those judged worthy for the Garden continuing to their heavenly abode, those damned to The Fire, falling off the bridge into the pit of Jahannam. There will also be a punishment of the grave (for those who disbelieved) between death and the resurrection.
Not everyone consigned to hell will remain there, as it is believed by both scholars and lay Muslims that "all but the mushrikun, those who have committed the worst sin of impugning the tawḥīd of God, have the possibility of being saved;" and God's intercession to save sinners from hellfire is a "major theme" in popular Islamic stories about Judgement Day.
Scholars did not always agree on questions of who might go to hell; whether the creation of heaven and hell would wait until Judgement Day; whether there was a state between heaven and hell; whether those consigned to hell would be there for eternity.
"Fear, hope, and finally ... faith", have been given (by Jane I. Smith, Yvonne Y. Haddad) as motivations offered by the Quran for the belief of Muslims in an Afterlife, although some (Abū Aʿla al-Mawdūdī) have asserted it is simply a matter of reason:
The fact is that whatever Muhammad (peace be upon him) has told us about life after death is clearly borne out by reason. Although our belief in that Day is based upon our implicit trust in the Messenger of God, rational reflection not only confirms this belief but it also reveals that Muhammad's (peace be upon him) teachings in this respect are much more reasonable and understandable than all other view-points about life after death.
One of the primary beliefs pertaining to Islamic eschatology during the Early Muslim Period was that all humans could receive God's mercy and were worthy of salvation. These early depictions even show how small, insignificant deeds were enough to warrant mercy. Most early depictions of the end of days depict only those who reject Tawhid, (the concept of monotheism), are subject to eternal punishment. However, everybody is held responsible for their actions. Concepts of reward and punishment were seen as beyond this world, a view that is also held today.
Although Islamic philosophers and scholars were in general agreement on a bodily resurrection after death, interpretations differ in regard to the specifications of bodily resurrection. Some of the theories are the following:
According to scholars Jane I. Smith, Yvonne Y. Haddad, "the vast majority of believers", understand verses of the Quran on Jannah (and hellfire) "to be real and specific, anticipating them" with joy or terror. Besides the material notion of the paradise, descriptions of it are also interpreted as allegories, whose meaning is the state of joy believers will experience in the afterlife. For some theologians, seeing God is not a question of sight, but of awareness of God's presence. Although early Sufis, such as Hallaj, took the descriptions of paradise literal, later Sufi traditions usually stressed out the allegorical meaning.
On the issue of Judgement Day, early Muslims debated whether scripture should be interpreted literally or figuratively, and the school of thought that prevailed (Ashʿarī) "affirmed that such things as" connected with Judgement day as "the individual records of deeds (including the paper, pen, and ink with which they are inscribed), the bridge, the balance, and the pond" are "realities", and "to be understood in a concrete and literal sense."
According to Smith and Haddad, "The great majority of contemporary Muslim writers, ... choose not to discuss the afterlife at all". Islamic Modernists, according to Smith and Haddad, express a "kind of embarrassment with the elaborate traditional detail concerning life in the grave and in the abodes of recompense, called into question by modern rationalists". Consequently, most of "modern Muslim Theologians" either "silence the issue" or reaffirm "the traditional position that the reality of the afterlife must not be denied but that its exact nature remains unfathomable".
The beliefs of Pakistani modernist Muhammad Iqbal (died 1938), were similar to the Sufi "spiritual and internalized interpretations of hell" of ibn ʿArabī, and Rumi, seeing paradise and hell "primarily as metaphors for inner psychic" developments. Thus hellfire is actually a state of realization of one's failures as a human being", and not a supernatural subterranean realm. Egyptian modernist Muhammad ʿAbduh, thought it was sufficient to believe in the existence of an afterlife with rewards and punishment to be a true believer, even if you ignored "clear" (ẓāhir) hadith about hell.
Some postmodernists have found at least one sahih (authentic) hadith on hell unacceptable—the tradition of Muhammad stating, "most people in hell are women" has been explained as an attempt to "legitimate social control over women" (Smith and Haddad), or perpetuate "the moral, social, political, sectarian hierarchies" of medieval Islam (Lange). Amina Wadud notes that the Qur'an does not mention any specific gender when talking about hell, Q.43:74–76, for example, states that "the guilty are immortal in hell's torment"; and when discussing paradise, includes women, Q.3:14–15, for example, states that "Beautiful of mankind is love of the joys (that come) from women and offspring..."
In terms of classical Islam, "the only options" afforded by the Qur'an for the resurrected are an eternity of horrible punishments of The Fire or the delightful rewards of The Garden. Islamic tradition has raised the question of whether or not consignment to the Fire is eternal, or eternal for all, but "has found no reason to amend" the limit of two options in the afterlife. But one verse in the Quran has "led to a great deal of speculation concerning the possibility of a third place".
"What some have called" the "Limbo" Theory of Islam, as described by Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad, implies that some individuals are not immediately sent to The Fire or The Garden, but are held in a state of limbo. Smith and Haddad believe it is "very doubtful" that the Qur'anic meant for al-aʿrāf to be understood as "an abode for those ... in an intermediate category, but this has come to be the most commonly held interpretation".
As for who the inhabitants of the inhabits al-aʿrāf are, the "majority of exegetes" support the theory that they are persons whose actions balance in terms of merit and demerit – whose good deeds keep them from the Fire and whose evil deeds keep them from the Garden. They will be the last to enter the Garden, at the mercy of their Lord.
There was considerable debate regarding whether heaven and hell exists at the current moment. The Mu'tazila argued that since the Quran states that once the trumpet sounds, all except God will be destroyed, this would include the destruction of heaven and hell. However, the Ash'ariya argued that although the trumpet's sounding will precede all being destroyed, creation was a "constant process". Māturīdism also defends the idea that paradise and hell are coexisting with the temporal world. The attributes of paradise and hell would already take effect on this world (dunya). Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi (944–983) states that the purpose of simultaneous existence of both worlds is that they inspire hope and fear among humans.
Evidence that Jannah and the Fire already exists is supported by a number of verses in the Quran. It is implied someone has gone to the Garden or the hell (3:169, 36:13-26, 66:10, 3:10-11, 6:93). In the Story of Adam and Eve, they once resided in Garden of Eden, which is often considered to be Jannah. This identification, however, is not universal. Al-Balluti (887 – 966) reasoned that the Garden of Eden lacked the perfection and eternal character of a final paradise: Adam and Eve lost the primordial paradise, while the paradisiacal afterlife lasts forever; if Adam and Eve were in the otherworldly paradise, the devil (Shaiṭān) could not have entered and deceive them, since there is no evil or idle talk in paradise; Adam slept in his garden, but there is no sleep in paradise.
Besides the Quranic allusions, hadiths are taken into consideration to evaluate the afterlife's coexistence with the temporary world. Reports pertaining to the Night Journey (Mi'raj) state that Muhammad saw visions of both destinations and creatures inhabiting it. Thus, heaven and hell are usually regarded as coexisting with the current world. According to another common tradition, Muhammad is supposed to have taken a pomegranate from jannah, and shared it with Ali, as recorded by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. However, some scholars, like Ghazali, reject that Muhammad grabbed the fruit, argued he had only a vision instead.
In Classical Islam, there was a consensus among the theological community regarding the finality of Jannah (also called Heaven, paradise, the Gardens); after Judgement Day, faithful servants of God would find themselves here for eternity. However, some practitioners in the early Muslim community held that the other abode of the hereafter (hell/Jahannam), or at least part of that abode, might not be eternal. This belief was based upon an interpretations of scripture that since the upper, less tortuous levels of hell were reserved for Muslims who were only in hell for as long as God deemed necessary. Once Muslims had their sins purged and were allowed into heaven, these levels would be empty and the need for their existence gone. These interpretations are centered on verses 11:106–107 in the Quran, stating,
This possibility that God may yet commute a sentence to hell, interprets (parts of) hell as being similar in function to purgatory in Christianity, with the exception to this comparison being that hell in this context is for the punishment of the sinner's complete body, as opposed to only the soul being punished in purgatory. Arguments questioning the permanence of hell take the view that hell is not necessarily solely there to punish the evil, but to purify their souls, whereas the purpose of the Garden is simply to reward the righteous. Evidence against the concept of hell being in part temporary, is the Quran verse stating that hell will endure as long as Heaven will, which has been established as eternal.
Orthodox Islam teaches the doctrine of Qadar (Arabic: قدر, aka Predestination, or divine destiny in Islam), whereby everything that has happened and will happen in the universe—including sinful human behavior—is commanded by God. At the same time, we human beings are responsible for our actions and rewarded or punished for them in the Afterlife.
Qadar/predestination/divine destiny, is one of Sunni Islam's six articles of faith and is mentioned in the Quran.
Of course, the fate of human beings in the Afterlife is especially crucial. It is reflected in Quranic verses such as
Muhammad also talked about the doctrine of predestination multiple times during his mission. Thus the consensus of the Sunni Muslim community has been that scripture indicates predestination. Nonetheless, some Muslim theologians have argued against predestination, (including at least some Shia Muslims, whose article of faith includes Adalah (justice), but not Qadar. At least some Shia – such as Naser Makarem Shirazi – denounce predestination).
Opponents of predestination in early Islam, (al-Qadariyah, Muʿtazila) argued that if God has already determined everything that will happen, God's human creation cannot really have free will over decisions to do good or evil, or control of whether they suffer eternal torment in Jahannam—which is something that (the opponents believe) a just God would never allow to happen. While Qadar is the consensus of Muslims, it is also an issue scholars discourage debate and discussion about. Hadith narrate Muhammad warning his followers to “refrain from speaking about qadar”; and according to the creed of Al-Tahawi, "the principle of providence" is such a secret that God did not let even angels, prophets and messengers in on the mystery.
Scholars do not all agree on who will end up in Jannah and who in Jahannam, and the criteria for deciding. Issues include whether all Muslims, even those who've committed major sins, will end up in Jannah; whether any non-Muslims will be saved or all will go to Jahannam.
According to the Quran, the basic criterion for salvation in the afterlife is the belief in the oneness of God (tawḥīd), angels, revealed books, messengers, as well as repentance to God, and doing good deeds (amal salih). This is qualified by the doctrine that ultimately salvation can only be attained through God's judgement.
Muslim scholars mostly agree that ultimately all Muslims will be saved (though many may need to be purified by a spell in hellfire but disagree about the possibility for salvation of non-Muslims.
The idea that jinn as well as humans could find salvation was widely accepted, Like humans, their destiny in the hereafter depends on whether they accept God's guidance. The surah Al-Jinn says:
Angels, who are not subject to desire and do not commit sin, are found in both paradise and the Fire – punishing sinners in hell, and praising and serving humans (and jinn) in paradise.
Muslim scholars arguing in favor of non-Muslims' being able to enter paradise cite the verse:
Those arguing against non-Muslim salvation regard this verse to have applied only until the arrival of Muhammad, after which it was abrogated by another verse:
Although the Quran acknowledges the Bible as gospel, rejecting Muhammad and his message is seen as a rejection of salvation by them.
According to Mohammad Hassan Khalil, on the subject of whether self-proclaimed non-Muslims might be allowed into Jannah, Islamic theologians can be classified as
(In addition there are those who could be described as 'interim inclusivists' or 'ultimate universalists'.)
Based on these categories, four "well-known and particularly influential Muslim thinkers" can be sorted as:
Ashʿarism (/æʃəˈriː/; Arabic: أشعرية: al-ʾAshʿarīyah), one of the main Sunni schools of Islamic theology, founded by the Islamic scholar, Shāfiʿī jurist, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī in the 10th century, is known for an optimistic perspective on salvation for Muslims, repeatedly addressing God's mercy over God's wrath. However, according to Ash'arism, God is neither obligated to punish disobedience nor to reward obedience.
Ash'aris hold revelation necessary to understand good and evil, as well as religious truths. Accordingly, revelation is necessary to reach moral and religious truths and thus, people who hear from a prophet or messenger are obligated to follow the revealed religion. However, those who have not received revelation are not obligated, and can hope for salvation.
Ash'arite scholar al-Ghazali divided non-Muslims into three categories for purposes of the Afterlife according to Mohammad Hassan Khalil:
Of these three, only the last group would be punished. Ghazali distinguished between the "saved" and "those who will attain success". Therefore, righteous non-Muslims will neither enter hell nor Jannah, but will stay in al-Araf (a realm between Jannah and Jahannam inhabited by those who are neither entirely evil nor entirely good).
Māturīdism (Arabic: الماتريدية: al-Māturīdiyyah) is also one of the main Sunni schools of Islamic theology developed and formalized by the Islamic scholar, Ḥanafī jurist Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī in the 10th century. Māturīdi scholars are thought to have been less optimistic about the chances of sinners entering paradise than Ash'aris, but more optimistic than Muʿtazila. They agree that Muslims who have committed grave sins will be punished but generally acknowledge that even these people will eventually enter paradise. Regarding the fate of non-Muslims, scholars have different opinions. Māturīdism holds people responsible for believing in a creator due to their intellectual capacities, even if they haven't heard about any prophetic mission. While some (like Rifat Atay) regard Māturīdism to be exclusivistic, only allowing people who are Muslims to enter paradise, others argue that Māturīdi understood that "to believe in Islam" meant having a subjective conceptualization of God and his laws by reason alone. This fits the doctrine, upheld by Māturīdism, that human reason suffices to grasp good and evil, and arrive at religious truths. Accordingly, people are judged by their degree of understanding God's universal law, not by their adherence to a particular belief system. In modern times, Yohei Matsuyama largely agrees with this interpretation. According to Abu'l-Qasim Ishaq, children cannot be considered unbelievers, thus all of them go to paradise.
Muʿtazila (Arabic: المعتزلة al-muʿtazilah) emphasized God's justice, free will, and the responsibility of each human being for their actions. They have been called the "best known exponents" of Qadariyah, the idea that human free will was necessary "as a guarantee of divine justice". Compared to Maturidi and Ashʿarī, Muʿtazila had the least amount of "salvific optimism". The "divine threat" (al-wa'id) and "divine promise" (al wa'd) became key tenets of the Mu'tazilites, who stressed that they applied to both Muslims and non-Muslims. This meant that those who committed grave or heinous sins (Kabirah), even Muslims, might denied entry to paradise forever. The only way for a grave sinner to be forgiven, many theologians believed, is by repentance (tawba). Mu'tazilites believed God's justice obligated Him to forgive those who had repented (other schools believed He was not so constrained). The Mu'tazilites stress on individual accountability meant a rejection of intercession (Shafa'a) on behalf of Muhammad. Another controversial belief of many (but not all) Mu'tazilites was that paradise and hell would be created only after Judgement Day. This meant rejection of the commonly accepted idea that paradise and hell coexist with the contemporary world. Their reasoning was that since God does everything for a purpose, and since paradise and hell are created to reward or punish people, they will only be created after judegement has been passed on people and they are assigned to these abodes.
Like most Sunni, Shia Islam hold that all Muslims will eventually go to Jannah.
On the fate of non-Muslims in the hereafter, Shia Islam (or at least cleric Ayatullah Mahdi Hadavi Tehrani of Al-Islam.org), takes a view similar to Ash'arism. Tehrani divides non-Muslims into two groups: the heedless and stubborn who will go to hell and the ignorant who will not "if they are truthful to their own religion":
(At least one Twelver Shia scholar 'Allama al-Hilli, insists that not only will non-Muslims be damned but suggests Sunni Muslim will be as well, as it is not possible for any Muslim to be ignorant of "the imamate and of the Return", and thus "whoever is ignorant of any of them is outside the circle of believers and worthy of eternal punishment." This statement is not indicative of all Shia eschatological thought.)
Also like mainstream schools, and unlike Muʿtazila, Twelver Shia hold that Jannah and hellfire "exist at present ... according to the Qur`an and ahadith". However, they will not "become fully apparent and represented" until Judgement Day. As for three other issues in Islamic eschatology:
these three "types" of jannah (or Jahannam) are "all simply manifestations of the ultimate, eternal heaven and hell".
Modernist scholars Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida rejected the notion that the People of the Book would be excluded from Jannah, based on Q.4:123-124 (see above). The Fate of the unlearned is also a matter of dispute within Islamic theology.
Turkish theologian Süleyman Ateş cites the Quran 5:66 to argue that there are good and bad people in any religion, and that some Muslims may not enter paradise, but those who believe without doubt in the hereafter and a God without partners, and who do good and useful deeds may enter paradise, whatever their religions.
On the other hand, those who argue that only Islam is the "completed" and "perfected", and that it is necessary to believe in the all teaching of God – the prophets, the angels etc. – insist that only Muslims can enter paradise.
While "some traditional and contemporary commentators" have interpreted the Quran as condemning all Jews, Farid Esack argues this condemnation is neither "universal" nor "eternal", and asks, 'if the Qur'an is to consign the Jews to eternal damnation, then what becomes of the sacred text as a means of guidance for all humankind? Would that vision too be damned?'
An example of a line criticizing the Jews can be found in Surah 5:
A Sahih hadith concerning Jews and one of the signs of the coming of Judgement Day has been quoted many times, (it became a part of the charter of Hamas).
However, some scripture praises the dedication of Jews to monotheism, and this verse of the Qur'an in surah 3, can be interpreted as taking a more reconciliatory tone:
After reconciling the different descriptions, one can conclude that the transgressions of the "apes and pigs" are not indicative of the entire community, and that while some Jews are on their way to damnation, others are not.
Prior to the 20th century, Islam had "strongly emphasized the hereafter" (ākhira). Desire to counter colonialism and "achieve material and technological parity with the West" turned modern thinkers to stress this world (dunyā), without suggesting ākhira was less important. The focus on end times/Eschatology in Islam has tended to occur among those less exposed to scholarly learning. In the 1980s however, it again became much more popular generally. Islamic leaders and scholars have always urged Muslim to be prepared for Judgement Day, but "the particulars of the end of the world are not a mainstream concern in Islam," according to Graeme Wood.
However, in 2012 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 50% or more respondents in several Muslim-majority countries (Lebanon, Turkey, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) expected the Mahdi (the final redeemer according to Islam) to return during their lifetime. The expectation is most common in Afghanistan (83%), followed by Iraq (72%), Turkey (68%), Tunisia (67%), Malaysia (62%), Pakistan (60%), Lebanon (56%), and Muslims in southern Thailand (57%).
Stories of end times and doomsday tend to be passed on as bedtime stories or informal talk among the lay Muslims, rather than in the Imam's Friday khutbah. "Even Muslims with low levels of knowledge have heard parts of parts of it", according to scholar Jean Pierre Filiu. In Islamic bookstores, their "dramatic and sensational stories of final battles between good and evil, supernatural powers, the ultimate rise of a Muslim elite," are naturally more attention getting than more orthodox/studious works on prayer, purity or the lives of exemplary Muslims. More official Muslim sources have often either kept quiet about apocalyptic hadith or outright denied their existence—an example being Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations who stated "There is no apocalyptic bloodbath in Islam."
Popular Islamic pamphlets and tracts on the End Times have always been in circulation, but until around 2010 their "impact on political and theological thinking was practically nil" among Sunnis. Interest in the End Times is particularly strong among jihadis and "since the mid-2000s, the apocalyptic currents in jihadism have surged." As of 2011, the belief that the end of the world is at hand and will be precipitated by an apocalyptic Great Battle has been noted as a "fast-growing belief in Muslim countries" though still a minority belief.
According to J.-P. Filiu, the uprising of the (Shiʿi) Mahdi Army in Iraq and July 2006 war between Israel and (Shiʿi) Hizbullah are "at least in part" a consequence of "mounting eschatological expectations" coming from copious literature preaching that the return of the Hidden Imam was imminent; literature emanating from the Shiʿi seminaries and scholars of holy city of Najaf, Iraq, from Lebanon, and from Iran during the administration of its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One Shiʿi Ayatollah, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, revered as "the fifth martyr" of Shiʿi Islam (killed by Saddam Hussein), went to the trouble of trying to explain how the Hidden Imam could be over 1000 years old, and why the present is a propitious time for the reappearance of him. Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army waged a violent struggle against the American military through 2004, and its ranks swelled with thousands of recruits. Muqtada's political faction won seats in parliament. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency (2005-2013), he shared with Iranians his "avowed conviction" that believers must actively work for the Mahdi's reappearance, despite this bringing him "into conflict with the highest authorities of Shiism".
"Dramatic and sensational stories" of the apocalypse first made an impact in the mid-1980s when Said Ayyub's Al-Masīh al-Dajjāl (The AntiChrist) started a whole new genre of Islamic "apocalyptic fiction" or "millenarian speculation" throughout the Arab world. The book was so successful Ayyub went on to write a half-dozen other spinoff books, inspired imitators who enjoyed even greater success (Muhammad Izzat Arif, Muhammad Isa Dawud, and Mansur AbdelHakim).
The book (and the genre) was noteworthy for rupturing the "organic link between Islamic tradition and the last days of the world", using Western sources (such as Gustave Le Bon and William Guy Carr) that previously would have been ignored; and lack of Sahih Bukhari (i.e. top quality) hadith (he does quote Ibn Kathir and some hadith "repeated at second hand"); and for an obsessively anti-Jewish point of view ("in all great transformations of thought, there is a Jewish factor, avowed and plain, or else hidden and secret", "the Jews are planning the Third World War in order to eliminate the Islamic world and all opposition to Israel", and cover art featuring a grotesque cartoon figure with a Star of David and large hooked nose).
Unlike traditional popular works of Islamic eschatology that kept close to scripture and classical manuals of eschatology in describing al-Dajjāl, Said Ayyub portrayed the Dajjāl as 1) the true Jewish messiah, that Jews had been waiting for, 2) a figure who will appear or reappear not only in end times, but one who has been working throughout the history of humanity to create havoc with such diabolical success that human history is really "only a succession of nefarious maneuvers" by him. Intermediaries of al-dajjal (according to Ayyub) include St. Paul the Apostle, who (Ayyub maintains) created Christianity by distorting the true story of Jesus, the Emperor Constantine who made possible "the Crusader state in service to the Jews", the Freemasons, Napoleon, the United States of America, Communists, Israel, etc. He concludes that the dajjal is hiding in Palestine (but will also "appear in Khurasan as the head of an expansionist state") and the Great Battle between Muslims and his forces will be World War III fought in the Middle East.
Later books, The Hidden Link between the AntiChrist, the Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, and Flying Saucers (1994), by Muhammad Isa Dawud, for example, move even farther away from traditional themes, disclosing that the Anti-Christ journeyed from the Middle East to the archipelago of Bermuda in the 8th century CE to make it his home base and from whence he fomented the French Revolution and other mischief, and now sends flying saucers to patrol Egypt and prepare for his eventual triumphal return to Jerusalem.
The success of the genre provoked a "counteroffensive" by pious conservatives (Abdellatif Ashur, Muhammad Bayyumi Magdi, and Muhammad Shahawi) disturbed by the liberties Said Ayyub and others had taken with Islamic doctrine.
In the early 1980s, when Abdullah Azzam, called on Muslims around the world to join the jihad in Afghanistan, he considered the fight "to be a sign that the end times were imminent". Also around that time, popular Islamic writers, such as Said Ayyub, started blaming Islamic decline in the face of the Western world, not on lack of technology and development, but on the forces of the Dajjal.
Al-Qaeda used "apocalyptic predictions in both its internal and external messaging" according to Jessica Stern, and its use of "the name Khorasan, a region that includes part of Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, and from which, it is prophesied, the Mahdi will emerge alongside an army bearing black flags", was thought to be a symbol of end times. But these claims were "mostly symbolic", and according to Wood, Bin Laden "rarely mentioned" the Apocalypse and when he did, "he implied he would be long dead when it arrived" (a reflection of his more "elite" background according to Will McCants). According to J.-P. Filiu, out of the mass of Al-Qaeda documents seized after the fall of the Taliban, only one letter made any reference to the apocalypse.
A prominent jihadist, Abu Musʿab al-Sūri, (called a "sophisticated strategist" and "articulate exponent of the modern jihad"), somewhat independent and critical of Al-Qaeda, was also much more interested in end times. He wrote, "I have no doubt that we have entered into the age of battles and tribulations [zāman al-malāhim wal-fitan]" He devoted the last 100 pages of his magnum opus on jihad (A Call to Global Islamic Resistance, made available online around 2005) to matters such as the proper chronology and location of related battles and other activities of the Mahdi, the Antichrist, the mountain of gold to be found in the Euphrates river, the Sufyani, Gog and Magog, etc.
Abu Musʿab al Zarqawi, the founder of what would become the Islamic State "injected" the apocalyptic message into jihad. ISIS has evoked "the apocalyptic tradition much more explicitly" than earlier jihadis. Dabiq, Syria – a town understood "in some versions" of the eschatological "narrative to be a possible location for the final apocalyptic battle" – was captured by ISIS and made its capital. ISIS also declared its "intent to conquer Constantinople" – Muslims conquering Constantinople being another end times prophesy. Interviews by the New York Times, and Jurgen Todenhöfer with many dozens of Muslims who had traveled to fight with Islamic State, and by Graeme Wood with Islamic State supporters elsewhere, found "messianic expectation" a strong motivator to join Islamic State.
While Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are Sunni, Shia insurgents/militants have also been "drawn to the battlefield" by "apocalyptic belief", according to William McCants, who quotes a Shia fighter in Iraq saying, “'I was waiting for the day when I will fight in Syria. Thank God he chose me to be one of the Imam's soldiers.'”
Some dissident Shiʿa in Iraq, oppose not only Sunni, US and Iraqi government forces, but the Shiʿi religious hierarchy as well. In Najaf, in late January 2007, at least 200 were killed in the Battle of Najaf, when several hundred members of an armed Iraqi Shi'a messianic sect known as the Soldiers of Heaven or Jund As-Samāʾ(Arabic: جند السماء), allegedly attempted to start a "messianic insurrection" during the holy day of Ashura in the holy city of Najaf; planning to disguise themselves as pilgrims and kill leading Shi'a clerics. The group allegedly believed that spreading chaos would hasten the return of the 12th Imam/Mahdi, or alternately, that their leader, Dia Abdul Zahra Kadim, was the awaited Mahdi. The next year during Ashura a reported 18 officers and 53 militia members were killed in clashes between "millenarian rebels" and police, the violence blamed on followers of one Ahmad al-Hassan, a man claiming the Hidden Iman had designated him as his (the Hidden Imam's) representative (wassi), and who accused Ayatollahs/Shia clerics of being guilty of "aberration and treason, of occupation and tyranny".
Jihadis of the Islamic State see the fulfillment of many of the "lesser signs" of the coming of Judgement Day in current events. Its generally agreed that Israel Arab wars have been wars between Muslims and Jews (which were prophesied), and that moral standards have declined leading to rampant fornication, alcohol consumption, and music listening. "A slave giving birth to her master" can happen when the child of a slave woman and the slave's owner inherits the slave after the owner's death—slavery being practiced in the Islamic State (until its defeat). An embargo of Iraq is alleged to be foretold in the hadith "Iraq would withhold its dirhams and qafiz". That Muslim states are being led by those who do not deserve to lead them, is an article of faith among jihadis and many other Muslims. ISIS alleges that worship of the pre-Islamic deity al-Lat is being practiced by its Shia enemy Hezbollah. The naked shepherds who will build tall buildings is interpreted to refer to Gulf State builders of skyscrapers are "only a generation or two out of desert poverty".
But the Islamic State is also attempting to fulfill prophecies itself to hasten end times. Zarqawi published "communiqués detailing the fulfillment of specific predictions" found in a famous book on jihad and end times called, A Call to a Global Islamic Resistance by Abu Musab al Suri. His successor, Al-Baghdadi, took "the fulfillment of apocalyptic portents even more seriously". According to Hassan Abbas, at least part of ISIS's motivation in killing and otherwise provoking Shia is to "deliberately ... instigate a war between Sunnis and Shi'a, in the belief that a sectarian war would be a sign that the final times has arrived"; and also explains the ISIS Siege of Kobanî: "In the eschatological literature, there is reference to crisis in Syria and massacre of Kurds—this is why Kobane is important."(The town of 45,000 was under siege by ISIS from September 2014 to January 2015.)
Thus, "ISIS's obsession with the end of the world" helps explain its lack of interest in the "ordinary moral rules" of the temporal world, according to Jessica Stern. If you are "participating in a cosmic war between good and evil", (and if everyone will be dead and then resurrected relatively soon anyway), pedestrian concerns about saving the lives of the innocent are of little concern.
Among the problems critics see with some of the concepts of, and attention given to, the eschatology of Islam, are its effect on the socio-economic health of the Muslim world, the basis of the scripture (particularly the hadith) dealing with end times, and the rational implausibility of some of the theological concepts such as resurrection of the dead.
Mustafa Akyol criticizes the current focus of the Muslim community on apocalypticism and the use of the forces of the Dajjal to explain stagnation in the Muslim world in the past two centuries vis-à-vis the West (and now East Asia). He argues that if supernatural evil is believed to be the cause of the problems of Muslims, then practical solutions such as "science, economic development and liberal democracy" will be ignored in favor of divine intervention. (On the other hand, a sahih hadith reports Muhammad saying that "If the Final Hour comes while you have a shoot of a plant in your hands and it is possible to plant it before the Hour comes, you should plant it.")
Western scholars (William McCants, Jane Smith, Yvonne Haddad, Jean-Pierre Filiu) agree that the apocalyptic narratives are strongly connected to the early jihad wars against the Byzantine Empire and civil wars against other Muslims. McCants, writes that the fitan ("tribulations") of the minor and lesser signs come from the fitan of the early Islamic civil wars (First Fitna (656–661 CE), Second Fitna (c. 680/683–c. 685/692 CE), Third Fitna (744–750/752 CE)), where Muhammad's companions (Sahabah) and successor generations (Tabi'un and Taba Tabi'in) fought each other for political supremacy. "Before and after each tribulation, partisans on both sides circulated prophecies in the name of the Prophet to support their champion. With time, the context was forgotten but the prophecies remained." Smith and Haddad also write that "the political implications of the whole millennial idea in Islam, especially as related to the understanding of the mahdi and the rise of the 'Abbasids in the second Islamic century, are very difficult to separate from the eschatological ones." They also argue that it's "difficult to determine whether" Muḥammad "actually anticipated the arrival" the Mahdi as "an eschatological figure" – despite the fact that "most of the traditions about the Mahdi are credited to Muḥammad." Filiu has also stated that "the apocalyptic narrative was decisively influenced by the conflicts that filled Islam's early years, campaigns and jihad against the Byzantine Empire and recurrent civil wars among Muslims." Consequently, the reliability of hadith on end times has been questioned.
Skepticism of the concept of the resurrection of the dead has been part of both "the compatriots" of Muhammad and the "rational and scientifically-infused" inhabitants of the contemporary world.
The fact of the resurrection of the body has been of continuing importance to Muslims and has raised very particular questions in certain circles of Islamic thought, such as those reflected in the later disputations between philosophy and theology. It was not really a point of issue for early Islam, however, and bodily resurrection has never been seriously denied by orthodoxy. It is, as many have observed, basic to the message of God as proclaimed by the Prophet and articulated clearly by the Qur'an, especially in those passages in which the contemporaries of the Prophet are presented as having scoffed or raised doubts. It continues to be, ... a point of conviction for many of the contemporary interpreters of Islam to a world in which a rational and scientifically-infused populace continues to raise the same eyebrows of skepticism as did the compatriots of the Prophet.
Early skeptics being quoted in the Quran as saying: "Are we to be returned to our former state when we have become decayed bones? They say, that would be a detrimental return!" (Q79: 10–12).
Death is also seen as a homecoming. When people visit tombs, they are having a specific spiritual routine. The correct way to visit someone's tomb is to recite parts of the Quran and pray for the deceased.
The writings of five medieval Sunni scholars on Islamic eschatology stand out for their "depth and originality", according to Jean-Pierre Filiu. Taking a work by each of them on the subject of the signs of end times, (or that includes the subject of the signs of end times), Filiu points out their characteristics, differences, and influences (where the Mahdi will first appear, where Jesus will descend to, how many human and angel warriors will fight with the Mahdi, etc.).
ISIS, 2022 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Islamic eschatology (Arabic: عِلْم آخر الزمان في الإسلام, ‘ilm ākhir az-zamān fī al-islām) is a field of study in Islam concerning future events that would happen in the end times. It is primarily based on sources from the Quran and Sunnah. Aspects from this field of study include the signs of the final age, the destruction of the universe and Judgement Day.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The general consensus of Muslim scholars agree there would be tremendous and distinctive signs before the world ends. Among which would be an era of trials and tribulations, a time of immorality followed by mighty wars, worldwide unnatural phenomena and the return of justice to the world. Defining figures are also prophesied such as the Mahdi, and the Second Coming of Isa (known as Jesus in Christianity) who bring about a heavenly victory against Dajjal (Antichrist according to Christianity) ending with the release of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) to the world. Once all the events are completed, the universe shall be destroyed and every human being would be resurrected to be held accountable for their deeds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Alike with other tenets of Islamic faith, sources of Islamic eschatology are taken from two primary sources, namely the Quran itself and Sunnah literature, which are accounts of the traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad during his lifetime. These two foundational sources would pave the way for interpretations by later scholars such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Kathir, and Muhammad al-Bukhari.",
"title": "Sources for Islamic eschatology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The arrival of Judgement Day is prophesied to be preceded by apocalyptic signs of its arrival in various hadith collections.",
"title": "Signs of the End Times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The signs are divided into two categories. Minor signs are uneventful signs that happen in the timeframe of centuries. Major signs are seismic events that happen very rapidly and is the immediate precursor to the end.",
"title": "Signs of the End Times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Savior and evil-doing figures that appear in the major signs include:",
"title": "Signs of the End Times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "",
"title": "Signs of the End Times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Small Resurrection (al-qiyamah al-sughra) happens, when the soul is separated from the body. The soul then turns to the afterlife (akhira or malakut), where it is interrogated by two angels, Munkar and Nakir.",
"title": "Small Resurrection"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In Islam, \"the promise and threat\" (waʿd wa-waʿīd) of Judgement Day (Arabic: یوم القيامة, romanized: Yawm al-qiyāmah, lit. 'Day of Resurrection' or Arabic: یوم الدین, romanized: Yawm ad-din, lit. 'Day of Judgement'), has been called \"the dominant message\" of the Quran, and is considered a fundamental tenet of faith by all Muslims, and one of the six articles of Islamic faith.",
"title": "Resurrection and final judgement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The two themes \"central to the understanding of Islamic eschatology\" are:",
"title": "Resurrection and final judgement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The trials, tribulations and details associated with it are detailed in the Quran and the hadith (sayings of Muhammad); these have been elaborated on in creeds, Quranic commentaries (tafsịrs), theological writing, eschatological manuals to provide more details and a sequence of events on the Day. Islamic expositors and scholarly authorities who have explained the subject in detail include al-Ghazali, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Majah, Muhammad al-Bukhari, and Ibn Khuzaymah.",
"title": "Resurrection and final judgement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After the final signs of The Hour – the defeat of the Sufyani; the end of the just reign of the Mahdi and/or Jesus; the rising of the sun from the west; the peaceful death all believers from inhalation of a lethal breeze – a trumpet will blast, signaling the destruction of earth (Q.69:13–16). A second blast will signal the death of any being still living.",
"title": "Resurrection and final judgement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The dead will then be resurrected and Afterlife commence with yet another trumpet blast, (different sources give different numbers of trumpet blasts) The first to arise will be Muhammad, followed by the other members of the Muslim community, with all gathering at the place of assembly [al-maḥshar]. In between resurrection and the actual judgement will be an agonizing time of waiting (Q.21:103, Q.37:20) for unbelievers.",
"title": "Resurrection and final judgement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "At divine judgement, the resurrected will stand in a grand assembly, each person's Book of Deeds – where \"every small and great thing is recorded\" – will be read, and ultimate judgement made. The resurrected will then walk over the bridge of As-Sirāt, those judged worthy for the Garden continuing to their heavenly abode, those damned to The Fire, falling off the bridge into the pit of Jahannam. There will also be a punishment of the grave (for those who disbelieved) between death and the resurrection.",
"title": "Resurrection and final judgement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Not everyone consigned to hell will remain there, as it is believed by both scholars and lay Muslims that \"all but the mushrikun, those who have committed the worst sin of impugning the tawḥīd of God, have the possibility of being saved;\" and God's intercession to save sinners from hellfire is a \"major theme\" in popular Islamic stories about Judgement Day.",
"title": "Resurrection and final judgement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Scholars did not always agree on questions of who might go to hell; whether the creation of heaven and hell would wait until Judgement Day; whether there was a state between heaven and hell; whether those consigned to hell would be there for eternity.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "\"Fear, hope, and finally ... faith\", have been given (by Jane I. Smith, Yvonne Y. Haddad) as motivations offered by the Quran for the belief of Muslims in an Afterlife, although some (Abū Aʿla al-Mawdūdī) have asserted it is simply a matter of reason:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The fact is that whatever Muhammad (peace be upon him) has told us about life after death is clearly borne out by reason. Although our belief in that Day is based upon our implicit trust in the Messenger of God, rational reflection not only confirms this belief but it also reveals that Muhammad's (peace be upon him) teachings in this respect are much more reasonable and understandable than all other view-points about life after death.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "One of the primary beliefs pertaining to Islamic eschatology during the Early Muslim Period was that all humans could receive God's mercy and were worthy of salvation. These early depictions even show how small, insignificant deeds were enough to warrant mercy. Most early depictions of the end of days depict only those who reject Tawhid, (the concept of monotheism), are subject to eternal punishment. However, everybody is held responsible for their actions. Concepts of reward and punishment were seen as beyond this world, a view that is also held today.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Although Islamic philosophers and scholars were in general agreement on a bodily resurrection after death, interpretations differ in regard to the specifications of bodily resurrection. Some of the theories are the following:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "According to scholars Jane I. Smith, Yvonne Y. Haddad, \"the vast majority of believers\", understand verses of the Quran on Jannah (and hellfire) \"to be real and specific, anticipating them\" with joy or terror. Besides the material notion of the paradise, descriptions of it are also interpreted as allegories, whose meaning is the state of joy believers will experience in the afterlife. For some theologians, seeing God is not a question of sight, but of awareness of God's presence. Although early Sufis, such as Hallaj, took the descriptions of paradise literal, later Sufi traditions usually stressed out the allegorical meaning.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On the issue of Judgement Day, early Muslims debated whether scripture should be interpreted literally or figuratively, and the school of thought that prevailed (Ashʿarī) \"affirmed that such things as\" connected with Judgement day as \"the individual records of deeds (including the paper, pen, and ink with which they are inscribed), the bridge, the balance, and the pond\" are \"realities\", and \"to be understood in a concrete and literal sense.\"",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "According to Smith and Haddad, \"The great majority of contemporary Muslim writers, ... choose not to discuss the afterlife at all\". Islamic Modernists, according to Smith and Haddad, express a \"kind of embarrassment with the elaborate traditional detail concerning life in the grave and in the abodes of recompense, called into question by modern rationalists\". Consequently, most of \"modern Muslim Theologians\" either \"silence the issue\" or reaffirm \"the traditional position that the reality of the afterlife must not be denied but that its exact nature remains unfathomable\".",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The beliefs of Pakistani modernist Muhammad Iqbal (died 1938), were similar to the Sufi \"spiritual and internalized interpretations of hell\" of ibn ʿArabī, and Rumi, seeing paradise and hell \"primarily as metaphors for inner psychic\" developments. Thus hellfire is actually a state of realization of one's failures as a human being\", and not a supernatural subterranean realm. Egyptian modernist Muhammad ʿAbduh, thought it was sufficient to believe in the existence of an afterlife with rewards and punishment to be a true believer, even if you ignored \"clear\" (ẓāhir) hadith about hell.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Some postmodernists have found at least one sahih (authentic) hadith on hell unacceptable—the tradition of Muhammad stating, \"most people in hell are women\" has been explained as an attempt to \"legitimate social control over women\" (Smith and Haddad), or perpetuate \"the moral, social, political, sectarian hierarchies\" of medieval Islam (Lange). Amina Wadud notes that the Qur'an does not mention any specific gender when talking about hell, Q.43:74–76, for example, states that \"the guilty are immortal in hell's torment\"; and when discussing paradise, includes women, Q.3:14–15, for example, states that \"Beautiful of mankind is love of the joys (that come) from women and offspring...\"",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In terms of classical Islam, \"the only options\" afforded by the Qur'an for the resurrected are an eternity of horrible punishments of The Fire or the delightful rewards of The Garden. Islamic tradition has raised the question of whether or not consignment to the Fire is eternal, or eternal for all, but \"has found no reason to amend\" the limit of two options in the afterlife. But one verse in the Quran has \"led to a great deal of speculation concerning the possibility of a third place\".",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "\"What some have called\" the \"Limbo\" Theory of Islam, as described by Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad, implies that some individuals are not immediately sent to The Fire or The Garden, but are held in a state of limbo. Smith and Haddad believe it is \"very doubtful\" that the Qur'anic meant for al-aʿrāf to be understood as \"an abode for those ... in an intermediate category, but this has come to be the most commonly held interpretation\".",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "As for who the inhabitants of the inhabits al-aʿrāf are, the \"majority of exegetes\" support the theory that they are persons whose actions balance in terms of merit and demerit – whose good deeds keep them from the Fire and whose evil deeds keep them from the Garden. They will be the last to enter the Garden, at the mercy of their Lord.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "There was considerable debate regarding whether heaven and hell exists at the current moment. The Mu'tazila argued that since the Quran states that once the trumpet sounds, all except God will be destroyed, this would include the destruction of heaven and hell. However, the Ash'ariya argued that although the trumpet's sounding will precede all being destroyed, creation was a \"constant process\". Māturīdism also defends the idea that paradise and hell are coexisting with the temporal world. The attributes of paradise and hell would already take effect on this world (dunya). Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi (944–983) states that the purpose of simultaneous existence of both worlds is that they inspire hope and fear among humans.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Evidence that Jannah and the Fire already exists is supported by a number of verses in the Quran. It is implied someone has gone to the Garden or the hell (3:169, 36:13-26, 66:10, 3:10-11, 6:93). In the Story of Adam and Eve, they once resided in Garden of Eden, which is often considered to be Jannah. This identification, however, is not universal. Al-Balluti (887 – 966) reasoned that the Garden of Eden lacked the perfection and eternal character of a final paradise: Adam and Eve lost the primordial paradise, while the paradisiacal afterlife lasts forever; if Adam and Eve were in the otherworldly paradise, the devil (Shaiṭān) could not have entered and deceive them, since there is no evil or idle talk in paradise; Adam slept in his garden, but there is no sleep in paradise.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Besides the Quranic allusions, hadiths are taken into consideration to evaluate the afterlife's coexistence with the temporary world. Reports pertaining to the Night Journey (Mi'raj) state that Muhammad saw visions of both destinations and creatures inhabiting it. Thus, heaven and hell are usually regarded as coexisting with the current world. According to another common tradition, Muhammad is supposed to have taken a pomegranate from jannah, and shared it with Ali, as recorded by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. However, some scholars, like Ghazali, reject that Muhammad grabbed the fruit, argued he had only a vision instead.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In Classical Islam, there was a consensus among the theological community regarding the finality of Jannah (also called Heaven, paradise, the Gardens); after Judgement Day, faithful servants of God would find themselves here for eternity. However, some practitioners in the early Muslim community held that the other abode of the hereafter (hell/Jahannam), or at least part of that abode, might not be eternal. This belief was based upon an interpretations of scripture that since the upper, less tortuous levels of hell were reserved for Muslims who were only in hell for as long as God deemed necessary. Once Muslims had their sins purged and were allowed into heaven, these levels would be empty and the need for their existence gone. These interpretations are centered on verses 11:106–107 in the Quran, stating,",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "This possibility that God may yet commute a sentence to hell, interprets (parts of) hell as being similar in function to purgatory in Christianity, with the exception to this comparison being that hell in this context is for the punishment of the sinner's complete body, as opposed to only the soul being punished in purgatory. Arguments questioning the permanence of hell take the view that hell is not necessarily solely there to punish the evil, but to purify their souls, whereas the purpose of the Garden is simply to reward the righteous. Evidence against the concept of hell being in part temporary, is the Quran verse stating that hell will endure as long as Heaven will, which has been established as eternal.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Orthodox Islam teaches the doctrine of Qadar (Arabic: قدر, aka Predestination, or divine destiny in Islam), whereby everything that has happened and will happen in the universe—including sinful human behavior—is commanded by God. At the same time, we human beings are responsible for our actions and rewarded or punished for them in the Afterlife.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Qadar/predestination/divine destiny, is one of Sunni Islam's six articles of faith and is mentioned in the Quran.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Of course, the fate of human beings in the Afterlife is especially crucial. It is reflected in Quranic verses such as",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Muhammad also talked about the doctrine of predestination multiple times during his mission. Thus the consensus of the Sunni Muslim community has been that scripture indicates predestination. Nonetheless, some Muslim theologians have argued against predestination, (including at least some Shia Muslims, whose article of faith includes Adalah (justice), but not Qadar. At least some Shia – such as Naser Makarem Shirazi – denounce predestination).",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Opponents of predestination in early Islam, (al-Qadariyah, Muʿtazila) argued that if God has already determined everything that will happen, God's human creation cannot really have free will over decisions to do good or evil, or control of whether they suffer eternal torment in Jahannam—which is something that (the opponents believe) a just God would never allow to happen. While Qadar is the consensus of Muslims, it is also an issue scholars discourage debate and discussion about. Hadith narrate Muhammad warning his followers to “refrain from speaking about qadar”; and according to the creed of Al-Tahawi, \"the principle of providence\" is such a secret that God did not let even angels, prophets and messengers in on the mystery.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Scholars do not all agree on who will end up in Jannah and who in Jahannam, and the criteria for deciding. Issues include whether all Muslims, even those who've committed major sins, will end up in Jannah; whether any non-Muslims will be saved or all will go to Jahannam.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "According to the Quran, the basic criterion for salvation in the afterlife is the belief in the oneness of God (tawḥīd), angels, revealed books, messengers, as well as repentance to God, and doing good deeds (amal salih). This is qualified by the doctrine that ultimately salvation can only be attained through God's judgement.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Muslim scholars mostly agree that ultimately all Muslims will be saved (though many may need to be purified by a spell in hellfire but disagree about the possibility for salvation of non-Muslims.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The idea that jinn as well as humans could find salvation was widely accepted, Like humans, their destiny in the hereafter depends on whether they accept God's guidance. The surah Al-Jinn says:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Angels, who are not subject to desire and do not commit sin, are found in both paradise and the Fire – punishing sinners in hell, and praising and serving humans (and jinn) in paradise.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Muslim scholars arguing in favor of non-Muslims' being able to enter paradise cite the verse:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Those arguing against non-Muslim salvation regard this verse to have applied only until the arrival of Muhammad, after which it was abrogated by another verse:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Although the Quran acknowledges the Bible as gospel, rejecting Muhammad and his message is seen as a rejection of salvation by them.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "According to Mohammad Hassan Khalil, on the subject of whether self-proclaimed non-Muslims might be allowed into Jannah, Islamic theologians can be classified as",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "(In addition there are those who could be described as 'interim inclusivists' or 'ultimate universalists'.)",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Based on these categories, four \"well-known and particularly influential Muslim thinkers\" can be sorted as:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Ashʿarism (/æʃəˈriː/; Arabic: أشعرية: al-ʾAshʿarīyah), one of the main Sunni schools of Islamic theology, founded by the Islamic scholar, Shāfiʿī jurist, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī in the 10th century, is known for an optimistic perspective on salvation for Muslims, repeatedly addressing God's mercy over God's wrath. However, according to Ash'arism, God is neither obligated to punish disobedience nor to reward obedience.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Ash'aris hold revelation necessary to understand good and evil, as well as religious truths. Accordingly, revelation is necessary to reach moral and religious truths and thus, people who hear from a prophet or messenger are obligated to follow the revealed religion. However, those who have not received revelation are not obligated, and can hope for salvation.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Ash'arite scholar al-Ghazali divided non-Muslims into three categories for purposes of the Afterlife according to Mohammad Hassan Khalil:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Of these three, only the last group would be punished. Ghazali distinguished between the \"saved\" and \"those who will attain success\". Therefore, righteous non-Muslims will neither enter hell nor Jannah, but will stay in al-Araf (a realm between Jannah and Jahannam inhabited by those who are neither entirely evil nor entirely good).",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Māturīdism (Arabic: الماتريدية: al-Māturīdiyyah) is also one of the main Sunni schools of Islamic theology developed and formalized by the Islamic scholar, Ḥanafī jurist Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī in the 10th century. Māturīdi scholars are thought to have been less optimistic about the chances of sinners entering paradise than Ash'aris, but more optimistic than Muʿtazila. They agree that Muslims who have committed grave sins will be punished but generally acknowledge that even these people will eventually enter paradise. Regarding the fate of non-Muslims, scholars have different opinions. Māturīdism holds people responsible for believing in a creator due to their intellectual capacities, even if they haven't heard about any prophetic mission. While some (like Rifat Atay) regard Māturīdism to be exclusivistic, only allowing people who are Muslims to enter paradise, others argue that Māturīdi understood that \"to believe in Islam\" meant having a subjective conceptualization of God and his laws by reason alone. This fits the doctrine, upheld by Māturīdism, that human reason suffices to grasp good and evil, and arrive at religious truths. Accordingly, people are judged by their degree of understanding God's universal law, not by their adherence to a particular belief system. In modern times, Yohei Matsuyama largely agrees with this interpretation. According to Abu'l-Qasim Ishaq, children cannot be considered unbelievers, thus all of them go to paradise.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Muʿtazila (Arabic: المعتزلة al-muʿtazilah) emphasized God's justice, free will, and the responsibility of each human being for their actions. They have been called the \"best known exponents\" of Qadariyah, the idea that human free will was necessary \"as a guarantee of divine justice\". Compared to Maturidi and Ashʿarī, Muʿtazila had the least amount of \"salvific optimism\". The \"divine threat\" (al-wa'id) and \"divine promise\" (al wa'd) became key tenets of the Mu'tazilites, who stressed that they applied to both Muslims and non-Muslims. This meant that those who committed grave or heinous sins (Kabirah), even Muslims, might denied entry to paradise forever. The only way for a grave sinner to be forgiven, many theologians believed, is by repentance (tawba). Mu'tazilites believed God's justice obligated Him to forgive those who had repented (other schools believed He was not so constrained). The Mu'tazilites stress on individual accountability meant a rejection of intercession (Shafa'a) on behalf of Muhammad. Another controversial belief of many (but not all) Mu'tazilites was that paradise and hell would be created only after Judgement Day. This meant rejection of the commonly accepted idea that paradise and hell coexist with the contemporary world. Their reasoning was that since God does everything for a purpose, and since paradise and hell are created to reward or punish people, they will only be created after judegement has been passed on people and they are assigned to these abodes.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Like most Sunni, Shia Islam hold that all Muslims will eventually go to Jannah.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On the fate of non-Muslims in the hereafter, Shia Islam (or at least cleric Ayatullah Mahdi Hadavi Tehrani of Al-Islam.org), takes a view similar to Ash'arism. Tehrani divides non-Muslims into two groups: the heedless and stubborn who will go to hell and the ignorant who will not \"if they are truthful to their own religion\":",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "(At least one Twelver Shia scholar 'Allama al-Hilli, insists that not only will non-Muslims be damned but suggests Sunni Muslim will be as well, as it is not possible for any Muslim to be ignorant of \"the imamate and of the Return\", and thus \"whoever is ignorant of any of them is outside the circle of believers and worthy of eternal punishment.\" This statement is not indicative of all Shia eschatological thought.)",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Also like mainstream schools, and unlike Muʿtazila, Twelver Shia hold that Jannah and hellfire \"exist at present ... according to the Qur`an and ahadith\". However, they will not \"become fully apparent and represented\" until Judgement Day. As for three other issues in Islamic eschatology:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "these three \"types\" of jannah (or Jahannam) are \"all simply manifestations of the ultimate, eternal heaven and hell\".",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Modernist scholars Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida rejected the notion that the People of the Book would be excluded from Jannah, based on Q.4:123-124 (see above). The Fate of the unlearned is also a matter of dispute within Islamic theology.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Turkish theologian Süleyman Ateş cites the Quran 5:66 to argue that there are good and bad people in any religion, and that some Muslims may not enter paradise, but those who believe without doubt in the hereafter and a God without partners, and who do good and useful deeds may enter paradise, whatever their religions.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "On the other hand, those who argue that only Islam is the \"completed\" and \"perfected\", and that it is necessary to believe in the all teaching of God – the prophets, the angels etc. – insist that only Muslims can enter paradise.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "While \"some traditional and contemporary commentators\" have interpreted the Quran as condemning all Jews, Farid Esack argues this condemnation is neither \"universal\" nor \"eternal\", and asks, 'if the Qur'an is to consign the Jews to eternal damnation, then what becomes of the sacred text as a means of guidance for all humankind? Would that vision too be damned?'",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "An example of a line criticizing the Jews can be found in Surah 5:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "A Sahih hadith concerning Jews and one of the signs of the coming of Judgement Day has been quoted many times, (it became a part of the charter of Hamas).",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "However, some scripture praises the dedication of Jews to monotheism, and this verse of the Qur'an in surah 3, can be interpreted as taking a more reconciliatory tone:",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "After reconciling the different descriptions, one can conclude that the transgressions of the \"apes and pigs\" are not indicative of the entire community, and that while some Jews are on their way to damnation, others are not.",
"title": "Eschatological theological questions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Prior to the 20th century, Islam had \"strongly emphasized the hereafter\" (ākhira). Desire to counter colonialism and \"achieve material and technological parity with the West\" turned modern thinkers to stress this world (dunyā), without suggesting ākhira was less important. The focus on end times/Eschatology in Islam has tended to occur among those less exposed to scholarly learning. In the 1980s however, it again became much more popular generally. Islamic leaders and scholars have always urged Muslim to be prepared for Judgement Day, but \"the particulars of the end of the world are not a mainstream concern in Islam,\" according to Graeme Wood.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "However, in 2012 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 50% or more respondents in several Muslim-majority countries (Lebanon, Turkey, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) expected the Mahdi (the final redeemer according to Islam) to return during their lifetime. The expectation is most common in Afghanistan (83%), followed by Iraq (72%), Turkey (68%), Tunisia (67%), Malaysia (62%), Pakistan (60%), Lebanon (56%), and Muslims in southern Thailand (57%).",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Stories of end times and doomsday tend to be passed on as bedtime stories or informal talk among the lay Muslims, rather than in the Imam's Friday khutbah. \"Even Muslims with low levels of knowledge have heard parts of parts of it\", according to scholar Jean Pierre Filiu. In Islamic bookstores, their \"dramatic and sensational stories of final battles between good and evil, supernatural powers, the ultimate rise of a Muslim elite,\" are naturally more attention getting than more orthodox/studious works on prayer, purity or the lives of exemplary Muslims. More official Muslim sources have often either kept quiet about apocalyptic hadith or outright denied their existence—an example being Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations who stated \"There is no apocalyptic bloodbath in Islam.\"",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Popular Islamic pamphlets and tracts on the End Times have always been in circulation, but until around 2010 their \"impact on political and theological thinking was practically nil\" among Sunnis. Interest in the End Times is particularly strong among jihadis and \"since the mid-2000s, the apocalyptic currents in jihadism have surged.\" As of 2011, the belief that the end of the world is at hand and will be precipitated by an apocalyptic Great Battle has been noted as a \"fast-growing belief in Muslim countries\" though still a minority belief.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "According to J.-P. Filiu, the uprising of the (Shiʿi) Mahdi Army in Iraq and July 2006 war between Israel and (Shiʿi) Hizbullah are \"at least in part\" a consequence of \"mounting eschatological expectations\" coming from copious literature preaching that the return of the Hidden Imam was imminent; literature emanating from the Shiʿi seminaries and scholars of holy city of Najaf, Iraq, from Lebanon, and from Iran during the administration of its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One Shiʿi Ayatollah, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, revered as \"the fifth martyr\" of Shiʿi Islam (killed by Saddam Hussein), went to the trouble of trying to explain how the Hidden Imam could be over 1000 years old, and why the present is a propitious time for the reappearance of him. Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army waged a violent struggle against the American military through 2004, and its ranks swelled with thousands of recruits. Muqtada's political faction won seats in parliament. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency (2005-2013), he shared with Iranians his \"avowed conviction\" that believers must actively work for the Mahdi's reappearance, despite this bringing him \"into conflict with the highest authorities of Shiism\".",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "\"Dramatic and sensational stories\" of the apocalypse first made an impact in the mid-1980s when Said Ayyub's Al-Masīh al-Dajjāl (The AntiChrist) started a whole new genre of Islamic \"apocalyptic fiction\" or \"millenarian speculation\" throughout the Arab world. The book was so successful Ayyub went on to write a half-dozen other spinoff books, inspired imitators who enjoyed even greater success (Muhammad Izzat Arif, Muhammad Isa Dawud, and Mansur AbdelHakim).",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The book (and the genre) was noteworthy for rupturing the \"organic link between Islamic tradition and the last days of the world\", using Western sources (such as Gustave Le Bon and William Guy Carr) that previously would have been ignored; and lack of Sahih Bukhari (i.e. top quality) hadith (he does quote Ibn Kathir and some hadith \"repeated at second hand\"); and for an obsessively anti-Jewish point of view (\"in all great transformations of thought, there is a Jewish factor, avowed and plain, or else hidden and secret\", \"the Jews are planning the Third World War in order to eliminate the Islamic world and all opposition to Israel\", and cover art featuring a grotesque cartoon figure with a Star of David and large hooked nose).",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Unlike traditional popular works of Islamic eschatology that kept close to scripture and classical manuals of eschatology in describing al-Dajjāl, Said Ayyub portrayed the Dajjāl as 1) the true Jewish messiah, that Jews had been waiting for, 2) a figure who will appear or reappear not only in end times, but one who has been working throughout the history of humanity to create havoc with such diabolical success that human history is really \"only a succession of nefarious maneuvers\" by him. Intermediaries of al-dajjal (according to Ayyub) include St. Paul the Apostle, who (Ayyub maintains) created Christianity by distorting the true story of Jesus, the Emperor Constantine who made possible \"the Crusader state in service to the Jews\", the Freemasons, Napoleon, the United States of America, Communists, Israel, etc. He concludes that the dajjal is hiding in Palestine (but will also \"appear in Khurasan as the head of an expansionist state\") and the Great Battle between Muslims and his forces will be World War III fought in the Middle East.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Later books, The Hidden Link between the AntiChrist, the Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, and Flying Saucers (1994), by Muhammad Isa Dawud, for example, move even farther away from traditional themes, disclosing that the Anti-Christ journeyed from the Middle East to the archipelago of Bermuda in the 8th century CE to make it his home base and from whence he fomented the French Revolution and other mischief, and now sends flying saucers to patrol Egypt and prepare for his eventual triumphal return to Jerusalem.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The success of the genre provoked a \"counteroffensive\" by pious conservatives (Abdellatif Ashur, Muhammad Bayyumi Magdi, and Muhammad Shahawi) disturbed by the liberties Said Ayyub and others had taken with Islamic doctrine.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In the early 1980s, when Abdullah Azzam, called on Muslims around the world to join the jihad in Afghanistan, he considered the fight \"to be a sign that the end times were imminent\". Also around that time, popular Islamic writers, such as Said Ayyub, started blaming Islamic decline in the face of the Western world, not on lack of technology and development, but on the forces of the Dajjal.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Al-Qaeda used \"apocalyptic predictions in both its internal and external messaging\" according to Jessica Stern, and its use of \"the name Khorasan, a region that includes part of Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, and from which, it is prophesied, the Mahdi will emerge alongside an army bearing black flags\", was thought to be a symbol of end times. But these claims were \"mostly symbolic\", and according to Wood, Bin Laden \"rarely mentioned\" the Apocalypse and when he did, \"he implied he would be long dead when it arrived\" (a reflection of his more \"elite\" background according to Will McCants). According to J.-P. Filiu, out of the mass of Al-Qaeda documents seized after the fall of the Taliban, only one letter made any reference to the apocalypse.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "A prominent jihadist, Abu Musʿab al-Sūri, (called a \"sophisticated strategist\" and \"articulate exponent of the modern jihad\"), somewhat independent and critical of Al-Qaeda, was also much more interested in end times. He wrote, \"I have no doubt that we have entered into the age of battles and tribulations [zāman al-malāhim wal-fitan]\" He devoted the last 100 pages of his magnum opus on jihad (A Call to Global Islamic Resistance, made available online around 2005) to matters such as the proper chronology and location of related battles and other activities of the Mahdi, the Antichrist, the mountain of gold to be found in the Euphrates river, the Sufyani, Gog and Magog, etc.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Abu Musʿab al Zarqawi, the founder of what would become the Islamic State \"injected\" the apocalyptic message into jihad. ISIS has evoked \"the apocalyptic tradition much more explicitly\" than earlier jihadis. Dabiq, Syria – a town understood \"in some versions\" of the eschatological \"narrative to be a possible location for the final apocalyptic battle\" – was captured by ISIS and made its capital. ISIS also declared its \"intent to conquer Constantinople\" – Muslims conquering Constantinople being another end times prophesy. Interviews by the New York Times, and Jurgen Todenhöfer with many dozens of Muslims who had traveled to fight with Islamic State, and by Graeme Wood with Islamic State supporters elsewhere, found \"messianic expectation\" a strong motivator to join Islamic State.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "While Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are Sunni, Shia insurgents/militants have also been \"drawn to the battlefield\" by \"apocalyptic belief\", according to William McCants, who quotes a Shia fighter in Iraq saying, “'I was waiting for the day when I will fight in Syria. Thank God he chose me to be one of the Imam's soldiers.'”",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Some dissident Shiʿa in Iraq, oppose not only Sunni, US and Iraqi government forces, but the Shiʿi religious hierarchy as well. In Najaf, in late January 2007, at least 200 were killed in the Battle of Najaf, when several hundred members of an armed Iraqi Shi'a messianic sect known as the Soldiers of Heaven or Jund As-Samāʾ(Arabic: جند السماء), allegedly attempted to start a \"messianic insurrection\" during the holy day of Ashura in the holy city of Najaf; planning to disguise themselves as pilgrims and kill leading Shi'a clerics. The group allegedly believed that spreading chaos would hasten the return of the 12th Imam/Mahdi, or alternately, that their leader, Dia Abdul Zahra Kadim, was the awaited Mahdi. The next year during Ashura a reported 18 officers and 53 militia members were killed in clashes between \"millenarian rebels\" and police, the violence blamed on followers of one Ahmad al-Hassan, a man claiming the Hidden Iman had designated him as his (the Hidden Imam's) representative (wassi), and who accused Ayatollahs/Shia clerics of being guilty of \"aberration and treason, of occupation and tyranny\".",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Jihadis of the Islamic State see the fulfillment of many of the \"lesser signs\" of the coming of Judgement Day in current events. Its generally agreed that Israel Arab wars have been wars between Muslims and Jews (which were prophesied), and that moral standards have declined leading to rampant fornication, alcohol consumption, and music listening. \"A slave giving birth to her master\" can happen when the child of a slave woman and the slave's owner inherits the slave after the owner's death—slavery being practiced in the Islamic State (until its defeat). An embargo of Iraq is alleged to be foretold in the hadith \"Iraq would withhold its dirhams and qafiz\". That Muslim states are being led by those who do not deserve to lead them, is an article of faith among jihadis and many other Muslims. ISIS alleges that worship of the pre-Islamic deity al-Lat is being practiced by its Shia enemy Hezbollah. The naked shepherds who will build tall buildings is interpreted to refer to Gulf State builders of skyscrapers are \"only a generation or two out of desert poverty\".",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "But the Islamic State is also attempting to fulfill prophecies itself to hasten end times. Zarqawi published \"communiqués detailing the fulfillment of specific predictions\" found in a famous book on jihad and end times called, A Call to a Global Islamic Resistance by Abu Musab al Suri. His successor, Al-Baghdadi, took \"the fulfillment of apocalyptic portents even more seriously\". According to Hassan Abbas, at least part of ISIS's motivation in killing and otherwise provoking Shia is to \"deliberately ... instigate a war between Sunnis and Shi'a, in the belief that a sectarian war would be a sign that the final times has arrived\"; and also explains the ISIS Siege of Kobanî: \"In the eschatological literature, there is reference to crisis in Syria and massacre of Kurds—this is why Kobane is important.\"(The town of 45,000 was under siege by ISIS from September 2014 to January 2015.)",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Thus, \"ISIS's obsession with the end of the world\" helps explain its lack of interest in the \"ordinary moral rules\" of the temporal world, according to Jessica Stern. If you are \"participating in a cosmic war between good and evil\", (and if everyone will be dead and then resurrected relatively soon anyway), pedestrian concerns about saving the lives of the innocent are of little concern.",
"title": "Islamic eschatology among Muslims in 20th and 21st centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Among the problems critics see with some of the concepts of, and attention given to, the eschatology of Islam, are its effect on the socio-economic health of the Muslim world, the basis of the scripture (particularly the hadith) dealing with end times, and the rational implausibility of some of the theological concepts such as resurrection of the dead.",
"title": "Questions and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Mustafa Akyol criticizes the current focus of the Muslim community on apocalypticism and the use of the forces of the Dajjal to explain stagnation in the Muslim world in the past two centuries vis-à-vis the West (and now East Asia). He argues that if supernatural evil is believed to be the cause of the problems of Muslims, then practical solutions such as \"science, economic development and liberal democracy\" will be ignored in favor of divine intervention. (On the other hand, a sahih hadith reports Muhammad saying that \"If the Final Hour comes while you have a shoot of a plant in your hands and it is possible to plant it before the Hour comes, you should plant it.\")",
"title": "Questions and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Western scholars (William McCants, Jane Smith, Yvonne Haddad, Jean-Pierre Filiu) agree that the apocalyptic narratives are strongly connected to the early jihad wars against the Byzantine Empire and civil wars against other Muslims. McCants, writes that the fitan (\"tribulations\") of the minor and lesser signs come from the fitan of the early Islamic civil wars (First Fitna (656–661 CE), Second Fitna (c. 680/683–c. 685/692 CE), Third Fitna (744–750/752 CE)), where Muhammad's companions (Sahabah) and successor generations (Tabi'un and Taba Tabi'in) fought each other for political supremacy. \"Before and after each tribulation, partisans on both sides circulated prophecies in the name of the Prophet to support their champion. With time, the context was forgotten but the prophecies remained.\" Smith and Haddad also write that \"the political implications of the whole millennial idea in Islam, especially as related to the understanding of the mahdi and the rise of the 'Abbasids in the second Islamic century, are very difficult to separate from the eschatological ones.\" They also argue that it's \"difficult to determine whether\" Muḥammad \"actually anticipated the arrival\" the Mahdi as \"an eschatological figure\" – despite the fact that \"most of the traditions about the Mahdi are credited to Muḥammad.\" Filiu has also stated that \"the apocalyptic narrative was decisively influenced by the conflicts that filled Islam's early years, campaigns and jihad against the Byzantine Empire and recurrent civil wars among Muslims.\" Consequently, the reliability of hadith on end times has been questioned.",
"title": "Questions and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Skepticism of the concept of the resurrection of the dead has been part of both \"the compatriots\" of Muhammad and the \"rational and scientifically-infused\" inhabitants of the contemporary world.",
"title": "Questions and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The fact of the resurrection of the body has been of continuing importance to Muslims and has raised very particular questions in certain circles of Islamic thought, such as those reflected in the later disputations between philosophy and theology. It was not really a point of issue for early Islam, however, and bodily resurrection has never been seriously denied by orthodoxy. It is, as many have observed, basic to the message of God as proclaimed by the Prophet and articulated clearly by the Qur'an, especially in those passages in which the contemporaries of the Prophet are presented as having scoffed or raised doubts. It continues to be, ... a point of conviction for many of the contemporary interpreters of Islam to a world in which a rational and scientifically-infused populace continues to raise the same eyebrows of skepticism as did the compatriots of the Prophet.",
"title": "Questions and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Early skeptics being quoted in the Quran as saying: \"Are we to be returned to our former state when we have become decayed bones? They say, that would be a detrimental return!\" (Q79: 10–12).",
"title": "Questions and criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Death is also seen as a homecoming. When people visit tombs, they are having a specific spiritual routine. The correct way to visit someone's tomb is to recite parts of the Quran and pray for the deceased.",
"title": "Visitation of tombs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The writings of five medieval Sunni scholars on Islamic eschatology stand out for their \"depth and originality\", according to Jean-Pierre Filiu. Taking a work by each of them on the subject of the signs of end times, (or that includes the subject of the signs of end times), Filiu points out their characteristics, differences, and influences (where the Mahdi will first appear, where Jesus will descend to, how many human and angel warriors will fight with the Mahdi, etc.).",
"title": "Literature on Islamic eschatology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "ISIS, 2022",
"title": "References"
}
]
| Islamic eschatology is a field of study in Islam concerning future events that would happen in the end times. It is primarily based on sources from the Quran and Sunnah. Aspects from this field of study include the signs of the final age, the destruction of the universe and Judgement Day. The general consensus of Muslim scholars agree there would be tremendous and distinctive signs before the world ends. Among which would be an era of trials and tribulations, a time of immorality followed by mighty wars, worldwide unnatural phenomena and the return of justice to the world. Defining figures are also prophesied such as the Mahdi, and the Second Coming of Isa who bring about a heavenly victory against Dajjal ending with the release of Yajuj and Majuj to the world. Once all the events are completed, the universe shall be destroyed and every human being would be resurrected to be held accountable for their deeds. | 2002-01-15T15:24:40Z | 2023-12-26T21:17:51Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_eschatology |
15,514 | Iblis | Iblis (Arabic: إِبْلِيسْ, romanized: Iblīs), alternatively known as Eblīs, is the leader of the devils (shayāṭīn) in Islam. According to the Quran, Iblis was thrown out of heaven, after he refused to prostrate himself before Adam. Regarding the origin and nature of Iblis, there are two different viewpoints.
In the first version, before Iblis was cast down from heaven, he used to be a leading angel called ʿAzāzīl, appointed by God to obliterate the preceding inhabitants of the earth (usually jinn), who became disobedient and destructive, to replace them with humans. After Iblis objected to God's decision to create Adam as a successor to the previous generation of sentient life, he was punished by being relegated and cast down to earth as a shayṭān (devil). In the alternative account, God created Iblis from the fires beneath the seventh earth. Worshipping God for thousands of years, Iblis ascended to the surface, whereupon, thanks to his pertinacious servitude, he rose until he reached the company of angels in the seventh heaven. When God created Adam and taught him the "names of all things", then ordered the angels to bow down, Iblis, being a jinn created from fire in this account, refused, and disobeyed God, leading to his downfall.
In the Islamic tradition, Iblis is often identified with ash-Shayṭān ("the Devil"), often known by the epithet ar-Rajim (Arabic: ٱلرَّجِيْم, lit. 'the Accursed'). Shayṭān is usually applied to Iblis in order to denote his role as the tempter, while Iblīs is his proper name. Some Muslim scholars uphold a more ambivalent role for Iblis, considering him not simply the Devil but "the truest monotheist" (Tawḥīd-i Iblīs), because he would worship only the Creator, and not his creations, while preserving the term shayṭān exclusively for evil forces.
In Islamic traditions, Iblīs is known by many alternative names or titles, such as Abū Murrah (Arabic: أَبُو مُرَّة, "Father of Bitterness") as the name stems from the word "murr" – meaning "bitter", ‘aduww Allāh or ‘aduwallah (Arabic: عُدُوّ الله, "enemy or foe" of God) and Abū Al-Harith (Arabic: أَبُو الْحَارِث, "the father of the plowmen"). He is also known by the nickname "Abū Kardūs" (Arabic: أَبُو كَرْدُوس), which may mean "Father who piles up, crams or crowds together".
The designation Iblīs (Arabic: إِبْلِيس) may be an epithet referencing an attribute, deriving from the Arabic verbal root BLS ب-ل-س (with the broad meaning of "remain in grief") or بَلَسَ (balasa, "he despaired"). This is the major opinion among Arab scholars, who maintain the tradition that the personal name of this being was ʿAzāzīl:
"The word "إبليس" [(Iblis)] is from the root "بلس" [(BLS)]. The root may mean: to be silent. "الله رحمة من أبلس" means to be in despair of Allah's mercy, hence, the name إبليس (Iblis). His original name was Azazil. Allah has said in Surah Al-Rum "وَيَوْمَ تَقُومُ ٱلسَّاعَةُ يُبْلِسُ ٱلْمُجْرِمُونَ" (On the Day that the Hour will be established, the guilty will be struck dumb with despair). The name "Iblis" is derived from the root, بلس , as he is in despair of Allah's mercy" – Ibn Mandhur, Lisan Al-Arab, Vol.6/29
Some Muslim teachers, such as al-Jili, relate this name to talbis meaning confusion, because God's command confused him.
Another possibility is that it is derived from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos) (which is also the source of the English word 'devil') via a Syriac intermediary. The name itself could not be found before the Quran in Arab literature, suggesting it is not of pre-Islamic Arabian origin. The name could be found in the Kitab al Magall, a Christian apocryphal work written in Arabic.
Iblis is mentioned 11 times in the Quran by name, nine times related to his refusal against God's Command to prostrate himself before Adam. The term šayṭān is more prevalent, although Iblis is sometimes referred to as šayṭān; the terms are not interchangeable. The different fragments of Iblis's story are scattered across the Quran. In the aggregate, the story can be summarised as follows:
When God created Adam, He ordered the angels to bow before the new creation. All of the angels bowed down, but Iblis refused to do so. He argued that since he was created from fire, he is superior to humans, who were made from clay-mud, and that he should not prostrate himself before Adam. As punishment for his haughtiness, God banished Iblis from heaven and condemned him to hell. Later, Iblis requested the ability to try to mislead Adam and his descendants. God granted his request but also warned him that he would have no power over God's Servants.
Surah al-Kahf states in reference to Iblis:
(...) except Iblis, he was one of the jinni (...) (Arabic: إِلَّاۤ إِبۡلِیسَ كَانَ مِنَ ٱلۡجِنِّ "illā iblīsa kāna mina l-jinni" (18:50)
This led to a dispute among the mufassirūn (exegetes), who disagree on whether Iblis belongs to a group of angels called jinni due to their origin from paradise, or if he was distinct from the angels, the progenitor of the jinn.
There are different opinions regarding the origin of Iblis. This dispute is closely related to doctrinal differences regarding free-will. Like humans, jinn are created on earth to "worship" ('abada) God (51:56), and are capable of righteous and evil acts (11:119). If angels can sin or not is disputed in Islam. Those who say that Iblis was not an angel, but a jinni, argue that only jinn (and humans), but not angels are capable of disobedience. This is the generally opinion among the Qadariyah and most Mu'tazilites. This view is also found to be prominent among many Salafis.
On the other hand, the term for celestial beings is usually malāk (angel) in early Islam. Tabarsi notes that if Iblis were a jinni, he couldn't have been one of the custodians of paradise. Many among those who say that Iblis was an angel read Surah 18:50 as a nisba for the term jannāt, thus referring to Iblis' heavenly origin (this reading is preferred by – among others – Ash'ari, Suyuti, and Al-Tha`labi). Most mutakallimūn (theologians) do not consider angels to be infallable, al-Razi being an exception.
Nontheless, if faith (ʾīmān) in God is proportional to obedience and knowledge of God, theologians still need to explain the cause for Iblis' fall. The Hanābila and Ash'arites would argue that Iblis was ignorant (jahl) and didn't understand God's will (irāda). However, Iblis' unbelief (kufr) would be ultimately caused by God. Al-Maghrībī states that, when the angels questioned the creation of Adam, God opened the angels' eyes for the characteristics of Adam, but closed the eyes' of Iblis, so he would remain in resistance (iḥtijāj). Therefore, Iblis would have been created as a disobedient angel and function as God's tempter.
Al-Māturīdī, the eponymous founder of Māturīdī theology, considers some sort of middle ground, arguing that angels have been put to a test in the heavens, just like humans and jinn are tested on earth. If they were not tested, the Quran wouldn't compliment angels for obedience. Al-Māturīdī further explains, when Surah al-Anbiya mentions that angels usurping divine names will be sentenced to hell, this refers to Iblis. This position is also found among the Māturīdīte scholars al-Samarqandī and al-Nasafi.
Within Muslim thought, Iblis is generally not considered to be the originator of evil. However, there are a few exceptions among Muslim scholars. The Qadariyya asserted that evil was introduced by disobedience to God, and Iblis was the first who disobeyed. This view is sometimes attributed to Hasan al-Basri. An extreme position among the Qadariyya asserts that Iblis was not even created by God, but this view is generally rejected as beliefs of the Manichaeans (majūs). Al-Māturīdī argued that such dualistic worldviews are irreconcilable with the Islamic doctrine of tawḥīd. Likewise, the jinn would have sinned prior to Iblis.
Iblis' disobedience is seen as an example and warning for the thaqalān (those who are accountable for their deeds). Those who say that Iblis was predestined to fall, say that he was created in such a way that God can demonstrate his entire spectrum of attributes (for example; jalal (majesty)) in his eternal speech (i.e. the Quran), and teaching the consequences of sin.
Three things to avoid are marked by the fall of Iblis: Transgression (ma'siyah), arrogance (istikbār), and comparison (qiyās) to another creature of God. Disobedience alone is not considered to be the cause of Iblis' damnation, but the reason behind his action and the implied underlying unbelief.
Although not the cause of evil, Iblis is known as the progenitor of tempters, known as the "father of the devils" (Abū ash-Shayāṭīn). Ḥādīth literature emphasizes their evil influences over humans rather than treating them as proper personalities. Muslims are advised to "seek refuge" from such influences and are recommanded to recite duʿāʾ (prayers) for protection.
The predestinarians approach was attractive for many Muslim thinkers to avoid dualistic tendencies. Some extreme positions went as far as to consider the belief that evil derives from an individual's own responsibility without God's interference, as a form of attributing a second power to God, thus falling into širk (polytheism). From this idea of absolute predeterminism, some scholars and ṣūfis developed sympathy for Iblis. They began to consider Iblis to be a "true monotheists" only bested by Muhammed, who would accept punishment and suffering over bowing before something else but God, an idea later known as "Satan's monotheism" (tawḥīd-i Iblīs).
This idea is reflected in a transmission by Wahb ibn Munabbih, an eminent teller of Israʼiliyyat, stating that Iblis met Moses on the slopes of Sinai. When Moses asks Iblis why he refused God's order, he replies that the command was actually a test. This story inspired people, such as Mansur al-Hallaj and Ahmad Ghazali. The latter depicted Iblis as a paragon of self-sacrifice and stated at some point: "Whoever doesn't learn monotheism from Satan is a heretic (zindīq )". His student, Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, asserted that Iblis' disobedience was wanted by God, or God would be powerless and a powerless being can't be attributed to God.
Such positive depictions are, however, by no means universal among the predestinarians. Ibn Ghanim refers to the report of the meeting between Iblis and Moses, and argues that Iblis is just using predeterminism as an excuse to cover his unbelief and use a subtile deception by evoking sympathies. Ruzbihan Baqli calls Iblis' apology a form of deception.
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207–1273) argues that it is pointless to use predeterminism as an excuse for one's own demise. He invokes the analogy between Adam and Iblis: While both were destined to fall, Iblis and his offspring blamed God, while Adam pleaded for forgiveness nontheless. He advises humans to do the same. In this context, Rumi declares that love is more important than intelligence and states: "(Cunning) intelligence is from Iblis, and love from Adam."
In his Masnavi (Book 2), he refers to several attempts to excuse Iblis, when he wakens Mu'awiya for the morning prayer (ṣalāt al-fajr). Mu'awiya is sceptical towards Iblis' alleged good intentions, so he begins to question him. Iblis argues that an original angel, who was predestined to fall, could never be truly evil. Mu'awiya realizes he cannot outsmart Iblis and seeks refuge in God instead. When Iblis sees that he can't win Mu'awiya over, he confesses that he never had good intentions in the first place and used these arguements just to trick people. Instead, he woke him up because missing a prayer and consequent repentance (tawbah), would bring him closer to God than performing the prayer. Rumi makes clear that there is no reason to have sympathies for the fallen angel, as he is still the enemy of humans.
Most stories regarding Iblis consider him to be involved in a battle between Angels and jinn. However, opinions differ on whether Iblis was one of the Angels or of the jinn during the battle. From the opinions that Iblis as a jinn, is supposed to have lived on earth before the creation of humans. When the Angels arrived to battle the jinn, they took prisoners, among them Iblis, and were carried to heaven. Since he, unlike the other jinn, was pious, the Angels were impressed by his nobility, and Iblis was allowed to join the company of Angels and elevated to their rank. Although he got the outer appearance of an Angel, he was still a jinn in essence, and thus able to disobey God later.
He was then sentenced to hell forever, but God granted him a favor for his former worship, that is to take revenge on humans by attempting to mislead them until the Day of Judgment.
Other scholar traditions considering Iblis being an Angel, often describe him as an archangel (malak al-muqarrab), called Azazil. According to this story, Azazil/Iblis was the leader and Imam (teacher) of the Angels, and became a guardian of heaven. At the same time, he was the closest to the Throne of God. God gave him authority over the lower heavens and the earth. When God sent the Angels to earth to battle the jinn, Azazil/Iblis and his army drove the jinn to the edge of the world, Mount Qaf.
Knowing about the corruption of the former earthen inhabitants, Iblis protested, when he was instructed to prostrate himself before the new earthen inhabitant, that is Adam. He assumed that the Angels who praise God's Glory day and night are superior in contrast to the mud-made humans and their bodily flaws. He even regarded himself superior in comparison to the other Angels, since he was (one of those) created from fire. However, he was degraded and sentenced to hell (Sijjin), by God for his arrogance.
Iblis is said to had four wings. After he was cursed, his form turned from that of an Angel into a devil. God transformed his neck to that of a pig, and his head into that of a camel. His eyes are stretched all over his face, and canines the fangs of a boar. From his beard, only seven hairs grow.
After he was cast out from among the Angels, God made him able to beget children. God aroused hatred within Iblis, so that a spark of fire emanated from him. From this spark of fire (samum), God created Iblis' wife. In other traditions, God made Iblis hermaphrodite, and Iblis begot offspring by himself alone.
The matter regarding Iblis being an Angel, although still debated, consensus among scholars and majority of muslims according to Quranic narration ({And ˹remember˺ when We said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam,” so they all did—but not Iblîs,1 who was one of the jinn} Surah Al-Kahf 50, {He replied, “I am better than he is: You created me from fire and him from clay.”} Surah Al-A'raf 12), is that he is a Jinn. The name Azazil, along with him being an Angel, is said to have originated from Jewish narrations, which are not considered a reliable source.
According to the Stories of the Prophets, to enter the abode of Adam in garden Eden, Iblis uses the biblical serpent to sneak in. The garden is watched by an Angelic guardian. He invents a plan to trick him and approaches a peacock and tells him that all creatures are destined to die and thus the peacock's beauty will perish. But if he gets the fruit of eternity, he could make every creature immortal. Therefore, the peacock persuades the serpent to slip Iblis into the Garden, by carrying him in his mouth. In similar narration, Iblis is warded off by Riḍwan's burning sword for 100 years. Then he found the serpent. He says since he was one of the first cherub, he will one day return to God's Grace and Promises to show gratitude if the serpent does him a favor. In both narratives, in the Garden, Iblis speaks through the serpent to Adam and Eve, and tricks them into eating from the forbidden tree.
Modern Muslims accuse the Yazidis of devil-worship for venerating the peacock. The image of the biblical serpent might derive from Gnostic and Jewish oral tradition circulating in the Arabian Peninsula,
During the early Abbaside period, Iblis might have been an inspirational figure, some sort of musical patron, for anti-religious poets and hedonists, such as al-Walid. In Muslim culture, it is said some people had befriended Iblis as a muse. Hilal al-Kufi (end of the seventh century) was nicknamed "companion of Iblis" (sahib Iblis). Abu al-Fadl Muhammad al Tabasi frequently invokes Iblis (or Azazil) and his progeny in his Medieval encyclopedia of magic. Iblis is further said to approach dying people to tempt them away from Islam in exchange for their life. According to the Islamic Book of the Dead, Iblis in disguise approaches a thirsty man with a cup of water, but only handing him water over, if he testifies "two gods", "no one formed the universe" or "the Messenger, peace be upon him, lied".
Iblis possessed an ability to shapeshift, as narrated by Hadiths which given commentaries by Tabari, which noded by Ibn Taymiyya, where Iblis was once taking form of Suraqa ibn Malik, and take sides with the polytheists during the Battle of Badr.
Iblis is perhaps one of the most well-known individual supernatural entities and was depicted in multiple visual representations like the Quran and Manuscripts of Bal‘ami’s ‘Tarjamah-i Tarikh-i Tabari. Iblis was a unique individual, described as both a pious jinni and an angel before he fell from God's grace when he refused to bow before the prophet Adam. After this incident, Iblis turned into a shaytan. In visual appearance, Iblis was depicted in On the Monstrous in the Islamic Visual Tradition by Francesca Leoni as a being with a human-like body with flaming eyes, a tail, claws, and large horns on a grossly disproportionate large head.
Illustrations of Iblis in Islamic paintings often depict him black-faced, a feature which would later symbolize any satanic figure or heretic, and with a black body, to symbolize his corrupted nature. Another common depiction of Iblis shows him in human form wearing a special head covering, clearly different from the traditional Islamic turban and long sleeves, signifying long lasting devotion to God. Only in one, he wears traditional Islamic head covering.
Most pictures show and describe Iblis at the moment, when the angels prostrate themselves before Adam. In the manuscripts of Bal‘ami’s ‘Tarjamah-i Tarikh-i Tabari he is usually seen beyond the outcrop, his face transformed with his wings burned, to the envious countenance of a devil. In his demonic form, Iblis is portrayed similar to his cohorts (shayatin) in Turko-Persian art, as Asian demons (div). They are bangled creatures with flaming eyes, only covered by a short skirt. Similar to European arts depicting devils by traits of pagan deities, Islamic arts portray the devils with features often similar to that of Hindu deities.
Vathek, first composed in French (1782) by the English novelist William Beckford, in which the protagonists travel through, what he conceives as the supernatural world of the Orient. In their travels, they meet jinn, angels, peri, and prophets. The underworld is the domain of Iblis, however, they meet him only in person at the end of the journey. Although there are similarities to Dante's Satan in the Halls of Iblis, Beckford's Satan, clearly inspired by the figure of Iblis, is that of a young man with mixed traits of pride and despair, and not that of a monstrous being.
The complexity of Iblis' character from Quranic story had long lasting influences on Islamic cultural literature. It elaborates on the necessity of evil and Iblis' disobedience in creative retelling of the exegetical tradition.
In Muhammad Iqbal's poetry, Iblis is critical about overstressed obedience, which caused his downfall. But Iblis is not happy about humanity's obedience towards himself either; rather he longs for humans who resist him. Before a human who resisted him, he would be willing to prostrate himself, and he could finally achieve salvation.
Egyptian novelist Tawfiq al-Hakim's ash-Shahid (1953) describes the necessity of Iblis's evil for the world. As a reference to Iblis' predetermined fall, his protagonist Iblis consulsts religious authorities to embrace salvation, but is rejected each time, because the world would require him to be sinful. He consults the Pope, the Rabbi, and the Al-Azhar Mosque, each of them explain the necessity of Iblis' unbelief. Without Iblis' evil deeds, a large portion of revelation would become obsolete. Afterwards, Iblis visits the angel Gabriel, but is rejected again. Realizing that Iblis is both doomed as well as appointed by God, he descends from heaven shouting out: "I am a martyr!".
The novel received negative reception in Salafi circles. The Salafi scholar Abu Ishaq al-Heweny stated: "I swear by God it would never cross the mind, at all, that this absolute kufr reaches this level, and that it gets published as a novel". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Iblis (Arabic: إِبْلِيسْ, romanized: Iblīs), alternatively known as Eblīs, is the leader of the devils (shayāṭīn) in Islam. According to the Quran, Iblis was thrown out of heaven, after he refused to prostrate himself before Adam. Regarding the origin and nature of Iblis, there are two different viewpoints.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In the first version, before Iblis was cast down from heaven, he used to be a leading angel called ʿAzāzīl, appointed by God to obliterate the preceding inhabitants of the earth (usually jinn), who became disobedient and destructive, to replace them with humans. After Iblis objected to God's decision to create Adam as a successor to the previous generation of sentient life, he was punished by being relegated and cast down to earth as a shayṭān (devil). In the alternative account, God created Iblis from the fires beneath the seventh earth. Worshipping God for thousands of years, Iblis ascended to the surface, whereupon, thanks to his pertinacious servitude, he rose until he reached the company of angels in the seventh heaven. When God created Adam and taught him the \"names of all things\", then ordered the angels to bow down, Iblis, being a jinn created from fire in this account, refused, and disobeyed God, leading to his downfall.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In the Islamic tradition, Iblis is often identified with ash-Shayṭān (\"the Devil\"), often known by the epithet ar-Rajim (Arabic: ٱلرَّجِيْم, lit. 'the Accursed'). Shayṭān is usually applied to Iblis in order to denote his role as the tempter, while Iblīs is his proper name. Some Muslim scholars uphold a more ambivalent role for Iblis, considering him not simply the Devil but \"the truest monotheist\" (Tawḥīd-i Iblīs), because he would worship only the Creator, and not his creations, while preserving the term shayṭān exclusively for evil forces.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In Islamic traditions, Iblīs is known by many alternative names or titles, such as Abū Murrah (Arabic: أَبُو مُرَّة, \"Father of Bitterness\") as the name stems from the word \"murr\" – meaning \"bitter\", ‘aduww Allāh or ‘aduwallah (Arabic: عُدُوّ الله, \"enemy or foe\" of God) and Abū Al-Harith (Arabic: أَبُو الْحَارِث, \"the father of the plowmen\"). He is also known by the nickname \"Abū Kardūs\" (Arabic: أَبُو كَرْدُوس), which may mean \"Father who piles up, crams or crowds together\".",
"title": "Naming and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The designation Iblīs (Arabic: إِبْلِيس) may be an epithet referencing an attribute, deriving from the Arabic verbal root BLS ب-ل-س (with the broad meaning of \"remain in grief\") or بَلَسَ (balasa, \"he despaired\"). This is the major opinion among Arab scholars, who maintain the tradition that the personal name of this being was ʿAzāzīl:",
"title": "Naming and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "\"The word \"إبليس\" [(Iblis)] is from the root \"بلس\" [(BLS)]. The root may mean: to be silent. \"الله رحمة من أبلس\" means to be in despair of Allah's mercy, hence, the name إبليس (Iblis). His original name was Azazil. Allah has said in Surah Al-Rum \"وَيَوْمَ تَقُومُ ٱلسَّاعَةُ يُبْلِسُ ٱلْمُجْرِمُونَ\" (On the Day that the Hour will be established, the guilty will be struck dumb with despair). The name \"Iblis\" is derived from the root, بلس , as he is in despair of Allah's mercy\" – Ibn Mandhur, Lisan Al-Arab, Vol.6/29",
"title": "Naming and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Some Muslim teachers, such as al-Jili, relate this name to talbis meaning confusion, because God's command confused him.",
"title": "Naming and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Another possibility is that it is derived from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos) (which is also the source of the English word 'devil') via a Syriac intermediary. The name itself could not be found before the Quran in Arab literature, suggesting it is not of pre-Islamic Arabian origin. The name could be found in the Kitab al Magall, a Christian apocryphal work written in Arabic.",
"title": "Naming and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Iblis is mentioned 11 times in the Quran by name, nine times related to his refusal against God's Command to prostrate himself before Adam. The term šayṭān is more prevalent, although Iblis is sometimes referred to as šayṭān; the terms are not interchangeable. The different fragments of Iblis's story are scattered across the Quran. In the aggregate, the story can be summarised as follows:",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "When God created Adam, He ordered the angels to bow before the new creation. All of the angels bowed down, but Iblis refused to do so. He argued that since he was created from fire, he is superior to humans, who were made from clay-mud, and that he should not prostrate himself before Adam. As punishment for his haughtiness, God banished Iblis from heaven and condemned him to hell. Later, Iblis requested the ability to try to mislead Adam and his descendants. God granted his request but also warned him that he would have no power over God's Servants.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Surah al-Kahf states in reference to Iblis:",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "(...) except Iblis, he was one of the jinni (...) (Arabic: إِلَّاۤ إِبۡلِیسَ كَانَ مِنَ ٱلۡجِنِّ \"illā iblīsa kāna mina l-jinni\" (18:50)",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "This led to a dispute among the mufassirūn (exegetes), who disagree on whether Iblis belongs to a group of angels called jinni due to their origin from paradise, or if he was distinct from the angels, the progenitor of the jinn.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "There are different opinions regarding the origin of Iblis. This dispute is closely related to doctrinal differences regarding free-will. Like humans, jinn are created on earth to \"worship\" ('abada) God (51:56), and are capable of righteous and evil acts (11:119). If angels can sin or not is disputed in Islam. Those who say that Iblis was not an angel, but a jinni, argue that only jinn (and humans), but not angels are capable of disobedience. This is the generally opinion among the Qadariyah and most Mu'tazilites. This view is also found to be prominent among many Salafis.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On the other hand, the term for celestial beings is usually malāk (angel) in early Islam. Tabarsi notes that if Iblis were a jinni, he couldn't have been one of the custodians of paradise. Many among those who say that Iblis was an angel read Surah 18:50 as a nisba for the term jannāt, thus referring to Iblis' heavenly origin (this reading is preferred by – among others – Ash'ari, Suyuti, and Al-Tha`labi). Most mutakallimūn (theologians) do not consider angels to be infallable, al-Razi being an exception.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Nontheless, if faith (ʾīmān) in God is proportional to obedience and knowledge of God, theologians still need to explain the cause for Iblis' fall. The Hanābila and Ash'arites would argue that Iblis was ignorant (jahl) and didn't understand God's will (irāda). However, Iblis' unbelief (kufr) would be ultimately caused by God. Al-Maghrībī states that, when the angels questioned the creation of Adam, God opened the angels' eyes for the characteristics of Adam, but closed the eyes' of Iblis, so he would remain in resistance (iḥtijāj). Therefore, Iblis would have been created as a disobedient angel and function as God's tempter.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Al-Māturīdī, the eponymous founder of Māturīdī theology, considers some sort of middle ground, arguing that angels have been put to a test in the heavens, just like humans and jinn are tested on earth. If they were not tested, the Quran wouldn't compliment angels for obedience. Al-Māturīdī further explains, when Surah al-Anbiya mentions that angels usurping divine names will be sentenced to hell, this refers to Iblis. This position is also found among the Māturīdīte scholars al-Samarqandī and al-Nasafi.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Within Muslim thought, Iblis is generally not considered to be the originator of evil. However, there are a few exceptions among Muslim scholars. The Qadariyya asserted that evil was introduced by disobedience to God, and Iblis was the first who disobeyed. This view is sometimes attributed to Hasan al-Basri. An extreme position among the Qadariyya asserts that Iblis was not even created by God, but this view is generally rejected as beliefs of the Manichaeans (majūs). Al-Māturīdī argued that such dualistic worldviews are irreconcilable with the Islamic doctrine of tawḥīd. Likewise, the jinn would have sinned prior to Iblis.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Iblis' disobedience is seen as an example and warning for the thaqalān (those who are accountable for their deeds). Those who say that Iblis was predestined to fall, say that he was created in such a way that God can demonstrate his entire spectrum of attributes (for example; jalal (majesty)) in his eternal speech (i.e. the Quran), and teaching the consequences of sin.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Three things to avoid are marked by the fall of Iblis: Transgression (ma'siyah), arrogance (istikbār), and comparison (qiyās) to another creature of God. Disobedience alone is not considered to be the cause of Iblis' damnation, but the reason behind his action and the implied underlying unbelief.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Although not the cause of evil, Iblis is known as the progenitor of tempters, known as the \"father of the devils\" (Abū ash-Shayāṭīn). Ḥādīth literature emphasizes their evil influences over humans rather than treating them as proper personalities. Muslims are advised to \"seek refuge\" from such influences and are recommanded to recite duʿāʾ (prayers) for protection.",
"title": "Kalām"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The predestinarians approach was attractive for many Muslim thinkers to avoid dualistic tendencies. Some extreme positions went as far as to consider the belief that evil derives from an individual's own responsibility without God's interference, as a form of attributing a second power to God, thus falling into širk (polytheism). From this idea of absolute predeterminism, some scholars and ṣūfis developed sympathy for Iblis. They began to consider Iblis to be a \"true monotheists\" only bested by Muhammed, who would accept punishment and suffering over bowing before something else but God, an idea later known as \"Satan's monotheism\" (tawḥīd-i Iblīs).",
"title": "Tawḥīd-i Iblīs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "This idea is reflected in a transmission by Wahb ibn Munabbih, an eminent teller of Israʼiliyyat, stating that Iblis met Moses on the slopes of Sinai. When Moses asks Iblis why he refused God's order, he replies that the command was actually a test. This story inspired people, such as Mansur al-Hallaj and Ahmad Ghazali. The latter depicted Iblis as a paragon of self-sacrifice and stated at some point: \"Whoever doesn't learn monotheism from Satan is a heretic (zindīq )\". His student, Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, asserted that Iblis' disobedience was wanted by God, or God would be powerless and a powerless being can't be attributed to God.",
"title": "Tawḥīd-i Iblīs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Such positive depictions are, however, by no means universal among the predestinarians. Ibn Ghanim refers to the report of the meeting between Iblis and Moses, and argues that Iblis is just using predeterminism as an excuse to cover his unbelief and use a subtile deception by evoking sympathies. Ruzbihan Baqli calls Iblis' apology a form of deception.",
"title": "Tawḥīd-i Iblīs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207–1273) argues that it is pointless to use predeterminism as an excuse for one's own demise. He invokes the analogy between Adam and Iblis: While both were destined to fall, Iblis and his offspring blamed God, while Adam pleaded for forgiveness nontheless. He advises humans to do the same. In this context, Rumi declares that love is more important than intelligence and states: \"(Cunning) intelligence is from Iblis, and love from Adam.\"",
"title": "Tawḥīd-i Iblīs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In his Masnavi (Book 2), he refers to several attempts to excuse Iblis, when he wakens Mu'awiya for the morning prayer (ṣalāt al-fajr). Mu'awiya is sceptical towards Iblis' alleged good intentions, so he begins to question him. Iblis argues that an original angel, who was predestined to fall, could never be truly evil. Mu'awiya realizes he cannot outsmart Iblis and seeks refuge in God instead. When Iblis sees that he can't win Mu'awiya over, he confesses that he never had good intentions in the first place and used these arguements just to trick people. Instead, he woke him up because missing a prayer and consequent repentance (tawbah), would bring him closer to God than performing the prayer. Rumi makes clear that there is no reason to have sympathies for the fallen angel, as he is still the enemy of humans.",
"title": "Tawḥīd-i Iblīs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Most stories regarding Iblis consider him to be involved in a battle between Angels and jinn. However, opinions differ on whether Iblis was one of the Angels or of the jinn during the battle. From the opinions that Iblis as a jinn, is supposed to have lived on earth before the creation of humans. When the Angels arrived to battle the jinn, they took prisoners, among them Iblis, and were carried to heaven. Since he, unlike the other jinn, was pious, the Angels were impressed by his nobility, and Iblis was allowed to join the company of Angels and elevated to their rank. Although he got the outer appearance of an Angel, he was still a jinn in essence, and thus able to disobey God later.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "He was then sentenced to hell forever, but God granted him a favor for his former worship, that is to take revenge on humans by attempting to mislead them until the Day of Judgment.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Other scholar traditions considering Iblis being an Angel, often describe him as an archangel (malak al-muqarrab), called Azazil. According to this story, Azazil/Iblis was the leader and Imam (teacher) of the Angels, and became a guardian of heaven. At the same time, he was the closest to the Throne of God. God gave him authority over the lower heavens and the earth. When God sent the Angels to earth to battle the jinn, Azazil/Iblis and his army drove the jinn to the edge of the world, Mount Qaf.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Knowing about the corruption of the former earthen inhabitants, Iblis protested, when he was instructed to prostrate himself before the new earthen inhabitant, that is Adam. He assumed that the Angels who praise God's Glory day and night are superior in contrast to the mud-made humans and their bodily flaws. He even regarded himself superior in comparison to the other Angels, since he was (one of those) created from fire. However, he was degraded and sentenced to hell (Sijjin), by God for his arrogance.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Iblis is said to had four wings. After he was cursed, his form turned from that of an Angel into a devil. God transformed his neck to that of a pig, and his head into that of a camel. His eyes are stretched all over his face, and canines the fangs of a boar. From his beard, only seven hairs grow.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "After he was cast out from among the Angels, God made him able to beget children. God aroused hatred within Iblis, so that a spark of fire emanated from him. From this spark of fire (samum), God created Iblis' wife. In other traditions, God made Iblis hermaphrodite, and Iblis begot offspring by himself alone.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The matter regarding Iblis being an Angel, although still debated, consensus among scholars and majority of muslims according to Quranic narration ({And ˹remember˺ when We said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam,” so they all did—but not Iblîs,1 who was one of the jinn} Surah Al-Kahf 50, {He replied, “I am better than he is: You created me from fire and him from clay.”} Surah Al-A'raf 12), is that he is a Jinn. The name Azazil, along with him being an Angel, is said to have originated from Jewish narrations, which are not considered a reliable source.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "According to the Stories of the Prophets, to enter the abode of Adam in garden Eden, Iblis uses the biblical serpent to sneak in. The garden is watched by an Angelic guardian. He invents a plan to trick him and approaches a peacock and tells him that all creatures are destined to die and thus the peacock's beauty will perish. But if he gets the fruit of eternity, he could make every creature immortal. Therefore, the peacock persuades the serpent to slip Iblis into the Garden, by carrying him in his mouth. In similar narration, Iblis is warded off by Riḍwan's burning sword for 100 years. Then he found the serpent. He says since he was one of the first cherub, he will one day return to God's Grace and Promises to show gratitude if the serpent does him a favor. In both narratives, in the Garden, Iblis speaks through the serpent to Adam and Eve, and tricks them into eating from the forbidden tree.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Modern Muslims accuse the Yazidis of devil-worship for venerating the peacock. The image of the biblical serpent might derive from Gnostic and Jewish oral tradition circulating in the Arabian Peninsula,",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "During the early Abbaside period, Iblis might have been an inspirational figure, some sort of musical patron, for anti-religious poets and hedonists, such as al-Walid. In Muslim culture, it is said some people had befriended Iblis as a muse. Hilal al-Kufi (end of the seventh century) was nicknamed \"companion of Iblis\" (sahib Iblis). Abu al-Fadl Muhammad al Tabasi frequently invokes Iblis (or Azazil) and his progeny in his Medieval encyclopedia of magic. Iblis is further said to approach dying people to tempt them away from Islam in exchange for their life. According to the Islamic Book of the Dead, Iblis in disguise approaches a thirsty man with a cup of water, but only handing him water over, if he testifies \"two gods\", \"no one formed the universe\" or \"the Messenger, peace be upon him, lied\".",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Iblis possessed an ability to shapeshift, as narrated by Hadiths which given commentaries by Tabari, which noded by Ibn Taymiyya, where Iblis was once taking form of Suraqa ibn Malik, and take sides with the polytheists during the Battle of Badr.",
"title": "In tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Iblis is perhaps one of the most well-known individual supernatural entities and was depicted in multiple visual representations like the Quran and Manuscripts of Bal‘ami’s ‘Tarjamah-i Tarikh-i Tabari. Iblis was a unique individual, described as both a pious jinni and an angel before he fell from God's grace when he refused to bow before the prophet Adam. After this incident, Iblis turned into a shaytan. In visual appearance, Iblis was depicted in On the Monstrous in the Islamic Visual Tradition by Francesca Leoni as a being with a human-like body with flaming eyes, a tail, claws, and large horns on a grossly disproportionate large head.",
"title": "In arts and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Illustrations of Iblis in Islamic paintings often depict him black-faced, a feature which would later symbolize any satanic figure or heretic, and with a black body, to symbolize his corrupted nature. Another common depiction of Iblis shows him in human form wearing a special head covering, clearly different from the traditional Islamic turban and long sleeves, signifying long lasting devotion to God. Only in one, he wears traditional Islamic head covering.",
"title": "In arts and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Most pictures show and describe Iblis at the moment, when the angels prostrate themselves before Adam. In the manuscripts of Bal‘ami’s ‘Tarjamah-i Tarikh-i Tabari he is usually seen beyond the outcrop, his face transformed with his wings burned, to the envious countenance of a devil. In his demonic form, Iblis is portrayed similar to his cohorts (shayatin) in Turko-Persian art, as Asian demons (div). They are bangled creatures with flaming eyes, only covered by a short skirt. Similar to European arts depicting devils by traits of pagan deities, Islamic arts portray the devils with features often similar to that of Hindu deities.",
"title": "In arts and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Vathek, first composed in French (1782) by the English novelist William Beckford, in which the protagonists travel through, what he conceives as the supernatural world of the Orient. In their travels, they meet jinn, angels, peri, and prophets. The underworld is the domain of Iblis, however, they meet him only in person at the end of the journey. Although there are similarities to Dante's Satan in the Halls of Iblis, Beckford's Satan, clearly inspired by the figure of Iblis, is that of a young man with mixed traits of pride and despair, and not that of a monstrous being.",
"title": "In arts and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The complexity of Iblis' character from Quranic story had long lasting influences on Islamic cultural literature. It elaborates on the necessity of evil and Iblis' disobedience in creative retelling of the exegetical tradition.",
"title": "In arts and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In Muhammad Iqbal's poetry, Iblis is critical about overstressed obedience, which caused his downfall. But Iblis is not happy about humanity's obedience towards himself either; rather he longs for humans who resist him. Before a human who resisted him, he would be willing to prostrate himself, and he could finally achieve salvation.",
"title": "In arts and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Egyptian novelist Tawfiq al-Hakim's ash-Shahid (1953) describes the necessity of Iblis's evil for the world. As a reference to Iblis' predetermined fall, his protagonist Iblis consulsts religious authorities to embrace salvation, but is rejected each time, because the world would require him to be sinful. He consults the Pope, the Rabbi, and the Al-Azhar Mosque, each of them explain the necessity of Iblis' unbelief. Without Iblis' evil deeds, a large portion of revelation would become obsolete. Afterwards, Iblis visits the angel Gabriel, but is rejected again. Realizing that Iblis is both doomed as well as appointed by God, he descends from heaven shouting out: \"I am a martyr!\".",
"title": "In arts and literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The novel received negative reception in Salafi circles. The Salafi scholar Abu Ishaq al-Heweny stated: \"I swear by God it would never cross the mind, at all, that this absolute kufr reaches this level, and that it gets published as a novel\".",
"title": "In arts and literature"
}
]
| Iblis, alternatively known as Eblīs, is the leader of the devils (shayāṭīn) in Islam. According to the Quran, Iblis was thrown out of heaven, after he refused to prostrate himself before Adam. Regarding the origin and nature of Iblis, there are two different viewpoints. In the first version, before Iblis was cast down from heaven, he used to be a leading angel called ʿAzāzīl, appointed by God to obliterate the preceding inhabitants of the earth, who became disobedient and destructive, to replace them with humans. After Iblis objected to God's decision to create Adam as a successor to the previous generation of sentient life, he was punished by being relegated and cast down to earth as a shayṭān (devil). In the alternative account, God created Iblis from the fires beneath the seventh earth. Worshipping God for thousands of years, Iblis ascended to the surface, whereupon, thanks to his pertinacious servitude, he rose until he reached the company of angels in the seventh heaven. When God created Adam and taught him the "names of all things", then ordered the angels to bow down, Iblis, being a jinn created from fire in this account, refused, and disobeyed God, leading to his downfall. In the Islamic tradition, Iblis is often identified with ash-Shayṭān, often known by the epithet ar-Rajim. Shayṭān is usually applied to Iblis in order to denote his role as the tempter, while Iblīs is his proper name. Some Muslim scholars uphold a more ambivalent role for Iblis, considering him not simply the Devil but "the truest monotheist", because he would worship only the Creator, and not his creations, while preserving the term shayṭān exclusively for evil forces. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-29T16:21:01Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iblis |
15,516 | Intelsat | 38°56′30″N 77°03′49″W / 38.94167°N 77.06361°W / 38.94167; -77.06361
Intelsat S.A. (formerly INTEL-SAT, INTELSAT, Intelsat) is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States. Originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO, or INTELSAT), from 1964 to 2001, it was an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international telecommunications and broadcast services.
In March 2023, rival satellite operator SES confirmed that it was in talks about a merger with Intelsat but in June 2023, it was announced that these discussions had ended.
As of June 2022, Intelsat operated a fleet of 52 communications satellites which was then one of the world's largest fleets. In 2020, the company announced plans to procure, build and launch seven C-band satellites over the next several years. These C-band satellites will contribute to the acceleration of America's 5G buildout. In early 2022, the company announced contracts for four GEO software defined satellites (SDS), two in partnership with Airbus and two in partnership with Thales Alenia Space, that are scheduled to launch in 2023. These contracts point to the pursuit of a multi-year network transformation plan with investments designed to deliver higher speeds, more flexibility, redundancy, and backwards compatibility.
As of 2022, the company served approximately 1,800 customers and employed a staff of approximately 1,790 people.
John F. Kennedy instigated the creation of INTELSAT with his speech to the United Nations on 25 September 1961. Less than a year later, John F. Kennedy signed the Communications Satellite Act of 1962. INTELSAT was originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO) and operated from 1964 to 2001 as an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international broadcast services. In 2001, the international satellite market was fully commercialized, and INTELSAT was privatized after 2001 as Intelsat was formed up as a private Luxembourg corporation.
The International Governmental Organization (IGO) began on (August 20, 1964; 59 years ago (August 20, 1964)), with 7 participating countries. The 1964 agreement was an interim arrangement on a path to a more permanent agreement. The permanent international organization was established in 1973, following inter-nation negotiations from 1969 to 1971. The most difficult issue to "resolve concerned the shift from management of the system by a national entity to management by the international organization itself".
On 6 April 1965, INTELSAT's first satellite, the Intelsat I (nicknamed Early Bird), was placed in geostationary orbit above the Atlantic Ocean by a Delta D rocket.
In 1973, the name was changed and there were 81 signatories. INTELSAT was "governed initially by two international agreements: The Agreement setting forth the basic provisions and principles and structure of the organization, signed by the governments through their foreign ministries, and an Operating Agreement setting forth more detailed financial and technical provisions and signed by the governments or their designated telecommunications entities", — in most cases, the latter are the ministries of communications of the party countries, but in the case of the United States, was the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), a private corporation established by federal legislation to represent the U.S. in international governance for the global communication satellite system. INTELSAT at that time directly owned and managed a global communications satellite system, and structurally consisted of three parts:
The 1973 Agreement called for a seven-year transition from national to international management, but continued until 1976 to carve out "technical and operational management of the system [to the U.S. signatory] the Communications Satellite Corporation [which had also] served as the Manager of the global system under the interim arrangements in force from 1964 to 1973". Later phases of the transition resulted in full international governance by 1980. Financial contribution to the organization, its so-called "investment share", was strictly proportional to each member's use of the system, determined annually; and this corresponded to the weighted vote each would have on the Board of Governors.
As of 2018, Intelsat provides service to over 600 Earth stations in more than 149 countries, territories and dependencies. By 2001, INTELSAT had over 100 members. It was also this year that INTELSAT privatized and changed its name to Intelsat.
Since its inception, Intelsat has used several versions (blocks) of its dedicated Intelsat satellites. Intelsat completes each block of spacecraft independently, leading to a variety of satellite manufacturing contractors over the years. Intelsat's largest spacecraft supplier by 2012 was Space Systems/Loral, having built 47 spacecraft (Intelsat 20) by that time.
The network in its early years was not as robust as it is now. A failure of the Atlantic satellite in the spring of 1969 threatened to stop the Apollo 11 mission; a replacement satellite went into a bad orbit and could not be recovered in time; NASA used undersea cable telephone circuits as an alternative to route Apollo's communications to NASA during the mission. During the Apollo 11 moonwalk, the Moon was over the Pacific Ocean, and so other antennas were used, as well as INTELSAT III, which was in geostationary orbit over the Pacific.
By the 1990s, building and launching satellites was no longer exclusively a government domain and as country-specific telecommunications systems were privatized, several private satellite operators arose to meet the growing demand. In the U.S., satellite operators such as PanAmSat, Orion Communications, Columbia Communications, Iridium, Globalstar, TRW and others formed under the umbrella of the Alliance for Competitive International Satellite Services (ACISS) to press for an end to the exclusively-intergovernmental organizations operating communication satellites and the monopoly position of COMSAT the U.S. signatory to Intelsat and Inmarsat. In March 2001, the U.S. Congress passed the Open-market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (ORBIT) Act to privatize COMSAT. In April 1998, to address U.S. government concerns about market power, Intelsat's senior management spun off five of its older satellites to a private Dutch entity, New Skies Satellites, which became a direct competitor to Intelsat.
On 18 July 2001, Intelsat became a private company, 37 years after formation. Prior to Intelsat's privatization in 2001, ownership and investment in INTELSAT (measured in shares) was distributed among INTELSAT members according to their use of services. Investment shares determined each member's percentage of the total contribution needed to finance capital expenditures. The organization's primary source of revenue was satellite usage fees which, after deduction of operating costs, was redistributed to INTELSAT members in proportion to their shares as repayment of capital and compensation for use of capital. Satellite services were available to any organization (both INTELSAT members and non-members), and all users paid the same rates.
Intelsat Americas-7 (known formerly as Telstar 7 and known as Galaxy 27 since on 1 February 2007) experienced a several-day power failure on 29 November 2004. The satellite returned to service with reduced capacity.
Intelsat was sold for US$3.1 billion in January 2005 to four private equity firms: Madison Dearborn Partners, Apax Partners, Permira and Apollo Global Management. The company acquired PanAmSat on 3 July 2006, and was then the world's largest provider of fixed satellite services, operating a fleet of 52 satellites in prime orbital locations.
In June 2007, BC Partners announced they had acquired 76% of Intelsat for about 3.75 billion euros.
In April 2013, the renamed Intelsat S.A. undertook an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, raising a net US$550 million, of which US$492 million was paid immediately to reduce outstanding company debts of US$15.9 billion. In May 2013, the company announced it would be purchasing four new high-performance Boeing EpicNG 702 MP satellites.
In 2015, Intelsat reincorporated in Delaware and became Intelsat Corporation.
There were negotiations in 2017 that Intelsat could potentially merge with Softbank-backed OneWeb. However, on 1 June 2017, it was announced that the bondholders would not accept the offer and that the potential merger would be terminated as of 2 June 2017.
After 2014, Intelsat maintained its corporate administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, where a majority of its employees worked at the time. Intelsat maintains constantly staffed global network operations centers in its Tysons Corner location and in Ellenwood, Georgia. A highly international business, Intelsat sources the majority of its revenue from non-U.S. located customers. In addition to its satellite fleet, Intelsat owns and operates eight teleports around the world.
Intelsat filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. courts on 13 May 2020, just before the new 5G spectrum auctions, with over US$15 billion in total debt.
Public reporting showed that the company had been considering bankruptcy protection as early as February 2020, as Intelsat formally withdrew from the C-Band Alliance. The C-Band Alliance was an industry consortium of the major satellite operators. The consortium had been formed to lobby U.S. regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the reassignment and payment for the legacy 5G spectrum of its members.
According to company statements, the company was hoping to restructure so that it could raise requisite capital to launch new satellite technology in 2022/2023, at a cost of some US$1.6 billion. The technology could compress existing licensed C-band spectrum customers into just forty per cent of the spectrum used in 2019. The release of spectrum would enable the company to receive up to US$4.86 billion in "spectrum clearing payments" from the FCC for clearing the spectrum by December 2023, two years ahead of the FCC baseline plan.
On February 24, 2022, Intelsat emerged from Chapter 11 as a private company with a strengthened capital structure which reduced debt by more than half, from approximately $16 billion to $7 billion. The company’s plan of reorganization was supported by all creditors and confirmed by the Bankruptcy Court on December 16, 2021. In connection with the emergence from bankruptcy, Intelsat also obtained $6.7 billion in new financing including a revolving credit facility, term loan, and secured notes.
According to then company CEO, Stephen Spengler, post bankruptcy, the company plans to pursue aggressive network innovation plans, and strategic growth initiatives, including building a software-defined 5G network. The company also announced a new board of directors, led by Lisa Hammitt, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Davidson Technologies.
In December 2020, Intelsat completed its acquisition of Gogo’s Commercial Aviation (CA) business. The vertical integration combined Intelsat’s next-generation global telecommunications network with Gogo CA’s customer-facing capabilities offering airlines and passengers an enhanced inflight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC) experience.
As of March 2011, Intelsat has agreed to purchase one-half of the 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) propellant payload that an MDA Corporation spacecraft satellite-servicing demonstration project would take to geostationary orbit. Catching up in orbit with four or five Intelsat communication satellites, a load of 200 kg (440 lb) of fuel delivered to each satellite would add somewhere between two and four years of additional service life. A near-end-of-life Intelsat satellite will be moved to a graveyard orbit 200 to 300 km (120–190 mi) above the geostationary belt where the refueling will be done, "without consequence" to the Intelsat business.
As of March 2010, the business model was still evolving. MDA "could ask customers to pay per kilogram of fuel successfully added to [each] satellite, with the per-kilogram price being a function of the additional revenue the operator can expect to generate from the spacecraft's extended operational life".
The plan is that the fuel-depot vehicle would maneuver to several satellites, dock at the target satellite's apogee kick motor, remove a small part of the target spacecraft's thermal protection blanket, connect to a fuel-pressure line and deliver the propellant. "MDA officials estimate the docking maneuver would take the communications satellite out of service for about 20 minutes".
On 25 February 2020, a Northrop Grumman robotic servicing spacecraft, Mission Extension Vehicle 1 (MEV 1) docked with the Intelsat 901 satellite. The MEV 1 spacecraft will provide propulsion capabilities to Intelsat 901 to extend its usable life for five years.
On 1 February 2007, Intelsat changed the names of 16 of its satellites formerly known under the Intelsat Americas and PanAmSat brands to Galaxy and Intelsat, respectively.
Over time, Intelsat has worked with most of the commercial launch services providers worldwide. Their satellites are often among the most massive of their generation, requiring the most powerful and reliable rockets on the market at a given time. In the 21st century, most Intelsat missions were conducted by Arianespace with the European Ariane 4 and Ariane 5 launchers, and by International Launch Services (ILS) with Proton-K and Proton-M rockets manufactured by Khrunichev in Russia. Intelsat also took advantage of the equatorial Sea Launch offering with Zenit-3SL rockets launched from the Ocean Odyssey floating platform in Pacific Ocean, until they suspended operations in 2014. On 30 May 2012, Intelsat signed a contract with SpaceX for one of the first Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, marking the return of Intelsat to American launchers after many flights on Atlas II in the 1990s and a single Atlas V launch in 2009. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "38°56′30″N 77°03′49″W / 38.94167°N 77.06361°W / 38.94167; -77.06361",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Intelsat S.A. (formerly INTEL-SAT, INTELSAT, Intelsat) is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States. Originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO, or INTELSAT), from 1964 to 2001, it was an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international telecommunications and broadcast services.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In March 2023, rival satellite operator SES confirmed that it was in talks about a merger with Intelsat but in June 2023, it was announced that these discussions had ended.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "As of June 2022, Intelsat operated a fleet of 52 communications satellites which was then one of the world's largest fleets. In 2020, the company announced plans to procure, build and launch seven C-band satellites over the next several years. These C-band satellites will contribute to the acceleration of America's 5G buildout. In early 2022, the company announced contracts for four GEO software defined satellites (SDS), two in partnership with Airbus and two in partnership with Thales Alenia Space, that are scheduled to launch in 2023. These contracts point to the pursuit of a multi-year network transformation plan with investments designed to deliver higher speeds, more flexibility, redundancy, and backwards compatibility.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "As of 2022, the company served approximately 1,800 customers and employed a staff of approximately 1,790 people.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "John F. Kennedy instigated the creation of INTELSAT with his speech to the United Nations on 25 September 1961. Less than a year later, John F. Kennedy signed the Communications Satellite Act of 1962. INTELSAT was originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO) and operated from 1964 to 2001 as an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international broadcast services. In 2001, the international satellite market was fully commercialized, and INTELSAT was privatized after 2001 as Intelsat was formed up as a private Luxembourg corporation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The International Governmental Organization (IGO) began on (August 20, 1964; 59 years ago (August 20, 1964)), with 7 participating countries. The 1964 agreement was an interim arrangement on a path to a more permanent agreement. The permanent international organization was established in 1973, following inter-nation negotiations from 1969 to 1971. The most difficult issue to \"resolve concerned the shift from management of the system by a national entity to management by the international organization itself\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "On 6 April 1965, INTELSAT's first satellite, the Intelsat I (nicknamed Early Bird), was placed in geostationary orbit above the Atlantic Ocean by a Delta D rocket.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1973, the name was changed and there were 81 signatories. INTELSAT was \"governed initially by two international agreements: The Agreement setting forth the basic provisions and principles and structure of the organization, signed by the governments through their foreign ministries, and an Operating Agreement setting forth more detailed financial and technical provisions and signed by the governments or their designated telecommunications entities\", — in most cases, the latter are the ministries of communications of the party countries, but in the case of the United States, was the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), a private corporation established by federal legislation to represent the U.S. in international governance for the global communication satellite system. INTELSAT at that time directly owned and managed a global communications satellite system, and structurally consisted of three parts:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The 1973 Agreement called for a seven-year transition from national to international management, but continued until 1976 to carve out \"technical and operational management of the system [to the U.S. signatory] the Communications Satellite Corporation [which had also] served as the Manager of the global system under the interim arrangements in force from 1964 to 1973\". Later phases of the transition resulted in full international governance by 1980. Financial contribution to the organization, its so-called \"investment share\", was strictly proportional to each member's use of the system, determined annually; and this corresponded to the weighted vote each would have on the Board of Governors.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As of 2018, Intelsat provides service to over 600 Earth stations in more than 149 countries, territories and dependencies. By 2001, INTELSAT had over 100 members. It was also this year that INTELSAT privatized and changed its name to Intelsat.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Since its inception, Intelsat has used several versions (blocks) of its dedicated Intelsat satellites. Intelsat completes each block of spacecraft independently, leading to a variety of satellite manufacturing contractors over the years. Intelsat's largest spacecraft supplier by 2012 was Space Systems/Loral, having built 47 spacecraft (Intelsat 20) by that time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The network in its early years was not as robust as it is now. A failure of the Atlantic satellite in the spring of 1969 threatened to stop the Apollo 11 mission; a replacement satellite went into a bad orbit and could not be recovered in time; NASA used undersea cable telephone circuits as an alternative to route Apollo's communications to NASA during the mission. During the Apollo 11 moonwalk, the Moon was over the Pacific Ocean, and so other antennas were used, as well as INTELSAT III, which was in geostationary orbit over the Pacific.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "By the 1990s, building and launching satellites was no longer exclusively a government domain and as country-specific telecommunications systems were privatized, several private satellite operators arose to meet the growing demand. In the U.S., satellite operators such as PanAmSat, Orion Communications, Columbia Communications, Iridium, Globalstar, TRW and others formed under the umbrella of the Alliance for Competitive International Satellite Services (ACISS) to press for an end to the exclusively-intergovernmental organizations operating communication satellites and the monopoly position of COMSAT the U.S. signatory to Intelsat and Inmarsat. In March 2001, the U.S. Congress passed the Open-market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (ORBIT) Act to privatize COMSAT. In April 1998, to address U.S. government concerns about market power, Intelsat's senior management spun off five of its older satellites to a private Dutch entity, New Skies Satellites, which became a direct competitor to Intelsat.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On 18 July 2001, Intelsat became a private company, 37 years after formation. Prior to Intelsat's privatization in 2001, ownership and investment in INTELSAT (measured in shares) was distributed among INTELSAT members according to their use of services. Investment shares determined each member's percentage of the total contribution needed to finance capital expenditures. The organization's primary source of revenue was satellite usage fees which, after deduction of operating costs, was redistributed to INTELSAT members in proportion to their shares as repayment of capital and compensation for use of capital. Satellite services were available to any organization (both INTELSAT members and non-members), and all users paid the same rates.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Intelsat Americas-7 (known formerly as Telstar 7 and known as Galaxy 27 since on 1 February 2007) experienced a several-day power failure on 29 November 2004. The satellite returned to service with reduced capacity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Intelsat was sold for US$3.1 billion in January 2005 to four private equity firms: Madison Dearborn Partners, Apax Partners, Permira and Apollo Global Management. The company acquired PanAmSat on 3 July 2006, and was then the world's largest provider of fixed satellite services, operating a fleet of 52 satellites in prime orbital locations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In June 2007, BC Partners announced they had acquired 76% of Intelsat for about 3.75 billion euros.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In April 2013, the renamed Intelsat S.A. undertook an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, raising a net US$550 million, of which US$492 million was paid immediately to reduce outstanding company debts of US$15.9 billion. In May 2013, the company announced it would be purchasing four new high-performance Boeing EpicNG 702 MP satellites.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2015, Intelsat reincorporated in Delaware and became Intelsat Corporation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There were negotiations in 2017 that Intelsat could potentially merge with Softbank-backed OneWeb. However, on 1 June 2017, it was announced that the bondholders would not accept the offer and that the potential merger would be terminated as of 2 June 2017.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "After 2014, Intelsat maintained its corporate administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, where a majority of its employees worked at the time. Intelsat maintains constantly staffed global network operations centers in its Tysons Corner location and in Ellenwood, Georgia. A highly international business, Intelsat sources the majority of its revenue from non-U.S. located customers. In addition to its satellite fleet, Intelsat owns and operates eight teleports around the world.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Intelsat filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. courts on 13 May 2020, just before the new 5G spectrum auctions, with over US$15 billion in total debt.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Public reporting showed that the company had been considering bankruptcy protection as early as February 2020, as Intelsat formally withdrew from the C-Band Alliance. The C-Band Alliance was an industry consortium of the major satellite operators. The consortium had been formed to lobby U.S. regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the reassignment and payment for the legacy 5G spectrum of its members.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "According to company statements, the company was hoping to restructure so that it could raise requisite capital to launch new satellite technology in 2022/2023, at a cost of some US$1.6 billion. The technology could compress existing licensed C-band spectrum customers into just forty per cent of the spectrum used in 2019. The release of spectrum would enable the company to receive up to US$4.86 billion in \"spectrum clearing payments\" from the FCC for clearing the spectrum by December 2023, two years ahead of the FCC baseline plan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "On February 24, 2022, Intelsat emerged from Chapter 11 as a private company with a strengthened capital structure which reduced debt by more than half, from approximately $16 billion to $7 billion. The company’s plan of reorganization was supported by all creditors and confirmed by the Bankruptcy Court on December 16, 2021. In connection with the emergence from bankruptcy, Intelsat also obtained $6.7 billion in new financing including a revolving credit facility, term loan, and secured notes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "According to then company CEO, Stephen Spengler, post bankruptcy, the company plans to pursue aggressive network innovation plans, and strategic growth initiatives, including building a software-defined 5G network. The company also announced a new board of directors, led by Lisa Hammitt, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Davidson Technologies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In December 2020, Intelsat completed its acquisition of Gogo’s Commercial Aviation (CA) business. The vertical integration combined Intelsat’s next-generation global telecommunications network with Gogo CA’s customer-facing capabilities offering airlines and passengers an enhanced inflight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC) experience.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "As of March 2011, Intelsat has agreed to purchase one-half of the 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) propellant payload that an MDA Corporation spacecraft satellite-servicing demonstration project would take to geostationary orbit. Catching up in orbit with four or five Intelsat communication satellites, a load of 200 kg (440 lb) of fuel delivered to each satellite would add somewhere between two and four years of additional service life. A near-end-of-life Intelsat satellite will be moved to a graveyard orbit 200 to 300 km (120–190 mi) above the geostationary belt where the refueling will be done, \"without consequence\" to the Intelsat business.",
"title": "In-space refueling demonstration project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "As of March 2010, the business model was still evolving. MDA \"could ask customers to pay per kilogram of fuel successfully added to [each] satellite, with the per-kilogram price being a function of the additional revenue the operator can expect to generate from the spacecraft's extended operational life\".",
"title": "In-space refueling demonstration project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The plan is that the fuel-depot vehicle would maneuver to several satellites, dock at the target satellite's apogee kick motor, remove a small part of the target spacecraft's thermal protection blanket, connect to a fuel-pressure line and deliver the propellant. \"MDA officials estimate the docking maneuver would take the communications satellite out of service for about 20 minutes\".",
"title": "In-space refueling demonstration project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On 25 February 2020, a Northrop Grumman robotic servicing spacecraft, Mission Extension Vehicle 1 (MEV 1) docked with the Intelsat 901 satellite. The MEV 1 spacecraft will provide propulsion capabilities to Intelsat 901 to extend its usable life for five years.",
"title": "In-space refueling demonstration project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On 1 February 2007, Intelsat changed the names of 16 of its satellites formerly known under the Intelsat Americas and PanAmSat brands to Galaxy and Intelsat, respectively.",
"title": "Satellites"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Over time, Intelsat has worked with most of the commercial launch services providers worldwide. Their satellites are often among the most massive of their generation, requiring the most powerful and reliable rockets on the market at a given time. In the 21st century, most Intelsat missions were conducted by Arianespace with the European Ariane 4 and Ariane 5 launchers, and by International Launch Services (ILS) with Proton-K and Proton-M rockets manufactured by Khrunichev in Russia. Intelsat also took advantage of the equatorial Sea Launch offering with Zenit-3SL rockets launched from the Ocean Odyssey floating platform in Pacific Ocean, until they suspended operations in 2014. On 30 May 2012, Intelsat signed a contract with SpaceX for one of the first Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, marking the return of Intelsat to American launchers after many flights on Atlas II in the 1990s and a single Atlas V launch in 2009.",
"title": "Satellites"
}
]
| Intelsat S.A. is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States. Originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, from 1964 to 2001, it was an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international telecommunications and broadcast services. In March 2023, rival satellite operator SES confirmed that it was in talks about a merger with Intelsat but in June 2023, it was announced that these discussions had ended. As of June 2022, Intelsat operated a fleet of 52 communications satellites which was then one of the world's largest fleets. In 2020, the company announced plans to procure, build and launch seven C-band satellites over the next several years. These C-band satellites will contribute to the acceleration of America's 5G buildout. In early 2022, the company announced contracts for four GEO software defined satellites (SDS), two in partnership with Airbus and two in partnership with Thales Alenia Space, that are scheduled to launch in 2023. These contracts point to the pursuit of a multi-year network transformation plan with investments designed to deliver higher speeds, more flexibility, redundancy, and backwards compatibility. As of 2022, the company served approximately 1,800 customers and employed a staff of approximately 1,790 people. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-07T17:26:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat |
15,517 | ITSO | ITSO may refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "ITSO may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| ITSO may refer to: ITSO Ltd, previously Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation, who maintain the ITSO standard for smart ticketing in the UK
International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, an intergovernmental consortium
Information Technology Student Organization, a student organization at Rochester Institute of Technology
International Technical Support Organization, the IBM group that produces IBM Redbooks. | 2022-06-11T11:37:41Z | [
"Template:Disambiguation"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITSO |
|
15,521 | Devanagari numerals | The Devanagari numerals are the symbols used to write numbers in the Devanagari script, the predominant for northern Indian languages. They are used to write decimal numbers, instead of the Western Arabic numerals.
The word śūnya for zero was calqued into Arabic as صف sifr, meaning 'nothing', which became the term "zero" in many European languages via Medieval Latin zephirum.
Devanagari digits shapes may vary depending on geographical area or epoch. Some of the variants are also seen in older Sanskrit literature. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Devanagari numerals are the symbols used to write numbers in the Devanagari script, the predominant for northern Indian languages. They are used to write decimal numbers, instead of the Western Arabic numerals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The word śūnya for zero was calqued into Arabic as صف sifr, meaning 'nothing', which became the term \"zero\" in many European languages via Medieval Latin zephirum.",
"title": "Table"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Devanagari digits shapes may vary depending on geographical area or epoch. Some of the variants are also seen in older Sanskrit literature.",
"title": "Variants"
}
]
| The Devanagari numerals are the symbols used to write numbers in the Devanagari script, the predominant for northern Indian languages. They are used to write decimal numbers, instead of the Western Arabic numerals. | 2002-01-18T13:36:20Z | 2023-10-31T06:25:11Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari_numerals |
15,524 | Ian Botham | Ian Terence Botham, Baron Botham, OBE (born 24 November 1955) is an English cricket commentator, member of the House of Lords, a former cricketer who has been chairman of Durham County Cricket Club since 2017 and charity fundraiser. Hailed as one of the greatest all-rounders in the history of the game, Botham represented England in both Test and One-Day International cricket.
He played most of his first-class cricket for Somerset, at other times competing for Worcestershire, Durham and Queensland. He was an aggressive right-handed batsman and, as a right-arm fast-medium bowler, was noted for his swing bowling. He generally fielded close to the wicket, predominantly in the slips. In Test cricket, Botham scored 14 centuries with a highest score of 208, and from 1986 to 1988 held the world record for the most Test wickets until overtaken by fellow all-rounder Sir Richard Hadlee. He took five wickets in an innings 27 times, and 10 wickets in a match four times. In 1980, he became the second player in Test history to complete the "match double" of scoring 100 runs and taking 10 wickets in the same match. On the occasion of England's 1000th Test in August 2018, he was named in the country's greatest Test XI by the ECB.
Botham has at times been involved in controversies, including a highly publicised court case involving rival all-rounder Imran Khan and an ongoing dispute with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). These incidents, allied to his on-field success, have attracted media attention, especially from the tabloid press. Botham has used his fame to raise money for research into childhood leukaemia. These efforts have realised millions of pounds for Bloodwise, of which he became president. On 8 August 2009, he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. In July 2020, it was announced that Botham would be elevated to the House of Lords and that he would sit as a crossbench peer.
Botham has a wide range of sporting interests outside cricket. He was a talented footballer at school and had to choose between cricket and football as a career. He chose cricket but, even so, he played professional football for a few seasons and made eleven appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe United, becoming the club's president in 2017. He is a keen golfer, and his other pastimes include angling and shooting. He has been awarded both a knighthood and a life peerage.
Ian Botham was born in Heswall, Cheshire, to Herbert Leslie ("Les") Botham and Violet Marie, née Collett. His father had been in the Fleet Air Arm for twenty years spanning the Second World War; his mother was a nurse. The family moved to Yeovil before Botham's third birthday after his father got a job as a test engineer at Westland Helicopters. Both his parents played cricket: his father for Westland Sports Club while his mother captained a nursing services team at Sherborne. Botham developed an eagerness for the game before he had started school: he would climb through the fence of the Yeovil Boys' Grammar School to watch the pupils play cricket. At the age of around four, he came home with a cricket ball and asked his mother "Do you know how to hold a ball when you're going to bowl a daisy-cutter?" He subsequently demonstrated the grip and went away to practise bowling it.
Botham attended Milford Junior School in the town, and his "love affair" with sport began there. He played both cricket and football for the school's teams at the age of nine, two years earlier than most of his contemporaries. Playing against the older boys forced Botham to learn to hit the ball hard, and improve to their standard. At the same age he went to matches with his father, who played for Westland Sports Club, and if one of the teams was short, he would try to get a match. His father recalled that though he never got to bowl, and rarely got to bat, he received praise for the standard of his fielding. He joined the Boys' Brigade where more sporting opportunities were available. By the time he was nine, he had begun to "haunt" local recreation grounds with his kit always ready, looking to play for any team that was short of players. By the age of twelve he was playing occasional matches for Yeovil Cricket Club's second team.
Botham went on to Bucklers Mead Comprehensive School in Yeovil, where he continued to do well in sport and played for the school's cricket and football teams. He became captain of their under-16 cricket team when he was thirteen. His performances for the school drew the attention of Somerset County Cricket Club's youth coach Bill Andrews. Still thirteen, he scored 80 runs on debut for Somerset's under-15s side against Wiltshire, but the team captain Phil Slocombe did not call on him to bowl as he considered him to be a specialist batsman. Two years later, Botham had the opportunity to choose between football and cricket: Bert Head, manager of Crystal Palace offered him apprentice forms with the First Division club. He already had a contract with Somerset and, after discussing the offer with his father, decided to continue to pursue a cricket career, as he believed he was a better cricketer. When informed that he wanted to be a sportsman, Botham's careers teacher said to him: "Fine, everyone wants to play sport, but what are you really going to do?"
In 1972, at the age of 16, Botham left school intent on playing cricket for Somerset, who retained his contract but felt he was too young to justify a full professional deal. So, Botham joined the ground staff at Lord's. As a ground boy, he had numerous tasks such as "cleaning the pavilion windows, pushing the roller on matchdays, selling scorecards, pressing electronic buttons on the scoreboards and rushing bowling analyses to the dressing-room". He also received coaching and plenty of time in the practice nets, and was often the first to arrive and the last to leave practice. Despite his time in the nets, Botham was only considered by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) coach Harry Sharp to have the potential to become a "good, average county cricketer." Botham travelled to play for Somerset under-25s a number of times during the season, but failed to excel in any of the matches. His appearances for the MCC were of a similar vein: he rarely scored more than 50 runs, and was used sparingly as a bowler. In one such match against "Scotland A", the MCC Young Cricketers used eight bowlers in their second innings, but Botham was not among them.
The following year, still a ground boy at Lord's, Botham was asked to return to play for Somerset's under-25s more often. Against Glamorgan U-25, he scored 91 runs and took three tail-end wickets, while just under a month later he claimed a further three wickets against Hampshire. He advanced to play for the county's second team in the Minor Counties Championship, and although he was still used sparingly as a bowler, he made some good scores with the bat, most significantly against Cornwall, against whom he aggregated 194 runs in four innings. During winter nets prior to the season, Botham had caught the eye of the former England Test cricketer Tom Cartwright, who coached at Millfield School in addition to playing for Somerset. Cartwright was impressed with Botham's foot-work and physical co-ordination, and helped him learn the basics of swing bowling, something Botham picked up "astonishly quickly" according to Cartwright.
Botham had done well for the Second XI and he later acknowledged the help and advice he received from Somerset players Peter Robinson, Graham Burgess and Ken Palmer. Botham made his senior debut, aged 17, for Somerset on Sunday, 2 September 1973 when he played in a List A John Player League (JPL) match (38 overs each) against Sussex at the County Ground, Hove. The match was in the same week that his time on the Lord's ground staff was completed. Somerset batted first, and Botham, number seven in the batting order, scored two runs before he was dismissed leg before wicket (lbw) by Mike Buss. Somerset totalled 139 for 9. Sussex won comfortably by six wickets, reaching 141 for four with fifteen deliveries remaining. Botham bowled three overs without success, conceding 22 runs. He did impress, however, by taking a diving catch to dismiss his future England colleague Tony Greig off the bowling of his captain Brian Close.
A week later, Botham made a second appearance in the JPL against Surrey at The Oval in the final match of the season. Somerset were well beaten by 68 runs. Botham had his first bowling success when he dismissed Geoff Howarth lbw. He bowled four overs and took one for 14. As in his first match, he scored two batting at number seven, this time being caught and bowled by Intikhab Alam. These were his only two senior appearances in 1973, Somerset finishing 11th in the JPL. In summary, Botham scored four runs, took one wicket for 14 and held one catch.
Aged 18, Botham was a regular in the Somerset team from the beginning of the 1974 season and made his first-class début 8–10 May in a County Championship match against Lancashire at the County Ground, Taunton. Viv Richards, from Antigua and Barbuda, made his County Championship début for Somerset in the same match and Lancashire's team included Clive Lloyd, two players who would loom large in Botham's future Test career. Brian Close won the toss and decided to bat first. On day one, Somerset were all out for 285 and Lancashire reached 41 for none. Botham batted at number seven and scored 13 before being caught. Day two was rain-affected and Lancashire advanced to 200 for none. Their innings closed on the final day at 381 for eight. Botham bowled only three overs and his figures were none for 15; he held one catch to dismiss Jack Simmons. Somerset played for the draw and were 104 for two at the end. Botham did not bat again.
On 12 June 1974, he played against Hampshire at Taunton in a Benson & Hedges Cup (B&H Cup) quarter-final. Hampshire won the toss and decided to bat. They scored 182 all out with Botham taking two for 33 including the prize wicket of Barry Richards, bowled for 13. Botham was number nine in Somerset's batting order and came in with his team struggling at 113 for 7. Almost immediately, that became 113 for 8 and he had only the tailenders Hallam Moseley and Bob Clapp to support him. He was facing the West Indian fast bowler Andy Roberts who delivered a bouncer which hit him in the mouth. Despite heavy bleeding and the eventual loss of four teeth, Botham refused to leave the field and carried on batting. He hit two sixes and made 45*, enabling Somerset to win by one wicket. He won the Gold Award. Later, he said he should have left the field but was full of praise for Moseley and Clapp.
In a County Championship match on 13 July 1974, Botham scored his first half-century in first-class cricket. He made 59 in Somerset's first innings against Middlesex at Taunton, the highest individual score in a low-scoring match which Somerset won by 73 runs. Middlesex's captain was Mike Brearley, who would become a very influential figure in Botham's career. A month later, in a match against Leicestershire at Clarence Park, Weston-super-Mare, Botham achieved his first-ever five wickets in an innings (5wI) with five for 59. He took seven in the match which Somerset won by 179 runs, largely thanks to Close who scored 59 and 114*.
Botham showed great promise in 1974, his first full season in which Somerset finished fifth in the County Championship and a close second to Leicestershire in the JPL. They also reached the semi-finals in both the Gillette Cup and the B&H Cup. In 18 first-class appearances, Botham scored 441 runs with a highest of 59, took 30 first-class wickets with a best of five for 59 and held 15 catches. He played in 18 List A matches too, scoring 222 runs with a highest of 45* (his Gold Award innings against Hampshire), took 12 wickets with a best of two for 16 and held four catches.
Botham continued to make progress in 1975. Somerset struggled in the County Championship, winning only four of their twenty matches and finished joint 12th. In the JPL, they slumped badly from second to 14th. They reached the quarter-final of the B&H Cup but only the second round of the Gillette Cup. Botham played in 22 first-class and 23 List A matches so it was a busy season for him. In first-class, he scored 584 runs with a highest of 65, one of two half-centuries, and held 18 catches. He took 62 wickets, doubling his 1974 tally, with a best of five for 69, his only 5wI that season. In List A, he scored 232 runs with a highest of 38* and held seven catches. He took 32 wickets with a best of three for 34.
1976 was a significant season for Botham as he scored over 1,000 runs for the first time, completed his first century and earned international selection by England in two Limited Overs Internationals. Somerset improved in the County Championship to finish seventh, winning seven matches. They were one of five teams tied for first place in the JPL but their run rate was less than that of Kent, who were declared the champions. Somerset lost their opening match in the Gillette Cup and were eliminated at the group stage of the B&H Cup. Botham, though, came on in leaps and bounds. He totalled 1,022 first-class runs in 20 matches with a highest of 167*, his first-ever century and he also scored six half-centuries. With the ball, he took 66 wickets with a best of six for 16. He had four 5wI and, for the first time, ten wickets in a match (10wM). He played in a total of 22 List A matches, including the two for England, scoring 395 runs with a highest of 46. He took 33 wickets with a best of four for 41.
In the County Championship match against Sussex at Hove in May, Botham came very close to his maiden century but was dismissed for 97, his highest score to date. The match was drawn. At the end of the month, Somerset played Gloucestershire in a remarkable match at Taunton. Batting first, Somerset scored 333 for seven (innings closed) and then, thanks to six for 25 by Botham, bowled out Gloucestershire for only 79. The follow-on was enforced but Gloucestershire proved a much tougher nut to crack second time around. With Zaheer Abbas scoring 141, they made 372 and left Somerset needing 118 to win. Botham took five for 125 in the second innings for a match analysis of 11 for 150, his maiden 10wM. This match ended the same way as the famous Test at Headingley in 1981 but the boot was on the other foot for Botham here because he was on the team that enforced the follow-on – and lost. Mike Procter and Tony Brown did the damage and bowled Somerset out for 110 in 42 overs, Gloucestershire winning by just eight runs.
Botham scored his maiden first-class century at Trent Bridge on Tuesday 3 August 1976 in the County Championship game against Nottinghamshire (Notts) who won the toss and decided to bat first. Derek Randall scored 204* and the Notts innings closed at 364 for 4 (Botham one for 59). Somerset were 52 for one at close of play. On day two, Somerset scored 304 for 8 (innings closed) and Botham, batting at number six, scored 80. At close of play, Notts in their second innings were 107 for four, thus extending their lead to 167 with six wickets standing. On day three, Notts advanced to 240 for nine declared (Botham one for 16), leaving Somerset with a difficult target of 301. At 40 for two and with both their openers gone, Brian Close changed his batting order and summoned Botham to come in at number four. Close himself had gone in at three but he was out soon afterwards for 35. With support from Graham Burgess (78), Botham laid into the Notts bowling and scored an impressive 167 not out. Somerset reached 302 for four in only 65 overs and won by six wickets.
Botham's international début for England was on 26 August 1976 in a Limited Overs International (LOI) against the West Indies at the North Marine Road Ground, Scarborough. The series was called the Prudential Trophy and the teams had 55 overs each per innings. Botham, still only 20, was the youngest player. At Scarborough, England captain Alan Knott lost the toss and Clive Lloyd, captaining the West Indies, elected to field first. Botham was number seven in the batting order and came in at 136 for five to join Graham Barlow. He scored only one before he was caught by Roy Fredericks off the bowling of his future Sky Sports colleague Michael Holding. England's innings closed at 202 for eight with Barlow 80 not out. West Indies lost Fredericks almost immediately but that brought Viv Richards to the crease and he hit 119 not out, winning the man of the match award, and leading West Indies to victory in only 41 overs by six wickets. Botham had the consolation of taking his first international wicket when he had Lawrence Rowe caught by Mike Hendrick for 10. He bowled only three overs and took some punishment from Richards, his return being one for 26.
In the second match at Lord's, Botham was replaced by returning England captain Tony Greig. England lost by 36 runs as Richards, this time with 97, was again the difference between the teams. Having lost the series, England recalled Botham for the final match at Edgbaston on 30–31 August. The match was extended to two days and overs reduced to 32 per side. Tony Greig won the toss and decided to field. England began well and dismissed Fredericks and Richards, for a duck, in only the second over. West Indies were then seven for one but a powerful innings by Clive Lloyd pulled them out of trouble and they reached 223 for nine, innings closed. Botham bowled three very expensive overs, conceding 31 runs, but he did manage to bowl out Michael Holding for his second international wicket. England were never in the hunt and were bowled out for 173, West Indies winning by 50 runs and claiming the series 3–0. Botham again batted at number seven and made a good start, scoring 20 at a run a ball, but he was then caught by Bernard Julien off Fredericks and England were 151 for seven with only Knott and the tailenders left.
In the winter of 1976–77, after he had made his first two international appearances, Botham played District Cricket in Melbourne, Australia for the University of Melbourne Cricket Club. He was joined by Yorkshire's Graham Stevenson. They were signed for the second half of the season on a sponsorship arranged through the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) by Whitbread's Brewery. Five of the competition's 15 rounds were abandoned because of adverse weather. It was apparently on this trip that Botham originally fell out with the former Australian captain Ian Chappell. The cause seems to have been a cricket-related argument in a bar, which may have resulted in Chappell being pushed off his stool (the story is widely sourced but accounts differ). This became a long-running feud and, as late as the 2010–11 Ashes series, there was an altercation between Botham and Chappell in a car park at the Adelaide Oval.
Botham produced a number of good batting and bowling performances for Somerset in 1977 and these impressed the Test selectors who included him in the team for the third Test against Australia at Trent Bridge, starting on 28 July. Having captured 36 first-class wickets through May and June, Botham had something of a purple patch in July which earned him his Test call-up. In the match against Sussex at Hove, which Somerset won by an innings and 37 runs, he took four for 111 and six for 50 for his second 10wM. In Somerset's innings of 448 for eight, he shared a 4th wicket partnership of 174 with Viv Richards. Botham scored 62, Richards 204. He took 22 more wickets, including two 5wI, in the next three County Championship games before his Test debut. In the whole season, playing 17 first-class matches, he took 88 wickets with six 5wI and one 10wM, his second innings return at Hove being his best. His batting was not quite as good as in 1976 as his average was down but he scored 738 runs with a highest of 114, which was his sole century, and five half-centuries. He scored the century in July against Hampshire at Taunton, 114 in Somerset's first innings of 284, and followed it with bowling returns of four for 69 and four for 43, another impressive all-round effort which earned Somerset a win by 152 runs. Somerset had a good season in the County Championship, finishing fourth. They reached the semi-final of the Gillette Cup but, without the injured Botham, were well beaten by eventual winners Middlesex. They were a poor tenth in the JPL and were eliminated from the B&H Cup at the group stage.
Botham made his Test début at Trent Bridge on 28 July 1977 in the third Test against Australia. His début was somewhat overshadowed by the return from self-imposed Test exile of Geoffrey Boycott. England went into the match with a 1–0 series lead having won the second Test after the first had been drawn. The series was played against the background of the so-called "Packer Affair" which resulted in the establishment of World Series Cricket in the next Australian season. Because of Tony Greig's involvement, he had been stripped of the England captaincy but remained in the team under new captain Mike Brearley. England had three all-rounders at Trent Bridge with Greig, Geoff Miller and Botham all playing. Australian captain Greg Chappell won the toss and decided to bat first. Australia scored 243 and were all out shortly before the close on day one. Botham, aged 21, made an immediate impact and took five for 74, the highlight being the wicket of Chappell, bowled for just 19. England batted all through day two and into day three as Boycott, in his first Test innings since 1974, and Knott both made centuries. Botham came in at number eight on day three and scored 25 before he was bowled by Max Walker. England were all out not long afterwards for 364, a first innings lead of 121. Botham had no joy in Australia's second innings with none for 60. A century by Rick McCosker enabled Australia to score 309 before they were all out in the evening session on day four. Bob Willis took five for 88. England needed 189 to win and completed the job, by seven wickets, well into the final day with Brearley scoring 81 and Boycott, who batted on all five days, 80 not out. Botham didn't get a second innings.
Botham's impressive bowling at Trent Bridge meant he was an automatic choice for the fourth Test at Headingley two weeks later. England won the toss, decided to bat first and went on to win by an innings and 85 runs to secure a winning 3–0 lead in the series and regain The Ashes, which they had lost in 1974–75. The match is famous for Boycott's one hundredth career century, scored on his home county ground and in his second Test since his return to the England fold. Botham was bowled third ball by Ray Bright without scoring. He made amends with the ball by taking five for 21 in only eleven overs, Australia being bowled out for only 103. The follow-on was enforced and Australia this time made 248, but Botham (none for 47) did not take a wicket. He was injured during the second innings when he accidentally trod on the ball and broke a bone in his foot. He was unable to play again in the 1977 season.
His promising start as Test player resulted in two awards. He was named Young Cricketer of the Year for 1977 by the Cricket Writers' Club; and was selected as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year (i.e., for 1977 but announced in the 1978 edition). Wisden commented that his 1977 season "was marred only by a week's cricket idleness carrying the drinks at the Prudential matches, and a foot injury which ruined for him the end of the season and probably robbed him of a rare double. He finished with 88 wickets and 738 runs". Importantly, the foot injury was a broken toe sustained when he trod on the ball at Headingley and Botham subsequently needed treatment for it at his local hospital in Taunton. It was while going to one of his appointments that he took a wrong turn and ended up on a children's ward where he learned that some of the children were dying of leukaemia. This incident sparked his charitable crusade on behalf of leukaemia research.
England were in Pakistan from November 1977 to January 1978, playing three Tests and three LOIs. Botham was almost fully recovered from his foot injury but did not play in any of the Tests. He took part in all three LOIs and in some of the first-class matches against club teams. From January to March, England were in New Zealand for a three-match Test series under the captaincy of Geoff Boycott. Botham impressed in a first-class match against Canterbury at Lancaster Park, scoring 126 not out in the second innings against an attack including Richard Hadlee and was selected for the first Test at Basin Reserve. Botham had an indifferent game there and England, twice bowled out by Hadlee, lost by 72 runs. In the next match at Carisbrook against Otago, Botham achieved a 10wM with seven for 58 (his career best return to date) in the second innings, enabling the England XI to win by six wickets. England won the second Test at Lancaster Park by 174 runs after an outstanding all-round performance by Botham who scored 103 and 30 not out and took five for 73 and three for 38. He also held three catches. In the second innings, promoted up the order to get quick runs before an overnight declaration, he was responsible for calling for a risky run that led to the run-out dismissal of acting-captain Geoff Boycott: Botham's own published autobiography alleges that this was deliberately done, on the orders of acting vice-captain Bob Willis, because Boycott was scoring too slowly. The final Test was played at Eden Park and was drawn, the series ending 1–1. New Zealand batted first and totalled 315 with Geoff Howarth scoring 122. Botham took five for 109 in 34 overs. England replied with 429 all out (Clive Radley 158, Botham 53). New Zealand then chose to bat out time and Howarth scored his second century of the match (Botham none for 51). Botham's form in New Zealand cemented his place in the England team.
In the 1978 English season, Pakistan and New Zealand both visited to play three Tests each and Botham featured in all six matches. Having scored exactly 100 in the first Test against Pakistan at Edgbaston, England winning by an innings and 57 runs, Botham in the second at Lord's scored 108 and then, after none for 17 in the first innings, achieved his Test and first-class career best return of eight for 34 in the second, England winning by an innings and 120 runs. The third Test was ruined by the weather and England won the series 2–0. Against New Zealand, Botham did little with the bat but his bowling was outstanding. In the second Test he took nine wickets in the match as England won by an innings and then a 10wM in the final match at Lord's with six for 101 and five for 39. England won the series 3–0.
Due to his England commitments, Botham appeared infrequently for Somerset in 1978. His best performances for them were a return of seven for 61 against Glamorgan and an innings of 80 against Sussex in the Gillette Cup final at Lord's. This was Somerset's first limited overs final and they lost by five wickets despite Botham's effort. They were involved in a tight contest for the JPL title and were placed second on run rate after tying with Hampshire and Leicestershire on 48 points each. Somerset did quite well in the County Championship, finishing fifth after winning nine matches, and reached the semi-final of the B&H Cup.
Botham's first tour of Australia was in 1978–79. England, defending the Ashes they had regained in 1977, played six Tests under Mike Brearley's leadership. Australia had what was effectively "a reserve team" because their leading players were contracted to World Series Cricket for the season. The difference in standard was evident on the first day of the first Test at the Gabba as Botham, Chris Old and Bob Willis bowled them out for only 116 in just 38 overs, England going on to win easily enough by seven wickets. Apart from a surprise defeat in the third Test, England were never troubled and won the series 5–1. Botham's performance in the series was satisfactory but there were no headlines and only modest averages. He took 23 wickets at 24.65 with a best return of four for 42. He scored 291 runs with a highest of 74 at 29.10. He held 11 catches.
Botham played for England in the 1979 Cricket World Cup and was a member of their losing team in the final. He was again an infrequent member of the Somerset team because of the World Cup and the Test series against India. It became a memorable season for Somerset as they built on their form in 1978 to win both the Gillette Cup and the JPL, their first-ever senior trophies. Botham played in the Gillette Cup final at Lord's, in which they defeated Northamptonshire by 45 runs, thanks to a century by Viv Richards. They slipped to eighth in the County Championship. In the B&H Cup, however, they were expelled from the competition for bringing the game into disrepute after an unsporting declaration, designed to protect the team's run rate, by team captain Brian Rose.
The England v India series in 1979 took place after the World Cup ended and four Tests were played. England won the first at Edgbaston by an innings and 83 runs after opening with a massive total of 633 for five declared. Botham scored 33 and then took two for 86 and five for 70. On the first day of the second Test at Lord's, Botham swept through the Indian batting with five for 35 and a catch off Mike Hendrick to dismiss them for only 96 in 56 overs. Surprisingly, however, India recovered to salvage a draw. In the third Test at Headingley, it was Botham the batsman who did the business, scoring 137 from 152 balls in England's first innings total of 270 (the next highest innings was 31 by Geoff Boycott). The match was ruined by the weather and was drawn. In the final Test at The Oval, England opened with 305 (Botham 38); India replied with 202 (Botham four for 65); and England with 334 for eight declared (Botham run out for a duck) extended their lead to 437 with four sessions remaining. Thanks to a brilliant 221 by Sunil Gavaskar, India came agonisingly close to pulling off a remarkable last day victory but ran out of time on 429 for eight (Botham three for 97), just nine runs short, and so England won the series 1–0 with three draws.
The shambolic state of international cricket at the end of the 1970s was illustrated by the panic resulting from a hastily convened settlement between World Series Cricket and the Australian Board of Control. Although they had visited Australia only twelve months earlier to play for the Ashes, England were persuaded to go there again and play another three Tests, but with the Ashes not at stake. As Wisden put it, the programme did not have the best interests of cricket at heart, particularly Australian cricket below Test level, which had been "swamped by the accent on Test and one-day internationals, neatly parcelled to present a cricketing package suitable for maximum exploitation on television". The matches were widely perceived to be semi-official only and received "a definite thumbs down". Botham was a member of the England team and played in all three matches which, rightly or wrongly, count towards his Test statistics. England were largely faithful to the players who had toured Australia the previous winter and Derek Underwood was the only World Series player they recalled; they did not recall Alan Knott, for example, while Tony Greig was beyond the pale. Australia recalled Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Jeff Thomson, fielding a team that was a mixture of old and new. In the first match, played at the WACA Ground, Botham had match figures of eleven for 176 but to no avail as Australia won by 138 runs. Having excelled with the ball in that match, Botham did so with his bat in the third one, scoring an unbeaten 119 in the second innings of the third. Australia won all three matches of a series best forgotten for all its attendant politics, but Botham had enhanced his reputation as a world-class all-rounder.
Botham's third overseas tour was to India in February 1980. It was the fiftieth anniversary of India's entry into Test cricket and so England played a single commemorative Test at the Wankhede Stadium in Bombay. It turned into a personal triumph for Botham who became the first player in Test history to score a century and take ten wickets in the same match. England's wicketkeeper Bob Taylor held ten catches in the match, eight of them off Botham's bowling.
India won the toss and decided to bat first but, with Botham taking six for 58, they were all out on day one for 242. England replied with 296, the highlight being Botham's 114 from just 144 balls; he began his innings with England in trouble at 57 for four. This quickly became 58 for five and Botham was joined by England's other match hero Taylor. England's first five batsmen had contributed just 51 to the total. Botham was often unfairly labelled a "big hitter" but in fact his style was very orthodox (i.e., he "played straight") and in this innings he scored 17 fours but, significantly, no sixes. Taylor provided dogged support and their sixth wicket partnership realised 171 runs. When Botham was out near the end of day two, the score was 229 for six and England reached 232 for six at close of play, still ten runs behind. On the third morning, Taylor led England past India's total and, with useful batting performances by the specialist bowlers, England totalled 296 to gain a first innings lead of 54.
India's second innings was a disaster, and they lost eight wickets by the close of play on the third day with only Kapil Dev offering any resistance. They were all out early on the fourth day for 149. Botham was the outstanding performer again, taking seven for 48 which gave him match figures of thirteen for 106. Geoffrey Boycott and Graham Gooch scored the necessary runs for England to win by ten wickets with a day to spare.
Mike Brearley announced his retirement from Test cricket after the Jubilee Test in Bombay and, somewhat surprisingly given his lack of captaincy experience, Botham was appointed to replace him as England's captain for the forthcoming home series against West Indies, who were at the time the world's outstanding team. Botham led England in twelve Tests in 1980 and 1981 but he was unsuccessful, the team achieving no wins, eight draws and four defeats under his leadership. In addition, his form suffered and was eventually dismissed from the post, although he did actually resign just before the selectors were about to fire him. In Botham's defence, nine of his matches as captain were against West Indies, who afterwards won twelve of their next thirteen Tests against England. The other three were all against Australia.
In 1980, which was a wet summer, West Indies arguably had the better of all five Test matches, although, with the rain constantly intervening, they were able to win only one of them. Ironically it was the one which they came closest to losing, West Indies winning the first Test by only two wickets, and being at one stage 180/7 chasing a tricky 208. Rain saved England from a probable heavy defeat in the 2nd and 5th Tests: they fared better in between. In the 3rd, England conceded a first-innings lead of 110, but replied strongly in the second innings with a painstakingly slow and defensive 391/7, which would have resulted in a difficult target for the Windies had there been another day to chase it – but the third day had been rained off, and time ran out. In the Fourth Test, England picked up their only first-innings lead of the series – of 105 runs – but collapsed catastrophically in the second, before being saved by a century partnership for the last wicket between Willey (100*) and Willis (24*) to reach a total 201/9, and again the loss of a day and a half to rain left no time for the Windies to chase a potentially tough target above 300. Botham had a poor season as a bowler and, in all first-class cricket, took just 40 wickets at the high average of 34.67 with a best return of only four for 38. He did better as a batsman, scoring 1,149 runs (the second time, after 1976, that he topped a thousand in a season) at 42.55: but this did not translate to form in the Tests. He completed two centuries and six other half-centuries for his county. His highest score in the season was ultimately the highest of his career: 228 for Somerset against Gloucestershire at Taunton in May. He batted for just over three hours, hitting 27 fours and ten sixes. With Gloucestershire batting out time for a draw on the final day, Somerset used all eleven players as bowlers. Apart from an innings of 57 in the first Test, Botham contributed little to England in the series and that innings was the only time he reached 50 in all his twelve Tests as England captain.
Somerset came close to retaining their JPL title in 1980 but had to be content with second place, only two points behind Warwickshire. They finished a credible fifth in the County Championship but were eliminated from both the Gillette and B&H Cups in the opening phase.
Botham led England on the controversial tour of the West Indies from January to April 1981. The second Test, scheduled to be played at Bourda, was cancelled after the Guyanese government revoking the visa of Robin Jackman because of his playing and coaching links with South Africa. The other four Tests were played and West Indies won the series 2–0 but England were helped by rain in the two drawn matches. Botham took the most wickets for England, but Wisden said "his bowling never recovered the full rhythm of a year before". His batting, however, apart from one good LOI performance in the first one-day international "was found wanting in technique, concentration and eventually in confidence". In Wisden's view, Botham's loss of form "could be cited as eloquent evidence of the undesirability of saddling a fast bowler and vital all-rounder with the extra burden of captaincy". The closest England came to a victory was in the first ODI, in which England bowled the West Indies out for 127 but, thanks to six wickets from Colin Croft, failed by two runs in the chase which was anchored by Botham's 60: this was, at the time, the lowest ODI total batting first to be successfully defended.
The England captaincy had affected Botham's form as a player and in his last Test as captain, against Australia at Lord's in 1981, he was dismissed for a pair. According to Wisden editor Matthew Engel, writing in ESPNcricinfo, Botham "resigned (a minute before being sacked), his form shot to pieces" after that match. Australia were then leading the series 1–0 after two Tests with four more to be played. Botham was replaced by the returning Mike Brearley, who had been his predecessor until retiring from Test cricket in 1980.
Botham continued to play for England under Brearley and achieved the highpoint of his career in the next three Tests as England recovered to win The Ashes. In the third Test at Headingley, Australia opened with 401 for 9 declared, despite good bowling by Botham who took 6 for 95. England responded poorly and were dismissed for 174. Botham was the only batsman to perform at all well and scored 50, which was his first Test half-century since he had been awarded the captaincy thirteen Tests earlier. Having been forced to follow-on, England collapsed again and at 135 for 7 on the afternoon of the fourth day, an innings defeat looked certain. Bookmakers had reportedly been offering odds of 500/1 against an England win after the follow-on was enforced. Botham, himself not long at the wicket, was the sole remaining recognised batsman as he was joined by the fast bowler Graham Dilley, number nine in the batting order, with only Chris Old and Bob Willis to come. With able support from Dilley (56) and Old (29), Botham hit out and by the close of play was 145 not out with Willis hanging on at the other end on 1 not out. England's lead was just 124 but there remained a glimmer of hope. On the final day's play, Botham reached 149 not out before Willis's wicket fell. Australia, with plenty of time remaining, needed 130 to win and were generally expected to get them; but after Botham took the first wicket, Willis took 8 for 43 to dismiss Australia for only 111. England had won by 18 runs; it was only the second time in history that a team following on had won a Test match.
Botham's outstanding form continued through the next two Tests. In the fourth at Edgbaston, a low-scoring match left Australia batting last and needing 151 to win. They reached 105 for 5 and were still favourites at that point but, in an inspired spell of bowling, Botham then took five wickets for only one run in 28 balls to give England victory by 29 runs. In the fifth Test at Old Trafford, Botham scored 118 in a partnership of 149 with Chris Tavaré before he was dismissed. He hit six sixes in that innings. England won that match to take a winning 3–1 series lead. The last Test at The Oval was drawn, Botham achieving a 10wM by taking six for 125 and four for 128. He was named Man of the Series after scoring 399 runs, taking 34 wickets and holding 12 catches.
Somerset won the Benson & Hedges Cup for the first time in 1981 and did well in the County Championship too, finishing third. They were again runners-up in the JPL, but a long way behind the winners Essex. In the renamed NatWest Trophy (formerly Gillette Cup), Somerset were knocked out in the second round. Botham played in the B&H final at Lord's, in which Somerset defeated Surrey by seven wickets. He took no wickets but provided Viv Richards (132 not out) with good support in the run chase. Botham ended the season with 67 wickets at 25.55, a best return of six for 90 (for Somerset v Sussex) and one 10wM (sixth Test). He scored 925 runs with a highest of 149* (third Test) at 42.04; and held 19 catches.
During this period, Botham played in 25 Tests. There were home series against both India and Pakistan in 1982; and New Zealand in 1983. His overseas tours were to India and Sri Lanka in 1981–82 (he took part in the inaugural Test played by Sri Lanka); to Australia in 1982–83; and to New Zealand and Pakistan in 1983–84. He played for England in the 1983 Cricket World Cup and was a member of their losing team in the semi-final.
Botham's return to India was less than triumphant and Wisden took him to task for his "ineffectiveness with the ball". Having achieved a match analysis of nine for 133 at Bombay, where England were beaten on a poor pitch, Botham took only eight more wickets, at 65 each, in the last five Tests and Wisden said this "was a telling blow to England's chance of levelling the series".
1982 was a good all-round season for Botham, especially as Somerset retained the Benson & Hedges Cup. In 17 first-class matches, he scored 1,241 runs with a highest of 208 against India (this was ultimately his career highest in Test cricket) at a good average of 44.32. He took 66 wickets at the low average of 22.98 with a best return of five for 46. England won their Test series against Pakistan by 2–1 and the one against India 1–0. Botham scored two centuries against India: 128 at Old Trafford and his career high 208 at The Oval. Somerset finished sixth and ninth in the County Championship and the JPL respectively. They reached the quarter-final of the NatWest Trophy and their season highlight was retaining the B&H Cup they won in 1981. In the final at Lord's, Somerset dismissed Nottinghamshire for only 130 (Botham two for 19)and won easily by nine wickets.
Botham toured Australia again in 1982–83 with England seeking to retain the Ashes, but Australia won the series 2–1 despite England winning, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), a Test described by Wisden as "one of the most exciting Test matches ever played". Botham had a poor series and tour. He played in nine first-class matches and scored only 434 runs at the low average of 24.11 with a highest of 65. He was no better with the ball, taking just 29 wickets for a too-high 35.62 with a best return of four for 43. He did, however, field well and held 17 catches, nearly two a match.
In the 1983 English season, Somerset won the NatWest Trophy for the first time, defeating Kent in the Lord's final by 24 runs with Botham as their captain. They were very close to taking the JPL title too but, having tied with Yorkshire on 46 points, they were placed second on run rate. In the County Championship, they won only three matches and finished tenth. They were knocked out of the B&H Cup early. Botham had a good season with the bat, scoring 852 runs in his 14 first-class matches at 40.57 with a highest score of 152 among three centuries. He did less well with the ball: only 22 wickets at the high average of 33.09. New Zealand played a four-match Test series against England after the World Cup and, at the 29th attempt, finally defeated England for the first time in a Test match in England. England won the other three matches convincingly, however, to take the series 3–1. Botham did little with the ball, the same story as in his whole season, but he did score a century (103) in the final Test at Trent Bridge (see photo).
In the winter of 1983–84, England toured New Zealand from January to February and Pakistan in March. Apart from one innings at Basin Reserve in the first Test against New Zealand, Botham was a disappointment on this tour, especially as a bowler. He scored 138 in the first Test, sharing in a sixth wicket partnership of 232 with Derek Randall (164), but the match was drawn. It was a poor tour for England, all told, and described by Wisden as "ranking among the unhappiest they have ever undertaken". England lost both series 1–0. Botham left Pakistan after the first Test there, the one England lost, to have a knee problem investigated at home.
After ten seasons as a first-team regular, Botham was appointed Somerset club captain in 1984 and 1985. In the County Championship, they finished seventh in 1984 and then dropped to 17th (bottom of the table) in 1985. In the JPL, they were 15th in 1984 and eleventh in 1985. They made little impression in either of the B&H Cup or the NatWest Trophy so, all in all, Botham's captaincy period was a lean time for the club who had enjoyed its most successful period ever in the preceding seasons.
Botham played in 18 Tests from 1984 to 1986, ten of them (five home, five away) against West Indies. Throughout Botham's Test career, the highest international standards were set by West Indies and Botham was generally unsuccessful against them. In both of these series, 1984 and 1985–86, West Indies beat England 5–0 in whitewashes that were dubbed "blackwash".
Ironically, his highest score and both his best and worst bowling performances against West Indies occurred in the same match at Lord's in 1984. Clive Lloyd won the toss and, perhaps mistakenly, elected to field. The first day was rain-affected and England, 167 for two overnight, scored 286 thanks to a century by Graeme Fowler; Botham scored a useful 30. West Indies lost three quick wickets, all of them to Botham who was a "reminder of his old self" in the words of Wisden, but recovered to reach 119 for three at the close of play on day two. In the third morning, Viv Richards was dismissed by Botham under dubious circumstances but Botham was inspired by the capture of his great friend's wicket and went on to take eight for 103, dismissing West Indies for 245 and for once giving England a chance of victory against the world's best team, with a first innings lead of 41. This was Botham's best-ever bowling performance against West Indies by some distance. England began their second innings and had been reduced to 88 for four when Botham joined Allan Lamb. They reached 114 for four at day three close. There was no Sunday play and England resumed on the Monday 155 runs ahead with six wickets standing. Botham and Lamb added 128 for the fifth wicket before Botham was out for 81, including nine fours and one six, easily his highest score and best innings against West Indies. Lamb made a century and England were all out on the Tuesday morning (final day) for exactly 300. West Indies needed 342 to win in five and a half hours. They lost Desmond Haynes to a run out at 57 for 0, whereupon Larry Gomes (92 not out) joined Gordon Greenidge (214 not out) and West Indies went on to win by nine wickets with 11.5 of the last twenty overs to spare. Although Wisden does not name Botham except as an "inattentive" fielder who dropped a catch, it describes the England bowlers "looking second-rate and nobody but Willis bowling the right line or setting the right field to the powerful and phlegmatic Greenidge". Botham bowled the most overs, 20, and with nought for 117 he conceded almost a run a ball (Willis had nought for 48 from 15 overs). In mitigation, Wisden conceded that Greenidge played "the innings of his life, and his ruthless batting probably made the bowling look worse that it was".
He also played in the one-off Test against Sri Lanka: not bowling particularly well in the first innings although he took the first wicket (1/114 out of 491), and being dismissed for 6 as England batted (370). Toward the end of Sri Lanka's second innings as the match meandered to a draw, in absolutely ferocious heat Botham dispensed with his usual fast bowler's long run-up and switched to bowling off-spin off a few paces, surprising everybody (himself included) by taking several wickets with it, out of an analysis of 6/90. He decided to take a rest over the winter, and sit out of the 1984–85 tour of India.
In 1985, Botham played in all six Tests against a poor Australian team as England, themselves a second-rate team based on their recent performances, comfortably regained the Ashes and he was the leading wicket-taker, but the series was dominated by England's specialist batsmen, especially Mike Gatting and David Gower. Botham, who by this time had adopted a dyed blonde mullet haircut as a trademark, contributed relatively little with the bat, compared with the massive totals amassed by Gower, Gatting, Graham Gooch and Tim Robinson. He scored 250 runs at 31.25 with a highest of 85. He did take the most wickets (31 at 27.58 with a best of five for 109) but he was rarely impressive and he was bowling to a weak batting side, Allan Border apart. England's best bowler was Richard Ellison who played only twice and took 17 wickets at only 10.88 with a best of six for 77 and one 10wM.
Botham was suspended for 63 days by the Test and County Cricket Board in 1986 after he admitted in an interview that he had smoked cannabis. Due to the ban, Botham played in only one Test which was the final one of the series against New Zealand. He made his mark on that Test though: beginning it by taking the wicket of Bruce Edgar with his very first delivery, to go level with Dennis Lillee on 355 as holder of the world record for Test wickets. The next delivery was edged through the slip cordon by Jeff Crowe. Botham went past the mark in his second over to hold the record outright, by trapping Crowe leg-before. Then on the fourth day of the match, coming in after centuries from Gatting and Gower, he bashed a quickfire half-century in just 32 balls, including 24 off one over from Derek Stirling – equalling the record at the time, for most runs off an over in Tests... a record which he was responsible for, but from the other side, having conceded 24 runs to Andy Roberts back in the 1980/81 tour of the West Indies. England declared with a massive first-innings lead, but rain came after lunch on the fourth day and only one further over was bowled.
Botham was succeeded by Peter Roebuck as Somerset captain for 1986 but, during the season, tensions arose in the Somerset dressing room which eventually exploded into a full-scale row and resulted in the sacking by the club of Botham's friends Viv Richards and Joel Garner. Botham, who supported Richards and Garner, decided to resign at the end of the season. 1986 was not a season for Botham to remember except for one brilliant List A innings when he made his career highest score in the limited overs form of 175 not out for Somerset against Northamptonshire in a 39-over JPL match at the Wellingborough School ground. It was to no avail, however, as the weather intervened and the game ended in no result. His innings remains a ground record.
Botham's final tour of Australia was in 1986/87 under Mike Gatting's captaincy. He played in four Tests and England won the Ashes for the last time until 2005. In many ways, the series was also Botham's last hurrah because he scored his final Test century (138 in the first Test at Brisbane which England won by seven wickets) and took his final Test 5wI (five for 41 in the fourth Test at the MCG which England won by an innings and 14 runs). Wisden pointed out that although Botham had a modest series statistically, "he was an asset to the side" because of his enthusiasm and "going out of his way to encourage younger players, especially Phil DeFreitas". Unfortunately he suffered a severe rib injury in the Second Test in Perth, which kept him out of the 3rd Test entirely and reduced the pace of his bowling for the remainder of the tour as he tried to manage it: as a result, with reasonable success, he changed his bowling style to a defensive, miserly military-medium pace. England also won the two one-day tournaments, the one-off Benson & Hedges Perth Challenge (against Australia, West Indies and Pakistan) and the World Series (against Australia and Windies): Botham produced several match-winning performances with both bat and ball despite being not fully fit, and was Man of the Match in both matches of the best-of-three final of the World Series – with the bat in the first, opening the batting for 71 (scored out of 91 while he was at the crease), and with the ball in the second, for a particularly miserly spell which also took three wickets as England defended a low total by nine runs, to win the finals 2–0. It was also in this tournament that England tried the experiment of having Botham open the batting in ODIs, with the idea of hitting the ball over the top to counter the fielding restrictions which forced most of the fielders to be close to the bat inside the early overs.
After his resignation from Somerset, Botham joined Worcestershire for the 1987 season and spent five seasons with them. In 1987, he scored 126* against his old county but otherwise he was more successful as a limited overs batsman, scoring two centuries and averaging 40.94. His bowling too was much better in the shorter form, wherein he averaged 21.29 against 42.04 in first-class. His limited overs efforts helped Worcestershire to win the Sunday League. They finished ninth in the County Championship and were unsuccessful in the two knockout trophies. Worcestershire, taking a leaf from England's winter tactic, sometimes used Botham to open the batting in one-day matches, in partnership with regular opener Tim Curtis.
Botham played in the five 1987 Tests against Pakistan, the last time he represented England in a full series. He scored 232 runs in the series with one half-century (51*) at 33.14; and took only seven wickets which were enormously expensive. Pakistan won by an innings at Headingley with the other four Tests drawn, although England were in superior positions in the First and Fourth tests which lost much time to rain, and only narrowly failed to level the series in the Fourth, running out of overs chasing a small target. When Pakistan totalled 708 at The Oval, the 217 runs conceded by Botham, from 52 overs, were the most by an England bowler, passing the 204 by Ian Peebles, from 71 overs, against Australia at The Oval in 1930, although he took three wickets and also ran out Imran Khan. The half-century, his final and by far his slowest Test fifty, was a dogged, defensive effort occupying most of the last day in a drawn match, in an unbroken partnership with Gatting (150*) to save the 5th test and keep England's margin of defeat at 1–0. He declined to go on tour with England the following winter, either for the 1987 World Cup in India and Pakistan (in which England reached the final) or for the subsequent tours of Pakistan (lost 1–0) and New Zealand (a rain-ruined 0–0 drawn series).
Botham spent the 1987–88 Australian season with Queensland, playing for them in the Sheffield Shield. Queensland were one of the better state teams in the 1980s and were always in the Shield's top three from the 1983–84 season through to the 1990–91 season, but didn't win it. In Botham's season there, his teammates including Allan Border (captain), wicketkeeper Ian Healy and pace bowler Craig McDermott, they finished second to Western Australia. Botham scored several half-centuries and took a reasonable number of wickets and helped Queensland make the Sheffield Shield final. Botham and Dennis Lillee were fined for damaging the Queensland dressing room in Launceston, Tasmania during a one-day match. When the Queensland team flew to Perth for the Shield final, Botham was involved in an altercation where he allegedly assaulted a fellow airline passenger who had intervened in an argument between the Queensland players. Queensland lost the final. Botham was fined $800 by a magistrate and $5,000 by the Australian Cricket Board. He was consequently sacked by Queensland.
Botham was unfit for most of the 1988 season and played in only four first-class and seven limited overs matches during April and May. He did not play for England. Nevertheless, Worcestershire won both the County Championship and the Sunday League. Botham was out of action for eleven months, having had an operation to fuse vertebrae in his spine in response to a long-standing back problem.
He returned in May 1989 and, bowling well in the County Championship, helped Worcestershire to a second successive title. With England struggling against Allan Border's rebuilt Australian team which featured the likes of Healy, McDermott, Steve Waugh, Merv Hughes and Mark Taylor, Botham was recalled for the third, fourth and fifth Tests of the pivotal Ashes 1989 series. He could do little to stem a tide which had now turned completely in Australia's favour and looked completely out of his depth. He scored only 62 runs at the very low average of 15.50 – two-thirds of them in one innings – and took just three wickets at an enormously expensive 80.33. The summer of 1989 saw more controversy for England with the organisation of a rebel tour to South Africa, all participants being banned for three years: Botham declined the rebel tour, hoping to be selected for the winter tour of the West Indies, only to be dropped for his poor form.
Another two-year absence from international cricket ensued until he was recalled again to play against West Indies in 1991, on the strength of belting 161* for Worcestershire against them in their early-season tour match against the county – it was to be his only century ever against the West Indies. He was selected for the early-season ODI series at first: he took a wicket in his first over, and four in his ten-over spell, but later tore a hamstring, going for a quick single while batting. He could have retired hurt, but opted to continue with a runner, only to be dismissed by the next delivery. The injury put him out of the remaining ODIs (both won by England) and the first couple of Tests (which England won and drew to lead 1–0): then, on his comeback in a county match, another injury caused him to be unavailable for the 3rd and 4th Tests (both lost by England). He was recalled for the 5th Test with England needing a victory to tie the series: batting in the first innings, he scored a respectable 31 before attempting to hook Curtly Ambrose and being dismissed "hit wicket", in circumstances which caused an infamous giggling fit in the BBC Test Match Special radio commentary box. Used sparingly with the ball, he took 1/27 and 2/40 as West Indies were bowled out, forced to follow on and bowled out again, by Tufnell (6/25) and Lawrence (5/106) in the first and second innings respectively. His only Test victory against the Windies was completed when he himself hit the winning runs – a boundary off his first delivery – as England chased a target of 143 with five wickets to spare, and tied the series. Two weeks later, he played against Sri Lanka at Lord's, achieving little of note. He helped Worcestershire to win the B&H Cup for the only time in 1991.
Botham's final tour was to Australia and New Zealand in 1991–92. In the tour of NZ, he played in only the last Test, and the one-day series: his most notable contribution was his highest ODI score of 79, opening the batting, in which he seemed to be set fair to finally reach a century in an ODI, but NZ managed to keep him away from the strike for several overs, he ran out of patience, slogged a delivery straight up in the air and was caught. After this came the World Cup in Australia. Botham had not previously won any man of the match awards in the World Cup, but in this competition he won two. Against India at the WACA Ground, he bowled tightly and restricted India, needing 237, to only 27 runs from his ten overs, an economy rate of 2.70 which was significantly lower than anyone else's. He captured two wickets and one of them was Sachin Tendulkar. England won by nine runs. Against Australia at Sydney Cricket Ground later in the competition, Botham won the award for the sort of all-round performance which had made his reputation. Australia won the toss and decided to bat first. They scored 171 all out in 49 overs and Botham took four for 31 in his ten. He then opened the England innings with Graham Gooch – the tactic England had trialled in Australia five years before, and again in the ODIs against NZ at the end of the tour before the World Cup – and scored 53 from only 77 balls in a partnership with Gooch of 107. England went on to win by eight wickets with nine overs to spare. He was less successful in the final, where previously economical bowling figures were ruined by a late assault from the Pakistani batting line-up, and then he was given out caught-behind for a duck (perhaps unfortunately, since he appeared not to have touched the ball according to the camera replays) in Wasim Akram's first over, England losing the match.
In 1992, Botham joined County Championship newcomers Durham, scoring a century in the second innings in their inaugural first-class match against Leicestershire: and he played in the first two Tests against Pakistan, the second one at Lord's being his final Test appearance. Botham scored 2 and 6, cheaply dismissed each time by the pace of Waqar Younis. As a bowler, he was used for only five overs in the first innings, his final Test return being none for nine: he did not bowl in Pakistan's second innings, thanks to a foot injury sustained while batting, although he fielded at slip. England lost the match by two wickets and Pakistan went on to win the series 2–1. Botham did however play in the ODI series, in all five matches, which England won 4–1: these were his last international matches. England's batting was so dominant in all but one of the matches, that Botham only came in right at the end of the innings, or not at all, reverting to his old place in the middle order, and he had little to do: except in the 4th match, where he opened the batting again (in Gooch's absence) and scored a respectable and workmanlike 40, but saw England lose their last four wickets for ten runs and the match by three runs. His bowling was similarly unremarkable, usually capturing one or two wickets at about four an over: he neither scored a run (did not bat) nor took a wicket (0–43) in his final match.
It was in 1992 that Botham was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to cricket and for his charity work in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
Botham retired from cricket midway through the 1993 season, his last match being for Durham against the visiting Australians at The Racecourse 17–19 July 1993. Durham batted first and scored 385 for eight declared (Wayne Larkins 151). In his final first-class innings, Botham scored 32. In reply, Australia could only make 221, thanks to Simon Brown who took seven for 70 (Botham none for 21). Being 164 behind, Australia had to follow on and a victory for Durham was possible but centuries by Matthew Hayden and David Boon saved Australia and the match was drawn. Botham's final bowling return was none for 45 from eleven overs. In the final over of the game, Botham also kept wicket, without wearing gloves or pads.
Botham's Test career spanned 16 seasons and he played in 102 matches. He scored 5,200 runs at an average of 33.54 with a highest score of 208 in his 14 centuries. He took 383 wickets at an average of 28.40 with a best return of eight for 34 and achieved ten wickets in a match four times. He held 120 catches.
In 116 LOIs from 1976 to 1992, he scored 2,113 runs with a highest score of 79; took 145 wickets with a best return of four for 31; and held 36 catches. A straight comparison of these totals with those of his Test career reveal that he was less effective in the limited overs form of the game. He did have some outstanding LOI matches, however, winning six man of the match awards. Botham took part in three editions of the Cricket World Cup: 1979, 1983 and 1992. He played in 22 World Cup matches including the finals in 1979 and 1992, both of which England lost, and he was in England's losing team in the 1983 semi-final.
Botham was the 21st player to achieve the "double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket and he went on to score 5,200 runs and take 383 wickets, as well as holding 120 catches.
He held the world record for the greatest number of Test wickets from 21 August 1986 to 12 November 1988. His predecessor was Dennis Lillee who had retired with 355 wickets in 70 matches. Botham extended the record to 373 in 94 matches before he was overtaken by Richard Hadlee. Botham ended with 383 wickets in 102 matches while Hadlee extended the record to 431 in 86 matches. See List of Test cricket records#Career.
As described above, Botham in 1980 became the second player to achieve the "match double" of 100 runs and ten wickets in Test cricket, following Alan Davidson in 1960–61. Botham was, however, the first to score a century and take ten wickets in a Test match (Davidson scored 44 and 80). The century and ten double has since been achieved by Imran Khan who scored 117 and took six for 98 and five for 82 against India at the Iqbal Stadium in Faisalabad in January 1983., and again by Shakib Al Hasan for Bangladesh against Zimbabwe at Khulna in 2014.
Compared with many of cricket's greatest players, most of whom were specialists, Botham's averages seem fairly ordinary but this overlooks the fact that he was a genuine all-rounder and it is rare for this type of player to achieve world-class status. Since the Second World War, Botham is one of perhaps a dozen or so world-class all-rounders whereas there have been numerous world-class specialists. Some of the great all-rounders, such as Garfield Sobers and Jacques Kallis as batsmen or Alan Davidson and Richard Hadlee as bowlers, could justifiably be described as world-class specialists in their main discipline who were effective practitioners of the other. The genuine all-rounders to achieve world-class status during the era, besides Botham himself, have included Keith Miller, Richie Benaud, Mike Procter, Clive Rice, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and Andrew Flintoff.
Of note, Botham's first 202 wickets came at 21.20 per wicket, while his final 181 cost on average 36.43 apiece; the first average is one that would make Botham one of the greatest bowlers of the modern era, ranking alongside the West Indian greats Curtly Ambrose (career average 20.99), Malcolm Marshall (career average 20.94), and Joel Garner (career average 20.97), but the second average depicts a player who, as a specialist bowler, would be unable to sustain a place in many Test teams. This difference can be largely attributed to the longer term effects of a back injury he sustained in 1980; this limited his bowling pace and his ability to swing the ball.
Botham's batting – although never the equal of his bowling abilities – declined as well, with a batting average of 38.80 for his first 51 Tests substantially higher than the 28.87 he managed in his last 51 Tests, again a number that would be considered unsatisfactory for a specialist batsman in most Test sides. In the first 5 years of Botham's Test career, when not playing as captain, he scored 2,557 runs at an average of 49.17 including 11 centuries and a highest score of 208, took 196 wickets at an average of 21.28 including nineteen 5 wicket hauls and held 50 catches. Such figures denote a player who would easily maintain a place in any Test side as a specialist batsman or bowler alone. During this period his reputation as one of the leading Test all-rounders was firmly established.
Botham had an affinity with Brian Close, his first county captain who became a mentor to him, as they shared a determination to do well and win matches. Wisden has commented on another shared characteristic: "outstanding courage", mainly because Botham would readily field anywhere, generally in the slips but also in dangerous positions near the batsman and he was a brilliant fielder. As a batsman, Botham was often wrongly labelled by the tabloid press as a "big hitter" (effectively implying that he was a "slogger") but, while it is true that his strength enabled him to drive a ball for six and his courage to hook one for six, Botham actually had a very correct batting style as he stood side-on and played straight: Wisden praised his "straight hitting and square cutting". Botham might not have been good enough to retain a regular England place as a specialist batsman (his Test career batting average was a fairly modest 33.54) but as a bowler who was capable of taking 383 Test wickets, he certainly would. Wisden praised Tom Cartwright for helping to develop Botham's technique as a swing bowler and, by the time he made his Test debut in 1977, Botham had mastered change of pace, the outswinger and the fast inswinging yorker, all formidable parts of his repertoire which eventually enabled him to break the world Test wicket record.
Writing in Barclays World of Cricket (1986), former England captain Tony Lewis commented on Botham's strength, enthusiasm and aggression "which he took into every game". Lewis, however, pointed out that Botham's exuberance often reduced the efficiency of his play, in that he would take too many risks or refuse to give up on a bowling tactic despite ongoing heavy cost. He summarised Botham as an exciting cricketer who lacked self-discipline. Botham was in the middle of his career when the book was published, but Lewis emphasised the speed at which Botham had achieved certain milestones such as 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket. At that time there seemed no reason why Botham should not go on reaching milestones, but he had already peaked and, in retrospect, his career had a meteoric aspect. His rival Imran Khan asserted this when he said: "Botham was someone who I don't think ever did justice to his talent. When he started he could have done anything, but he declined very quickly. In a way our careers were the opposite of each other. I started quite slowly but got better, maximised my talent. He went the other way, I think".
Botham's career and ability level has been oft-debated. For example, when naming him as a Cricketer of the Year in its 1978 edition, Wisden described Botham as "a determined character who knows where he is aiming, and who will, quite naturally and fiercely, address himself to the interesting view that he is overrated". Denis Compton would dismiss Botham as "overrated" and said he "only did well because all the best players had joined Packer": i.e., for World Series Cricket (WSC).
He would readily give praise to his colleagues, for instance, his batting partners Hallam Moseley and Bob Clapp after the 1974 Benson and Hedges quarter-final against Hampshire; and to Bob Willis, the man whose bowling spell won the test match at Headingley in 1981.
The Richards–Botham Trophy, set to replace the Wisden Trophy for winners of West Indies–England Test series, is named in honour of Botham and Viv Richards.
In 1994, the year after he retired, Botham became embroiled in a legal dispute with Imran Khan who, in an article for India Today, had accused Botham and Allan Lamb of bringing cricket into disrepute. Botham and Lamb instigated a libel action in response. The case was heard at the High Court in 1996 with the court choosing to hear on the second day a separate action brought solely by Botham against Khan, who had suggested in a newspaper article that Botham had been involved in ball-tampering. This would become the subject of a court case later on, one that Khan would go on to win. Botham was liable for all expenses in the court case in the ruling, including those incurred by Khan.
Botham was a talented footballer but, believing he was better at cricket, he chose the latter for his full-time career. Even so, he played football as a centre-half from 1978 to 1985 for Yeovil Town and Scunthorpe United. He made eleven appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe. While with Yeovil, Botham made an appearance for the Football Association XI (a representative side for non-League footballers) against the Northern Football League at Croft Park during the 1984–85 season.
Botham has been a prodigious fundraiser for charitable causes, undertaking a total of 12 long-distance charity walks. His first, in 1985, was a 900-mile trek from John o' Groats to Land's End. His efforts were inspired after a visit to Taunton's Musgrove Park Hospital in 1977 whilst receiving treatment for a broken toe. When he took a wrong turn into a children's ward, he was devastated to learn that some of the children had only weeks to live, and why. At the time he was an expectant father. Since then his efforts have raised more than £12 million for charity, with leukaemia research the main cause to benefit. In recognition of this work, Botham in 2003 became the first-ever President of Bloodwise, the UK's leading blood cancer charity. In November 2014, Botham designed a Paddington Bear statue, one of fifty created by various celebrities which were located around London prior to the release of the film Paddington, with the statues auctioned to raise funds for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
On 10 October 2007, Botham was invested a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, having been appointed in the Queen's Birthday Honours "for services to Charity and to Cricket".
After retiring from cricket, Botham became involved in the media and has worked as an analyst and commentator for Sky Sports for many years. Unlike Fred Trueman and others, he does not hark back to "in my day". Wisden editor Matthew Engel remarked on Botham's calmness, wit and sagacity as a TV commentator, though admitting he was surprised by it.
On 9 August 2009, while commentating on the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley that season, Botham was invited to take part in an on-field ceremony to induct him into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame along with the Yorkshire greats Wilfred Rhodes, Fred Trueman and Geoffrey Boycott. Geoff Boycott was also in attendance, along with Fred Trueman's widow Veronica and Colin Graves who, as Yorkshire County Cricket Club chairman, accepted the honour on behalf of Wilfred Rhodes. Botham said: "To be named amongst 55 of the most prolific players in cricketing history is a great honour for me. To have my cricketing career recognised in the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame is not something I would have thought when I began playing cricket but to be receiving this award today is something I'm extremely grateful for". Colin Graves included Botham in his tribute to Rhodes when he said: "It is a great honour to accept the cap on behalf of a Yorkshire legend. Wilfred Rhodes was an exceedingly gifted player and is rightly regarded as one of England's greatest all-rounders. I am also delighted to see two other great Yorkshiremen and another great all-rounder inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame today".
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1981 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews during a meeting at Lord's.
On 12 August 1995, Botham was interviewed at length by Andrew Neil on his one-on-one interview show Is This Your Life? for Channel 4.
He was nominated by Boris Johnson for a life peerage in the 2020 Political Honours, it being widely reported that the honour was a reward for his support for Brexit. He was created Baron Botham, of Ravensworth in the County of North Yorkshire on 10 September and took the oath and his seat on 5 October 2020. He made his maiden speech on 3 November the same year and since then has made one further spoken contribution on 25 November 2020. His last vote in the House of Lords was in July 2021.
On 23 August 2021, Boris Johnson appointed him the UK's Trade Envoy to Australia.
Botham is colour blind. In 1976, in Doncaster, Botham married Kathryn ("Kathy") Waller (now Lady Botham) whom he first met in June 1974. After their marriage, they lived until the late 1980s in Epworth, near Scunthorpe. They have one son, Liam (born August 1977), and two daughters, Sarah and Becky. The family now live in Ravensworth in North Yorkshire, and also own property in Almería, where Botham frequently plays golf.
Botham is an avid trout and salmon fisherman. As a result, he was invited to present a TV series called Botham on the Fly. He has also been a team captain on the BBC series A Question of Sport.
Besides angling and golf, Botham enjoys game shooting and owns a grouse moor. This has resulted in a high-profile dispute with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). In August 2016, he called for Chris Packham to be sacked by the BBC as part of a campaign funded by the grouse shooting industry, after Packham had highlighted the industry's involvement in the illegal killing of endangered species of birds of prey.
According to the New Statesman in 2015, "Botham is an old-fashioned Englishman [...] he is conservative with a small and upper-case C" and "a robust monarchist". Botham was a staunch supporter of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. He was quoted: "Personally, I think that England is an island. I think that England should be England. And I think that we should keep that." He appeared at a number of pro-Leave campaign events in the run-up to the UK's EU membership referendum in 2016.
Botham's private life has also made occasional dramatic appearances in Britain's tabloid newspapers, with at least one extra-marital affair prompting a public apology to his wife Kathy. He also fell out publicly with other players, including fellow England player Geoff Boycott, Somerset captain Peter Roebuck, and Australian batsman Ian Chappell, with whom he had an altercation in an Adelaide Oval car park during the 2010–11 Ashes series. Although Botham hoped to resolve his long-running feud with Chappell during a Channel 9 documentary on 27 June 2023, Chappell refused. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Ian Terence Botham, Baron Botham, OBE (born 24 November 1955) is an English cricket commentator, member of the House of Lords, a former cricketer who has been chairman of Durham County Cricket Club since 2017 and charity fundraiser. Hailed as one of the greatest all-rounders in the history of the game, Botham represented England in both Test and One-Day International cricket.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "He played most of his first-class cricket for Somerset, at other times competing for Worcestershire, Durham and Queensland. He was an aggressive right-handed batsman and, as a right-arm fast-medium bowler, was noted for his swing bowling. He generally fielded close to the wicket, predominantly in the slips. In Test cricket, Botham scored 14 centuries with a highest score of 208, and from 1986 to 1988 held the world record for the most Test wickets until overtaken by fellow all-rounder Sir Richard Hadlee. He took five wickets in an innings 27 times, and 10 wickets in a match four times. In 1980, he became the second player in Test history to complete the \"match double\" of scoring 100 runs and taking 10 wickets in the same match. On the occasion of England's 1000th Test in August 2018, he was named in the country's greatest Test XI by the ECB.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Botham has at times been involved in controversies, including a highly publicised court case involving rival all-rounder Imran Khan and an ongoing dispute with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). These incidents, allied to his on-field success, have attracted media attention, especially from the tabloid press. Botham has used his fame to raise money for research into childhood leukaemia. These efforts have realised millions of pounds for Bloodwise, of which he became president. On 8 August 2009, he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. In July 2020, it was announced that Botham would be elevated to the House of Lords and that he would sit as a crossbench peer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Botham has a wide range of sporting interests outside cricket. He was a talented footballer at school and had to choose between cricket and football as a career. He chose cricket but, even so, he played professional football for a few seasons and made eleven appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe United, becoming the club's president in 2017. He is a keen golfer, and his other pastimes include angling and shooting. He has been awarded both a knighthood and a life peerage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Ian Botham was born in Heswall, Cheshire, to Herbert Leslie (\"Les\") Botham and Violet Marie, née Collett. His father had been in the Fleet Air Arm for twenty years spanning the Second World War; his mother was a nurse. The family moved to Yeovil before Botham's third birthday after his father got a job as a test engineer at Westland Helicopters. Both his parents played cricket: his father for Westland Sports Club while his mother captained a nursing services team at Sherborne. Botham developed an eagerness for the game before he had started school: he would climb through the fence of the Yeovil Boys' Grammar School to watch the pupils play cricket. At the age of around four, he came home with a cricket ball and asked his mother \"Do you know how to hold a ball when you're going to bowl a daisy-cutter?\" He subsequently demonstrated the grip and went away to practise bowling it.",
"title": "Early life and development as a cricketer (1955–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Botham attended Milford Junior School in the town, and his \"love affair\" with sport began there. He played both cricket and football for the school's teams at the age of nine, two years earlier than most of his contemporaries. Playing against the older boys forced Botham to learn to hit the ball hard, and improve to their standard. At the same age he went to matches with his father, who played for Westland Sports Club, and if one of the teams was short, he would try to get a match. His father recalled that though he never got to bowl, and rarely got to bat, he received praise for the standard of his fielding. He joined the Boys' Brigade where more sporting opportunities were available. By the time he was nine, he had begun to \"haunt\" local recreation grounds with his kit always ready, looking to play for any team that was short of players. By the age of twelve he was playing occasional matches for Yeovil Cricket Club's second team.",
"title": "Early life and development as a cricketer (1955–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Botham went on to Bucklers Mead Comprehensive School in Yeovil, where he continued to do well in sport and played for the school's cricket and football teams. He became captain of their under-16 cricket team when he was thirteen. His performances for the school drew the attention of Somerset County Cricket Club's youth coach Bill Andrews. Still thirteen, he scored 80 runs on debut for Somerset's under-15s side against Wiltshire, but the team captain Phil Slocombe did not call on him to bowl as he considered him to be a specialist batsman. Two years later, Botham had the opportunity to choose between football and cricket: Bert Head, manager of Crystal Palace offered him apprentice forms with the First Division club. He already had a contract with Somerset and, after discussing the offer with his father, decided to continue to pursue a cricket career, as he believed he was a better cricketer. When informed that he wanted to be a sportsman, Botham's careers teacher said to him: \"Fine, everyone wants to play sport, but what are you really going to do?\"",
"title": "Early life and development as a cricketer (1955–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1972, at the age of 16, Botham left school intent on playing cricket for Somerset, who retained his contract but felt he was too young to justify a full professional deal. So, Botham joined the ground staff at Lord's. As a ground boy, he had numerous tasks such as \"cleaning the pavilion windows, pushing the roller on matchdays, selling scorecards, pressing electronic buttons on the scoreboards and rushing bowling analyses to the dressing-room\". He also received coaching and plenty of time in the practice nets, and was often the first to arrive and the last to leave practice. Despite his time in the nets, Botham was only considered by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) coach Harry Sharp to have the potential to become a \"good, average county cricketer.\" Botham travelled to play for Somerset under-25s a number of times during the season, but failed to excel in any of the matches. His appearances for the MCC were of a similar vein: he rarely scored more than 50 runs, and was used sparingly as a bowler. In one such match against \"Scotland A\", the MCC Young Cricketers used eight bowlers in their second innings, but Botham was not among them.",
"title": "Early life and development as a cricketer (1955–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The following year, still a ground boy at Lord's, Botham was asked to return to play for Somerset's under-25s more often. Against Glamorgan U-25, he scored 91 runs and took three tail-end wickets, while just under a month later he claimed a further three wickets against Hampshire. He advanced to play for the county's second team in the Minor Counties Championship, and although he was still used sparingly as a bowler, he made some good scores with the bat, most significantly against Cornwall, against whom he aggregated 194 runs in four innings. During winter nets prior to the season, Botham had caught the eye of the former England Test cricketer Tom Cartwright, who coached at Millfield School in addition to playing for Somerset. Cartwright was impressed with Botham's foot-work and physical co-ordination, and helped him learn the basics of swing bowling, something Botham picked up \"astonishly quickly\" according to Cartwright.",
"title": "Early life and development as a cricketer (1955–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Botham had done well for the Second XI and he later acknowledged the help and advice he received from Somerset players Peter Robinson, Graham Burgess and Ken Palmer. Botham made his senior debut, aged 17, for Somerset on Sunday, 2 September 1973 when he played in a List A John Player League (JPL) match (38 overs each) against Sussex at the County Ground, Hove. The match was in the same week that his time on the Lord's ground staff was completed. Somerset batted first, and Botham, number seven in the batting order, scored two runs before he was dismissed leg before wicket (lbw) by Mike Buss. Somerset totalled 139 for 9. Sussex won comfortably by six wickets, reaching 141 for four with fifteen deliveries remaining. Botham bowled three overs without success, conceding 22 runs. He did impress, however, by taking a diving catch to dismiss his future England colleague Tony Greig off the bowling of his captain Brian Close.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "A week later, Botham made a second appearance in the JPL against Surrey at The Oval in the final match of the season. Somerset were well beaten by 68 runs. Botham had his first bowling success when he dismissed Geoff Howarth lbw. He bowled four overs and took one for 14. As in his first match, he scored two batting at number seven, this time being caught and bowled by Intikhab Alam. These were his only two senior appearances in 1973, Somerset finishing 11th in the JPL. In summary, Botham scored four runs, took one wicket for 14 and held one catch.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Aged 18, Botham was a regular in the Somerset team from the beginning of the 1974 season and made his first-class début 8–10 May in a County Championship match against Lancashire at the County Ground, Taunton. Viv Richards, from Antigua and Barbuda, made his County Championship début for Somerset in the same match and Lancashire's team included Clive Lloyd, two players who would loom large in Botham's future Test career. Brian Close won the toss and decided to bat first. On day one, Somerset were all out for 285 and Lancashire reached 41 for none. Botham batted at number seven and scored 13 before being caught. Day two was rain-affected and Lancashire advanced to 200 for none. Their innings closed on the final day at 381 for eight. Botham bowled only three overs and his figures were none for 15; he held one catch to dismiss Jack Simmons. Somerset played for the draw and were 104 for two at the end. Botham did not bat again.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On 12 June 1974, he played against Hampshire at Taunton in a Benson & Hedges Cup (B&H Cup) quarter-final. Hampshire won the toss and decided to bat. They scored 182 all out with Botham taking two for 33 including the prize wicket of Barry Richards, bowled for 13. Botham was number nine in Somerset's batting order and came in with his team struggling at 113 for 7. Almost immediately, that became 113 for 8 and he had only the tailenders Hallam Moseley and Bob Clapp to support him. He was facing the West Indian fast bowler Andy Roberts who delivered a bouncer which hit him in the mouth. Despite heavy bleeding and the eventual loss of four teeth, Botham refused to leave the field and carried on batting. He hit two sixes and made 45*, enabling Somerset to win by one wicket. He won the Gold Award. Later, he said he should have left the field but was full of praise for Moseley and Clapp.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In a County Championship match on 13 July 1974, Botham scored his first half-century in first-class cricket. He made 59 in Somerset's first innings against Middlesex at Taunton, the highest individual score in a low-scoring match which Somerset won by 73 runs. Middlesex's captain was Mike Brearley, who would become a very influential figure in Botham's career. A month later, in a match against Leicestershire at Clarence Park, Weston-super-Mare, Botham achieved his first-ever five wickets in an innings (5wI) with five for 59. He took seven in the match which Somerset won by 179 runs, largely thanks to Close who scored 59 and 114*.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Botham showed great promise in 1974, his first full season in which Somerset finished fifth in the County Championship and a close second to Leicestershire in the JPL. They also reached the semi-finals in both the Gillette Cup and the B&H Cup. In 18 first-class appearances, Botham scored 441 runs with a highest of 59, took 30 first-class wickets with a best of five for 59 and held 15 catches. He played in 18 List A matches too, scoring 222 runs with a highest of 45* (his Gold Award innings against Hampshire), took 12 wickets with a best of two for 16 and held four catches.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Botham continued to make progress in 1975. Somerset struggled in the County Championship, winning only four of their twenty matches and finished joint 12th. In the JPL, they slumped badly from second to 14th. They reached the quarter-final of the B&H Cup but only the second round of the Gillette Cup. Botham played in 22 first-class and 23 List A matches so it was a busy season for him. In first-class, he scored 584 runs with a highest of 65, one of two half-centuries, and held 18 catches. He took 62 wickets, doubling his 1974 tally, with a best of five for 69, his only 5wI that season. In List A, he scored 232 runs with a highest of 38* and held seven catches. He took 32 wickets with a best of three for 34.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "1976 was a significant season for Botham as he scored over 1,000 runs for the first time, completed his first century and earned international selection by England in two Limited Overs Internationals. Somerset improved in the County Championship to finish seventh, winning seven matches. They were one of five teams tied for first place in the JPL but their run rate was less than that of Kent, who were declared the champions. Somerset lost their opening match in the Gillette Cup and were eliminated at the group stage of the B&H Cup. Botham, though, came on in leaps and bounds. He totalled 1,022 first-class runs in 20 matches with a highest of 167*, his first-ever century and he also scored six half-centuries. With the ball, he took 66 wickets with a best of six for 16. He had four 5wI and, for the first time, ten wickets in a match (10wM). He played in a total of 22 List A matches, including the two for England, scoring 395 runs with a highest of 46. He took 33 wickets with a best of four for 41.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the County Championship match against Sussex at Hove in May, Botham came very close to his maiden century but was dismissed for 97, his highest score to date. The match was drawn. At the end of the month, Somerset played Gloucestershire in a remarkable match at Taunton. Batting first, Somerset scored 333 for seven (innings closed) and then, thanks to six for 25 by Botham, bowled out Gloucestershire for only 79. The follow-on was enforced but Gloucestershire proved a much tougher nut to crack second time around. With Zaheer Abbas scoring 141, they made 372 and left Somerset needing 118 to win. Botham took five for 125 in the second innings for a match analysis of 11 for 150, his maiden 10wM. This match ended the same way as the famous Test at Headingley in 1981 but the boot was on the other foot for Botham here because he was on the team that enforced the follow-on – and lost. Mike Procter and Tony Brown did the damage and bowled Somerset out for 110 in 42 overs, Gloucestershire winning by just eight runs.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Botham scored his maiden first-class century at Trent Bridge on Tuesday 3 August 1976 in the County Championship game against Nottinghamshire (Notts) who won the toss and decided to bat first. Derek Randall scored 204* and the Notts innings closed at 364 for 4 (Botham one for 59). Somerset were 52 for one at close of play. On day two, Somerset scored 304 for 8 (innings closed) and Botham, batting at number six, scored 80. At close of play, Notts in their second innings were 107 for four, thus extending their lead to 167 with six wickets standing. On day three, Notts advanced to 240 for nine declared (Botham one for 16), leaving Somerset with a difficult target of 301. At 40 for two and with both their openers gone, Brian Close changed his batting order and summoned Botham to come in at number four. Close himself had gone in at three but he was out soon afterwards for 35. With support from Graham Burgess (78), Botham laid into the Notts bowling and scored an impressive 167 not out. Somerset reached 302 for four in only 65 overs and won by six wickets.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Botham's international début for England was on 26 August 1976 in a Limited Overs International (LOI) against the West Indies at the North Marine Road Ground, Scarborough. The series was called the Prudential Trophy and the teams had 55 overs each per innings. Botham, still only 20, was the youngest player. At Scarborough, England captain Alan Knott lost the toss and Clive Lloyd, captaining the West Indies, elected to field first. Botham was number seven in the batting order and came in at 136 for five to join Graham Barlow. He scored only one before he was caught by Roy Fredericks off the bowling of his future Sky Sports colleague Michael Holding. England's innings closed at 202 for eight with Barlow 80 not out. West Indies lost Fredericks almost immediately but that brought Viv Richards to the crease and he hit 119 not out, winning the man of the match award, and leading West Indies to victory in only 41 overs by six wickets. Botham had the consolation of taking his first international wicket when he had Lawrence Rowe caught by Mike Hendrick for 10. He bowled only three overs and took some punishment from Richards, his return being one for 26.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the second match at Lord's, Botham was replaced by returning England captain Tony Greig. England lost by 36 runs as Richards, this time with 97, was again the difference between the teams. Having lost the series, England recalled Botham for the final match at Edgbaston on 30–31 August. The match was extended to two days and overs reduced to 32 per side. Tony Greig won the toss and decided to field. England began well and dismissed Fredericks and Richards, for a duck, in only the second over. West Indies were then seven for one but a powerful innings by Clive Lloyd pulled them out of trouble and they reached 223 for nine, innings closed. Botham bowled three very expensive overs, conceding 31 runs, but he did manage to bowl out Michael Holding for his second international wicket. England were never in the hunt and were bowled out for 173, West Indies winning by 50 runs and claiming the series 3–0. Botham again batted at number seven and made a good start, scoring 20 at a run a ball, but he was then caught by Bernard Julien off Fredericks and England were 151 for seven with only Knott and the tailenders left.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the winter of 1976–77, after he had made his first two international appearances, Botham played District Cricket in Melbourne, Australia for the University of Melbourne Cricket Club. He was joined by Yorkshire's Graham Stevenson. They were signed for the second half of the season on a sponsorship arranged through the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) by Whitbread's Brewery. Five of the competition's 15 rounds were abandoned because of adverse weather. It was apparently on this trip that Botham originally fell out with the former Australian captain Ian Chappell. The cause seems to have been a cricket-related argument in a bar, which may have resulted in Chappell being pushed off his stool (the story is widely sourced but accounts differ). This became a long-running feud and, as late as the 2010–11 Ashes series, there was an altercation between Botham and Chappell in a car park at the Adelaide Oval.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Botham produced a number of good batting and bowling performances for Somerset in 1977 and these impressed the Test selectors who included him in the team for the third Test against Australia at Trent Bridge, starting on 28 July. Having captured 36 first-class wickets through May and June, Botham had something of a purple patch in July which earned him his Test call-up. In the match against Sussex at Hove, which Somerset won by an innings and 37 runs, he took four for 111 and six for 50 for his second 10wM. In Somerset's innings of 448 for eight, he shared a 4th wicket partnership of 174 with Viv Richards. Botham scored 62, Richards 204. He took 22 more wickets, including two 5wI, in the next three County Championship games before his Test debut. In the whole season, playing 17 first-class matches, he took 88 wickets with six 5wI and one 10wM, his second innings return at Hove being his best. His batting was not quite as good as in 1976 as his average was down but he scored 738 runs with a highest of 114, which was his sole century, and five half-centuries. He scored the century in July against Hampshire at Taunton, 114 in Somerset's first innings of 284, and followed it with bowling returns of four for 69 and four for 43, another impressive all-round effort which earned Somerset a win by 152 runs. Somerset had a good season in the County Championship, finishing fourth. They reached the semi-final of the Gillette Cup but, without the injured Botham, were well beaten by eventual winners Middlesex. They were a poor tenth in the JPL and were eliminated from the B&H Cup at the group stage.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Botham made his Test début at Trent Bridge on 28 July 1977 in the third Test against Australia. His début was somewhat overshadowed by the return from self-imposed Test exile of Geoffrey Boycott. England went into the match with a 1–0 series lead having won the second Test after the first had been drawn. The series was played against the background of the so-called \"Packer Affair\" which resulted in the establishment of World Series Cricket in the next Australian season. Because of Tony Greig's involvement, he had been stripped of the England captaincy but remained in the team under new captain Mike Brearley. England had three all-rounders at Trent Bridge with Greig, Geoff Miller and Botham all playing. Australian captain Greg Chappell won the toss and decided to bat first. Australia scored 243 and were all out shortly before the close on day one. Botham, aged 21, made an immediate impact and took five for 74, the highlight being the wicket of Chappell, bowled for just 19. England batted all through day two and into day three as Boycott, in his first Test innings since 1974, and Knott both made centuries. Botham came in at number eight on day three and scored 25 before he was bowled by Max Walker. England were all out not long afterwards for 364, a first innings lead of 121. Botham had no joy in Australia's second innings with none for 60. A century by Rick McCosker enabled Australia to score 309 before they were all out in the evening session on day four. Bob Willis took five for 88. England needed 189 to win and completed the job, by seven wickets, well into the final day with Brearley scoring 81 and Boycott, who batted on all five days, 80 not out. Botham didn't get a second innings.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Botham's impressive bowling at Trent Bridge meant he was an automatic choice for the fourth Test at Headingley two weeks later. England won the toss, decided to bat first and went on to win by an innings and 85 runs to secure a winning 3–0 lead in the series and regain The Ashes, which they had lost in 1974–75. The match is famous for Boycott's one hundredth career century, scored on his home county ground and in his second Test since his return to the England fold. Botham was bowled third ball by Ray Bright without scoring. He made amends with the ball by taking five for 21 in only eleven overs, Australia being bowled out for only 103. The follow-on was enforced and Australia this time made 248, but Botham (none for 47) did not take a wicket. He was injured during the second innings when he accidentally trod on the ball and broke a bone in his foot. He was unable to play again in the 1977 season.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "His promising start as Test player resulted in two awards. He was named Young Cricketer of the Year for 1977 by the Cricket Writers' Club; and was selected as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year (i.e., for 1977 but announced in the 1978 edition). Wisden commented that his 1977 season \"was marred only by a week's cricket idleness carrying the drinks at the Prudential matches, and a foot injury which ruined for him the end of the season and probably robbed him of a rare double. He finished with 88 wickets and 738 runs\". Importantly, the foot injury was a broken toe sustained when he trod on the ball at Headingley and Botham subsequently needed treatment for it at his local hospital in Taunton. It was while going to one of his appointments that he took a wrong turn and ended up on a children's ward where he learned that some of the children were dying of leukaemia. This incident sparked his charitable crusade on behalf of leukaemia research.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "England were in Pakistan from November 1977 to January 1978, playing three Tests and three LOIs. Botham was almost fully recovered from his foot injury but did not play in any of the Tests. He took part in all three LOIs and in some of the first-class matches against club teams. From January to March, England were in New Zealand for a three-match Test series under the captaincy of Geoff Boycott. Botham impressed in a first-class match against Canterbury at Lancaster Park, scoring 126 not out in the second innings against an attack including Richard Hadlee and was selected for the first Test at Basin Reserve. Botham had an indifferent game there and England, twice bowled out by Hadlee, lost by 72 runs. In the next match at Carisbrook against Otago, Botham achieved a 10wM with seven for 58 (his career best return to date) in the second innings, enabling the England XI to win by six wickets. England won the second Test at Lancaster Park by 174 runs after an outstanding all-round performance by Botham who scored 103 and 30 not out and took five for 73 and three for 38. He also held three catches. In the second innings, promoted up the order to get quick runs before an overnight declaration, he was responsible for calling for a risky run that led to the run-out dismissal of acting-captain Geoff Boycott: Botham's own published autobiography alleges that this was deliberately done, on the orders of acting vice-captain Bob Willis, because Boycott was scoring too slowly. The final Test was played at Eden Park and was drawn, the series ending 1–1. New Zealand batted first and totalled 315 with Geoff Howarth scoring 122. Botham took five for 109 in 34 overs. England replied with 429 all out (Clive Radley 158, Botham 53). New Zealand then chose to bat out time and Howarth scored his second century of the match (Botham none for 51). Botham's form in New Zealand cemented his place in the England team.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 1978 English season, Pakistan and New Zealand both visited to play three Tests each and Botham featured in all six matches. Having scored exactly 100 in the first Test against Pakistan at Edgbaston, England winning by an innings and 57 runs, Botham in the second at Lord's scored 108 and then, after none for 17 in the first innings, achieved his Test and first-class career best return of eight for 34 in the second, England winning by an innings and 120 runs. The third Test was ruined by the weather and England won the series 2–0. Against New Zealand, Botham did little with the bat but his bowling was outstanding. In the second Test he took nine wickets in the match as England won by an innings and then a 10wM in the final match at Lord's with six for 101 and five for 39. England won the series 3–0.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Due to his England commitments, Botham appeared infrequently for Somerset in 1978. His best performances for them were a return of seven for 61 against Glamorgan and an innings of 80 against Sussex in the Gillette Cup final at Lord's. This was Somerset's first limited overs final and they lost by five wickets despite Botham's effort. They were involved in a tight contest for the JPL title and were placed second on run rate after tying with Hampshire and Leicestershire on 48 points each. Somerset did quite well in the County Championship, finishing fifth after winning nine matches, and reached the semi-final of the B&H Cup.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Botham's first tour of Australia was in 1978–79. England, defending the Ashes they had regained in 1977, played six Tests under Mike Brearley's leadership. Australia had what was effectively \"a reserve team\" because their leading players were contracted to World Series Cricket for the season. The difference in standard was evident on the first day of the first Test at the Gabba as Botham, Chris Old and Bob Willis bowled them out for only 116 in just 38 overs, England going on to win easily enough by seven wickets. Apart from a surprise defeat in the third Test, England were never troubled and won the series 5–1. Botham's performance in the series was satisfactory but there were no headlines and only modest averages. He took 23 wickets at 24.65 with a best return of four for 42. He scored 291 runs with a highest of 74 at 29.10. He held 11 catches.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Botham played for England in the 1979 Cricket World Cup and was a member of their losing team in the final. He was again an infrequent member of the Somerset team because of the World Cup and the Test series against India. It became a memorable season for Somerset as they built on their form in 1978 to win both the Gillette Cup and the JPL, their first-ever senior trophies. Botham played in the Gillette Cup final at Lord's, in which they defeated Northamptonshire by 45 runs, thanks to a century by Viv Richards. They slipped to eighth in the County Championship. In the B&H Cup, however, they were expelled from the competition for bringing the game into disrepute after an unsporting declaration, designed to protect the team's run rate, by team captain Brian Rose.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The England v India series in 1979 took place after the World Cup ended and four Tests were played. England won the first at Edgbaston by an innings and 83 runs after opening with a massive total of 633 for five declared. Botham scored 33 and then took two for 86 and five for 70. On the first day of the second Test at Lord's, Botham swept through the Indian batting with five for 35 and a catch off Mike Hendrick to dismiss them for only 96 in 56 overs. Surprisingly, however, India recovered to salvage a draw. In the third Test at Headingley, it was Botham the batsman who did the business, scoring 137 from 152 balls in England's first innings total of 270 (the next highest innings was 31 by Geoff Boycott). The match was ruined by the weather and was drawn. In the final Test at The Oval, England opened with 305 (Botham 38); India replied with 202 (Botham four for 65); and England with 334 for eight declared (Botham run out for a duck) extended their lead to 437 with four sessions remaining. Thanks to a brilliant 221 by Sunil Gavaskar, India came agonisingly close to pulling off a remarkable last day victory but ran out of time on 429 for eight (Botham three for 97), just nine runs short, and so England won the series 1–0 with three draws.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The shambolic state of international cricket at the end of the 1970s was illustrated by the panic resulting from a hastily convened settlement between World Series Cricket and the Australian Board of Control. Although they had visited Australia only twelve months earlier to play for the Ashes, England were persuaded to go there again and play another three Tests, but with the Ashes not at stake. As Wisden put it, the programme did not have the best interests of cricket at heart, particularly Australian cricket below Test level, which had been \"swamped by the accent on Test and one-day internationals, neatly parcelled to present a cricketing package suitable for maximum exploitation on television\". The matches were widely perceived to be semi-official only and received \"a definite thumbs down\". Botham was a member of the England team and played in all three matches which, rightly or wrongly, count towards his Test statistics. England were largely faithful to the players who had toured Australia the previous winter and Derek Underwood was the only World Series player they recalled; they did not recall Alan Knott, for example, while Tony Greig was beyond the pale. Australia recalled Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Jeff Thomson, fielding a team that was a mixture of old and new. In the first match, played at the WACA Ground, Botham had match figures of eleven for 176 but to no avail as Australia won by 138 runs. Having excelled with the ball in that match, Botham did so with his bat in the third one, scoring an unbeaten 119 in the second innings of the third. Australia won all three matches of a series best forgotten for all its attendant politics, but Botham had enhanced his reputation as a world-class all-rounder.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Botham's third overseas tour was to India in February 1980. It was the fiftieth anniversary of India's entry into Test cricket and so England played a single commemorative Test at the Wankhede Stadium in Bombay. It turned into a personal triumph for Botham who became the first player in Test history to score a century and take ten wickets in the same match. England's wicketkeeper Bob Taylor held ten catches in the match, eight of them off Botham's bowling.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "India won the toss and decided to bat first but, with Botham taking six for 58, they were all out on day one for 242. England replied with 296, the highlight being Botham's 114 from just 144 balls; he began his innings with England in trouble at 57 for four. This quickly became 58 for five and Botham was joined by England's other match hero Taylor. England's first five batsmen had contributed just 51 to the total. Botham was often unfairly labelled a \"big hitter\" but in fact his style was very orthodox (i.e., he \"played straight\") and in this innings he scored 17 fours but, significantly, no sixes. Taylor provided dogged support and their sixth wicket partnership realised 171 runs. When Botham was out near the end of day two, the score was 229 for six and England reached 232 for six at close of play, still ten runs behind. On the third morning, Taylor led England past India's total and, with useful batting performances by the specialist bowlers, England totalled 296 to gain a first innings lead of 54.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "India's second innings was a disaster, and they lost eight wickets by the close of play on the third day with only Kapil Dev offering any resistance. They were all out early on the fourth day for 149. Botham was the outstanding performer again, taking seven for 48 which gave him match figures of thirteen for 106. Geoffrey Boycott and Graham Gooch scored the necessary runs for England to win by ten wickets with a day to spare.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Mike Brearley announced his retirement from Test cricket after the Jubilee Test in Bombay and, somewhat surprisingly given his lack of captaincy experience, Botham was appointed to replace him as England's captain for the forthcoming home series against West Indies, who were at the time the world's outstanding team. Botham led England in twelve Tests in 1980 and 1981 but he was unsuccessful, the team achieving no wins, eight draws and four defeats under his leadership. In addition, his form suffered and was eventually dismissed from the post, although he did actually resign just before the selectors were about to fire him. In Botham's defence, nine of his matches as captain were against West Indies, who afterwards won twelve of their next thirteen Tests against England. The other three were all against Australia.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 1980, which was a wet summer, West Indies arguably had the better of all five Test matches, although, with the rain constantly intervening, they were able to win only one of them. Ironically it was the one which they came closest to losing, West Indies winning the first Test by only two wickets, and being at one stage 180/7 chasing a tricky 208. Rain saved England from a probable heavy defeat in the 2nd and 5th Tests: they fared better in between. In the 3rd, England conceded a first-innings lead of 110, but replied strongly in the second innings with a painstakingly slow and defensive 391/7, which would have resulted in a difficult target for the Windies had there been another day to chase it – but the third day had been rained off, and time ran out. In the Fourth Test, England picked up their only first-innings lead of the series – of 105 runs – but collapsed catastrophically in the second, before being saved by a century partnership for the last wicket between Willey (100*) and Willis (24*) to reach a total 201/9, and again the loss of a day and a half to rain left no time for the Windies to chase a potentially tough target above 300. Botham had a poor season as a bowler and, in all first-class cricket, took just 40 wickets at the high average of 34.67 with a best return of only four for 38. He did better as a batsman, scoring 1,149 runs (the second time, after 1976, that he topped a thousand in a season) at 42.55: but this did not translate to form in the Tests. He completed two centuries and six other half-centuries for his county. His highest score in the season was ultimately the highest of his career: 228 for Somerset against Gloucestershire at Taunton in May. He batted for just over three hours, hitting 27 fours and ten sixes. With Gloucestershire batting out time for a draw on the final day, Somerset used all eleven players as bowlers. Apart from an innings of 57 in the first Test, Botham contributed little to England in the series and that innings was the only time he reached 50 in all his twelve Tests as England captain.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Somerset came close to retaining their JPL title in 1980 but had to be content with second place, only two points behind Warwickshire. They finished a credible fifth in the County Championship but were eliminated from both the Gillette and B&H Cups in the opening phase.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Botham led England on the controversial tour of the West Indies from January to April 1981. The second Test, scheduled to be played at Bourda, was cancelled after the Guyanese government revoking the visa of Robin Jackman because of his playing and coaching links with South Africa. The other four Tests were played and West Indies won the series 2–0 but England were helped by rain in the two drawn matches. Botham took the most wickets for England, but Wisden said \"his bowling never recovered the full rhythm of a year before\". His batting, however, apart from one good LOI performance in the first one-day international \"was found wanting in technique, concentration and eventually in confidence\". In Wisden's view, Botham's loss of form \"could be cited as eloquent evidence of the undesirability of saddling a fast bowler and vital all-rounder with the extra burden of captaincy\". The closest England came to a victory was in the first ODI, in which England bowled the West Indies out for 127 but, thanks to six wickets from Colin Croft, failed by two runs in the chase which was anchored by Botham's 60: this was, at the time, the lowest ODI total batting first to be successfully defended.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The England captaincy had affected Botham's form as a player and in his last Test as captain, against Australia at Lord's in 1981, he was dismissed for a pair. According to Wisden editor Matthew Engel, writing in ESPNcricinfo, Botham \"resigned (a minute before being sacked), his form shot to pieces\" after that match. Australia were then leading the series 1–0 after two Tests with four more to be played. Botham was replaced by the returning Mike Brearley, who had been his predecessor until retiring from Test cricket in 1980.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Botham continued to play for England under Brearley and achieved the highpoint of his career in the next three Tests as England recovered to win The Ashes. In the third Test at Headingley, Australia opened with 401 for 9 declared, despite good bowling by Botham who took 6 for 95. England responded poorly and were dismissed for 174. Botham was the only batsman to perform at all well and scored 50, which was his first Test half-century since he had been awarded the captaincy thirteen Tests earlier. Having been forced to follow-on, England collapsed again and at 135 for 7 on the afternoon of the fourth day, an innings defeat looked certain. Bookmakers had reportedly been offering odds of 500/1 against an England win after the follow-on was enforced. Botham, himself not long at the wicket, was the sole remaining recognised batsman as he was joined by the fast bowler Graham Dilley, number nine in the batting order, with only Chris Old and Bob Willis to come. With able support from Dilley (56) and Old (29), Botham hit out and by the close of play was 145 not out with Willis hanging on at the other end on 1 not out. England's lead was just 124 but there remained a glimmer of hope. On the final day's play, Botham reached 149 not out before Willis's wicket fell. Australia, with plenty of time remaining, needed 130 to win and were generally expected to get them; but after Botham took the first wicket, Willis took 8 for 43 to dismiss Australia for only 111. England had won by 18 runs; it was only the second time in history that a team following on had won a Test match.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Botham's outstanding form continued through the next two Tests. In the fourth at Edgbaston, a low-scoring match left Australia batting last and needing 151 to win. They reached 105 for 5 and were still favourites at that point but, in an inspired spell of bowling, Botham then took five wickets for only one run in 28 balls to give England victory by 29 runs. In the fifth Test at Old Trafford, Botham scored 118 in a partnership of 149 with Chris Tavaré before he was dismissed. He hit six sixes in that innings. England won that match to take a winning 3–1 series lead. The last Test at The Oval was drawn, Botham achieving a 10wM by taking six for 125 and four for 128. He was named Man of the Series after scoring 399 runs, taking 34 wickets and holding 12 catches.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Somerset won the Benson & Hedges Cup for the first time in 1981 and did well in the County Championship too, finishing third. They were again runners-up in the JPL, but a long way behind the winners Essex. In the renamed NatWest Trophy (formerly Gillette Cup), Somerset were knocked out in the second round. Botham played in the B&H final at Lord's, in which Somerset defeated Surrey by seven wickets. He took no wickets but provided Viv Richards (132 not out) with good support in the run chase. Botham ended the season with 67 wickets at 25.55, a best return of six for 90 (for Somerset v Sussex) and one 10wM (sixth Test). He scored 925 runs with a highest of 149* (third Test) at 42.04; and held 19 catches.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "During this period, Botham played in 25 Tests. There were home series against both India and Pakistan in 1982; and New Zealand in 1983. His overseas tours were to India and Sri Lanka in 1981–82 (he took part in the inaugural Test played by Sri Lanka); to Australia in 1982–83; and to New Zealand and Pakistan in 1983–84. He played for England in the 1983 Cricket World Cup and was a member of their losing team in the semi-final.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Botham's return to India was less than triumphant and Wisden took him to task for his \"ineffectiveness with the ball\". Having achieved a match analysis of nine for 133 at Bombay, where England were beaten on a poor pitch, Botham took only eight more wickets, at 65 each, in the last five Tests and Wisden said this \"was a telling blow to England's chance of levelling the series\".",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "1982 was a good all-round season for Botham, especially as Somerset retained the Benson & Hedges Cup. In 17 first-class matches, he scored 1,241 runs with a highest of 208 against India (this was ultimately his career highest in Test cricket) at a good average of 44.32. He took 66 wickets at the low average of 22.98 with a best return of five for 46. England won their Test series against Pakistan by 2–1 and the one against India 1–0. Botham scored two centuries against India: 128 at Old Trafford and his career high 208 at The Oval. Somerset finished sixth and ninth in the County Championship and the JPL respectively. They reached the quarter-final of the NatWest Trophy and their season highlight was retaining the B&H Cup they won in 1981. In the final at Lord's, Somerset dismissed Nottinghamshire for only 130 (Botham two for 19)and won easily by nine wickets.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Botham toured Australia again in 1982–83 with England seeking to retain the Ashes, but Australia won the series 2–1 despite England winning, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), a Test described by Wisden as \"one of the most exciting Test matches ever played\". Botham had a poor series and tour. He played in nine first-class matches and scored only 434 runs at the low average of 24.11 with a highest of 65. He was no better with the ball, taking just 29 wickets for a too-high 35.62 with a best return of four for 43. He did, however, field well and held 17 catches, nearly two a match.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the 1983 English season, Somerset won the NatWest Trophy for the first time, defeating Kent in the Lord's final by 24 runs with Botham as their captain. They were very close to taking the JPL title too but, having tied with Yorkshire on 46 points, they were placed second on run rate. In the County Championship, they won only three matches and finished tenth. They were knocked out of the B&H Cup early. Botham had a good season with the bat, scoring 852 runs in his 14 first-class matches at 40.57 with a highest score of 152 among three centuries. He did less well with the ball: only 22 wickets at the high average of 33.09. New Zealand played a four-match Test series against England after the World Cup and, at the 29th attempt, finally defeated England for the first time in a Test match in England. England won the other three matches convincingly, however, to take the series 3–1. Botham did little with the ball, the same story as in his whole season, but he did score a century (103) in the final Test at Trent Bridge (see photo).",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In the winter of 1983–84, England toured New Zealand from January to February and Pakistan in March. Apart from one innings at Basin Reserve in the first Test against New Zealand, Botham was a disappointment on this tour, especially as a bowler. He scored 138 in the first Test, sharing in a sixth wicket partnership of 232 with Derek Randall (164), but the match was drawn. It was a poor tour for England, all told, and described by Wisden as \"ranking among the unhappiest they have ever undertaken\". England lost both series 1–0. Botham left Pakistan after the first Test there, the one England lost, to have a knee problem investigated at home.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "After ten seasons as a first-team regular, Botham was appointed Somerset club captain in 1984 and 1985. In the County Championship, they finished seventh in 1984 and then dropped to 17th (bottom of the table) in 1985. In the JPL, they were 15th in 1984 and eleventh in 1985. They made little impression in either of the B&H Cup or the NatWest Trophy so, all in all, Botham's captaincy period was a lean time for the club who had enjoyed its most successful period ever in the preceding seasons.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Botham played in 18 Tests from 1984 to 1986, ten of them (five home, five away) against West Indies. Throughout Botham's Test career, the highest international standards were set by West Indies and Botham was generally unsuccessful against them. In both of these series, 1984 and 1985–86, West Indies beat England 5–0 in whitewashes that were dubbed \"blackwash\".",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Ironically, his highest score and both his best and worst bowling performances against West Indies occurred in the same match at Lord's in 1984. Clive Lloyd won the toss and, perhaps mistakenly, elected to field. The first day was rain-affected and England, 167 for two overnight, scored 286 thanks to a century by Graeme Fowler; Botham scored a useful 30. West Indies lost three quick wickets, all of them to Botham who was a \"reminder of his old self\" in the words of Wisden, but recovered to reach 119 for three at the close of play on day two. In the third morning, Viv Richards was dismissed by Botham under dubious circumstances but Botham was inspired by the capture of his great friend's wicket and went on to take eight for 103, dismissing West Indies for 245 and for once giving England a chance of victory against the world's best team, with a first innings lead of 41. This was Botham's best-ever bowling performance against West Indies by some distance. England began their second innings and had been reduced to 88 for four when Botham joined Allan Lamb. They reached 114 for four at day three close. There was no Sunday play and England resumed on the Monday 155 runs ahead with six wickets standing. Botham and Lamb added 128 for the fifth wicket before Botham was out for 81, including nine fours and one six, easily his highest score and best innings against West Indies. Lamb made a century and England were all out on the Tuesday morning (final day) for exactly 300. West Indies needed 342 to win in five and a half hours. They lost Desmond Haynes to a run out at 57 for 0, whereupon Larry Gomes (92 not out) joined Gordon Greenidge (214 not out) and West Indies went on to win by nine wickets with 11.5 of the last twenty overs to spare. Although Wisden does not name Botham except as an \"inattentive\" fielder who dropped a catch, it describes the England bowlers \"looking second-rate and nobody but Willis bowling the right line or setting the right field to the powerful and phlegmatic Greenidge\". Botham bowled the most overs, 20, and with nought for 117 he conceded almost a run a ball (Willis had nought for 48 from 15 overs). In mitigation, Wisden conceded that Greenidge played \"the innings of his life, and his ruthless batting probably made the bowling look worse that it was\".",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "He also played in the one-off Test against Sri Lanka: not bowling particularly well in the first innings although he took the first wicket (1/114 out of 491), and being dismissed for 6 as England batted (370). Toward the end of Sri Lanka's second innings as the match meandered to a draw, in absolutely ferocious heat Botham dispensed with his usual fast bowler's long run-up and switched to bowling off-spin off a few paces, surprising everybody (himself included) by taking several wickets with it, out of an analysis of 6/90. He decided to take a rest over the winter, and sit out of the 1984–85 tour of India.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1985, Botham played in all six Tests against a poor Australian team as England, themselves a second-rate team based on their recent performances, comfortably regained the Ashes and he was the leading wicket-taker, but the series was dominated by England's specialist batsmen, especially Mike Gatting and David Gower. Botham, who by this time had adopted a dyed blonde mullet haircut as a trademark, contributed relatively little with the bat, compared with the massive totals amassed by Gower, Gatting, Graham Gooch and Tim Robinson. He scored 250 runs at 31.25 with a highest of 85. He did take the most wickets (31 at 27.58 with a best of five for 109) but he was rarely impressive and he was bowling to a weak batting side, Allan Border apart. England's best bowler was Richard Ellison who played only twice and took 17 wickets at only 10.88 with a best of six for 77 and one 10wM.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Botham was suspended for 63 days by the Test and County Cricket Board in 1986 after he admitted in an interview that he had smoked cannabis. Due to the ban, Botham played in only one Test which was the final one of the series against New Zealand. He made his mark on that Test though: beginning it by taking the wicket of Bruce Edgar with his very first delivery, to go level with Dennis Lillee on 355 as holder of the world record for Test wickets. The next delivery was edged through the slip cordon by Jeff Crowe. Botham went past the mark in his second over to hold the record outright, by trapping Crowe leg-before. Then on the fourth day of the match, coming in after centuries from Gatting and Gower, he bashed a quickfire half-century in just 32 balls, including 24 off one over from Derek Stirling – equalling the record at the time, for most runs off an over in Tests... a record which he was responsible for, but from the other side, having conceded 24 runs to Andy Roberts back in the 1980/81 tour of the West Indies. England declared with a massive first-innings lead, but rain came after lunch on the fourth day and only one further over was bowled.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Botham was succeeded by Peter Roebuck as Somerset captain for 1986 but, during the season, tensions arose in the Somerset dressing room which eventually exploded into a full-scale row and resulted in the sacking by the club of Botham's friends Viv Richards and Joel Garner. Botham, who supported Richards and Garner, decided to resign at the end of the season. 1986 was not a season for Botham to remember except for one brilliant List A innings when he made his career highest score in the limited overs form of 175 not out for Somerset against Northamptonshire in a 39-over JPL match at the Wellingborough School ground. It was to no avail, however, as the weather intervened and the game ended in no result. His innings remains a ground record.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Botham's final tour of Australia was in 1986/87 under Mike Gatting's captaincy. He played in four Tests and England won the Ashes for the last time until 2005. In many ways, the series was also Botham's last hurrah because he scored his final Test century (138 in the first Test at Brisbane which England won by seven wickets) and took his final Test 5wI (five for 41 in the fourth Test at the MCG which England won by an innings and 14 runs). Wisden pointed out that although Botham had a modest series statistically, \"he was an asset to the side\" because of his enthusiasm and \"going out of his way to encourage younger players, especially Phil DeFreitas\". Unfortunately he suffered a severe rib injury in the Second Test in Perth, which kept him out of the 3rd Test entirely and reduced the pace of his bowling for the remainder of the tour as he tried to manage it: as a result, with reasonable success, he changed his bowling style to a defensive, miserly military-medium pace. England also won the two one-day tournaments, the one-off Benson & Hedges Perth Challenge (against Australia, West Indies and Pakistan) and the World Series (against Australia and Windies): Botham produced several match-winning performances with both bat and ball despite being not fully fit, and was Man of the Match in both matches of the best-of-three final of the World Series – with the bat in the first, opening the batting for 71 (scored out of 91 while he was at the crease), and with the ball in the second, for a particularly miserly spell which also took three wickets as England defended a low total by nine runs, to win the finals 2–0. It was also in this tournament that England tried the experiment of having Botham open the batting in ODIs, with the idea of hitting the ball over the top to counter the fielding restrictions which forced most of the fielders to be close to the bat inside the early overs.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "After his resignation from Somerset, Botham joined Worcestershire for the 1987 season and spent five seasons with them. In 1987, he scored 126* against his old county but otherwise he was more successful as a limited overs batsman, scoring two centuries and averaging 40.94. His bowling too was much better in the shorter form, wherein he averaged 21.29 against 42.04 in first-class. His limited overs efforts helped Worcestershire to win the Sunday League. They finished ninth in the County Championship and were unsuccessful in the two knockout trophies. Worcestershire, taking a leaf from England's winter tactic, sometimes used Botham to open the batting in one-day matches, in partnership with regular opener Tim Curtis.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Botham played in the five 1987 Tests against Pakistan, the last time he represented England in a full series. He scored 232 runs in the series with one half-century (51*) at 33.14; and took only seven wickets which were enormously expensive. Pakistan won by an innings at Headingley with the other four Tests drawn, although England were in superior positions in the First and Fourth tests which lost much time to rain, and only narrowly failed to level the series in the Fourth, running out of overs chasing a small target. When Pakistan totalled 708 at The Oval, the 217 runs conceded by Botham, from 52 overs, were the most by an England bowler, passing the 204 by Ian Peebles, from 71 overs, against Australia at The Oval in 1930, although he took three wickets and also ran out Imran Khan. The half-century, his final and by far his slowest Test fifty, was a dogged, defensive effort occupying most of the last day in a drawn match, in an unbroken partnership with Gatting (150*) to save the 5th test and keep England's margin of defeat at 1–0. He declined to go on tour with England the following winter, either for the 1987 World Cup in India and Pakistan (in which England reached the final) or for the subsequent tours of Pakistan (lost 1–0) and New Zealand (a rain-ruined 0–0 drawn series).",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Botham spent the 1987–88 Australian season with Queensland, playing for them in the Sheffield Shield. Queensland were one of the better state teams in the 1980s and were always in the Shield's top three from the 1983–84 season through to the 1990–91 season, but didn't win it. In Botham's season there, his teammates including Allan Border (captain), wicketkeeper Ian Healy and pace bowler Craig McDermott, they finished second to Western Australia. Botham scored several half-centuries and took a reasonable number of wickets and helped Queensland make the Sheffield Shield final. Botham and Dennis Lillee were fined for damaging the Queensland dressing room in Launceston, Tasmania during a one-day match. When the Queensland team flew to Perth for the Shield final, Botham was involved in an altercation where he allegedly assaulted a fellow airline passenger who had intervened in an argument between the Queensland players. Queensland lost the final. Botham was fined $800 by a magistrate and $5,000 by the Australian Cricket Board. He was consequently sacked by Queensland.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Botham was unfit for most of the 1988 season and played in only four first-class and seven limited overs matches during April and May. He did not play for England. Nevertheless, Worcestershire won both the County Championship and the Sunday League. Botham was out of action for eleven months, having had an operation to fuse vertebrae in his spine in response to a long-standing back problem.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "He returned in May 1989 and, bowling well in the County Championship, helped Worcestershire to a second successive title. With England struggling against Allan Border's rebuilt Australian team which featured the likes of Healy, McDermott, Steve Waugh, Merv Hughes and Mark Taylor, Botham was recalled for the third, fourth and fifth Tests of the pivotal Ashes 1989 series. He could do little to stem a tide which had now turned completely in Australia's favour and looked completely out of his depth. He scored only 62 runs at the very low average of 15.50 – two-thirds of them in one innings – and took just three wickets at an enormously expensive 80.33. The summer of 1989 saw more controversy for England with the organisation of a rebel tour to South Africa, all participants being banned for three years: Botham declined the rebel tour, hoping to be selected for the winter tour of the West Indies, only to be dropped for his poor form.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Another two-year absence from international cricket ensued until he was recalled again to play against West Indies in 1991, on the strength of belting 161* for Worcestershire against them in their early-season tour match against the county – it was to be his only century ever against the West Indies. He was selected for the early-season ODI series at first: he took a wicket in his first over, and four in his ten-over spell, but later tore a hamstring, going for a quick single while batting. He could have retired hurt, but opted to continue with a runner, only to be dismissed by the next delivery. The injury put him out of the remaining ODIs (both won by England) and the first couple of Tests (which England won and drew to lead 1–0): then, on his comeback in a county match, another injury caused him to be unavailable for the 3rd and 4th Tests (both lost by England). He was recalled for the 5th Test with England needing a victory to tie the series: batting in the first innings, he scored a respectable 31 before attempting to hook Curtly Ambrose and being dismissed \"hit wicket\", in circumstances which caused an infamous giggling fit in the BBC Test Match Special radio commentary box. Used sparingly with the ball, he took 1/27 and 2/40 as West Indies were bowled out, forced to follow on and bowled out again, by Tufnell (6/25) and Lawrence (5/106) in the first and second innings respectively. His only Test victory against the Windies was completed when he himself hit the winning runs – a boundary off his first delivery – as England chased a target of 143 with five wickets to spare, and tied the series. Two weeks later, he played against Sri Lanka at Lord's, achieving little of note. He helped Worcestershire to win the B&H Cup for the only time in 1991.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Botham's final tour was to Australia and New Zealand in 1991–92. In the tour of NZ, he played in only the last Test, and the one-day series: his most notable contribution was his highest ODI score of 79, opening the batting, in which he seemed to be set fair to finally reach a century in an ODI, but NZ managed to keep him away from the strike for several overs, he ran out of patience, slogged a delivery straight up in the air and was caught. After this came the World Cup in Australia. Botham had not previously won any man of the match awards in the World Cup, but in this competition he won two. Against India at the WACA Ground, he bowled tightly and restricted India, needing 237, to only 27 runs from his ten overs, an economy rate of 2.70 which was significantly lower than anyone else's. He captured two wickets and one of them was Sachin Tendulkar. England won by nine runs. Against Australia at Sydney Cricket Ground later in the competition, Botham won the award for the sort of all-round performance which had made his reputation. Australia won the toss and decided to bat first. They scored 171 all out in 49 overs and Botham took four for 31 in his ten. He then opened the England innings with Graham Gooch – the tactic England had trialled in Australia five years before, and again in the ODIs against NZ at the end of the tour before the World Cup – and scored 53 from only 77 balls in a partnership with Gooch of 107. England went on to win by eight wickets with nine overs to spare. He was less successful in the final, where previously economical bowling figures were ruined by a late assault from the Pakistani batting line-up, and then he was given out caught-behind for a duck (perhaps unfortunately, since he appeared not to have touched the ball according to the camera replays) in Wasim Akram's first over, England losing the match.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In 1992, Botham joined County Championship newcomers Durham, scoring a century in the second innings in their inaugural first-class match against Leicestershire: and he played in the first two Tests against Pakistan, the second one at Lord's being his final Test appearance. Botham scored 2 and 6, cheaply dismissed each time by the pace of Waqar Younis. As a bowler, he was used for only five overs in the first innings, his final Test return being none for nine: he did not bowl in Pakistan's second innings, thanks to a foot injury sustained while batting, although he fielded at slip. England lost the match by two wickets and Pakistan went on to win the series 2–1. Botham did however play in the ODI series, in all five matches, which England won 4–1: these were his last international matches. England's batting was so dominant in all but one of the matches, that Botham only came in right at the end of the innings, or not at all, reverting to his old place in the middle order, and he had little to do: except in the 4th match, where he opened the batting again (in Gooch's absence) and scored a respectable and workmanlike 40, but saw England lose their last four wickets for ten runs and the match by three runs. His bowling was similarly unremarkable, usually capturing one or two wickets at about four an over: he neither scored a run (did not bat) nor took a wicket (0–43) in his final match.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "It was in 1992 that Botham was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to cricket and for his charity work in the Queen's Birthday Honours.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Botham retired from cricket midway through the 1993 season, his last match being for Durham against the visiting Australians at The Racecourse 17–19 July 1993. Durham batted first and scored 385 for eight declared (Wayne Larkins 151). In his final first-class innings, Botham scored 32. In reply, Australia could only make 221, thanks to Simon Brown who took seven for 70 (Botham none for 21). Being 164 behind, Australia had to follow on and a victory for Durham was possible but centuries by Matthew Hayden and David Boon saved Australia and the match was drawn. Botham's final bowling return was none for 45 from eleven overs. In the final over of the game, Botham also kept wicket, without wearing gloves or pads.",
"title": "Cricket career (1973–1993)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Botham's Test career spanned 16 seasons and he played in 102 matches. He scored 5,200 runs at an average of 33.54 with a highest score of 208 in his 14 centuries. He took 383 wickets at an average of 28.40 with a best return of eight for 34 and achieved ten wickets in a match four times. He held 120 catches.",
"title": "Records in international cricket"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 116 LOIs from 1976 to 1992, he scored 2,113 runs with a highest score of 79; took 145 wickets with a best return of four for 31; and held 36 catches. A straight comparison of these totals with those of his Test career reveal that he was less effective in the limited overs form of the game. He did have some outstanding LOI matches, however, winning six man of the match awards. Botham took part in three editions of the Cricket World Cup: 1979, 1983 and 1992. He played in 22 World Cup matches including the finals in 1979 and 1992, both of which England lost, and he was in England's losing team in the 1983 semi-final.",
"title": "Records in international cricket"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Botham was the 21st player to achieve the \"double\" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket and he went on to score 5,200 runs and take 383 wickets, as well as holding 120 catches.",
"title": "Records in international cricket"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "He held the world record for the greatest number of Test wickets from 21 August 1986 to 12 November 1988. His predecessor was Dennis Lillee who had retired with 355 wickets in 70 matches. Botham extended the record to 373 in 94 matches before he was overtaken by Richard Hadlee. Botham ended with 383 wickets in 102 matches while Hadlee extended the record to 431 in 86 matches. See List of Test cricket records#Career.",
"title": "Records in international cricket"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "As described above, Botham in 1980 became the second player to achieve the \"match double\" of 100 runs and ten wickets in Test cricket, following Alan Davidson in 1960–61. Botham was, however, the first to score a century and take ten wickets in a Test match (Davidson scored 44 and 80). The century and ten double has since been achieved by Imran Khan who scored 117 and took six for 98 and five for 82 against India at the Iqbal Stadium in Faisalabad in January 1983., and again by Shakib Al Hasan for Bangladesh against Zimbabwe at Khulna in 2014.",
"title": "Records in international cricket"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Compared with many of cricket's greatest players, most of whom were specialists, Botham's averages seem fairly ordinary but this overlooks the fact that he was a genuine all-rounder and it is rare for this type of player to achieve world-class status. Since the Second World War, Botham is one of perhaps a dozen or so world-class all-rounders whereas there have been numerous world-class specialists. Some of the great all-rounders, such as Garfield Sobers and Jacques Kallis as batsmen or Alan Davidson and Richard Hadlee as bowlers, could justifiably be described as world-class specialists in their main discipline who were effective practitioners of the other. The genuine all-rounders to achieve world-class status during the era, besides Botham himself, have included Keith Miller, Richie Benaud, Mike Procter, Clive Rice, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and Andrew Flintoff.",
"title": "List of Test centuries and five-wicket innings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Of note, Botham's first 202 wickets came at 21.20 per wicket, while his final 181 cost on average 36.43 apiece; the first average is one that would make Botham one of the greatest bowlers of the modern era, ranking alongside the West Indian greats Curtly Ambrose (career average 20.99), Malcolm Marshall (career average 20.94), and Joel Garner (career average 20.97), but the second average depicts a player who, as a specialist bowler, would be unable to sustain a place in many Test teams. This difference can be largely attributed to the longer term effects of a back injury he sustained in 1980; this limited his bowling pace and his ability to swing the ball.",
"title": "List of Test centuries and five-wicket innings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Botham's batting – although never the equal of his bowling abilities – declined as well, with a batting average of 38.80 for his first 51 Tests substantially higher than the 28.87 he managed in his last 51 Tests, again a number that would be considered unsatisfactory for a specialist batsman in most Test sides. In the first 5 years of Botham's Test career, when not playing as captain, he scored 2,557 runs at an average of 49.17 including 11 centuries and a highest score of 208, took 196 wickets at an average of 21.28 including nineteen 5 wicket hauls and held 50 catches. Such figures denote a player who would easily maintain a place in any Test side as a specialist batsman or bowler alone. During this period his reputation as one of the leading Test all-rounders was firmly established.",
"title": "List of Test centuries and five-wicket innings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Botham had an affinity with Brian Close, his first county captain who became a mentor to him, as they shared a determination to do well and win matches. Wisden has commented on another shared characteristic: \"outstanding courage\", mainly because Botham would readily field anywhere, generally in the slips but also in dangerous positions near the batsman and he was a brilliant fielder. As a batsman, Botham was often wrongly labelled by the tabloid press as a \"big hitter\" (effectively implying that he was a \"slogger\") but, while it is true that his strength enabled him to drive a ball for six and his courage to hook one for six, Botham actually had a very correct batting style as he stood side-on and played straight: Wisden praised his \"straight hitting and square cutting\". Botham might not have been good enough to retain a regular England place as a specialist batsman (his Test career batting average was a fairly modest 33.54) but as a bowler who was capable of taking 383 Test wickets, he certainly would. Wisden praised Tom Cartwright for helping to develop Botham's technique as a swing bowler and, by the time he made his Test debut in 1977, Botham had mastered change of pace, the outswinger and the fast inswinging yorker, all formidable parts of his repertoire which eventually enabled him to break the world Test wicket record.",
"title": "Style and technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Writing in Barclays World of Cricket (1986), former England captain Tony Lewis commented on Botham's strength, enthusiasm and aggression \"which he took into every game\". Lewis, however, pointed out that Botham's exuberance often reduced the efficiency of his play, in that he would take too many risks or refuse to give up on a bowling tactic despite ongoing heavy cost. He summarised Botham as an exciting cricketer who lacked self-discipline. Botham was in the middle of his career when the book was published, but Lewis emphasised the speed at which Botham had achieved certain milestones such as 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket. At that time there seemed no reason why Botham should not go on reaching milestones, but he had already peaked and, in retrospect, his career had a meteoric aspect. His rival Imran Khan asserted this when he said: \"Botham was someone who I don't think ever did justice to his talent. When he started he could have done anything, but he declined very quickly. In a way our careers were the opposite of each other. I started quite slowly but got better, maximised my talent. He went the other way, I think\".",
"title": "Style and technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Botham's career and ability level has been oft-debated. For example, when naming him as a Cricketer of the Year in its 1978 edition, Wisden described Botham as \"a determined character who knows where he is aiming, and who will, quite naturally and fiercely, address himself to the interesting view that he is overrated\". Denis Compton would dismiss Botham as \"overrated\" and said he \"only did well because all the best players had joined Packer\": i.e., for World Series Cricket (WSC).",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "He would readily give praise to his colleagues, for instance, his batting partners Hallam Moseley and Bob Clapp after the 1974 Benson and Hedges quarter-final against Hampshire; and to Bob Willis, the man whose bowling spell won the test match at Headingley in 1981.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Richards–Botham Trophy, set to replace the Wisden Trophy for winners of West Indies–England Test series, is named in honour of Botham and Viv Richards.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 1994, the year after he retired, Botham became embroiled in a legal dispute with Imran Khan who, in an article for India Today, had accused Botham and Allan Lamb of bringing cricket into disrepute. Botham and Lamb instigated a libel action in response. The case was heard at the High Court in 1996 with the court choosing to hear on the second day a separate action brought solely by Botham against Khan, who had suggested in a newspaper article that Botham had been involved in ball-tampering. This would become the subject of a court case later on, one that Khan would go on to win. Botham was liable for all expenses in the court case in the ruling, including those incurred by Khan.",
"title": "Libel cases brought against Imran Khan (1994–1996)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Botham was a talented footballer but, believing he was better at cricket, he chose the latter for his full-time career. Even so, he played football as a centre-half from 1978 to 1985 for Yeovil Town and Scunthorpe United. He made eleven appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe. While with Yeovil, Botham made an appearance for the Football Association XI (a representative side for non-League footballers) against the Northern Football League at Croft Park during the 1984–85 season.",
"title": "Football career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Botham has been a prodigious fundraiser for charitable causes, undertaking a total of 12 long-distance charity walks. His first, in 1985, was a 900-mile trek from John o' Groats to Land's End. His efforts were inspired after a visit to Taunton's Musgrove Park Hospital in 1977 whilst receiving treatment for a broken toe. When he took a wrong turn into a children's ward, he was devastated to learn that some of the children had only weeks to live, and why. At the time he was an expectant father. Since then his efforts have raised more than £12 million for charity, with leukaemia research the main cause to benefit. In recognition of this work, Botham in 2003 became the first-ever President of Bloodwise, the UK's leading blood cancer charity. In November 2014, Botham designed a Paddington Bear statue, one of fifty created by various celebrities which were located around London prior to the release of the film Paddington, with the statues auctioned to raise funds for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).",
"title": "Charity fundraising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "On 10 October 2007, Botham was invested a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, having been appointed in the Queen's Birthday Honours \"for services to Charity and to Cricket\".",
"title": "Charity fundraising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "After retiring from cricket, Botham became involved in the media and has worked as an analyst and commentator for Sky Sports for many years. Unlike Fred Trueman and others, he does not hark back to \"in my day\". Wisden editor Matthew Engel remarked on Botham's calmness, wit and sagacity as a TV commentator, though admitting he was surprised by it.",
"title": "Media career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "On 9 August 2009, while commentating on the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley that season, Botham was invited to take part in an on-field ceremony to induct him into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame along with the Yorkshire greats Wilfred Rhodes, Fred Trueman and Geoffrey Boycott. Geoff Boycott was also in attendance, along with Fred Trueman's widow Veronica and Colin Graves who, as Yorkshire County Cricket Club chairman, accepted the honour on behalf of Wilfred Rhodes. Botham said: \"To be named amongst 55 of the most prolific players in cricketing history is a great honour for me. To have my cricketing career recognised in the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame is not something I would have thought when I began playing cricket but to be receiving this award today is something I'm extremely grateful for\". Colin Graves included Botham in his tribute to Rhodes when he said: \"It is a great honour to accept the cap on behalf of a Yorkshire legend. Wilfred Rhodes was an exceedingly gifted player and is rightly regarded as one of England's greatest all-rounders. I am also delighted to see two other great Yorkshiremen and another great all-rounder inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame today\".",
"title": "Media career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1981 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews during a meeting at Lord's.",
"title": "Media career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "On 12 August 1995, Botham was interviewed at length by Andrew Neil on his one-on-one interview show Is This Your Life? for Channel 4.",
"title": "Media career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "He was nominated by Boris Johnson for a life peerage in the 2020 Political Honours, it being widely reported that the honour was a reward for his support for Brexit. He was created Baron Botham, of Ravensworth in the County of North Yorkshire on 10 September and took the oath and his seat on 5 October 2020. He made his maiden speech on 3 November the same year and since then has made one further spoken contribution on 25 November 2020. His last vote in the House of Lords was in July 2021.",
"title": "Peerage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "On 23 August 2021, Boris Johnson appointed him the UK's Trade Envoy to Australia.",
"title": "Peerage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Botham is colour blind. In 1976, in Doncaster, Botham married Kathryn (\"Kathy\") Waller (now Lady Botham) whom he first met in June 1974. After their marriage, they lived until the late 1980s in Epworth, near Scunthorpe. They have one son, Liam (born August 1977), and two daughters, Sarah and Becky. The family now live in Ravensworth in North Yorkshire, and also own property in Almería, where Botham frequently plays golf.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Botham is an avid trout and salmon fisherman. As a result, he was invited to present a TV series called Botham on the Fly. He has also been a team captain on the BBC series A Question of Sport.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Besides angling and golf, Botham enjoys game shooting and owns a grouse moor. This has resulted in a high-profile dispute with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). In August 2016, he called for Chris Packham to be sacked by the BBC as part of a campaign funded by the grouse shooting industry, after Packham had highlighted the industry's involvement in the illegal killing of endangered species of birds of prey.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "According to the New Statesman in 2015, \"Botham is an old-fashioned Englishman [...] he is conservative with a small and upper-case C\" and \"a robust monarchist\". Botham was a staunch supporter of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. He was quoted: \"Personally, I think that England is an island. I think that England should be England. And I think that we should keep that.\" He appeared at a number of pro-Leave campaign events in the run-up to the UK's EU membership referendum in 2016.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Botham's private life has also made occasional dramatic appearances in Britain's tabloid newspapers, with at least one extra-marital affair prompting a public apology to his wife Kathy. He also fell out publicly with other players, including fellow England player Geoff Boycott, Somerset captain Peter Roebuck, and Australian batsman Ian Chappell, with whom he had an altercation in an Adelaide Oval car park during the 2010–11 Ashes series. Although Botham hoped to resolve his long-running feud with Chappell during a Channel 9 documentary on 27 June 2023, Chappell refused.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Ian Terence Botham, Baron Botham, is an English cricket commentator, member of the House of Lords, a former cricketer who has been chairman of Durham County Cricket Club since 2017 and charity fundraiser. Hailed as one of the greatest all-rounders in the history of the game, Botham represented England in both Test and One-Day International cricket. He played most of his first-class cricket for Somerset, at other times competing for Worcestershire, Durham and Queensland. He was an aggressive right-handed batsman and, as a right-arm fast-medium bowler, was noted for his swing bowling. He generally fielded close to the wicket, predominantly in the slips. In Test cricket, Botham scored 14 centuries with a highest score of 208, and from 1986 to 1988 held the world record for the most Test wickets until overtaken by fellow all-rounder Sir Richard Hadlee. He took five wickets in an innings 27 times, and 10 wickets in a match four times. In 1980, he became the second player in Test history to complete the "match double" of scoring 100 runs and taking 10 wickets in the same match. On the occasion of England's 1000th Test in August 2018, he was named in the country's greatest Test XI by the ECB. Botham has at times been involved in controversies, including a highly publicised court case involving rival all-rounder Imran Khan and an ongoing dispute with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). These incidents, allied to his on-field success, have attracted media attention, especially from the tabloid press. Botham has used his fame to raise money for research into childhood leukaemia. These efforts have realised millions of pounds for Bloodwise, of which he became president. On 8 August 2009, he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. In July 2020, it was announced that Botham would be elevated to the House of Lords and that he would sit as a crossbench peer. Botham has a wide range of sporting interests outside cricket. He was a talented footballer at school and had to choose between cricket and football as a career. He chose cricket but, even so, he played professional football for a few seasons and made eleven appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe United, becoming the club's president in 2017. He is a keen golfer, and his other pastimes include angling and shooting. He has been awarded both a knighthood and a life peerage. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-19T00:43:17Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Botham |
15,526 | Id Software | id Software LLC (/ɪd/) is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.
id Software made important technological developments in video game technologies for the PC (running MS-DOS and Windows), including work done for the Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake franchises at the time. id's work was particularly important in 3D computer graphics technology and in game engines that are used throughout the video game industry. The company was involved in the creation of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre: Wolfenstein 3D is often considered to be the first true FPS; Doom is a game that popularized the genre and PC gaming in general; and Quake was id's first true 3D FPS.
On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company. In 2015, they opened a second studio in Frankfurt, Germany.
The founders of id Software – John Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall – met in the offices of Softdisk developing multiple games for Softdisk's monthly publishing, including Dangerous Dave. Along with another Softdisk employee, Lane Roathe, they had formed a small group they called Ideas from the Deep (IFD), a name that Romero and Roathe had come up with. In September 1990, Carmack developed an efficient way to rapidly side-scroll graphics on the PC. Upon making this breakthrough, Carmack and Hall stayed up late into the night making a replica of the first level of the popular 1988 NES game Super Mario Bros. 3, inserting stock graphics of Romero's Dangerous Dave character in lieu of Mario. When Romero saw the demo, entitled Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, he realized that Carmack's breakthrough could have potential. The IFD team moonlighted over a week and over two weekends to create a larger demo of their PC version of Super Mario Bros. 3. They sent their work to Nintendo. According to Romero, Nintendo had told them that the demo was impressive, but "they didn't want their intellectual property on anything but their own hardware, so they told us Good Job and You Can't Do This". While the pair had not readily shared the demo though acknowledged its existence in the years since, a working copy of the demo was discovered in July 2021 and preserved at the Museum of Play.
Around the same time in 1990, Scott Miller of Apogee Software learned of the group and their exceptional talent, having played one of Romero's Softdisk games, Dangerous Dave, and contacted Romero under the guise of multiple fan letters that Romero came to realize all originated from the same address. When he confronted Miller, Miller explained that the deception was necessary since Softdisk screened letters it received. Although disappointed by not actually having received mail from multiple fans, Romero and other Softdisk developers began proposing ideas to Miller. One of these was Commander Keen, a side-scrolling game that incorporated the previous work they had done on the Super Mario Bros. 3 demonstration. The first Commander Keen game, Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, was released through Apogee in December 1990, which became a very successful shareware game. After their first royalty check, Romero, Carmack, and Adrian Carmack (no relation) decided to start their own company. After hiring Hall, the group finished the Commander Keen series, then hired Jay Wilbur and Kevin Cloud and began working on Wolfenstein 3D. id Software was officially founded by Romero, John and Adrian Carmack and Hall on February 1, 1991. The name "id" came out of their previous IFD; Roathe had left the group, and they opted to drop the "F" to leave "id". They initially used "id" as an initialism for "In Demand", but by the time of the fourth Commander Keen game, they opted to let "id" stand out "as a cool word", according to Romero.
The shareware distribution method was initially employed by id Software through Apogee Software to sell their products, such as the Commander Keen, Wolfenstein and Doom games. They would release the first part of their trilogy as shareware, then sell the other two installments by mail order. Only later (about the time of the release of Doom II) did id Software release their games via more traditional shrink-wrapped boxes in stores (through other game publishers).
After Wolfenstein 3D's great success, id began working on Doom. After Hall left the company, Sandy Petersen and Dave Taylor were hired before the release of Doom in December 1993.
Quake was released on June 22, 1996 and was considered a difficult game to develop due to creative differences. Animosity grew within the company and it caused a conflict between Carmack and Romero, which led the latter to leave id after the game's release. Soon after, other staff left the company as well such as Michael Abrash, Shawn Green, Jay Wilbur, Petersen and Mike Wilson. Petersen claimed in July 2021 that the lack of a team leader was the cause of it all. In fact, he volunteered to take lead as he had five years of experience as project manager in MicroProse but he was turned down by Carmack.
On June 24, 2009, it was announced that id Software had been acquired by ZeniMax Media (owner of Bethesda Softworks). The deal would eventually affect publishing deals id Software had before the acquisition, namely Rage, which was being published through Electronic Arts. ZeniMax received in July a $105 million investment from StrongMail Systems for the id acquisition, it's unknown if that was the exact price of the deal. id Software moved from the "cube-shaped" Mesquite office to a location in Richardson, Texas during the spring of 2011.
On June 26, 2013, id Software president Todd Hollenshead quit after 17 years of service.
On November 22, 2013, it was announced id Software co-founder and Technical Director John Carmack had fully resigned from the company to work full-time at Oculus VR which he joined as CTO in August 2013. He was the last of the original founders to leave the company.
Tim Willits left the company in 2019. ZeniMax Media was acquired by Microsoft for US$7.5 billion in March 2021 and became part of Xbox Game Studios.
The company writes its name with a lowercase id, which is pronounced as in "did" or "kid", and, according to the book Masters of Doom, the group identified itself as "Ideas from the Deep" in the early days of Softdisk but that, in the end, the name 'id' came from the phrase "in demand". Disliking "in demand" as "lame", someone suggested a connection with Sigmund Freud's psychological concept of id, which the others accepted. Evidence of the reference can be found as early as Wolfenstein 3D with the statement "that's id, as in the id, ego, and superego in the psyche" appearing in the game's documentation. Prior to an update to the website, id's History page made a direct reference to Freud.
Arranged in chronological order:
Starting with their first shareware game series, Commander Keen, id Software has licensed the core source code for the game, or what is more commonly known as the engine. Brainstormed by John Romero, id Software held a weekend session titled "The id Summer Seminar" in the summer of 1991 with prospective buyers including Scott Miller, George Broussard, Ken Rogoway, Jim Norwood and Todd Replogle. One of the nights, id Software put together an impromptu game known as "Wac-Man" to demonstrate not only the technical prowess of the Keen engine, but also how it worked internally.
id Software has developed their own game engine for each of their titles when moving to the next technological milestone, including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, ShadowCaster, Doom, Quake, Quake II, and Quake III, as well as the technology used in making Doom 3. After being used first for id Software's in-house game, the engines are licensed out to other developers. According to Eurogamer.net, "id Software has been synonymous with PC game engines since the concept of a detached game engine was first popularized". During the mid to late 1990s, "the launch of each successive round of technology it's been expected to occupy a headlining position", with the Quake III engine being most widely adopted of their engines. However id Tech 4 had far fewer licensees than the Unreal Engine from Epic Games, due to the long development time that went into Doom 3 which id Software had to release before licensing out that engine to others.
Despite his enthusiasm for open source code, Carmack revealed in 2011 that he had no interest in licensing the technology to the mass market. Beginning with Wolfenstein 3D, he felt bothered when third-party companies started "pestering" him to license the id tech engine, adding that he wanted to focus on new technology instead of providing support to existing ones. He felt very strongly that this was not why he signed up to be a game programmer for; to be "holding the hands" of other game developers. Carmack commended Epic Games for pursuing the licensing to the market beginning with Unreal Engine 3. Even though the said company has gained more success with its game engine than id Software over the years, Carmack had no regrets by his decision and continued to focus on open source until his departure from the company in 2013.
In conjunction with his self-professed affinity for sharing source code, John Carmack has open-sourced most of the major id Software engines under the GNU General Public License. Historically, the source code for each engine has been released once the code base is 5 years old. Consequently, many home grown projects have sprung up porting the code to different platforms, cleaning up the source code, or providing major modifications to the core engine. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake engine ports are ubiquitous to nearly all platforms capable of running games, such as hand-held PCs, iPods, the PSP, the Nintendo DS and more. Impressive core modifications include DarkPlaces which adds stencil shadow volumes into the original Quake engine along with a more efficient network protocol. Another such project is ioquake3, which maintains a goal of cleaning up the source code, adding features and fixing bugs. Even earlier id Software code, namely for Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D, was released in June 2014 by Flat Rock Software.
The GPL release of the Quake III engine's source code was moved from the end of 2004 to August 2005 as the engine was still being licensed to commercial customers who would otherwise be concerned over the sudden loss in value of their recent investment.
On August 4, 2011, John Carmack revealed during his QuakeCon 2011 keynote that they will be releasing the source code of the Doom 3 engine (id Tech 4) during the year.
id Software publicly stated they would not support the Wii console (possibly due to technical limitations), although they have since indicated that they may release titles on that platform (although it would be limited to their games released during the 1990s). They continued this policy with the Wii U but for Nintendo Switch, they collaborated with Panic Button starting with 2016's Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
Since id Software revealed their engine id Tech 5, they call their engines "id Tech", followed by a version number. Older engines have retroactively been renamed to fit this scheme, with the Doom engine as id Tech 1.
IMF ("id music file" or "id's music format") is an audio file format created by id Software for the AdLib sound card for use in their video games. The format is similar to MIDI, in that it defines musical notes, and does not support sampled digital audio for sound effects. IMF files store the actual bytes sent to the AdLib's OPL2 chip, which uses FM synthesis to produce audio output. The format is based on the AdLib command syntax, with a few modifications. Due to the limited features and relatively low sound quality, modern games no longer use IMF music.
A large number of songs in id Software's early games (such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D) were composed by Bobby Prince in IMF format. Other game developers like Apogee Software also used this format in their games (such as Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Duke Nukem II, and Monster Bash).
id Software was an early pioneer in the Linux gaming market, and id Software's Linux games have been some of the most popular of the platform. Many id Software games won the Readers' and Editors' Choice awards of Linux Journal. Some id Software titles ported to Linux are Doom (the first id Software game to be ported), Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Doom 3, Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Since id Software and some of its licensees released the source code for some of their previous games, several games which were not ported (such as Catacomb 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Heretic, Hexen, Hexen II, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Strife) can run on Linux and other operating systems natively through the use of source ports. Quake Live also launched with Linux support, although this, alongside OS X support, was later removed when changed to a standalone title.
The tradition of porting to Linux was first started by Dave D. Taylor, with David Kirsch doing some later porting. Since Quake III Arena, Linux porting had been handled by Timothee Besset. The majority of all id Tech 4 games, including those made by other developers, have a Linux client available, the only current exceptions being Wolfenstein and Brink. Similarly, almost all of the games utilizing the Quake II engine have Linux ports, the only exceptions being those created by Ion Storm (Daikatana later received a community port). Despite fears by the Linux gaming community that id Tech 5 would not be ported to that platform, Timothee Besset in his blog stated "I'll be damned if we don't find the time to get Linux builds done". Besset explained that id Software's primary justification for releasing Linux builds was better code quality, along with a technical interest in the platform. However, on January 26, 2012, Besset announced that he had left id.
John Carmack has expressed his stance with regard to Linux builds in the past. In December 2000 Todd Hollenshead expressed support for Linux: "All said, we will continue to be a leading supporter of the Linux platform because we believe it is a technically sound OS and is the OS of choice for many server ops." However, on April 25, 2012, Carmack revealed that "there are no plans for a native Linux client" of id's most recent game, Rage. In February 2013, Carmack argued for improving emulation as the "proper technical direction for gaming on Linux", though this was also due to ZeniMax's refusal to support "unofficial binaries", given all prior ports (except for Quake III Arena, via Loki Software, and earlier versions of Quake Live) having only ever been unofficial. Carmack didn't mention official games Quake: The Offering and Quake II: Colossus ported by id Software to Linux and published by Macmillan Computer Publishing USA.
Despite no longer releasing native binaries, id was an early adopter of Stadia, a cloud gaming service powered by Debian Linux servers, and the cross-platform Vulkan API. A Linux version of Doom from 2016 was tested internally, while it and its sequel Doom Eternal can be run using Wine and Proton.
Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, a platform game in the style of those for the Nintendo Entertainment System, was one of the first MS-DOS games with smooth horizontal-scrolling. Published by Apogee Software, the title and follow-ups brought id Software success as a shareware developer. It is the series of id Software that designer Tom Hall is most affiliated with. The first Commander Keen trilogy was released on December 14, 1990.
The company's breakout product was released on May 5, 1992: Wolfenstein 3D, a first-person shooter (FPS) with smooth 3D graphics that were unprecedented in computer games, and with violent gameplay that many gamers found engaging. After essentially founding an entire genre with this game, id Software created Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth, Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake 4, and Doom 3. Each of these first-person shooters featured progressively higher levels of graphical technology. Wolfenstein 3D spawned a prequel and a sequel: the prequel called Spear of Destiny, and the second, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, using the id Tech 3 engine. A third Wolfenstein sequel, simply titled Wolfenstein, was released by Raven Software, using the id Tech 4 engine. Another sequel, named Wolfenstein: The New Order; was developed by MachineGames using the id Tech 5 engine and released in 2014, with it getting a prequel by the name of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood a year later; followed by a direct sequel titled Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus in 2017.
Eighteen months after their release of Wolfenstein 3D, on December 10, 1993, id Software released Doom which would again set new standards for graphic quality and graphic violence in computer gaming. Doom featured a sci-fi/horror setting with graphic quality that had never been seen on personal computers or even video game consoles. Doom became a cultural phenomenon and its violent theme would eventually launch a new wave of criticism decrying the dangers of violence in video games. Doom was ported to numerous platforms, inspired many knock-offs, and was eventually followed by the technically similar Doom II: Hell on Earth. id Software made its mark in video game history with the shareware release of Doom, and eventually revisited the theme of this game in 2004 with their release of Doom 3. John Carmack said in an interview at QuakeCon 2007 that there would be a Doom 4. It began development on May 7, 2008. Doom 2016, the fourth installation of the Doom series, was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 13, 2016, and was later released on Nintendo Switch on November 10, 2017. In June 2018, the sequel to the 2016 Doom, Doom Eternal was officially announced at E3 2018 with a teaser trailer, followed by a gameplay reveal at QuakeCon in August 2018.
On June 22, 1996, the release of Quake marked the third milestone in id Software history. Quake combined a cutting edge fully 3D engine, the Quake engine, with a distinctive art style to create critically acclaimed graphics for its time. Audio was not neglected either, having recruited Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor to facilitate unique sound effects and ambient music for the game. (A small homage was paid to Nine Inch Nails in the form of the band's logo appearing on the ammunition boxes for the nailgun weapon.) It also included the work of Michael Abrash. Furthermore, Quake's main innovation, the capability to play a deathmatch (competitive gameplay between living opponents instead of against computer-controlled characters) over the Internet (especially through the add-on QuakeWorld), seared the title into the minds of gamers as another smash hit.
In 2008, id Software was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for the pioneering work Quake represented in user modifiable games. id Software is the only game development company ever honored twice by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, having been given an Emmy Award in 2007 for creation of the 3D technology that underlies modern shooter video games.
The Quake series continued with Quake II in 1997. Activision purchased a 49% stake in id Software, making it a second party which took publishing duties until 2009. However, the game is not a storyline sequel, and instead focuses on an assault on an alien planet, Stroggos, in retaliation for Strogg attacks on Earth. Most of the subsequent entries in the Quake franchise follow this storyline. Quake III Arena (1999), the next title in the series, has minimal plot, but centers around the "Arena Eternal", a gladiatorial setting created by an alien race known as the Vadrigar and populated by combatants plucked from various points in time and space. Among these combatants are some characters either drawn from or based on those in Doom ("Doomguy"), Quake (Ranger, Wrack), and Quake II (Bitterman, Tank Jr., Grunt, Stripe). Quake IV (2005) picks up where Quake II left off – finishing the war between the humans and Strogg. The spin-off Enemy Territory: Quake Wars acts as a prequel to Quake II, when the Strogg first invade Earth. Quake IV and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars were made by outside developers and not id.
There have also been other spin-offs such as Quake Mobile in 2005 and Quake Live, an internet browser based modification of Quake III. A game called Quake Arena DS was planned and canceled for the Nintendo DS. John Carmack stated, at QuakeCon 2007, that the id Tech 5 engine would be used for a new Quake game.
Todd Hollenshead announced in May 2007 that id Software had begun working on an all new series that would be using a new engine. Hollenshead also mentioned that the title would be completely developed in-house, marking the first game since 2004's Doom 3 to be done so. At 2007's WWDC, John Carmack showed the new engine called id Tech 5. Later that year, at QuakeCon 2007, the title of the new game was revealed as Rage.
On July 14, 2008, id Software announced at the 2008 E3 event that they would be publishing Rage through Electronic Arts, and not id's longtime publisher Activision. However, since then ZeniMax has also announced that they are publishing Rage through Bethesda Softworks.
On August 12, 2010, during Quakecon 2010, id Software announced Rage US ship date of September 13, 2011, and a European ship date of September 15, 2011. During the keynote, id Software also demonstrated a Rage spin-off title running on the iPhone. This technology demo later became Rage HD. The game was ultimately released in October 2011.
On May 14, 2018, Bethesda Softworks announced Rage 2, a co-development between id Software and Avalanche Studios.
During its early days, id Software produced much more varied games; these include the early 3D first-person shooter experiments that led to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom – Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D. There was also the Rescue Rover series, which had two games – Rescue Rover and Rescue Rover 2. Also there was John Romero's Dangerous Dave series, which included such notables as the tech demo (In Copyright Infringement) which led to the Commander Keen engine, and the decently popular Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion. In the Haunted Mansion was powered by the same engine as the earlier id Software game Shadow Knights, which was one of the several games written by id Software to fulfill their contractual obligation to produce games for Softdisk, where the id Software founders had been employed. id Software has also overseen several games using its technology that were not made in one of their IPs such as ShadowCaster, (early-id Tech 1), Heretic, Hexen: Beyond Heretic (id Tech 1), Hexen II (Quake engine), and Orcs and Elves (Doom RPG engine).
id Software has also published novels based on the Doom series Doom novels. After a brief hiatus from publishing, id resumed and re-launched the novel series in 2008 with Matthew J. Costello's (a story consultant for Doom 3 and now Rage) new Doom 3 novels: Worlds on Fire and Maelstrom.
id Software became involved in film development when they oversaw the film adaption of their Doom franchise in 2005. In August 2007, Todd Hollenshead stated at QuakeCon 2007 that a Return to Castle Wolfenstein movie is in development which re-teams the Silent Hill writer/producer team, Roger Avary as writer and director and Samuel Hadida as producer. A new Doom film, titled Doom: Annihilation, was released in 2019, although id itself stressed its lack of involvement.
id Software was the target of controversy over two of their most popular games, Doom and the earlier Wolfenstein 3D. More recently in 2022, id Software found themselves mired in a controversy concerning libel against Doom Eternal's composer.
Doom was notorious for its high levels of gore and occultism along with satanic imagery, which generated controversy from a broad range of groups. Yahoo! Games listed it as one of the top ten most controversial games of all time.
The game again sparked controversy throughout a period of school shootings in the United States when it was found that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who committed the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, were avid players of the game. While planning for the massacre, Harris said that the killing would be "like playing Doom", and "it'll be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, World War II, Vietnam, Duke Nukem and Doom all mixed together", and that his shotgun was "straight out of the game". A rumor spread afterwards that Harris had designed a Doom level that looked like the high school, populated with representations of Harris's classmates and teachers, and that Harris practiced for his role in the shootings by playing the level over and over. Although Harris did design Doom levels, none of them were based on Columbine High School.
While Doom and other violent video games have been blamed for nationally covered school shootings, 2008 research featured by Greater Good Science Center shows that the two are not closely related. Harvard Medical School researchers Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner found that violent video games did not correlate to school shootings. The United States Secret Service and United States Department of Education analyzed 37 incidents of school violence and sought to develop a profile of school shooters; they discovered that the most common traits among shooters were that they were male and had histories of depression and attempted suicide. While many of the killers—like the vast majority of young teenage boys—did play video games, this study did not find a relationship between gameplay and school shootings. In fact, only one-eighth of the shooters showed any special interest in violent video games, far less than the number of shooters who seemed attracted to books and movies with violent content.
As for Wolfenstein 3D, due to its use of Nazi symbols such as the swastika and the anthem of the Nazi Party, Horst-Wessel-Lied, as theme music, the PC version of the game was withdrawn from circulation in Germany in 1994, following a verdict by the Amtsgericht München on January 25, 1994. Despite the fact that Nazis are portrayed as the enemy in Wolfenstein, the use of those symbols is a federal offense in Germany unless certain circumstances apply. Similarly, the Atari Jaguar version was confiscated following a verdict by the Amtsgericht Berlin Tiergarten on December 7, 1994. The Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle lifted the outright ban in 2018 in favour of analysing depictions on a case-by-case basis, and the international version of the game was removed from the list of banned titles in 2019.
Due to concerns from Nintendo of America, the Super NES version was modified to not include any swastikas or Nazi references; furthermore, blood was replaced with sweat to make the game seem less violent, and the attack dogs in the game were replaced by giant mutant rats. Employees of id Software are quoted in The Official DOOM Player Guide about the reaction to Wolfenstein, claiming it to be ironic that it was morally acceptable to shoot people and rats, but not dogs. Two new weapons were added as well. The Super NES version was not as successful as the PC version.
In May 2020, after the Doom Eternal Original Soundtrack was released, there was a serious backlash to the Doom Eternal OST and accusations of low quality work that did not match composer Mick Gordon's usual standards. On April 19, Gordon confirmed on Twitter that it was not his work, and Marty Stratton subsequently posted on May 20 a 2,500-word open letter on Reddit blaming Gordon for everything that went wrong with the process of creating music for the soundtrack. Following this, public outcry against Gordon reached a level where he received explicit death threats and graphic messages of intent to harm him and his family. Gordon's message accounts, servers, and phones were allegedly inundated with abuse to extreme levels, seriously impacting his mental health.
On November 9, 2022, Mick published a 14,000-word article on Medium explaining his side of the story as a defensive rebuttal of the nine outlined accusations in Stratton's post (described as "an extensive series of lies"), substantiated with various forms of evidence including photographs of emails, receipts, and file metadata to verify his claims. It included claims that Gordon had yet to receive over half of his payment for his work and awards from the soundtrack's nominations at The Game Awards 2020 Stratton had reportedly claimed to deliver on Gordon's behalf; that his name had been listed on the OST's pre-order for weeks before Bethesda had contracted him to work on it just 48 hours before the game's release; Mossholder had been composing an alternate version of the OST as early as August 2019, and in response to request from Gordon's lawyers for Stratton's Reddit post to be removed, he was offered six figures in exchange for a lifetime gag order, but never the possibility of Stratton's defamatory post being removed.
On November 16, 2022 Bethesda released a statement backing Marty Stratton, Chad Mossholder, and everyone in the id software team. Their statement further claimed that they had evidence to rebut Gordon's claims, without releasing mentioned evidence, and expressed concern that his statement enticed harassment and violence towards the team.
In 2003, the book Masters of Doom chronicled the development of id Software, concentrating on the personalities and interaction of John Carmack and John Romero. Below are the key people involved with id's success.
Carmack's skill at 3D programming is widely recognized in the software industry and from its inception, he was id's lead programmer. On August 7, 2013, he joined Oculus VR, a company developing virtual reality headsets, and left id Software on November 22, 2013.
John Romero saw the horizontal scrolling demo Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement and immediately had the idea to form id Software on September 20, 1990. Romero pioneered the game engine licensing business with his "id Summer Seminar" in 1991 where the Keen4 engine was licensed to Apogee for Biomenace. John also worked closely with the DOOM community and was the face of id to its fans. One success of this engagement was the fan-made game Final DOOM, published in 1996. John also created the control scheme for the FPS, and the abstract level design style of DOOM that influenced many 3D games that came after it. John added par times to Wolfenstein 3D, and then DOOM, which started the phenomenon of Speedrunning. Romero wrote almost all the tools that enabled id Software and many others to develop games with id Software's technology. Romero was forced to resign in 1996 after the release of Quake, then later formed the company Ion Storm. There, he became infamous through the development of Daikatana, which was received negatively from reviewers and gamers alike upon release. Afterward, Romero co-founded The Guildhall in Dallas, Texas, served as chairman of the CPL eSports league, created an MMORPG publisher and developer named Gazillion Entertainment, created a hit Facebook game named Ravenwood Fair that garnered 25 million monthly players in 2011, and started Romero Games in Galway, Ireland in 2015.
Both Tom Hall and John Romero have reputations as designers and idea men who have helped shape some of the key PC gaming titles of the 1990s.
Tom Hall was forced to resign by id Software during the early days of Doom development, but not before he had some impact; for example, he was responsible for the inclusion of teleporters in the game. He was let go before the shareware release of Doom and then went to work for Apogee, developing Rise of the Triad with the "Developers of Incredible Power". When he finished work on that game, he found he was not compatible with the Prey development team at Apogee, and therefore left to join his ex-id Software compatriot John Romero at Ion Storm. Hall has frequently commented that if he could obtain the rights to Commander Keen, he would immediately develop another Keen title.
Sandy Petersen was a level designer for 19 of the 27 levels in the original Doom title as well as 17 of the 32 levels of Doom II. As a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, his influence is apparent in the Lovecraftian feel of the monsters for Quake, and he created Inferno, the third "episode" of the first Doom. He was forced to resign from id Software during the production of Quake II and most of his work was scrapped before the title was released.
American McGee was a level designer for Doom II, The Ultimate Doom, Quake, and Quake II. He was asked to resign after the release of Quake II, and he then moved to Electronic Arts where he gained industry notoriety with the development of his own game American McGee's Alice. After leaving Electronic Arts, he became an independent entrepreneur and game developer. McGee headed the independent game development studio Spicy Horse in Shanghai, China from 2007 to 2016. | [
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"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "id Software LLC (/ɪd/) is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.",
"title": ""
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{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "id Software made important technological developments in video game technologies for the PC (running MS-DOS and Windows), including work done for the Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake franchises at the time. id's work was particularly important in 3D computer graphics technology and in game engines that are used throughout the video game industry. The company was involved in the creation of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre: Wolfenstein 3D is often considered to be the first true FPS; Doom is a game that popularized the genre and PC gaming in general; and Quake was id's first true 3D FPS.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company. In 2015, they opened a second studio in Frankfurt, Germany.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The founders of id Software – John Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall – met in the offices of Softdisk developing multiple games for Softdisk's monthly publishing, including Dangerous Dave. Along with another Softdisk employee, Lane Roathe, they had formed a small group they called Ideas from the Deep (IFD), a name that Romero and Roathe had come up with. In September 1990, Carmack developed an efficient way to rapidly side-scroll graphics on the PC. Upon making this breakthrough, Carmack and Hall stayed up late into the night making a replica of the first level of the popular 1988 NES game Super Mario Bros. 3, inserting stock graphics of Romero's Dangerous Dave character in lieu of Mario. When Romero saw the demo, entitled Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, he realized that Carmack's breakthrough could have potential. The IFD team moonlighted over a week and over two weekends to create a larger demo of their PC version of Super Mario Bros. 3. They sent their work to Nintendo. According to Romero, Nintendo had told them that the demo was impressive, but \"they didn't want their intellectual property on anything but their own hardware, so they told us Good Job and You Can't Do This\". While the pair had not readily shared the demo though acknowledged its existence in the years since, a working copy of the demo was discovered in July 2021 and preserved at the Museum of Play.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Around the same time in 1990, Scott Miller of Apogee Software learned of the group and their exceptional talent, having played one of Romero's Softdisk games, Dangerous Dave, and contacted Romero under the guise of multiple fan letters that Romero came to realize all originated from the same address. When he confronted Miller, Miller explained that the deception was necessary since Softdisk screened letters it received. Although disappointed by not actually having received mail from multiple fans, Romero and other Softdisk developers began proposing ideas to Miller. One of these was Commander Keen, a side-scrolling game that incorporated the previous work they had done on the Super Mario Bros. 3 demonstration. The first Commander Keen game, Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, was released through Apogee in December 1990, which became a very successful shareware game. After their first royalty check, Romero, Carmack, and Adrian Carmack (no relation) decided to start their own company. After hiring Hall, the group finished the Commander Keen series, then hired Jay Wilbur and Kevin Cloud and began working on Wolfenstein 3D. id Software was officially founded by Romero, John and Adrian Carmack and Hall on February 1, 1991. The name \"id\" came out of their previous IFD; Roathe had left the group, and they opted to drop the \"F\" to leave \"id\". They initially used \"id\" as an initialism for \"In Demand\", but by the time of the fourth Commander Keen game, they opted to let \"id\" stand out \"as a cool word\", according to Romero.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The shareware distribution method was initially employed by id Software through Apogee Software to sell their products, such as the Commander Keen, Wolfenstein and Doom games. They would release the first part of their trilogy as shareware, then sell the other two installments by mail order. Only later (about the time of the release of Doom II) did id Software release their games via more traditional shrink-wrapped boxes in stores (through other game publishers).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After Wolfenstein 3D's great success, id began working on Doom. After Hall left the company, Sandy Petersen and Dave Taylor were hired before the release of Doom in December 1993.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Quake was released on June 22, 1996 and was considered a difficult game to develop due to creative differences. Animosity grew within the company and it caused a conflict between Carmack and Romero, which led the latter to leave id after the game's release. Soon after, other staff left the company as well such as Michael Abrash, Shawn Green, Jay Wilbur, Petersen and Mike Wilson. Petersen claimed in July 2021 that the lack of a team leader was the cause of it all. In fact, he volunteered to take lead as he had five years of experience as project manager in MicroProse but he was turned down by Carmack.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "On June 24, 2009, it was announced that id Software had been acquired by ZeniMax Media (owner of Bethesda Softworks). The deal would eventually affect publishing deals id Software had before the acquisition, namely Rage, which was being published through Electronic Arts. ZeniMax received in July a $105 million investment from StrongMail Systems for the id acquisition, it's unknown if that was the exact price of the deal. id Software moved from the \"cube-shaped\" Mesquite office to a location in Richardson, Texas during the spring of 2011.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On June 26, 2013, id Software president Todd Hollenshead quit after 17 years of service.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On November 22, 2013, it was announced id Software co-founder and Technical Director John Carmack had fully resigned from the company to work full-time at Oculus VR which he joined as CTO in August 2013. He was the last of the original founders to leave the company.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Tim Willits left the company in 2019. ZeniMax Media was acquired by Microsoft for US$7.5 billion in March 2021 and became part of Xbox Game Studios.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The company writes its name with a lowercase id, which is pronounced as in \"did\" or \"kid\", and, according to the book Masters of Doom, the group identified itself as \"Ideas from the Deep\" in the early days of Softdisk but that, in the end, the name 'id' came from the phrase \"in demand\". Disliking \"in demand\" as \"lame\", someone suggested a connection with Sigmund Freud's psychological concept of id, which the others accepted. Evidence of the reference can be found as early as Wolfenstein 3D with the statement \"that's id, as in the id, ego, and superego in the psyche\" appearing in the game's documentation. Prior to an update to the website, id's History page made a direct reference to Freud.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Arranged in chronological order:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Starting with their first shareware game series, Commander Keen, id Software has licensed the core source code for the game, or what is more commonly known as the engine. Brainstormed by John Romero, id Software held a weekend session titled \"The id Summer Seminar\" in the summer of 1991 with prospective buyers including Scott Miller, George Broussard, Ken Rogoway, Jim Norwood and Todd Replogle. One of the nights, id Software put together an impromptu game known as \"Wac-Man\" to demonstrate not only the technical prowess of the Keen engine, but also how it worked internally.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "id Software has developed their own game engine for each of their titles when moving to the next technological milestone, including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, ShadowCaster, Doom, Quake, Quake II, and Quake III, as well as the technology used in making Doom 3. After being used first for id Software's in-house game, the engines are licensed out to other developers. According to Eurogamer.net, \"id Software has been synonymous with PC game engines since the concept of a detached game engine was first popularized\". During the mid to late 1990s, \"the launch of each successive round of technology it's been expected to occupy a headlining position\", with the Quake III engine being most widely adopted of their engines. However id Tech 4 had far fewer licensees than the Unreal Engine from Epic Games, due to the long development time that went into Doom 3 which id Software had to release before licensing out that engine to others.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Despite his enthusiasm for open source code, Carmack revealed in 2011 that he had no interest in licensing the technology to the mass market. Beginning with Wolfenstein 3D, he felt bothered when third-party companies started \"pestering\" him to license the id tech engine, adding that he wanted to focus on new technology instead of providing support to existing ones. He felt very strongly that this was not why he signed up to be a game programmer for; to be \"holding the hands\" of other game developers. Carmack commended Epic Games for pursuing the licensing to the market beginning with Unreal Engine 3. Even though the said company has gained more success with its game engine than id Software over the years, Carmack had no regrets by his decision and continued to focus on open source until his departure from the company in 2013.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In conjunction with his self-professed affinity for sharing source code, John Carmack has open-sourced most of the major id Software engines under the GNU General Public License. Historically, the source code for each engine has been released once the code base is 5 years old. Consequently, many home grown projects have sprung up porting the code to different platforms, cleaning up the source code, or providing major modifications to the core engine. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake engine ports are ubiquitous to nearly all platforms capable of running games, such as hand-held PCs, iPods, the PSP, the Nintendo DS and more. Impressive core modifications include DarkPlaces which adds stencil shadow volumes into the original Quake engine along with a more efficient network protocol. Another such project is ioquake3, which maintains a goal of cleaning up the source code, adding features and fixing bugs. Even earlier id Software code, namely for Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D, was released in June 2014 by Flat Rock Software.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The GPL release of the Quake III engine's source code was moved from the end of 2004 to August 2005 as the engine was still being licensed to commercial customers who would otherwise be concerned over the sudden loss in value of their recent investment.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On August 4, 2011, John Carmack revealed during his QuakeCon 2011 keynote that they will be releasing the source code of the Doom 3 engine (id Tech 4) during the year.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "id Software publicly stated they would not support the Wii console (possibly due to technical limitations), although they have since indicated that they may release titles on that platform (although it would be limited to their games released during the 1990s). They continued this policy with the Wii U but for Nintendo Switch, they collaborated with Panic Button starting with 2016's Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Since id Software revealed their engine id Tech 5, they call their engines \"id Tech\", followed by a version number. Older engines have retroactively been renamed to fit this scheme, with the Doom engine as id Tech 1.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "IMF (\"id music file\" or \"id's music format\") is an audio file format created by id Software for the AdLib sound card for use in their video games. The format is similar to MIDI, in that it defines musical notes, and does not support sampled digital audio for sound effects. IMF files store the actual bytes sent to the AdLib's OPL2 chip, which uses FM synthesis to produce audio output. The format is based on the AdLib command syntax, with a few modifications. Due to the limited features and relatively low sound quality, modern games no longer use IMF music.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A large number of songs in id Software's early games (such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D) were composed by Bobby Prince in IMF format. Other game developers like Apogee Software also used this format in their games (such as Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Duke Nukem II, and Monster Bash).",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "id Software was an early pioneer in the Linux gaming market, and id Software's Linux games have been some of the most popular of the platform. Many id Software games won the Readers' and Editors' Choice awards of Linux Journal. Some id Software titles ported to Linux are Doom (the first id Software game to be ported), Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Doom 3, Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Since id Software and some of its licensees released the source code for some of their previous games, several games which were not ported (such as Catacomb 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Heretic, Hexen, Hexen II, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Strife) can run on Linux and other operating systems natively through the use of source ports. Quake Live also launched with Linux support, although this, alongside OS X support, was later removed when changed to a standalone title.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The tradition of porting to Linux was first started by Dave D. Taylor, with David Kirsch doing some later porting. Since Quake III Arena, Linux porting had been handled by Timothee Besset. The majority of all id Tech 4 games, including those made by other developers, have a Linux client available, the only current exceptions being Wolfenstein and Brink. Similarly, almost all of the games utilizing the Quake II engine have Linux ports, the only exceptions being those created by Ion Storm (Daikatana later received a community port). Despite fears by the Linux gaming community that id Tech 5 would not be ported to that platform, Timothee Besset in his blog stated \"I'll be damned if we don't find the time to get Linux builds done\". Besset explained that id Software's primary justification for releasing Linux builds was better code quality, along with a technical interest in the platform. However, on January 26, 2012, Besset announced that he had left id.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "John Carmack has expressed his stance with regard to Linux builds in the past. In December 2000 Todd Hollenshead expressed support for Linux: \"All said, we will continue to be a leading supporter of the Linux platform because we believe it is a technically sound OS and is the OS of choice for many server ops.\" However, on April 25, 2012, Carmack revealed that \"there are no plans for a native Linux client\" of id's most recent game, Rage. In February 2013, Carmack argued for improving emulation as the \"proper technical direction for gaming on Linux\", though this was also due to ZeniMax's refusal to support \"unofficial binaries\", given all prior ports (except for Quake III Arena, via Loki Software, and earlier versions of Quake Live) having only ever been unofficial. Carmack didn't mention official games Quake: The Offering and Quake II: Colossus ported by id Software to Linux and published by Macmillan Computer Publishing USA.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Despite no longer releasing native binaries, id was an early adopter of Stadia, a cloud gaming service powered by Debian Linux servers, and the cross-platform Vulkan API. A Linux version of Doom from 2016 was tested internally, while it and its sequel Doom Eternal can be run using Wine and Proton.",
"title": "Game development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, a platform game in the style of those for the Nintendo Entertainment System, was one of the first MS-DOS games with smooth horizontal-scrolling. Published by Apogee Software, the title and follow-ups brought id Software success as a shareware developer. It is the series of id Software that designer Tom Hall is most affiliated with. The first Commander Keen trilogy was released on December 14, 1990.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The company's breakout product was released on May 5, 1992: Wolfenstein 3D, a first-person shooter (FPS) with smooth 3D graphics that were unprecedented in computer games, and with violent gameplay that many gamers found engaging. After essentially founding an entire genre with this game, id Software created Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth, Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake 4, and Doom 3. Each of these first-person shooters featured progressively higher levels of graphical technology. Wolfenstein 3D spawned a prequel and a sequel: the prequel called Spear of Destiny, and the second, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, using the id Tech 3 engine. A third Wolfenstein sequel, simply titled Wolfenstein, was released by Raven Software, using the id Tech 4 engine. Another sequel, named Wolfenstein: The New Order; was developed by MachineGames using the id Tech 5 engine and released in 2014, with it getting a prequel by the name of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood a year later; followed by a direct sequel titled Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus in 2017.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Eighteen months after their release of Wolfenstein 3D, on December 10, 1993, id Software released Doom which would again set new standards for graphic quality and graphic violence in computer gaming. Doom featured a sci-fi/horror setting with graphic quality that had never been seen on personal computers or even video game consoles. Doom became a cultural phenomenon and its violent theme would eventually launch a new wave of criticism decrying the dangers of violence in video games. Doom was ported to numerous platforms, inspired many knock-offs, and was eventually followed by the technically similar Doom II: Hell on Earth. id Software made its mark in video game history with the shareware release of Doom, and eventually revisited the theme of this game in 2004 with their release of Doom 3. John Carmack said in an interview at QuakeCon 2007 that there would be a Doom 4. It began development on May 7, 2008. Doom 2016, the fourth installation of the Doom series, was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 13, 2016, and was later released on Nintendo Switch on November 10, 2017. In June 2018, the sequel to the 2016 Doom, Doom Eternal was officially announced at E3 2018 with a teaser trailer, followed by a gameplay reveal at QuakeCon in August 2018.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On June 22, 1996, the release of Quake marked the third milestone in id Software history. Quake combined a cutting edge fully 3D engine, the Quake engine, with a distinctive art style to create critically acclaimed graphics for its time. Audio was not neglected either, having recruited Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor to facilitate unique sound effects and ambient music for the game. (A small homage was paid to Nine Inch Nails in the form of the band's logo appearing on the ammunition boxes for the nailgun weapon.) It also included the work of Michael Abrash. Furthermore, Quake's main innovation, the capability to play a deathmatch (competitive gameplay between living opponents instead of against computer-controlled characters) over the Internet (especially through the add-on QuakeWorld), seared the title into the minds of gamers as another smash hit.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 2008, id Software was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for the pioneering work Quake represented in user modifiable games. id Software is the only game development company ever honored twice by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, having been given an Emmy Award in 2007 for creation of the 3D technology that underlies modern shooter video games.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Quake series continued with Quake II in 1997. Activision purchased a 49% stake in id Software, making it a second party which took publishing duties until 2009. However, the game is not a storyline sequel, and instead focuses on an assault on an alien planet, Stroggos, in retaliation for Strogg attacks on Earth. Most of the subsequent entries in the Quake franchise follow this storyline. Quake III Arena (1999), the next title in the series, has minimal plot, but centers around the \"Arena Eternal\", a gladiatorial setting created by an alien race known as the Vadrigar and populated by combatants plucked from various points in time and space. Among these combatants are some characters either drawn from or based on those in Doom (\"Doomguy\"), Quake (Ranger, Wrack), and Quake II (Bitterman, Tank Jr., Grunt, Stripe). Quake IV (2005) picks up where Quake II left off – finishing the war between the humans and Strogg. The spin-off Enemy Territory: Quake Wars acts as a prequel to Quake II, when the Strogg first invade Earth. Quake IV and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars were made by outside developers and not id.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "There have also been other spin-offs such as Quake Mobile in 2005 and Quake Live, an internet browser based modification of Quake III. A game called Quake Arena DS was planned and canceled for the Nintendo DS. John Carmack stated, at QuakeCon 2007, that the id Tech 5 engine would be used for a new Quake game.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Todd Hollenshead announced in May 2007 that id Software had begun working on an all new series that would be using a new engine. Hollenshead also mentioned that the title would be completely developed in-house, marking the first game since 2004's Doom 3 to be done so. At 2007's WWDC, John Carmack showed the new engine called id Tech 5. Later that year, at QuakeCon 2007, the title of the new game was revealed as Rage.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On July 14, 2008, id Software announced at the 2008 E3 event that they would be publishing Rage through Electronic Arts, and not id's longtime publisher Activision. However, since then ZeniMax has also announced that they are publishing Rage through Bethesda Softworks.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "On August 12, 2010, during Quakecon 2010, id Software announced Rage US ship date of September 13, 2011, and a European ship date of September 15, 2011. During the keynote, id Software also demonstrated a Rage spin-off title running on the iPhone. This technology demo later became Rage HD. The game was ultimately released in October 2011.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "On May 14, 2018, Bethesda Softworks announced Rage 2, a co-development between id Software and Avalanche Studios.",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During its early days, id Software produced much more varied games; these include the early 3D first-person shooter experiments that led to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom – Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D. There was also the Rescue Rover series, which had two games – Rescue Rover and Rescue Rover 2. Also there was John Romero's Dangerous Dave series, which included such notables as the tech demo (In Copyright Infringement) which led to the Commander Keen engine, and the decently popular Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion. In the Haunted Mansion was powered by the same engine as the earlier id Software game Shadow Knights, which was one of the several games written by id Software to fulfill their contractual obligation to produce games for Softdisk, where the id Software founders had been employed. id Software has also overseen several games using its technology that were not made in one of their IPs such as ShadowCaster, (early-id Tech 1), Heretic, Hexen: Beyond Heretic (id Tech 1), Hexen II (Quake engine), and Orcs and Elves (Doom RPG engine).",
"title": "Games"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "id Software has also published novels based on the Doom series Doom novels. After a brief hiatus from publishing, id resumed and re-launched the novel series in 2008 with Matthew J. Costello's (a story consultant for Doom 3 and now Rage) new Doom 3 novels: Worlds on Fire and Maelstrom.",
"title": "Other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "id Software became involved in film development when they oversaw the film adaption of their Doom franchise in 2005. In August 2007, Todd Hollenshead stated at QuakeCon 2007 that a Return to Castle Wolfenstein movie is in development which re-teams the Silent Hill writer/producer team, Roger Avary as writer and director and Samuel Hadida as producer. A new Doom film, titled Doom: Annihilation, was released in 2019, although id itself stressed its lack of involvement.",
"title": "Other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "id Software was the target of controversy over two of their most popular games, Doom and the earlier Wolfenstein 3D. More recently in 2022, id Software found themselves mired in a controversy concerning libel against Doom Eternal's composer.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Doom was notorious for its high levels of gore and occultism along with satanic imagery, which generated controversy from a broad range of groups. Yahoo! Games listed it as one of the top ten most controversial games of all time.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The game again sparked controversy throughout a period of school shootings in the United States when it was found that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who committed the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, were avid players of the game. While planning for the massacre, Harris said that the killing would be \"like playing Doom\", and \"it'll be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, World War II, Vietnam, Duke Nukem and Doom all mixed together\", and that his shotgun was \"straight out of the game\". A rumor spread afterwards that Harris had designed a Doom level that looked like the high school, populated with representations of Harris's classmates and teachers, and that Harris practiced for his role in the shootings by playing the level over and over. Although Harris did design Doom levels, none of them were based on Columbine High School.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "While Doom and other violent video games have been blamed for nationally covered school shootings, 2008 research featured by Greater Good Science Center shows that the two are not closely related. Harvard Medical School researchers Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner found that violent video games did not correlate to school shootings. The United States Secret Service and United States Department of Education analyzed 37 incidents of school violence and sought to develop a profile of school shooters; they discovered that the most common traits among shooters were that they were male and had histories of depression and attempted suicide. While many of the killers—like the vast majority of young teenage boys—did play video games, this study did not find a relationship between gameplay and school shootings. In fact, only one-eighth of the shooters showed any special interest in violent video games, far less than the number of shooters who seemed attracted to books and movies with violent content.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "As for Wolfenstein 3D, due to its use of Nazi symbols such as the swastika and the anthem of the Nazi Party, Horst-Wessel-Lied, as theme music, the PC version of the game was withdrawn from circulation in Germany in 1994, following a verdict by the Amtsgericht München on January 25, 1994. Despite the fact that Nazis are portrayed as the enemy in Wolfenstein, the use of those symbols is a federal offense in Germany unless certain circumstances apply. Similarly, the Atari Jaguar version was confiscated following a verdict by the Amtsgericht Berlin Tiergarten on December 7, 1994. The Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle lifted the outright ban in 2018 in favour of analysing depictions on a case-by-case basis, and the international version of the game was removed from the list of banned titles in 2019.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Due to concerns from Nintendo of America, the Super NES version was modified to not include any swastikas or Nazi references; furthermore, blood was replaced with sweat to make the game seem less violent, and the attack dogs in the game were replaced by giant mutant rats. Employees of id Software are quoted in The Official DOOM Player Guide about the reaction to Wolfenstein, claiming it to be ironic that it was morally acceptable to shoot people and rats, but not dogs. Two new weapons were added as well. The Super NES version was not as successful as the PC version.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In May 2020, after the Doom Eternal Original Soundtrack was released, there was a serious backlash to the Doom Eternal OST and accusations of low quality work that did not match composer Mick Gordon's usual standards. On April 19, Gordon confirmed on Twitter that it was not his work, and Marty Stratton subsequently posted on May 20 a 2,500-word open letter on Reddit blaming Gordon for everything that went wrong with the process of creating music for the soundtrack. Following this, public outcry against Gordon reached a level where he received explicit death threats and graphic messages of intent to harm him and his family. Gordon's message accounts, servers, and phones were allegedly inundated with abuse to extreme levels, seriously impacting his mental health.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On November 9, 2022, Mick published a 14,000-word article on Medium explaining his side of the story as a defensive rebuttal of the nine outlined accusations in Stratton's post (described as \"an extensive series of lies\"), substantiated with various forms of evidence including photographs of emails, receipts, and file metadata to verify his claims. It included claims that Gordon had yet to receive over half of his payment for his work and awards from the soundtrack's nominations at The Game Awards 2020 Stratton had reportedly claimed to deliver on Gordon's behalf; that his name had been listed on the OST's pre-order for weeks before Bethesda had contracted him to work on it just 48 hours before the game's release; Mossholder had been composing an alternate version of the OST as early as August 2019, and in response to request from Gordon's lawyers for Stratton's Reddit post to be removed, he was offered six figures in exchange for a lifetime gag order, but never the possibility of Stratton's defamatory post being removed.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "On November 16, 2022 Bethesda released a statement backing Marty Stratton, Chad Mossholder, and everyone in the id software team. Their statement further claimed that they had evidence to rebut Gordon's claims, without releasing mentioned evidence, and expressed concern that his statement enticed harassment and violence towards the team.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 2003, the book Masters of Doom chronicled the development of id Software, concentrating on the personalities and interaction of John Carmack and John Romero. Below are the key people involved with id's success.",
"title": "People"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Carmack's skill at 3D programming is widely recognized in the software industry and from its inception, he was id's lead programmer. On August 7, 2013, he joined Oculus VR, a company developing virtual reality headsets, and left id Software on November 22, 2013.",
"title": "People"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "John Romero saw the horizontal scrolling demo Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement and immediately had the idea to form id Software on September 20, 1990. Romero pioneered the game engine licensing business with his \"id Summer Seminar\" in 1991 where the Keen4 engine was licensed to Apogee for Biomenace. John also worked closely with the DOOM community and was the face of id to its fans. One success of this engagement was the fan-made game Final DOOM, published in 1996. John also created the control scheme for the FPS, and the abstract level design style of DOOM that influenced many 3D games that came after it. John added par times to Wolfenstein 3D, and then DOOM, which started the phenomenon of Speedrunning. Romero wrote almost all the tools that enabled id Software and many others to develop games with id Software's technology. Romero was forced to resign in 1996 after the release of Quake, then later formed the company Ion Storm. There, he became infamous through the development of Daikatana, which was received negatively from reviewers and gamers alike upon release. Afterward, Romero co-founded The Guildhall in Dallas, Texas, served as chairman of the CPL eSports league, created an MMORPG publisher and developer named Gazillion Entertainment, created a hit Facebook game named Ravenwood Fair that garnered 25 million monthly players in 2011, and started Romero Games in Galway, Ireland in 2015.",
"title": "People"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Both Tom Hall and John Romero have reputations as designers and idea men who have helped shape some of the key PC gaming titles of the 1990s.",
"title": "People"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Tom Hall was forced to resign by id Software during the early days of Doom development, but not before he had some impact; for example, he was responsible for the inclusion of teleporters in the game. He was let go before the shareware release of Doom and then went to work for Apogee, developing Rise of the Triad with the \"Developers of Incredible Power\". When he finished work on that game, he found he was not compatible with the Prey development team at Apogee, and therefore left to join his ex-id Software compatriot John Romero at Ion Storm. Hall has frequently commented that if he could obtain the rights to Commander Keen, he would immediately develop another Keen title.",
"title": "People"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Sandy Petersen was a level designer for 19 of the 27 levels in the original Doom title as well as 17 of the 32 levels of Doom II. As a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, his influence is apparent in the Lovecraftian feel of the monsters for Quake, and he created Inferno, the third \"episode\" of the first Doom. He was forced to resign from id Software during the production of Quake II and most of his work was scrapped before the title was released.",
"title": "People"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "American McGee was a level designer for Doom II, The Ultimate Doom, Quake, and Quake II. He was asked to resign after the release of Quake II, and he then moved to Electronic Arts where he gained industry notoriety with the development of his own game American McGee's Alice. After leaving Electronic Arts, he became an independent entrepreneur and game developer. McGee headed the independent game development studio Spicy Horse in Shanghai, China from 2007 to 2016.",
"title": "People"
}
]
| id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack. id Software made important technological developments in video game technologies for the PC, including work done for the Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake franchises at the time. id's work was particularly important in 3D computer graphics technology and in game engines that are used throughout the video game industry. The company was involved in the creation of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre: Wolfenstein 3D is often considered to be the first true FPS; Doom is a game that popularized the genre and PC gaming in general; and Quake was id's first true 3D FPS. On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company. In 2015, they opened a second studio in Frankfurt, Germany. | 2001-09-26T12:22:03Z | 2023-12-10T21:24:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software |
15,531 | Isaac Stern | Isaac Stern (July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001) was an American violinist.
Born in Poland, Stern moved to the US when he was 14 months old. Stern performed both nationally and internationally, notably touring the Soviet Union and China, and performing extensively in Israel, a country to which he had close ties since shortly after its founding.
Stern received extensive recognition for his work, including winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom and six Grammy Awards, and being named to the French Legion of Honour. The Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall bears his name, due to his role in saving the venue from demolition in the 1960s.
The son of Solomon and Clara Stern, Isaac Stern was born in Kremenets, Poland (now Ukraine), into a Jewish family. He was 14 months old when his family moved to San Francisco in 1921. Both his parents were musical, and his mother, who had studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, began teaching him the piano when he was six, before switching to the violin when he was eight. In 1928, Stern enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, to whom he said he owed the most. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background, Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Soviet Russia drew from the same city:
During World War II, Stern was rejected from military service due to flat feet. He then joined the United Service Organizations and performed for US troops. During one such performance on Guadalcanal, a Japanese soldier, mesmerized by his playing, sneaked into the audience of US personnel listening to his performance before sneaking back out.
Stern toured the Soviet Union in 1951, the first American violinist to do so. In 1967, Stern stated his refusal to return to the USSR until the Soviet regime allowed artists to enter and leave the country freely. His only visit to Germany was in 1999, for a series of master classes, but he never performed publicly in Germany.
Stern was married three times. His first marriage, in 1948 to ballerina Nora Kaye, ended in divorce after 18 months, but the two of them remained friends. On August 17, 1951, he married Vera Lindenblit (1927–2015). They had three children together, including conductors Michael and David Stern and also Rabbi Shira Stern, one of the first female rabbis in the USA. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1994 after 43 years. In 1996, Stern married his third wife, Linda Reynolds. His third wife, his three children, and his five grandchildren survived him.
Stern died September 22, 2001, of heart failure in a Manhattan, New York, hospital after an extended stay.
In 1940, Stern began performing with Russian-born pianist Alexander Zakin, collaborating until 1977. Within musical circles, Stern became renowned both for his recordings and for championing certain younger players. Among his discoveries were cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Jian Wang, and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman.
In the 1960s, he played a major role in saving New York City's Carnegie Hall from demolition, by organising the Citizens' Committee to Save Carnegie Hall. Following the purchase of Carnegie Hall by New York City, the Carnegie Hall Corporation was formed, and Stern was chosen as its first president, a title he held until his death. Carnegie Hall later named its main auditorium in his honor.
Among Stern's many recordings are concertos by Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi and modern works by Barber, Bartók, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Rochberg, and Dutilleux. The Dutilleux concerto, entitled L'arbre des songes ["The Tree of Dreams"] was a 1985 commission by Stern himself. He also dubbed actors' violin-playing in several films, such as Fiddler on the Roof.
Stern served as musical advisor for the 1946 film, Humoresque, about a rising violin star and his patron, played respectively by John Garfield and Joan Crawford. He was also the featured violin soloist on the soundtrack for the 1971 film of Fiddler on the Roof. In 1999, he appeared in the film Music of the Heart, along with Itzhak Perlman and several other famed violinists, with a youth orchestra led by Meryl Streep (the film was based on the true story of a gifted violin teacher in Harlem who eventually took her musicians to play a concert in Carnegie Hall).
In his autobiography, co-authored with Chaim Potok, My First 79 Years, Stern cited Nathan Milstein and Arthur Grumiaux as major influences on his style of playing.
He won Grammys for his work with Eugene Istomin and Leonard Rose in their famous chamber music trio in the 1960s and '70s, while also continuing his duo work with Alexander Zakin during this time. Stern recorded a series of piano quartets in the 1980s and 1990s with Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo and Yo-Yo Ma, including those of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Fauré, winning another Grammy in 1992 for the Brahms quartets Opp. 25 and 26.
In 1979, seven years after Richard Nixon made the first official visit by a US president to the country, the People's Republic of China offered Stern and pianist David Golub an unprecedented invitation to tour the country. While there, he collaborated with the China Central Symphony Society (now China National Symphony) under the direction of conductor Li Delun. Their visit was filmed and resulted in the Oscar-winning documentary, From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China.
Stern maintained close ties with Israel. Stern began performing in the country in 1949. In 1973, he performed for wounded Israeli soldiers during the Yom Kippur War. During the 1991 Gulf War and Iraq's Scud missile attacks on Israel, he had been playing in the Jerusalem Theater. During his performance, an air raid siren sounded, causing the audience to panic. Stern then stepped onto the stage and began playing a movement of Bach. The audience then calmed down, donned gas masks, and sat throughout the rest of his performance. Stern was a supporter of several educational projects in Israel, among them the America-Israel Foundation and the Jerusalem Music Center.
Stern's favorite instrument was the Ysaÿe Guarnerius, one of the violins produced by the Cremonese luthier Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù. It had previously been played by the violin virtuoso and composer Eugène Ysaÿe.
Among other instruments, Stern played the "Kruse-Vormbaum" Stradivarius (1728), the "ex-Stern" Bergonzi (1733), the "Panette" Guarneri del Gesù (1737), a Michele Angelo Bergonzi (1739–1757), the "Arma Senkrah" Guadagnini (1750), a Giovanni Guadagnini (1754), a J. B. Vuillaume copy of the "Panette" Guarneri del Gesu of 1737 (c.1850), and the "ex-Nicolas I" J.B. Vuillaume (1840). He also owned two contemporary instruments by Samuel Zygmuntowicz and modern Italian Jago Peternella Violins.
In May 2003, Stern's collection of instruments, bows and musical ephemera was sold through Tarisio Auctions. The auction set a number of world records and was at the time the second highest grossing violin auction of all time, with total sales of over $3.3M.
In 2012, a street in Tel Aviv was named for Stern. | [
{
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"text": "Isaac Stern (July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001) was an American violinist.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born in Poland, Stern moved to the US when he was 14 months old. Stern performed both nationally and internationally, notably touring the Soviet Union and China, and performing extensively in Israel, a country to which he had close ties since shortly after its founding.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Stern received extensive recognition for his work, including winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom and six Grammy Awards, and being named to the French Legion of Honour. The Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall bears his name, due to his role in saving the venue from demolition in the 1960s.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The son of Solomon and Clara Stern, Isaac Stern was born in Kremenets, Poland (now Ukraine), into a Jewish family. He was 14 months old when his family moved to San Francisco in 1921. Both his parents were musical, and his mother, who had studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, began teaching him the piano when he was six, before switching to the violin when he was eight. In 1928, Stern enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, to whom he said he owed the most. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background, Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Soviet Russia drew from the same city:",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "During World War II, Stern was rejected from military service due to flat feet. He then joined the United Service Organizations and performed for US troops. During one such performance on Guadalcanal, a Japanese soldier, mesmerized by his playing, sneaked into the audience of US personnel listening to his performance before sneaking back out.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Stern toured the Soviet Union in 1951, the first American violinist to do so. In 1967, Stern stated his refusal to return to the USSR until the Soviet regime allowed artists to enter and leave the country freely. His only visit to Germany was in 1999, for a series of master classes, but he never performed publicly in Germany.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Stern was married three times. His first marriage, in 1948 to ballerina Nora Kaye, ended in divorce after 18 months, but the two of them remained friends. On August 17, 1951, he married Vera Lindenblit (1927–2015). They had three children together, including conductors Michael and David Stern and also Rabbi Shira Stern, one of the first female rabbis in the USA. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1994 after 43 years. In 1996, Stern married his third wife, Linda Reynolds. His third wife, his three children, and his five grandchildren survived him.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Stern died September 22, 2001, of heart failure in a Manhattan, New York, hospital after an extended stay.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1940, Stern began performing with Russian-born pianist Alexander Zakin, collaborating until 1977. Within musical circles, Stern became renowned both for his recordings and for championing certain younger players. Among his discoveries were cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Jian Wang, and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the 1960s, he played a major role in saving New York City's Carnegie Hall from demolition, by organising the Citizens' Committee to Save Carnegie Hall. Following the purchase of Carnegie Hall by New York City, the Carnegie Hall Corporation was formed, and Stern was chosen as its first president, a title he held until his death. Carnegie Hall later named its main auditorium in his honor.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Among Stern's many recordings are concertos by Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi and modern works by Barber, Bartók, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Rochberg, and Dutilleux. The Dutilleux concerto, entitled L'arbre des songes [\"The Tree of Dreams\"] was a 1985 commission by Stern himself. He also dubbed actors' violin-playing in several films, such as Fiddler on the Roof.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Stern served as musical advisor for the 1946 film, Humoresque, about a rising violin star and his patron, played respectively by John Garfield and Joan Crawford. He was also the featured violin soloist on the soundtrack for the 1971 film of Fiddler on the Roof. In 1999, he appeared in the film Music of the Heart, along with Itzhak Perlman and several other famed violinists, with a youth orchestra led by Meryl Streep (the film was based on the true story of a gifted violin teacher in Harlem who eventually took her musicians to play a concert in Carnegie Hall).",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In his autobiography, co-authored with Chaim Potok, My First 79 Years, Stern cited Nathan Milstein and Arthur Grumiaux as major influences on his style of playing.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "He won Grammys for his work with Eugene Istomin and Leonard Rose in their famous chamber music trio in the 1960s and '70s, while also continuing his duo work with Alexander Zakin during this time. Stern recorded a series of piano quartets in the 1980s and 1990s with Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo and Yo-Yo Ma, including those of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Fauré, winning another Grammy in 1992 for the Brahms quartets Opp. 25 and 26.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1979, seven years after Richard Nixon made the first official visit by a US president to the country, the People's Republic of China offered Stern and pianist David Golub an unprecedented invitation to tour the country. While there, he collaborated with the China Central Symphony Society (now China National Symphony) under the direction of conductor Li Delun. Their visit was filmed and resulted in the Oscar-winning documentary, From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Stern maintained close ties with Israel. Stern began performing in the country in 1949. In 1973, he performed for wounded Israeli soldiers during the Yom Kippur War. During the 1991 Gulf War and Iraq's Scud missile attacks on Israel, he had been playing in the Jerusalem Theater. During his performance, an air raid siren sounded, causing the audience to panic. Stern then stepped onto the stage and began playing a movement of Bach. The audience then calmed down, donned gas masks, and sat throughout the rest of his performance. Stern was a supporter of several educational projects in Israel, among them the America-Israel Foundation and the Jerusalem Music Center.",
"title": "Ties to Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Stern's favorite instrument was the Ysaÿe Guarnerius, one of the violins produced by the Cremonese luthier Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù. It had previously been played by the violin virtuoso and composer Eugène Ysaÿe.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Among other instruments, Stern played the \"Kruse-Vormbaum\" Stradivarius (1728), the \"ex-Stern\" Bergonzi (1733), the \"Panette\" Guarneri del Gesù (1737), a Michele Angelo Bergonzi (1739–1757), the \"Arma Senkrah\" Guadagnini (1750), a Giovanni Guadagnini (1754), a J. B. Vuillaume copy of the \"Panette\" Guarneri del Gesu of 1737 (c.1850), and the \"ex-Nicolas I\" J.B. Vuillaume (1840). He also owned two contemporary instruments by Samuel Zygmuntowicz and modern Italian Jago Peternella Violins.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In May 2003, Stern's collection of instruments, bows and musical ephemera was sold through Tarisio Auctions. The auction set a number of world records and was at the time the second highest grossing violin auction of all time, with total sales of over $3.3M.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2012, a street in Tel Aviv was named for Stern.",
"title": "Awards and commemoration"
}
]
| Isaac Stern was an American violinist. Born in Poland, Stern moved to the US when he was 14 months old. Stern performed both nationally and internationally, notably touring the Soviet Union and China, and performing extensively in Israel, a country to which he had close ties since shortly after its founding. Stern received extensive recognition for his work, including winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom and six Grammy Awards, and being named to the French Legion of Honour. The Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall bears his name, due to his role in saving the venue from demolition in the 1960s. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-31T21:01:13Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Stern |
15,532 | Integral | In mathematics, an integral is the continuous analog of a sum, which is used to calculate areas, volumes, and their generalizations. Integration, the process of computing an integral, is one of the two fundamental operations of calculus, the other being differentiation. Integration started as a method to solve problems in mathematics and physics, such as finding the area under a curve, or determining displacement from velocity. Today integration is used in a wide variety of scientific fields.
The integrals depicted here are called definite integrals, which can be interpreted as the signed area of the region in the plane that is bounded by the graph of a given function between two points in the real line. Conventionally, areas above the horizontal axis of the plane are positive while areas below are negative. Integrals also refer to the concept of an antiderivative, a function whose derivative is the given function; in this case, they are also called indefinite integrals. The fundamental theorem of calculus relates definite integration to differentiation and provides a method to compute the definite integral of a function when its antiderivative is known; differentiation and integration are inverse operations.
Although methods of calculating areas and volumes dated from ancient Greek mathematics, the principles of integration were formulated independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the late 17th century, who thought of the area under a curve as an infinite sum of rectangles of infinitesimal width. Bernhard Riemann later gave a rigorous definition of integrals, which is based on a limiting procedure that approximates the area of a curvilinear region by breaking the region into infinitesimally thin vertical slabs. In the early 20th century, Henri Lebesgue generalized Riemann's formulation by introducing what is now referred to as the Lebesgue integral; it is more general than Riemann's in the sense that a wider class of functions are Lebesgue-integrable.
Integrals may be generalized depending on the type of the function as well as the domain over which the integration is performed. For example, a line integral is defined for functions of two or more variables, and the interval of integration is replaced by a curve connecting two points in space. In a surface integral, the curve is replaced by a piece of a surface in three-dimensional space.
The first documented systematic technique capable of determining integrals is the method of exhaustion of the ancient Greek astronomer Eudoxus (ca. 370 BC), which sought to find areas and volumes by breaking them up into an infinite number of divisions for which the area or volume was known. This method was further developed and employed by Archimedes in the 3rd century BC and used to calculate the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.
A similar method was independently developed in China around the 3rd century AD by Liu Hui, who used it to find the area of the circle. This method was later used in the 5th century by Chinese father-and-son mathematicians Zu Chongzhi and Zu Geng to find the volume of a sphere.
In the Middle East, Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (c. 965 – c. 1040 AD) derived a formula for the sum of fourth powers. He used the results to carry out what would now be called an integration of this function, where the formulae for the sums of integral squares and fourth powers allowed him to calculate the volume of a paraboloid.
The next significant advances in integral calculus did not begin to appear until the 17th century. At this time, the work of Cavalieri with his method of indivisibles, and work by Fermat, began to lay the foundations of modern calculus, with Cavalieri computing the integrals of x up to degree n = 9 in Cavalieri's quadrature formula. The case n = −1 required the invention of a function, the hyperbolic logarithm, achieved by quadrature of the hyperbola in 1647.
Further steps were made in the early 17th century by Barrow and Torricelli, who provided the first hints of a connection between integration and differentiation. Barrow provided the first proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus. Wallis generalized Cavalieri's method, computing integrals of x to a general power, including negative powers and fractional powers.
The major advance in integration came in the 17th century with the independent discovery of the fundamental theorem of calculus by Leibniz and Newton. The theorem demonstrates a connection between integration and differentiation. This connection, combined with the comparative ease of differentiation, can be exploited to calculate integrals. In particular, the fundamental theorem of calculus allows one to solve a much broader class of problems. Equal in importance is the comprehensive mathematical framework that both Leibniz and Newton developed. Given the name infinitesimal calculus, it allowed for precise analysis of functions with continuous domains. This framework eventually became modern calculus, whose notation for integrals is drawn directly from the work of Leibniz.
While Newton and Leibniz provided a systematic approach to integration, their work lacked a degree of rigour. Bishop Berkeley memorably attacked the vanishing increments used by Newton, calling them "ghosts of departed quantities". Calculus acquired a firmer footing with the development of limits. Integration was first rigorously formalized, using limits, by Riemann. Although all bounded piecewise continuous functions are Riemann-integrable on a bounded interval, subsequently more general functions were considered—particularly in the context of Fourier analysis—to which Riemann's definition does not apply, and Lebesgue formulated a different definition of integral, founded in measure theory (a subfield of real analysis). Other definitions of integral, extending Riemann's and Lebesgue's approaches, were proposed. These approaches based on the real number system are the ones most common today, but alternative approaches exist, such as a definition of integral as the standard part of an infinite Riemann sum, based on the hyperreal number system.
The notation for the indefinite integral was introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1675. He adapted the integral symbol, ∫, from the letter ſ (long s), standing for summa (written as ſumma; Latin for "sum" or "total"). The modern notation for the definite integral, with limits above and below the integral sign, was first used by Joseph Fourier in Mémoires of the French Academy around 1819–1820, reprinted in his book of 1822.
Isaac Newton used a small vertical bar above a variable to indicate integration, or placed the variable inside a box. The vertical bar was easily confused with .x or x′, which are used to indicate differentiation, and the box notation was difficult for printers to reproduce, so these notations were not widely adopted.
The term was first printed in Latin by Jacob Bernoulli in 1690: "Ergo et horum Integralia aequantur".
In general, the integral of a real-valued function f(x) with respect to a real variable x on an interval [a, b] is written as
The integral sign ∫ represents integration. The symbol dx, called the differential of the variable x, indicates that the variable of integration is x. The function f(x) is called the integrand, the points a and b are called the limits (or bounds) of integration, and the integral is said to be over the interval [a, b], called the interval of integration. A function is said to be integrable if its integral over its domain is finite. If limits are specified, the integral is called a definite integral.
When the limits are omitted, as in
the integral is called an indefinite integral, which represents a class of functions (the antiderivative) whose derivative is the integrand. The fundamental theorem of calculus relates the evaluation of definite integrals to indefinite integrals. There are several extensions of the notation for integrals to encompass integration on unbounded domains and/or in multiple dimensions (see later sections of this article).
In advanced settings, it is not uncommon to leave out dx when only the simple Riemann integral is being used, or the exact type of integral is immaterial. For instance, one might write ∫ a b ( c 1 f + c 2 g ) = c 1 ∫ a b f + c 2 ∫ a b g {\textstyle \int _{a}^{b}(c_{1}f+c_{2}g)=c_{1}\int _{a}^{b}f+c_{2}\int _{a}^{b}g} to express the linearity of the integral, a property shared by the Riemann integral and all generalizations thereof.
Integrals appear in many practical situations. For instance, from the length, width and depth of a swimming pool which is rectangular with a flat bottom, one can determine the volume of water it can contain, the area of its surface, and the length of its edge. But if it is oval with a rounded bottom, integrals are required to find exact and rigorous values for these quantities. In each case, one may divide the sought quantity into infinitely many infinitesimal pieces, then sum the pieces to achieve an accurate approximation.
As another example, to find the area of the region bounded by the graph of the function f(x) = x {\textstyle {\sqrt {x}}} between x = 0 and x = 1, one can divide the interval into five pieces (0, 1/5, 2/5, ..., 1), then construct rectangle2 using the right end height of each piece (thus √0, √1/5, √2/5, ..., √1) and sum their areas to get the approximation
which is larger than the exact value. Alternatively, when replacing these subintervals by ones with the left end height of each piece, the approximation one gets is too low: with twelve such subintervals the approximated area is only 0.6203. However, when the number of pieces increases to infinity, it will reach a limit which is the exact value of the area sought (in this case, 2/3). One writes
which means 2/3 is the result of a weighted sum of function values, √x, multiplied by the infinitesimal step widths, denoted by dx, on the interval [0, 1].
There are many ways of formally defining an integral, not all of which are equivalent. The differences exist mostly to deal with differing special cases which may not be integrable under other definitions, but are also occasionally for pedagogical reasons. The most commonly used definitions are Riemann integrals and Lebesgue integrals.
The Riemann integral is defined in terms of Riemann sums of functions with respect to tagged partitions of an interval. A tagged partition of a closed interval [a, b] on the real line is a finite sequence
This partitions the interval [a, b] into n sub-intervals [xi−1, xi] indexed by i, each of which is "tagged" with a specific point ti ∈ [xi−1, xi]. A Riemann sum of a function f with respect to such a tagged partition is defined as
thus each term of the sum is the area of a rectangle with height equal to the function value at the chosen point of the given sub-interval, and width the same as the width of sub-interval, Δi = xi−xi−1. The mesh of such a tagged partition is the width of the largest sub-interval formed by the partition, maxi=1...n Δi. The Riemann integral of a function f over the interval [a, b] is equal to S if:
When the chosen tags are the maximum (respectively, minimum) value of the function in each interval, the Riemann sum becomes an upper (respectively, lower) Darboux sum, suggesting the close connection between the Riemann integral and the Darboux integral.
It is often of interest, both in theory and applications, to be able to pass to the limit under the integral. For instance, a sequence of functions can frequently be constructed that approximate, in a suitable sense, the solution to a problem. Then the integral of the solution function should be the limit of the integrals of the approximations. However, many functions that can be obtained as limits are not Riemann-integrable, and so such limit theorems do not hold with the Riemann integral. Therefore, it is of great importance to have a definition of the integral that allows a wider class of functions to be integrated.
Such an integral is the Lebesgue integral, that exploits the following fact to enlarge the class of integrable functions: if the values of a function are rearranged over the domain, the integral of a function should remain the same. Thus Henri Lebesgue introduced the integral bearing his name, explaining this integral thus in a letter to Paul Montel:
I have to pay a certain sum, which I have collected in my pocket. I take the bills and coins out of my pocket and give them to the creditor in the order I find them until I have reached the total sum. This is the Riemann integral. But I can proceed differently. After I have taken all the money out of my pocket I order the bills and coins according to identical values and then I pay the several heaps one after the other to the creditor. This is my integral.
As Folland puts it, "To compute the Riemann integral of f, one partitions the domain [a, b] into subintervals", while in the Lebesgue integral, "one is in effect partitioning the range of f ". The definition of the Lebesgue integral thus begins with a measure, μ. In the simplest case, the Lebesgue measure μ(A) of an interval A = [a, b] is its width, b − a, so that the Lebesgue integral agrees with the (proper) Riemann integral when both exist. In more complicated cases, the sets being measured can be highly fragmented, with no continuity and no resemblance to intervals.
Using the "partitioning the range of f " philosophy, the integral of a non-negative function f : R → R should be the sum over t of the areas between a thin horizontal strip between y = t and y = t + dt. This area is just μ{ x : f(x) > t} dt. Let f(t) = μ{ x : f(x) > t }. The Lebesgue integral of f is then defined by
where the integral on the right is an ordinary improper Riemann integral (f is a strictly decreasing positive function, and therefore has a well-defined improper Riemann integral). For a suitable class of functions (the measurable functions) this defines the Lebesgue integral.
A general measurable function f is Lebesgue-integrable if the sum of the absolute values of the areas of the regions between the graph of f and the x-axis is finite:
In that case, the integral is, as in the Riemannian case, the difference between the area above the x-axis and the area below the x-axis:
where
Although the Riemann and Lebesgue integrals are the most widely used definitions of the integral, a number of others exist, including:
The collection of Riemann-integrable functions on a closed interval [a, b] forms a vector space under the operations of pointwise addition and multiplication by a scalar, and the operation of integration
is a linear functional on this vector space. Thus, the collection of integrable functions is closed under taking linear combinations, and the integral of a linear combination is the linear combination of the integrals:
Similarly, the set of real-valued Lebesgue-integrable functions on a given measure space E with measure μ is closed under taking linear combinations and hence form a vector space, and the Lebesgue integral
is a linear functional on this vector space, so that:
More generally, consider the vector space of all measurable functions on a measure space (E,μ), taking values in a locally compact complete topological vector space V over a locally compact topological field K, f : E → V. Then one may define an abstract integration map assigning to each function f an element of V or the symbol ∞,
that is compatible with linear combinations. In this situation, the linearity holds for the subspace of functions whose integral is an element of V (i.e. "finite"). The most important special cases arise when K is R, C, or a finite extension of the field Qp of p-adic numbers, and V is a finite-dimensional vector space over K, and when K = C and V is a complex Hilbert space.
Linearity, together with some natural continuity properties and normalization for a certain class of "simple" functions, may be used to give an alternative definition of the integral. This is the approach of Daniell for the case of real-valued functions on a set X, generalized by Nicolas Bourbaki to functions with values in a locally compact topological vector space. See Hildebrandt 1953 for an axiomatic characterization of the integral.
A number of general inequalities hold for Riemann-integrable functions defined on a closed and bounded interval [a, b] and can be generalized to other notions of integral (Lebesgue and Daniell).
In this section, f is a real-valued Riemann-integrable function. The integral
over an interval [a, b] is defined if a < b. This means that the upper and lower sums of the function f are evaluated on a partition a = x0 ≤ x1 ≤ . . . ≤ xn = b whose values xi are increasing. Geometrically, this signifies that integration takes place "left to right", evaluating f within intervals [x i , x i +1] where an interval with a higher index lies to the right of one with a lower index. The values a and b, the end-points of the interval, are called the limits of integration of f. Integrals can also be defined if a > b:
With a = b, this implies:
The first convention is necessary in consideration of taking integrals over subintervals of [a, b]; the second says that an integral taken over a degenerate interval, or a point, should be zero. One reason for the first convention is that the integrability of f on an interval [a, b] implies that f is integrable on any subinterval [c, d], but in particular integrals have the property that if c is any element of [a, b], then:
With the first convention, the resulting relation
is then well-defined for any cyclic permutation of a, b, and c.
The fundamental theorem of calculus is the statement that differentiation and integration are inverse operations: if a continuous function is first integrated and then differentiated, the original function is retrieved. An important consequence, sometimes called the second fundamental theorem of calculus, allows one to compute integrals by using an antiderivative of the function to be integrated.
Let f be a continuous real-valued function defined on a closed interval [a, b]. Let F be the function defined, for all x in [a, b], by
Then, F is continuous on [a, b], differentiable on the open interval (a, b), and
for all x in (a, b).
Let f be a real-valued function defined on a closed interval [a, b] that admits an antiderivative F on [a, b]. That is, f and F are functions such that for all x in [a, b],
If f is integrable on [a, b] then
A "proper" Riemann integral assumes the integrand is defined and finite on a closed and bounded interval, bracketed by the limits of integration. An improper integral occurs when one or more of these conditions is not satisfied. In some cases such integrals may be defined by considering the limit of a sequence of proper Riemann integrals on progressively larger intervals.
If the interval is unbounded, for instance at its upper end, then the improper integral is the limit as that endpoint goes to infinity:
If the integrand is only defined or finite on a half-open interval, for instance (a, b], then again a limit may provide a finite result:
That is, the improper integral is the limit of proper integrals as one endpoint of the interval of integration approaches either a specified real number, or ∞, or −∞. In more complicated cases, limits are required at both endpoints, or at interior points.
Just as the definite integral of a positive function of one variable represents the area of the region between the graph of the function and the x-axis, the double integral of a positive function of two variables represents the volume of the region between the surface defined by the function and the plane that contains its domain. For example, a function in two dimensions depends on two real variables, x and y, and the integral of a function f over the rectangle R given as the Cartesian product of two intervals R = [ a , b ] × [ c , d ] {\displaystyle R=[a,b]\times [c,d]} can be written
where the differential dA indicates that integration is taken with respect to area. This double integral can be defined using Riemann sums, and represents the (signed) volume under the graph of z = f(x,y) over the domain R. Under suitable conditions (e.g., if f is continuous), Fubini's theorem states that this integral can be expressed as an equivalent iterated integral
This reduces the problem of computing a double integral to computing one-dimensional integrals. Because of this, another notation for the integral over R uses a double integral sign:
Integration over more general domains is possible. The integral of a function f, with respect to volume, over an n-dimensional region D of R n {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}} is denoted by symbols such as:
The concept of an integral can be extended to more general domains of integration, such as curved lines and surfaces inside higher-dimensional spaces. Such integrals are known as line integrals and surface integrals respectively. These have important applications in physics, as when dealing with vector fields.
A line integral (sometimes called a path integral) is an integral where the function to be integrated is evaluated along a curve. Various different line integrals are in use. In the case of a closed curve it is also called a contour integral.
The function to be integrated may be a scalar field or a vector field. The value of the line integral is the sum of values of the field at all points on the curve, weighted by some scalar function on the curve (commonly arc length or, for a vector field, the scalar product of the vector field with a differential vector in the curve). This weighting distinguishes the line integral from simpler integrals defined on intervals. Many simple formulas in physics have natural continuous analogs in terms of line integrals; for example, the fact that work is equal to force, F, multiplied by displacement, s, may be expressed (in terms of vector quantities) as:
For an object moving along a path C in a vector field F such as an electric field or gravitational field, the total work done by the field on the object is obtained by summing up the differential work done in moving from s to s + ds. This gives the line integral
A surface integral generalizes double integrals to integration over a surface (which may be a curved set in space); it can be thought of as the double integral analog of the line integral. The function to be integrated may be a scalar field or a vector field. The value of the surface integral is the sum of the field at all points on the surface. This can be achieved by splitting the surface into surface elements, which provide the partitioning for Riemann sums.
For an example of applications of surface integrals, consider a vector field v on a surface S; that is, for each point x in S, v(x) is a vector. Imagine that a fluid flows through S, such that v(x) determines the velocity of the fluid at x. The flux is defined as the quantity of fluid flowing through S in unit amount of time. To find the flux, one need to take the dot product of v with the unit surface normal to S at each point, which will give a scalar field, which is integrated over the surface:
The fluid flux in this example may be from a physical fluid such as water or air, or from electrical or magnetic flux. Thus surface integrals have applications in physics, particularly with the classical theory of electromagnetism.
In complex analysis, the integrand is a complex-valued function of a complex variable z instead of a real function of a real variable x. When a complex function is integrated along a curve γ {\displaystyle \gamma } in the complex plane, the integral is denoted as follows
This is known as a contour integral.
A differential form is a mathematical concept in the fields of multivariable calculus, differential topology, and tensors. Differential forms are organized by degree. For example, a one-form is a weighted sum of the differentials of the coordinates, such as:
where E, F, G are functions in three dimensions. A differential one-form can be integrated over an oriented path, and the resulting integral is just another way of writing a line integral. Here the basic differentials dx, dy, dz measure infinitesimal oriented lengths parallel to the three coordinate axes.
A differential two-form is a sum of the form
Here the basic two-forms d x ∧ d y , d z ∧ d x , d y ∧ d z {\displaystyle dx\wedge dy,dz\wedge dx,dy\wedge dz} measure oriented areas parallel to the coordinate two-planes. The symbol ∧ {\displaystyle \wedge } denotes the wedge product, which is similar to the cross product in the sense that the wedge product of two forms representing oriented lengths represents an oriented area. A two-form can be integrated over an oriented surface, and the resulting integral is equivalent to the surface integral giving the flux of E i + F j + G k {\displaystyle E\mathbf {i} +F\mathbf {j} +G\mathbf {k} } .
Unlike the cross product, and the three-dimensional vector calculus, the wedge product and the calculus of differential forms makes sense in arbitrary dimension and on more general manifolds (curves, surfaces, and their higher-dimensional analogs). The exterior derivative plays the role of the gradient and curl of vector calculus, and Stokes' theorem simultaneously generalizes the three theorems of vector calculus: the divergence theorem, Green's theorem, and the Kelvin-Stokes theorem.
The discrete equivalent of integration is summation. Summations and integrals can be put on the same foundations using the theory of Lebesgue integrals or time-scale calculus.
An integration that is performed not over a variable (or, in physics, over a space or time dimension), but over a space of functions, is referred to as a functional integral.
Integrals are used extensively in many areas. For example, in probability theory, integrals are used to determine the probability of some random variable falling within a certain range. Moreover, the integral under an entire probability density function must equal 1, which provides a test of whether a function with no negative values could be a density function or not.
Integrals can be used for computing the area of a two-dimensional region that has a curved boundary, as well as computing the volume of a three-dimensional object that has a curved boundary. The area of a two-dimensional region can be calculated using the aforementioned definite integral. The volume of a three-dimensional object such as a disc or washer can be computed by disc integration using the equation for the volume of a cylinder, π r 2 h {\displaystyle \pi r^{2}h} , where r {\displaystyle r} is the radius. In the case of a simple disc created by rotating a curve about the x-axis, the radius is given by f(x), and its height is the differential dx. Using an integral with bounds a and b, the volume of the disc is equal to:
Integrals are also used in physics, in areas like kinematics to find quantities like displacement, time, and velocity. For example, in rectilinear motion, the displacement of an object over the time interval [ a , b ] {\displaystyle [a,b]} is given by:
where v ( t ) {\displaystyle v(t)} is the velocity expressed as a function of time. The work done by a force F ( x ) {\displaystyle F(x)} (given as a function of position) from an initial position A {\displaystyle A} to a final position B {\displaystyle B} is:
Integrals are also used in thermodynamics, where thermodynamic integration is used to calculate the difference in free energy between two given states.
The most basic technique for computing definite integrals of one real variable is based on the fundamental theorem of calculus. Let f(x) be the function of x to be integrated over a given interval [a, b]. Then, find an antiderivative of f; that is, a function F such that F′ = f on the interval. Provided the integrand and integral have no singularities on the path of integration, by the fundamental theorem of calculus,
Sometimes it is necessary to use one of the many techniques that have been developed to evaluate integrals. Most of these techniques rewrite one integral as a different one which is hopefully more tractable. Techniques include integration by substitution, integration by parts, integration by trigonometric substitution, and integration by partial fractions.
Alternative methods exist to compute more complex integrals. Many nonelementary integrals can be expanded in a Taylor series and integrated term by term. Occasionally, the resulting infinite series can be summed analytically. The method of convolution using Meijer G-functions can also be used, assuming that the integrand can be written as a product of Meijer G-functions. There are also many less common ways of calculating definite integrals; for instance, Parseval's identity can be used to transform an integral over a rectangular region into an infinite sum. Occasionally, an integral can be evaluated by a trick; for an example of this, see Gaussian integral.
Computations of volumes of solids of revolution can usually be done with disk integration or shell integration.
Specific results which have been worked out by various techniques are collected in the list of integrals.
Many problems in mathematics, physics, and engineering involve integration where an explicit formula for the integral is desired. Extensive tables of integrals have been compiled and published over the years for this purpose. With the spread of computers, many professionals, educators, and students have turned to computer algebra systems that are specifically designed to perform difficult or tedious tasks, including integration. Symbolic integration has been one of the motivations for the development of the first such systems, like Macsyma and Maple.
A major mathematical difficulty in symbolic integration is that in many cases, a relatively simple function does not have integrals that can be expressed in closed form involving only elementary functions, include rational and exponential functions, logarithm, trigonometric functions and inverse trigonometric functions, and the operations of multiplication and composition. The Risch algorithm provides a general criterion to determine whether the antiderivative of an elementary function is elementary and to compute the integral if is elementary. However, functions with closed expressions of antiderivatives are the exception, and consequently, computerized algebra systems have no hope of being able to find an antiderivative for a randomly constructed elementary function. On the positive side, if the 'building blocks' for antiderivatives are fixed in advance, it may still be possible to decide whether the antiderivative of a given function can be expressed using these blocks and operations of multiplication and composition and to find the symbolic answer whenever it exists. The Risch algorithm, implemented in Mathematica, Maple and other computer algebra systems, does just that for functions and antiderivatives built from rational functions, radicals, logarithm, and exponential functions.
Some special integrands occur often enough to warrant special study. In particular, it may be useful to have, in the set of antiderivatives, the special functions (like the Legendre functions, the hypergeometric function, the gamma function, the incomplete gamma function and so on). Extending Risch's algorithm to include such functions is possible but challenging and has been an active research subject.
More recently a new approach has emerged, using D-finite functions, which are the solutions of linear differential equations with polynomial coefficients. Most of the elementary and special functions are D-finite, and the integral of a D-finite function is also a D-finite function. This provides an algorithm to express the antiderivative of a D-finite function as the solution of a differential equation. This theory also allows one to compute the definite integral of a D-function as the sum of a series given by the first coefficients and provides an algorithm to compute any coefficient.
Rule-based integration systems facilitate integration. Rubi, a computer algebra system rule-based integrator, pattern matches an extensive system of symbolic integration rules to integrate a wide variety of integrands. This system uses over 6600 integration rules to compute integrals. The method of brackets is a generalization of Ramanujan's master theorem that can be applied to a wide range of univariate and multivariate integrals. A set of rules are applied to the coefficients and exponential terms of the integrand's power series expansion to determine the integral. The method is closely related to the Mellin transform.
Definite integrals may be approximated using several methods of numerical integration. The rectangle method relies on dividing the region under the function into a series of rectangles corresponding to function values and multiplies by the step width to find the sum. A better approach, the trapezoidal rule, replaces the rectangles used in a Riemann sum with trapezoids. The trapezoidal rule weights the first and last values by one half, then multiplies by the step width to obtain a better approximation. The idea behind the trapezoidal rule, that more accurate approximations to the function yield better approximations to the integral, can be carried further: Simpson's rule approximates the integrand by a piecewise quadratic function.
Riemann sums, the trapezoidal rule, and Simpson's rule are examples of a family of quadrature rules called the Newton–Cotes formulas. The degree n Newton–Cotes quadrature rule approximates the polynomial on each subinterval by a degree n polynomial. This polynomial is chosen to interpolate the values of the function on the interval. Higher degree Newton–Cotes approximations can be more accurate, but they require more function evaluations, and they can suffer from numerical inaccuracy due to Runge's phenomenon. One solution to this problem is Clenshaw–Curtis quadrature, in which the integrand is approximated by expanding it in terms of Chebyshev polynomials.
Romberg's method halves the step widths incrementally, giving trapezoid approximations denoted by T(h0), T(h1), and so on, where hk+1 is half of hk. For each new step size, only half the new function values need to be computed; the others carry over from the previous size. It then interpolate a polynomial through the approximations, and extrapolate to T(0). Gaussian quadrature evaluates the function at the roots of a set of orthogonal polynomials. An n-point Gaussian method is exact for polynomials of degree up to 2n − 1.
The computation of higher-dimensional integrals (for example, volume calculations) makes important use of such alternatives as Monte Carlo integration.
The area of an arbitrary two-dimensional shape can be determined using a measuring instrument called planimeter. The volume of irregular objects can be measured with precision by the fluid displaced as the object is submerged.
Area can sometimes be found via geometrical compass-and-straightedge constructions of an equivalent square.
Kempf, Jackson and Morales demonstrated mathematical relations that allow an integral to be calculated by means of differentiation. Their calculus involves the Dirac delta function and the partial derivative operator ∂ x {\displaystyle \partial _{x}} . This can also be applied to functional integrals, allowing them to be computed by functional differentiation.
The fundamental theorem of calculus allows for straightforward calculations of basic functions.
∫ 0 π sin ( x ) d x = − cos ( x ) | x = 0 x = π = − cos ( π ) − ( − cos ( 0 ) ) = 2 {\displaystyle \int _{0}^{\pi }\sin(x)\,dx=-\cos(x){\big |}_{x=0}^{x=\pi }=-\cos(\pi )-(-\cos(0))=2} | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In mathematics, an integral is the continuous analog of a sum, which is used to calculate areas, volumes, and their generalizations. Integration, the process of computing an integral, is one of the two fundamental operations of calculus, the other being differentiation. Integration started as a method to solve problems in mathematics and physics, such as finding the area under a curve, or determining displacement from velocity. Today integration is used in a wide variety of scientific fields.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The integrals depicted here are called definite integrals, which can be interpreted as the signed area of the region in the plane that is bounded by the graph of a given function between two points in the real line. Conventionally, areas above the horizontal axis of the plane are positive while areas below are negative. Integrals also refer to the concept of an antiderivative, a function whose derivative is the given function; in this case, they are also called indefinite integrals. The fundamental theorem of calculus relates definite integration to differentiation and provides a method to compute the definite integral of a function when its antiderivative is known; differentiation and integration are inverse operations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Although methods of calculating areas and volumes dated from ancient Greek mathematics, the principles of integration were formulated independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the late 17th century, who thought of the area under a curve as an infinite sum of rectangles of infinitesimal width. Bernhard Riemann later gave a rigorous definition of integrals, which is based on a limiting procedure that approximates the area of a curvilinear region by breaking the region into infinitesimally thin vertical slabs. In the early 20th century, Henri Lebesgue generalized Riemann's formulation by introducing what is now referred to as the Lebesgue integral; it is more general than Riemann's in the sense that a wider class of functions are Lebesgue-integrable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Integrals may be generalized depending on the type of the function as well as the domain over which the integration is performed. For example, a line integral is defined for functions of two or more variables, and the interval of integration is replaced by a curve connecting two points in space. In a surface integral, the curve is replaced by a piece of a surface in three-dimensional space.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first documented systematic technique capable of determining integrals is the method of exhaustion of the ancient Greek astronomer Eudoxus (ca. 370 BC), which sought to find areas and volumes by breaking them up into an infinite number of divisions for which the area or volume was known. This method was further developed and employed by Archimedes in the 3rd century BC and used to calculate the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A similar method was independently developed in China around the 3rd century AD by Liu Hui, who used it to find the area of the circle. This method was later used in the 5th century by Chinese father-and-son mathematicians Zu Chongzhi and Zu Geng to find the volume of a sphere.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the Middle East, Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (c. 965 – c. 1040 AD) derived a formula for the sum of fourth powers. He used the results to carry out what would now be called an integration of this function, where the formulae for the sums of integral squares and fourth powers allowed him to calculate the volume of a paraboloid.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The next significant advances in integral calculus did not begin to appear until the 17th century. At this time, the work of Cavalieri with his method of indivisibles, and work by Fermat, began to lay the foundations of modern calculus, with Cavalieri computing the integrals of x up to degree n = 9 in Cavalieri's quadrature formula. The case n = −1 required the invention of a function, the hyperbolic logarithm, achieved by quadrature of the hyperbola in 1647.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Further steps were made in the early 17th century by Barrow and Torricelli, who provided the first hints of a connection between integration and differentiation. Barrow provided the first proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus. Wallis generalized Cavalieri's method, computing integrals of x to a general power, including negative powers and fractional powers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The major advance in integration came in the 17th century with the independent discovery of the fundamental theorem of calculus by Leibniz and Newton. The theorem demonstrates a connection between integration and differentiation. This connection, combined with the comparative ease of differentiation, can be exploited to calculate integrals. In particular, the fundamental theorem of calculus allows one to solve a much broader class of problems. Equal in importance is the comprehensive mathematical framework that both Leibniz and Newton developed. Given the name infinitesimal calculus, it allowed for precise analysis of functions with continuous domains. This framework eventually became modern calculus, whose notation for integrals is drawn directly from the work of Leibniz.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "While Newton and Leibniz provided a systematic approach to integration, their work lacked a degree of rigour. Bishop Berkeley memorably attacked the vanishing increments used by Newton, calling them \"ghosts of departed quantities\". Calculus acquired a firmer footing with the development of limits. Integration was first rigorously formalized, using limits, by Riemann. Although all bounded piecewise continuous functions are Riemann-integrable on a bounded interval, subsequently more general functions were considered—particularly in the context of Fourier analysis—to which Riemann's definition does not apply, and Lebesgue formulated a different definition of integral, founded in measure theory (a subfield of real analysis). Other definitions of integral, extending Riemann's and Lebesgue's approaches, were proposed. These approaches based on the real number system are the ones most common today, but alternative approaches exist, such as a definition of integral as the standard part of an infinite Riemann sum, based on the hyperreal number system.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The notation for the indefinite integral was introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1675. He adapted the integral symbol, ∫, from the letter ſ (long s), standing for summa (written as ſumma; Latin for \"sum\" or \"total\"). The modern notation for the definite integral, with limits above and below the integral sign, was first used by Joseph Fourier in Mémoires of the French Academy around 1819–1820, reprinted in his book of 1822.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Isaac Newton used a small vertical bar above a variable to indicate integration, or placed the variable inside a box. The vertical bar was easily confused with .x or x′, which are used to indicate differentiation, and the box notation was difficult for printers to reproduce, so these notations were not widely adopted.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The term was first printed in Latin by Jacob Bernoulli in 1690: \"Ergo et horum Integralia aequantur\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In general, the integral of a real-valued function f(x) with respect to a real variable x on an interval [a, b] is written as",
"title": "Terminology and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The integral sign ∫ represents integration. The symbol dx, called the differential of the variable x, indicates that the variable of integration is x. The function f(x) is called the integrand, the points a and b are called the limits (or bounds) of integration, and the integral is said to be over the interval [a, b], called the interval of integration. A function is said to be integrable if its integral over its domain is finite. If limits are specified, the integral is called a definite integral.",
"title": "Terminology and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "When the limits are omitted, as in",
"title": "Terminology and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "the integral is called an indefinite integral, which represents a class of functions (the antiderivative) whose derivative is the integrand. The fundamental theorem of calculus relates the evaluation of definite integrals to indefinite integrals. There are several extensions of the notation for integrals to encompass integration on unbounded domains and/or in multiple dimensions (see later sections of this article).",
"title": "Terminology and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In advanced settings, it is not uncommon to leave out dx when only the simple Riemann integral is being used, or the exact type of integral is immaterial. For instance, one might write ∫ a b ( c 1 f + c 2 g ) = c 1 ∫ a b f + c 2 ∫ a b g {\\textstyle \\int _{a}^{b}(c_{1}f+c_{2}g)=c_{1}\\int _{a}^{b}f+c_{2}\\int _{a}^{b}g} to express the linearity of the integral, a property shared by the Riemann integral and all generalizations thereof.",
"title": "Terminology and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Integrals appear in many practical situations. For instance, from the length, width and depth of a swimming pool which is rectangular with a flat bottom, one can determine the volume of water it can contain, the area of its surface, and the length of its edge. But if it is oval with a rounded bottom, integrals are required to find exact and rigorous values for these quantities. In each case, one may divide the sought quantity into infinitely many infinitesimal pieces, then sum the pieces to achieve an accurate approximation.",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "As another example, to find the area of the region bounded by the graph of the function f(x) = x {\\textstyle {\\sqrt {x}}} between x = 0 and x = 1, one can divide the interval into five pieces (0, 1/5, 2/5, ..., 1), then construct rectangle2 using the right end height of each piece (thus √0, √1/5, √2/5, ..., √1) and sum their areas to get the approximation",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "which is larger than the exact value. Alternatively, when replacing these subintervals by ones with the left end height of each piece, the approximation one gets is too low: with twelve such subintervals the approximated area is only 0.6203. However, when the number of pieces increases to infinity, it will reach a limit which is the exact value of the area sought (in this case, 2/3). One writes",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "which means 2/3 is the result of a weighted sum of function values, √x, multiplied by the infinitesimal step widths, denoted by dx, on the interval [0, 1].",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "There are many ways of formally defining an integral, not all of which are equivalent. The differences exist mostly to deal with differing special cases which may not be integrable under other definitions, but are also occasionally for pedagogical reasons. The most commonly used definitions are Riemann integrals and Lebesgue integrals.",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Riemann integral is defined in terms of Riemann sums of functions with respect to tagged partitions of an interval. A tagged partition of a closed interval [a, b] on the real line is a finite sequence",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "This partitions the interval [a, b] into n sub-intervals [xi−1, xi] indexed by i, each of which is \"tagged\" with a specific point ti ∈ [xi−1, xi]. A Riemann sum of a function f with respect to such a tagged partition is defined as",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "thus each term of the sum is the area of a rectangle with height equal to the function value at the chosen point of the given sub-interval, and width the same as the width of sub-interval, Δi = xi−xi−1. The mesh of such a tagged partition is the width of the largest sub-interval formed by the partition, maxi=1...n Δi. The Riemann integral of a function f over the interval [a, b] is equal to S if:",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "When the chosen tags are the maximum (respectively, minimum) value of the function in each interval, the Riemann sum becomes an upper (respectively, lower) Darboux sum, suggesting the close connection between the Riemann integral and the Darboux integral.",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "It is often of interest, both in theory and applications, to be able to pass to the limit under the integral. For instance, a sequence of functions can frequently be constructed that approximate, in a suitable sense, the solution to a problem. Then the integral of the solution function should be the limit of the integrals of the approximations. However, many functions that can be obtained as limits are not Riemann-integrable, and so such limit theorems do not hold with the Riemann integral. Therefore, it is of great importance to have a definition of the integral that allows a wider class of functions to be integrated.",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Such an integral is the Lebesgue integral, that exploits the following fact to enlarge the class of integrable functions: if the values of a function are rearranged over the domain, the integral of a function should remain the same. Thus Henri Lebesgue introduced the integral bearing his name, explaining this integral thus in a letter to Paul Montel:",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "I have to pay a certain sum, which I have collected in my pocket. I take the bills and coins out of my pocket and give them to the creditor in the order I find them until I have reached the total sum. This is the Riemann integral. But I can proceed differently. After I have taken all the money out of my pocket I order the bills and coins according to identical values and then I pay the several heaps one after the other to the creditor. This is my integral.",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "As Folland puts it, \"To compute the Riemann integral of f, one partitions the domain [a, b] into subintervals\", while in the Lebesgue integral, \"one is in effect partitioning the range of f \". The definition of the Lebesgue integral thus begins with a measure, μ. In the simplest case, the Lebesgue measure μ(A) of an interval A = [a, b] is its width, b − a, so that the Lebesgue integral agrees with the (proper) Riemann integral when both exist. In more complicated cases, the sets being measured can be highly fragmented, with no continuity and no resemblance to intervals.",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Using the \"partitioning the range of f \" philosophy, the integral of a non-negative function f : R → R should be the sum over t of the areas between a thin horizontal strip between y = t and y = t + dt. This area is just μ{ x : f(x) > t} dt. Let f(t) = μ{ x : f(x) > t }. The Lebesgue integral of f is then defined by",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "where the integral on the right is an ordinary improper Riemann integral (f is a strictly decreasing positive function, and therefore has a well-defined improper Riemann integral). For a suitable class of functions (the measurable functions) this defines the Lebesgue integral.",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A general measurable function f is Lebesgue-integrable if the sum of the absolute values of the areas of the regions between the graph of f and the x-axis is finite:",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In that case, the integral is, as in the Riemannian case, the difference between the area above the x-axis and the area below the x-axis:",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "where",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Although the Riemann and Lebesgue integrals are the most widely used definitions of the integral, a number of others exist, including:",
"title": "Formal definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The collection of Riemann-integrable functions on a closed interval [a, b] forms a vector space under the operations of pointwise addition and multiplication by a scalar, and the operation of integration",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "is a linear functional on this vector space. Thus, the collection of integrable functions is closed under taking linear combinations, and the integral of a linear combination is the linear combination of the integrals:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Similarly, the set of real-valued Lebesgue-integrable functions on a given measure space E with measure μ is closed under taking linear combinations and hence form a vector space, and the Lebesgue integral",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "is a linear functional on this vector space, so that:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "More generally, consider the vector space of all measurable functions on a measure space (E,μ), taking values in a locally compact complete topological vector space V over a locally compact topological field K, f : E → V. Then one may define an abstract integration map assigning to each function f an element of V or the symbol ∞,",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "that is compatible with linear combinations. In this situation, the linearity holds for the subspace of functions whose integral is an element of V (i.e. \"finite\"). The most important special cases arise when K is R, C, or a finite extension of the field Qp of p-adic numbers, and V is a finite-dimensional vector space over K, and when K = C and V is a complex Hilbert space.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Linearity, together with some natural continuity properties and normalization for a certain class of \"simple\" functions, may be used to give an alternative definition of the integral. This is the approach of Daniell for the case of real-valued functions on a set X, generalized by Nicolas Bourbaki to functions with values in a locally compact topological vector space. See Hildebrandt 1953 for an axiomatic characterization of the integral.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "A number of general inequalities hold for Riemann-integrable functions defined on a closed and bounded interval [a, b] and can be generalized to other notions of integral (Lebesgue and Daniell).",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In this section, f is a real-valued Riemann-integrable function. The integral",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "over an interval [a, b] is defined if a < b. This means that the upper and lower sums of the function f are evaluated on a partition a = x0 ≤ x1 ≤ . . . ≤ xn = b whose values xi are increasing. Geometrically, this signifies that integration takes place \"left to right\", evaluating f within intervals [x i , x i +1] where an interval with a higher index lies to the right of one with a lower index. The values a and b, the end-points of the interval, are called the limits of integration of f. Integrals can also be defined if a > b:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "With a = b, this implies:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The first convention is necessary in consideration of taking integrals over subintervals of [a, b]; the second says that an integral taken over a degenerate interval, or a point, should be zero. One reason for the first convention is that the integrability of f on an interval [a, b] implies that f is integrable on any subinterval [c, d], but in particular integrals have the property that if c is any element of [a, b], then:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "With the first convention, the resulting relation",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "is then well-defined for any cyclic permutation of a, b, and c.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The fundamental theorem of calculus is the statement that differentiation and integration are inverse operations: if a continuous function is first integrated and then differentiated, the original function is retrieved. An important consequence, sometimes called the second fundamental theorem of calculus, allows one to compute integrals by using an antiderivative of the function to be integrated.",
"title": "Fundamental theorem of calculus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Let f be a continuous real-valued function defined on a closed interval [a, b]. Let F be the function defined, for all x in [a, b], by",
"title": "Fundamental theorem of calculus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Then, F is continuous on [a, b], differentiable on the open interval (a, b), and",
"title": "Fundamental theorem of calculus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "for all x in (a, b).",
"title": "Fundamental theorem of calculus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Let f be a real-valued function defined on a closed interval [a, b] that admits an antiderivative F on [a, b]. That is, f and F are functions such that for all x in [a, b],",
"title": "Fundamental theorem of calculus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "If f is integrable on [a, b] then",
"title": "Fundamental theorem of calculus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "A \"proper\" Riemann integral assumes the integrand is defined and finite on a closed and bounded interval, bracketed by the limits of integration. An improper integral occurs when one or more of these conditions is not satisfied. In some cases such integrals may be defined by considering the limit of a sequence of proper Riemann integrals on progressively larger intervals.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "If the interval is unbounded, for instance at its upper end, then the improper integral is the limit as that endpoint goes to infinity:",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "If the integrand is only defined or finite on a half-open interval, for instance (a, b], then again a limit may provide a finite result:",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "That is, the improper integral is the limit of proper integrals as one endpoint of the interval of integration approaches either a specified real number, or ∞, or −∞. In more complicated cases, limits are required at both endpoints, or at interior points.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Just as the definite integral of a positive function of one variable represents the area of the region between the graph of the function and the x-axis, the double integral of a positive function of two variables represents the volume of the region between the surface defined by the function and the plane that contains its domain. For example, a function in two dimensions depends on two real variables, x and y, and the integral of a function f over the rectangle R given as the Cartesian product of two intervals R = [ a , b ] × [ c , d ] {\\displaystyle R=[a,b]\\times [c,d]} can be written",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "where the differential dA indicates that integration is taken with respect to area. This double integral can be defined using Riemann sums, and represents the (signed) volume under the graph of z = f(x,y) over the domain R. Under suitable conditions (e.g., if f is continuous), Fubini's theorem states that this integral can be expressed as an equivalent iterated integral",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "This reduces the problem of computing a double integral to computing one-dimensional integrals. Because of this, another notation for the integral over R uses a double integral sign:",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Integration over more general domains is possible. The integral of a function f, with respect to volume, over an n-dimensional region D of R n {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {R} ^{n}} is denoted by symbols such as:",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The concept of an integral can be extended to more general domains of integration, such as curved lines and surfaces inside higher-dimensional spaces. Such integrals are known as line integrals and surface integrals respectively. These have important applications in physics, as when dealing with vector fields.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "A line integral (sometimes called a path integral) is an integral where the function to be integrated is evaluated along a curve. Various different line integrals are in use. In the case of a closed curve it is also called a contour integral.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The function to be integrated may be a scalar field or a vector field. The value of the line integral is the sum of values of the field at all points on the curve, weighted by some scalar function on the curve (commonly arc length or, for a vector field, the scalar product of the vector field with a differential vector in the curve). This weighting distinguishes the line integral from simpler integrals defined on intervals. Many simple formulas in physics have natural continuous analogs in terms of line integrals; for example, the fact that work is equal to force, F, multiplied by displacement, s, may be expressed (in terms of vector quantities) as:",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "For an object moving along a path C in a vector field F such as an electric field or gravitational field, the total work done by the field on the object is obtained by summing up the differential work done in moving from s to s + ds. This gives the line integral",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "A surface integral generalizes double integrals to integration over a surface (which may be a curved set in space); it can be thought of as the double integral analog of the line integral. The function to be integrated may be a scalar field or a vector field. The value of the surface integral is the sum of the field at all points on the surface. This can be achieved by splitting the surface into surface elements, which provide the partitioning for Riemann sums.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "For an example of applications of surface integrals, consider a vector field v on a surface S; that is, for each point x in S, v(x) is a vector. Imagine that a fluid flows through S, such that v(x) determines the velocity of the fluid at x. The flux is defined as the quantity of fluid flowing through S in unit amount of time. To find the flux, one need to take the dot product of v with the unit surface normal to S at each point, which will give a scalar field, which is integrated over the surface:",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The fluid flux in this example may be from a physical fluid such as water or air, or from electrical or magnetic flux. Thus surface integrals have applications in physics, particularly with the classical theory of electromagnetism.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In complex analysis, the integrand is a complex-valued function of a complex variable z instead of a real function of a real variable x. When a complex function is integrated along a curve γ {\\displaystyle \\gamma } in the complex plane, the integral is denoted as follows",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "This is known as a contour integral.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "A differential form is a mathematical concept in the fields of multivariable calculus, differential topology, and tensors. Differential forms are organized by degree. For example, a one-form is a weighted sum of the differentials of the coordinates, such as:",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "where E, F, G are functions in three dimensions. A differential one-form can be integrated over an oriented path, and the resulting integral is just another way of writing a line integral. Here the basic differentials dx, dy, dz measure infinitesimal oriented lengths parallel to the three coordinate axes.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "A differential two-form is a sum of the form",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Here the basic two-forms d x ∧ d y , d z ∧ d x , d y ∧ d z {\\displaystyle dx\\wedge dy,dz\\wedge dx,dy\\wedge dz} measure oriented areas parallel to the coordinate two-planes. The symbol ∧ {\\displaystyle \\wedge } denotes the wedge product, which is similar to the cross product in the sense that the wedge product of two forms representing oriented lengths represents an oriented area. A two-form can be integrated over an oriented surface, and the resulting integral is equivalent to the surface integral giving the flux of E i + F j + G k {\\displaystyle E\\mathbf {i} +F\\mathbf {j} +G\\mathbf {k} } .",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Unlike the cross product, and the three-dimensional vector calculus, the wedge product and the calculus of differential forms makes sense in arbitrary dimension and on more general manifolds (curves, surfaces, and their higher-dimensional analogs). The exterior derivative plays the role of the gradient and curl of vector calculus, and Stokes' theorem simultaneously generalizes the three theorems of vector calculus: the divergence theorem, Green's theorem, and the Kelvin-Stokes theorem.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The discrete equivalent of integration is summation. Summations and integrals can be put on the same foundations using the theory of Lebesgue integrals or time-scale calculus.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "An integration that is performed not over a variable (or, in physics, over a space or time dimension), but over a space of functions, is referred to as a functional integral.",
"title": "Extensions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Integrals are used extensively in many areas. For example, in probability theory, integrals are used to determine the probability of some random variable falling within a certain range. Moreover, the integral under an entire probability density function must equal 1, which provides a test of whether a function with no negative values could be a density function or not.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Integrals can be used for computing the area of a two-dimensional region that has a curved boundary, as well as computing the volume of a three-dimensional object that has a curved boundary. The area of a two-dimensional region can be calculated using the aforementioned definite integral. The volume of a three-dimensional object such as a disc or washer can be computed by disc integration using the equation for the volume of a cylinder, π r 2 h {\\displaystyle \\pi r^{2}h} , where r {\\displaystyle r} is the radius. In the case of a simple disc created by rotating a curve about the x-axis, the radius is given by f(x), and its height is the differential dx. Using an integral with bounds a and b, the volume of the disc is equal to:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Integrals are also used in physics, in areas like kinematics to find quantities like displacement, time, and velocity. For example, in rectilinear motion, the displacement of an object over the time interval [ a , b ] {\\displaystyle [a,b]} is given by:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "where v ( t ) {\\displaystyle v(t)} is the velocity expressed as a function of time. The work done by a force F ( x ) {\\displaystyle F(x)} (given as a function of position) from an initial position A {\\displaystyle A} to a final position B {\\displaystyle B} is:",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Integrals are also used in thermodynamics, where thermodynamic integration is used to calculate the difference in free energy between two given states.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The most basic technique for computing definite integrals of one real variable is based on the fundamental theorem of calculus. Let f(x) be the function of x to be integrated over a given interval [a, b]. Then, find an antiderivative of f; that is, a function F such that F′ = f on the interval. Provided the integrand and integral have no singularities on the path of integration, by the fundamental theorem of calculus,",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Sometimes it is necessary to use one of the many techniques that have been developed to evaluate integrals. Most of these techniques rewrite one integral as a different one which is hopefully more tractable. Techniques include integration by substitution, integration by parts, integration by trigonometric substitution, and integration by partial fractions.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Alternative methods exist to compute more complex integrals. Many nonelementary integrals can be expanded in a Taylor series and integrated term by term. Occasionally, the resulting infinite series can be summed analytically. The method of convolution using Meijer G-functions can also be used, assuming that the integrand can be written as a product of Meijer G-functions. There are also many less common ways of calculating definite integrals; for instance, Parseval's identity can be used to transform an integral over a rectangular region into an infinite sum. Occasionally, an integral can be evaluated by a trick; for an example of this, see Gaussian integral.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Computations of volumes of solids of revolution can usually be done with disk integration or shell integration.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Specific results which have been worked out by various techniques are collected in the list of integrals.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Many problems in mathematics, physics, and engineering involve integration where an explicit formula for the integral is desired. Extensive tables of integrals have been compiled and published over the years for this purpose. With the spread of computers, many professionals, educators, and students have turned to computer algebra systems that are specifically designed to perform difficult or tedious tasks, including integration. Symbolic integration has been one of the motivations for the development of the first such systems, like Macsyma and Maple.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "A major mathematical difficulty in symbolic integration is that in many cases, a relatively simple function does not have integrals that can be expressed in closed form involving only elementary functions, include rational and exponential functions, logarithm, trigonometric functions and inverse trigonometric functions, and the operations of multiplication and composition. The Risch algorithm provides a general criterion to determine whether the antiderivative of an elementary function is elementary and to compute the integral if is elementary. However, functions with closed expressions of antiderivatives are the exception, and consequently, computerized algebra systems have no hope of being able to find an antiderivative for a randomly constructed elementary function. On the positive side, if the 'building blocks' for antiderivatives are fixed in advance, it may still be possible to decide whether the antiderivative of a given function can be expressed using these blocks and operations of multiplication and composition and to find the symbolic answer whenever it exists. The Risch algorithm, implemented in Mathematica, Maple and other computer algebra systems, does just that for functions and antiderivatives built from rational functions, radicals, logarithm, and exponential functions.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Some special integrands occur often enough to warrant special study. In particular, it may be useful to have, in the set of antiderivatives, the special functions (like the Legendre functions, the hypergeometric function, the gamma function, the incomplete gamma function and so on). Extending Risch's algorithm to include such functions is possible but challenging and has been an active research subject.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "More recently a new approach has emerged, using D-finite functions, which are the solutions of linear differential equations with polynomial coefficients. Most of the elementary and special functions are D-finite, and the integral of a D-finite function is also a D-finite function. This provides an algorithm to express the antiderivative of a D-finite function as the solution of a differential equation. This theory also allows one to compute the definite integral of a D-function as the sum of a series given by the first coefficients and provides an algorithm to compute any coefficient.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Rule-based integration systems facilitate integration. Rubi, a computer algebra system rule-based integrator, pattern matches an extensive system of symbolic integration rules to integrate a wide variety of integrands. This system uses over 6600 integration rules to compute integrals. The method of brackets is a generalization of Ramanujan's master theorem that can be applied to a wide range of univariate and multivariate integrals. A set of rules are applied to the coefficients and exponential terms of the integrand's power series expansion to determine the integral. The method is closely related to the Mellin transform.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Definite integrals may be approximated using several methods of numerical integration. The rectangle method relies on dividing the region under the function into a series of rectangles corresponding to function values and multiplies by the step width to find the sum. A better approach, the trapezoidal rule, replaces the rectangles used in a Riemann sum with trapezoids. The trapezoidal rule weights the first and last values by one half, then multiplies by the step width to obtain a better approximation. The idea behind the trapezoidal rule, that more accurate approximations to the function yield better approximations to the integral, can be carried further: Simpson's rule approximates the integrand by a piecewise quadratic function.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Riemann sums, the trapezoidal rule, and Simpson's rule are examples of a family of quadrature rules called the Newton–Cotes formulas. The degree n Newton–Cotes quadrature rule approximates the polynomial on each subinterval by a degree n polynomial. This polynomial is chosen to interpolate the values of the function on the interval. Higher degree Newton–Cotes approximations can be more accurate, but they require more function evaluations, and they can suffer from numerical inaccuracy due to Runge's phenomenon. One solution to this problem is Clenshaw–Curtis quadrature, in which the integrand is approximated by expanding it in terms of Chebyshev polynomials.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Romberg's method halves the step widths incrementally, giving trapezoid approximations denoted by T(h0), T(h1), and so on, where hk+1 is half of hk. For each new step size, only half the new function values need to be computed; the others carry over from the previous size. It then interpolate a polynomial through the approximations, and extrapolate to T(0). Gaussian quadrature evaluates the function at the roots of a set of orthogonal polynomials. An n-point Gaussian method is exact for polynomials of degree up to 2n − 1.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The computation of higher-dimensional integrals (for example, volume calculations) makes important use of such alternatives as Monte Carlo integration.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The area of an arbitrary two-dimensional shape can be determined using a measuring instrument called planimeter. The volume of irregular objects can be measured with precision by the fluid displaced as the object is submerged.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Area can sometimes be found via geometrical compass-and-straightedge constructions of an equivalent square.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Kempf, Jackson and Morales demonstrated mathematical relations that allow an integral to be calculated by means of differentiation. Their calculus involves the Dirac delta function and the partial derivative operator ∂ x {\\displaystyle \\partial _{x}} . This can also be applied to functional integrals, allowing them to be computed by functional differentiation.",
"title": "Computation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "The fundamental theorem of calculus allows for straightforward calculations of basic functions.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "∫ 0 π sin ( x ) d x = − cos ( x ) | x = 0 x = π = − cos ( π ) − ( − cos ( 0 ) ) = 2 {\\displaystyle \\int _{0}^{\\pi }\\sin(x)\\,dx=-\\cos(x){\\big |}_{x=0}^{x=\\pi }=-\\cos(\\pi )-(-\\cos(0))=2}",
"title": "Examples"
}
]
| In mathematics, an integral is the continuous analog of a sum, which is used to calculate areas, volumes, and their generalizations. Integration, the process of computing an integral, is one of the two fundamental operations of calculus, the other being differentiation. Integration started as a method to solve problems in mathematics and physics, such as finding the area under a curve, or determining displacement from velocity. Today integration is used in a wide variety of scientific fields. The integrals depicted here are called definite integrals, which can be interpreted as the signed area of the region in the plane that is bounded by the graph of a given function between two points in the real line. Conventionally, areas above the horizontal axis of the plane are positive while areas below are negative. Integrals also refer to the concept of an antiderivative, a function whose derivative is the given function; in this case, they are also called indefinite integrals. The fundamental theorem of calculus relates definite integration to differentiation and provides a method to compute the definite integral of a function when its antiderivative is known; differentiation and integration are inverse operations. Although methods of calculating areas and volumes dated from ancient Greek mathematics, the principles of integration were formulated independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the late 17th century, who thought of the area under a curve as an infinite sum of rectangles of infinitesimal width. Bernhard Riemann later gave a rigorous definition of integrals, which is based on a limiting procedure that approximates the area of a curvilinear region by breaking the region into infinitesimally thin vertical slabs. In the early 20th century, Henri Lebesgue generalized Riemann's formulation by introducing what is now referred to as the Lebesgue integral; it is more general than Riemann's in the sense that a wider class of functions are Lebesgue-integrable. Integrals may be generalized depending on the type of the function as well as the domain over which the integration is performed. For example, a line integral is defined for functions of two or more variables, and the interval of integration is replaced by a curve connecting two points in space. In a surface integral, the curve is replaced by a piece of a surface in three-dimensional space. | 2002-01-23T19:59:08Z | 2023-12-21T07:08:37Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral |
15,533 | Zionist political violence | Zionist political violence refers to politically motivated violence or terrorism perpetrated by Zionists. The term is used to describe violence committed by those who support the political movement of Zionism, and violence committed against opponents of Zionism. The violence often takes the form of terrorist attacks and has been directed against both Jewish and Arab targets. The most active period of most notable Zionist political violence began on June 30, 1924, through the 1940s, and continues to the present day, usually for the purpose of expanding Zionist settlements in Palestine.
Notable examples of Zionist political violence include the King David Hotel bombing and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Actions were carried out by individuals and Jewish paramilitary groups such as the Irgun, the Lehi, the Haganah and the Palmach as part of a conflict between Jews, British authorities, and Palestinian Arabs, regarding land, immigration, and control over Palestine.
British soldiers and officials, United Nations personnel, Palestinian Arab fighters and civilians, and Jewish fighters and civilians were targets or victims of these actions. Domestic, commercial, and government property, infrastructure, and material have also been attacked.
During the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the 1921 Jaffa riots and the 1929 Palestine riots, Palestinian Arabs manifested hostility against Zionist immigration, which provoked the reaction of Jewish militias. In 1935, the Irgun, a Zionist underground military organization, split off from the Haganah. The Irgun were the armed expression of the nascent ideology of Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He expressed this ideology as "every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arab and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state".
During the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, Palestinian Arabs fought for the end of the Mandate and the creation of an Arab state based on the whole of Palestine. They attacked both British and Jews as well as some Palestinian Arabs who supported a Pan-Arabism. Mainstream Zionists, represented by the Vaad Leumi and the Haganah, practiced the policy of Havlagah (restraint); Irgun militants did not follow this policy and called themselves "Havlagah breakers." The Irgun began bombing Palestinian Arab civilian targets in 1938. While the Palestinian Arabs were "carefully disarmed" by the British Mandatory authorities by 1939, the Zionists were not. As a conciliation to the Arabs, the White Paper of 1939 was passed, imposing significant limits in Jewish immigration in the shadow of World War II.
After the British Declaration of War in September 1939, the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine David Ben-Gurion declared: 'We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper.'; the Haganah and Irgun subsequently suspended their activity against the British in support of their war against Nazi Germany. However, the smaller Lehi continued anti-British attacks and direct action throughout the war. At that time, the British also supported the creation and the training of Palmach, as a unit that could withstand a German offensive in the area, with the consent of the Yishuv which saw an opportunity to get trained units and soldiers for the planned Jewish state and during 1944–1945, the most mainstream Jewish paramilitary organization, Haganah, cooperated with the British authorities against the Lehi and Etzel.
After World War II, between 1945 and the 29 November 1947 Partition vote, British soldiers and policemen were targeted by Irgun and Lehi. The Haganah and Palmach at first collaborated with the British against them, particularly during the Hunting Season, before actively joining them in the Jewish Resistance Movement, then finally choosing an official neutral position after 1946 while the Irgun and the Lehi continued their attacks against the British.
The Haganah, Irgun and Lehi also executed dozens of Jews for alleged treason or collaboration with Britain or Arabs, often after irregular drumhead court martials.
The Haganah also carried out violent attacks in Palestine, such as the liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit detainee camp, the bombing of the country's railroad network, sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British Palestine police. It continued to organize illegal immigration throughout the entire war.
In February 1947, the British announced that they would end the mandate and withdraw from Palestine and they asked for the arbitration of the United Nations. After the vote of the Partition Plan for Palestine on 30 November 1947, civil war broke out in Palestine. Jewish and Arab communities fought each other violently in campaigns of attacks, retaliations, and counter-retaliations which provoked around 800 deaths after two months. Arab volunteers entered Palestine to fight alongside the Palestinian Arabs. In April, 6 weeks before the termination of the Mandate, the Jewish militias launched wide operations to control the territory dedicated to them by the Partition Plan. Many atrocities occurred during this time. The Arab population in the mixed cities of Tiberias, Safed, Haifa and Jaffa, as well as Beisan and Acre and in the neighbouring villages, fled or were expelled during this period. During the Battle for Jerusalem (1948) where the Jewish community of 100,000 people was besieged, most Arab villages of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem corridor were captured by Jewish militias and leveled.
At the beginning of the civil war, the Jewish militias organized several bombing attacks against civilians and military Arab targets. On 12 December, Irgun placed a car bomb opposite the Damascus Gate, killing 20 people. On 4 January 1948, the Lehi detonated a lorry bomb against the headquarters of the paramilitary Najjada located in Jaffa's Town Hall, killing 15 Arabs and injuring 80. During the night between 5 and 6 January, the Haganah bombed the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem that had been reported to hide Arab militiamen, killing 24 people. The next day, Irgun members in a stolen police van rolled a barrel bomb into a large group of civilians who were waiting for a bus by the Jaffa Gate, killing around 16. Another Irgun bomb went off in the Ramla market on February 18, killing 7 residents and injuring 45. On 28 February, the Palmah organised a bombing attack against a garage in Haifa, killing 30 people.
In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was the Prime Minister of Israel who was assassinated by Yigal Amir after a peace rally. Amir had been opposed to Rabin's peace initiative, which included signing the Oslo Accords and withdrawing from the West Bank. He believed that Rabin was a rodef, meaning a "pursuer" who endangered Jewish lives, and that he was justified in removing Rabin as a threat to Jews in the territories according to the concept of din rodef ("law of the pursuer"), which is a part of traditional Jewish law.
Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and in media such as The New York Times newspaper, and by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. In 1946, The World Zionist Congress strongly condemned terrorist activities in Palestine and "the shedding of innocent blood as a means of political warfare". Irgun was specifically condemned.
Menachem Begin was called a terrorist and a fascist by Albert Einstein and 27 other prominent Jewish intellectuals in a letter to the New York Times which was published on December 4, 1948. Specifically condemned was the participation of the Irgun in the Deir Yassin massacre:
The letter warns American Jews against supporting Begin's request for funding of his political party Herut, and ends with the warning:
Lehi was described as a terrorist organization by the British authorities and United Nations mediator Ralph Bunche.
During the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine before the war, the criterion of "Purity of arms" was used to distinguish between the respective attitudes of the Irgun and Haganah towards Arabs, with the latter priding itself on its adherence to principle. The Jewish society in the British Mandate Palestine generally disapproved and denounced violent attacks both on grounds of moral rejection and political disagreement, stressing that terrorism is counter-productive in the Zionist quest for Jewish self-determination. Generally speaking, this precept requires that "weapons remain pure [and that] they are employed only in self-defence and [never] against innocent civilians and defenceless people". But if it "remained a central value in education" it was "rather vague and intentionally blurred" at the practical level.
In 1946, at a meeting held between the heads of the Haganah, David Ben-Gurion predicted a confrontation between the Arabs of Palestine and the Arab states. Concerning the "principle of purity of arms", he stressed that: "The end does not justify all means. Our war is based on moral grounds" and during the 1948 War, the Mapam, the political party affiliated to Palmach, asked "a strict observance of the Jewish Purity of arms to secure the moral character of [the] war". When he was later criticized by Mapam members for his attitude concerning the Arab refugee problem, Ben-Gurion reminded them of the Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle and the fact Palmah officers had been responsible for the "outrage that had encouraged the Arabs' flight made the party uncomfortable."
According to Avi Shlaim, this condemnation of the use of violence is one of the key features of 'the conventional Zionist account or old history' whose 'popular-heroic-moralistic version' is 'taught in Israeli schools and used extensively in the quest for legitimacy abroad'. Benny Morris adds that '[t]he Israelis' collective memory of fighters characterized by "purity of arms" is also undermined by the evidence of [the dozen cases] of rapes committed in conquered towns and villages.' According to him, 'after the 1948 war, the Israelis tended to hail the "purity of arms" of its militiamen and soldiers to contrast this with Arab barbarism, which on occasion expressed itself in the mutilation of captured Jewish corpses.' According to him, 'this reinforced the Israelis' positive self-image and helped them "sell" the new state abroad and (...) demonized the enemy'.
Some Israelis justify acts of political violence. Sixty years after participating in the assassination of Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, Geulah Cohen had no regrets. As a broadcaster on Lehi's radio, she recalled the threats against Bernadotte in advance of the assassination. "I told him if you are not going to leave Jerusalem and go to your Stockholm, you won't be any more." Asked if it was right to assassinate Bernadotte, she replied, "There is no question about it. We would not have Jerusalem any more." In July 2006, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center organized a conference to mark the 60th anniversary of the King David Hotel bombing. The conference was attended by past and future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former members of Irgun. The British Ambassador in Tel Aviv and the Consul-General in Jerusalem protested that a plaque commemorating the bombing stated "For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated." Netanyahu, then chairman of Likud and Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset, opined that the bombing was a legitimate act with a military target, distinguishing it from an act of terror intended to harm civilians since Irgun sent warnings to evacuate the building. He said "Imagine that Hamas or Hizbullah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, 'We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area.' They don't do that. That is the difference." The British Ambassador in Tel Aviv and the Consul-General in Jerusalem protested, saying "We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated", and wrote to the Mayor of Jerusalem that such an "act of terror" could not be honored. The British government also demanded the removal of the plaque, pointing out that the statement on it accusing the British of failing to evacuate the hotel was untrue and "did not absolve those who planted the bomb." To prevent a diplomatic incident, changes were made in the plaque's text. The final English version says "Warning phone calls have been made to the hotel, The Palestine Post and the French Consulate, urging the hotel's occupants to leave immediately. The hotel was not evacuated and after 25 minutes the bombs exploded. To the Irgun's regret, 92 persons were killed." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Zionist political violence refers to politically motivated violence or terrorism perpetrated by Zionists. The term is used to describe violence committed by those who support the political movement of Zionism, and violence committed against opponents of Zionism. The violence often takes the form of terrorist attacks and has been directed against both Jewish and Arab targets. The most active period of most notable Zionist political violence began on June 30, 1924, through the 1940s, and continues to the present day, usually for the purpose of expanding Zionist settlements in Palestine.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Notable examples of Zionist political violence include the King David Hotel bombing and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Actions were carried out by individuals and Jewish paramilitary groups such as the Irgun, the Lehi, the Haganah and the Palmach as part of a conflict between Jews, British authorities, and Palestinian Arabs, regarding land, immigration, and control over Palestine.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "British soldiers and officials, United Nations personnel, Palestinian Arab fighters and civilians, and Jewish fighters and civilians were targets or victims of these actions. Domestic, commercial, and government property, infrastructure, and material have also been attacked.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "During the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the 1921 Jaffa riots and the 1929 Palestine riots, Palestinian Arabs manifested hostility against Zionist immigration, which provoked the reaction of Jewish militias. In 1935, the Irgun, a Zionist underground military organization, split off from the Haganah. The Irgun were the armed expression of the nascent ideology of Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He expressed this ideology as \"every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arab and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state\".",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "During the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, Palestinian Arabs fought for the end of the Mandate and the creation of an Arab state based on the whole of Palestine. They attacked both British and Jews as well as some Palestinian Arabs who supported a Pan-Arabism. Mainstream Zionists, represented by the Vaad Leumi and the Haganah, practiced the policy of Havlagah (restraint); Irgun militants did not follow this policy and called themselves \"Havlagah breakers.\" The Irgun began bombing Palestinian Arab civilian targets in 1938. While the Palestinian Arabs were \"carefully disarmed\" by the British Mandatory authorities by 1939, the Zionists were not. As a conciliation to the Arabs, the White Paper of 1939 was passed, imposing significant limits in Jewish immigration in the shadow of World War II.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After the British Declaration of War in September 1939, the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine David Ben-Gurion declared: 'We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper.'; the Haganah and Irgun subsequently suspended their activity against the British in support of their war against Nazi Germany. However, the smaller Lehi continued anti-British attacks and direct action throughout the war. At that time, the British also supported the creation and the training of Palmach, as a unit that could withstand a German offensive in the area, with the consent of the Yishuv which saw an opportunity to get trained units and soldiers for the planned Jewish state and during 1944–1945, the most mainstream Jewish paramilitary organization, Haganah, cooperated with the British authorities against the Lehi and Etzel.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "After World War II, between 1945 and the 29 November 1947 Partition vote, British soldiers and policemen were targeted by Irgun and Lehi. The Haganah and Palmach at first collaborated with the British against them, particularly during the Hunting Season, before actively joining them in the Jewish Resistance Movement, then finally choosing an official neutral position after 1946 while the Irgun and the Lehi continued their attacks against the British.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Haganah, Irgun and Lehi also executed dozens of Jews for alleged treason or collaboration with Britain or Arabs, often after irregular drumhead court martials.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Haganah also carried out violent attacks in Palestine, such as the liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit detainee camp, the bombing of the country's railroad network, sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British Palestine police. It continued to organize illegal immigration throughout the entire war.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In February 1947, the British announced that they would end the mandate and withdraw from Palestine and they asked for the arbitration of the United Nations. After the vote of the Partition Plan for Palestine on 30 November 1947, civil war broke out in Palestine. Jewish and Arab communities fought each other violently in campaigns of attacks, retaliations, and counter-retaliations which provoked around 800 deaths after two months. Arab volunteers entered Palestine to fight alongside the Palestinian Arabs. In April, 6 weeks before the termination of the Mandate, the Jewish militias launched wide operations to control the territory dedicated to them by the Partition Plan. Many atrocities occurred during this time. The Arab population in the mixed cities of Tiberias, Safed, Haifa and Jaffa, as well as Beisan and Acre and in the neighbouring villages, fled or were expelled during this period. During the Battle for Jerusalem (1948) where the Jewish community of 100,000 people was besieged, most Arab villages of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem corridor were captured by Jewish militias and leveled.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "At the beginning of the civil war, the Jewish militias organized several bombing attacks against civilians and military Arab targets. On 12 December, Irgun placed a car bomb opposite the Damascus Gate, killing 20 people. On 4 January 1948, the Lehi detonated a lorry bomb against the headquarters of the paramilitary Najjada located in Jaffa's Town Hall, killing 15 Arabs and injuring 80. During the night between 5 and 6 January, the Haganah bombed the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem that had been reported to hide Arab militiamen, killing 24 people. The next day, Irgun members in a stolen police van rolled a barrel bomb into a large group of civilians who were waiting for a bus by the Jaffa Gate, killing around 16. Another Irgun bomb went off in the Ramla market on February 18, killing 7 residents and injuring 45. On 28 February, the Palmah organised a bombing attack against a garage in Haifa, killing 30 people.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was the Prime Minister of Israel who was assassinated by Yigal Amir after a peace rally. Amir had been opposed to Rabin's peace initiative, which included signing the Oslo Accords and withdrawing from the West Bank. He believed that Rabin was a rodef, meaning a \"pursuer\" who endangered Jewish lives, and that he was justified in removing Rabin as a threat to Jews in the territories according to the concept of din rodef (\"law of the pursuer\"), which is a part of traditional Jewish law.",
"title": "Main occurrences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and in media such as The New York Times newspaper, and by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. In 1946, The World Zionist Congress strongly condemned terrorist activities in Palestine and \"the shedding of innocent blood as a means of political warfare\". Irgun was specifically condemned.",
"title": "Condemnation as terrorism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Menachem Begin was called a terrorist and a fascist by Albert Einstein and 27 other prominent Jewish intellectuals in a letter to the New York Times which was published on December 4, 1948. Specifically condemned was the participation of the Irgun in the Deir Yassin massacre:",
"title": "Condemnation as terrorism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The letter warns American Jews against supporting Begin's request for funding of his political party Herut, and ends with the warning:",
"title": "Condemnation as terrorism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Lehi was described as a terrorist organization by the British authorities and United Nations mediator Ralph Bunche.",
"title": "Condemnation as terrorism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "During the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine before the war, the criterion of \"Purity of arms\" was used to distinguish between the respective attitudes of the Irgun and Haganah towards Arabs, with the latter priding itself on its adherence to principle. The Jewish society in the British Mandate Palestine generally disapproved and denounced violent attacks both on grounds of moral rejection and political disagreement, stressing that terrorism is counter-productive in the Zionist quest for Jewish self-determination. Generally speaking, this precept requires that \"weapons remain pure [and that] they are employed only in self-defence and [never] against innocent civilians and defenceless people\". But if it \"remained a central value in education\" it was \"rather vague and intentionally blurred\" at the practical level.",
"title": "Jewish public opinion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1946, at a meeting held between the heads of the Haganah, David Ben-Gurion predicted a confrontation between the Arabs of Palestine and the Arab states. Concerning the \"principle of purity of arms\", he stressed that: \"The end does not justify all means. Our war is based on moral grounds\" and during the 1948 War, the Mapam, the political party affiliated to Palmach, asked \"a strict observance of the Jewish Purity of arms to secure the moral character of [the] war\". When he was later criticized by Mapam members for his attitude concerning the Arab refugee problem, Ben-Gurion reminded them of the Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle and the fact Palmah officers had been responsible for the \"outrage that had encouraged the Arabs' flight made the party uncomfortable.\"",
"title": "Jewish public opinion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "According to Avi Shlaim, this condemnation of the use of violence is one of the key features of 'the conventional Zionist account or old history' whose 'popular-heroic-moralistic version' is 'taught in Israeli schools and used extensively in the quest for legitimacy abroad'. Benny Morris adds that '[t]he Israelis' collective memory of fighters characterized by \"purity of arms\" is also undermined by the evidence of [the dozen cases] of rapes committed in conquered towns and villages.' According to him, 'after the 1948 war, the Israelis tended to hail the \"purity of arms\" of its militiamen and soldiers to contrast this with Arab barbarism, which on occasion expressed itself in the mutilation of captured Jewish corpses.' According to him, 'this reinforced the Israelis' positive self-image and helped them \"sell\" the new state abroad and (...) demonized the enemy'.",
"title": "Jewish public opinion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Some Israelis justify acts of political violence. Sixty years after participating in the assassination of Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, Geulah Cohen had no regrets. As a broadcaster on Lehi's radio, she recalled the threats against Bernadotte in advance of the assassination. \"I told him if you are not going to leave Jerusalem and go to your Stockholm, you won't be any more.\" Asked if it was right to assassinate Bernadotte, she replied, \"There is no question about it. We would not have Jerusalem any more.\" In July 2006, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center organized a conference to mark the 60th anniversary of the King David Hotel bombing. The conference was attended by past and future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former members of Irgun. The British Ambassador in Tel Aviv and the Consul-General in Jerusalem protested that a plaque commemorating the bombing stated \"For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated.\" Netanyahu, then chairman of Likud and Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset, opined that the bombing was a legitimate act with a military target, distinguishing it from an act of terror intended to harm civilians since Irgun sent warnings to evacuate the building. He said \"Imagine that Hamas or Hizbullah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, 'We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area.' They don't do that. That is the difference.\" The British Ambassador in Tel Aviv and the Consul-General in Jerusalem protested, saying \"We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated\", and wrote to the Mayor of Jerusalem that such an \"act of terror\" could not be honored. The British government also demanded the removal of the plaque, pointing out that the statement on it accusing the British of failing to evacuate the hotel was untrue and \"did not absolve those who planted the bomb.\" To prevent a diplomatic incident, changes were made in the plaque's text. The final English version says \"Warning phone calls have been made to the hotel, The Palestine Post and the French Consulate, urging the hotel's occupants to leave immediately. The hotel was not evacuated and after 25 minutes the bombs exploded. To the Irgun's regret, 92 persons were killed.\"",
"title": "Jewish public opinion"
}
]
| Zionist political violence refers to politically motivated violence or terrorism perpetrated by Zionists. The term is used to describe violence committed by those who support the political movement of Zionism, and violence committed against opponents of Zionism. The violence often takes the form of terrorist attacks and has been directed against both Jewish and Arab targets. The most active period of most notable Zionist political violence began on June 30, 1924, through the 1940s, and continues to the present day, usually for the purpose of expanding Zionist settlements in Palestine. Notable examples of Zionist political violence include the King David Hotel bombing and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. | 2002-01-23T21:18:15Z | 2023-11-10T06:16:54Z | [
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"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Zionism",
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"Template:Cite news",
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"Template:Pp-30-500",
"Template:ISBN",
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence |
15,536 | Lists of airports | An airport is an aerodrome with facilities for flights to take off and land. Airports often have facilities to store and maintain aircraft, and a control tower. An airport consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface such as a runway for a plane to take off or a helipad, and often includes adjacent utility buildings such as control towers, hangars and terminals.
An airport with a helipad for rotorcraft but no runway is called a heliport. An airport for use by seaplanes and amphibious aircraft is called a seaplane base. Such a base typically includes a stretch of open water for takeoffs and landings, and seaplane docks for tying-up.
An international airport has additional facilities for customs and immigration.
List of airports by IATA airport code: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An airport is an aerodrome with facilities for flights to take off and land. Airports often have facilities to store and maintain aircraft, and a control tower. An airport consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface such as a runway for a plane to take off or a helipad, and often includes adjacent utility buildings such as control towers, hangars and terminals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "An airport with a helipad for rotorcraft but no runway is called a heliport. An airport for use by seaplanes and amphibious aircraft is called a seaplane base. Such a base typically includes a stretch of open water for takeoffs and landings, and seaplane docks for tying-up.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "An international airport has additional facilities for customs and immigration.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "List of airports by IATA airport code: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z",
"title": ""
}
]
| An airport is an aerodrome with facilities for flights to take off and land. Airports often have facilities to store and maintain aircraft, and a control tower. An airport consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface such as a runway for a plane to take off or a helipad, and often includes adjacent utility buildings such as control towers, hangars and terminals. An airport with a helipad for rotorcraft but no runway is called a heliport. An airport for use by seaplanes and amphibious aircraft is called a seaplane base. Such a base typically includes a stretch of open water for takeoffs and landings, and seaplane docks for tying-up. An international airport has additional facilities for customs and immigration. List of airports by IATA airport code: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z By country: see Category:Lists of airports by country
By metropolitan area: see Category:Airports by city
List of eponyms of airports
Lists of military installations
Lists of the World's busiest airports:
by aircraft movements
by cargo traffic
by passenger traffic
by international passenger traffic
Lists by elevation:
List of highest airports
List of lowest airports
With triple takeoff/landing capability
Worldwide list of airports with scheduled commercial service, see: Airline destinations | 2023-05-02T10:55:11Z | [
"Template:Aviation lists",
"Template:List of lists",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Lists of airports by IATA code",
"Template:List of airports"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_airports |
|
15,538 | Inclusion body myositis | Inclusion body myositis (IBM) (/maɪoʊˈsaɪtɪs/) (sometimes called sporadic inclusion body myositis, sIBM) is the most common inflammatory muscle disease in older adults. The disease is characterized by slowly progressive weakness and wasting of both proximal muscles (located on or close to the torso) and distal muscles (close to hands or feet), most apparent in the finger flexors and knee extensors. IBM is often confused with an entirely different class of diseases, called hereditary inclusion body myopathies (hIBM). The "M" in hIBM is an abbreviation for "myopathy" while the "M" in IBM is for "myositis". In IBM, two processes appear to occur in the muscles in parallel, one autoimmune and the other degenerative. Inflammation is evident from the invasion of muscle fibers by immune cells. Degeneration is characterized by the appearance of holes, deposits of abnormal proteins, and filamentous inclusions in the muscle fibers. sIBM is a rare disease, with a prevalence ranging from 1 to 71 individuals per million.
Weakness comes on slowly (over months to years) in an asymmetric manner and progresses steadily, leading to severe weakness and wasting of arm and leg muscles. IBM is more common in men than women. Patients may become unable to perform activities of daily living and most require assistive devices within 5 to 10 years of symptom onset. sIBM does not significantly affect life expectancy, although death related to malnutrition and respiratory failure can occur. The risk of serious injury due to falls is increased. There is no effective treatment for the disease as of 2019.
IBM stands for "inclusion body myositis: not "inclusion body myopathy." The 'inclusion body' refers to a histological finding of rimmed vacuoles in muscle tissue. However, IBM does not refer to the collection of diseases that feature these inclusion bodies. It refers to a specific disease entity.
Multiple genetic diseases that feature inclusion bodies have been grouped into "hereditary inclusion body myopathies (hIBM)." Myopathy is used because inflammation is not a prominent finding. There is inconsistency in what individual disease entities fall under the category of hIBM. The term "sporadic inclusion body myositis" (sIBM) was introduced as a way to refer to IBM to avoid confusion with hIBM. However, one author discourages use of sIBM, as it implies that IBM and hIBM differ only in inheritance; they actually have unrelated mechanisms and manifestations of disease.
sIBM causes progressive muscle weakness. How sIBM affects individuals is variable, including the age of onset (which generally varies from the forties upwards) and rate of progression. Because of this variability, there is no "textbook case".
Common early symptoms include frequent tripping and falling and difficulty going up stairs. Foot drop in one or both feet can occur. Part of the cause for this dysfunction is the early involvement of the quadriceps muscles. Weakness of the tibialis anterior muscle is responsible for foot drop. Another common early symptom is trouble manipulating the fingers, such as difficulty with tasks such as turning doorknobs or gripping keys. Weakness of finger flexion and ankle dorsiflexion occurs early. sIBM also preferentially affects the wrist flexors, biceps, and triceps.
During the course of the illness, the patient's mobility is progressively restricted as it becomes difficult to bend down, reach for things, and walk quickly. Many patients say they have balance problems and fall easily, as the muscles cannot compensate for an off-balanced posture. Because sIBM makes the leg muscles weak and unstable, patients are very vulnerable to serious injury from tripping or falling down. Although pain has not been traditionally part of the "textbook" description, many patients report severe muscle pain, especially in the thighs.
Progressive difficulty swallowing (dysphagia) is present in 40 to 85% of IBM cases and often leads to death from aspiration pneumonia.
IBM can also result in diminished capacity for aerobic exercise. This decline is most likely a consequence of the sedentary lifestyle leading to disuse muscle atrophy that is often associated with the symptoms of IBM (i.e. progressive muscle weakness, decreased mobility, and increased level of fatigue). Therefore, one focus of treatment should be the improvement of aerobic capacity.
Patients with sIBM usually eventually need to resort to a cane or a walker and in most cases, a wheelchair eventually becomes a necessity.
"The progressive course of s-IBM leads slowly to severe disability. Finger functions can become very impaired, such as manipulating pens, keys, buttons, and zippers, pulling handles, and firmly grasping handshakes. Arising from a chair becomes difficult. Walking becomes more precarious. Sudden falls, sometimes resulting in major injury to the skull or other bones, can occur, even from walking on minimally irregular ground or from other minor imbalances outside or in the home, due to weakness of quadriceps and gluteus muscles depriving the patient of automatic posture maintenance. A foot-drop can increase the likelihood of tripping. Dysphagia can occur, usually caused by upper esophageal constriction that often can be symptomatically improved, for several months to years, by bougie dilation per a GI or ENT physician. Respiratory muscle weakness can sometimes eventuate."
The cause of IBM is unknown. IBM likely results from the interaction of a number of genetic and environmental factors.
There are two major theories about how sIBM is caused. One hypothesis suggests that the inflammation-immune reaction, caused by an unknown trigger – likely an undiscovered virus or an autoimmune disorder – is the primary cause of sIBM and that the degeneration of muscle fibers and protein abnormalities are secondary features. Despite the arguments "in favor of an adaptive immune response in sIBM, a purely autoimmune hypothesis for sIBM is untenable because of the disease's resistance to most immunotherapy."
The second school of thought advocates the theory that sIBM is a degenerative disorder related to aging of the muscle fibers and that abnormal, potentially pathogenic protein accumulations in myofibrils play a key causative role in sIBM (apparently before the immune system comes into play). This hypothesis emphasizes the abnormal intracellular accumulation of many proteins, protein aggregation and misfolding, proteosome inhibition, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress.
One review discusses the "limitations in the beta-amyloid-mediated theory of IBM myofiber injury."
Dalakas (2006) suggested that a chain of events causes IBM – some sort of virus, likely a retrovirus, triggers the cloning of T cells. These T cells appear to be driven by specific antigens to invade muscle fibers. In people with sIBM, the muscle cells display "flags" telling the immune system that they are infected or damaged (the muscles ubiquitously express MHC class I antigens) and this immune process leads to the death of muscle cells. The chronic stimulation of these antigens also causes stress inside the muscle cell in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and this ER stress may be enough to cause a self-sustaining T cell response (even after a virus has dissipated). In addition, this ER stress may cause the misfolding of protein. The ER is in charge of processing and folding molecules carrying antigens. In IBM, muscle fibers are overloaded with these major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules that carry the antigen protein pieces, leading to more ER stress and more protein misfolding.
A self-sustaining T cell response would make sIBM a type of autoimmune disorder. When studied carefully, it has not been possible to detect an ongoing viral infection in the muscles. One theory is that a chronic viral infection might be the initial triggering factor setting IBM in motion. There have been a handful of IBM cases – approximately 15 – that have shown clear evidence of a virus called HTLV-1. The HTLV-1 virus can cause leukemia, but in most cases lies dormant and most people end up being lifelong carriers of the virus. One review says that the best evidence points towards a connection with some type of retrovirus and that a retroviral infection combined with immune recognition of the retrovirus is enough to trigger the inflammation process.
sIBM is not inherited and is not passed on to the children of IBM patients. There are genetic features that do not directly cause IBM but that appear to predispose a person to getting IBM – having this particular combination of genes increases one's susceptibility to getting IBM. Some 67% of IBM patients have a particular combination of human leukocyte antigen genes in a section of the 8.1 ancestral haplotype in the center of the MHC class II region. sIBM is not passed on from generation to generation, although the susceptibility region of genes may be.
There are also several rare forms of hereditary inclusion body myopathy that are linked to specific genetic defects and that are passed on from generation to generation. Since these forms do not show features of muscle inflammation, they are classified as myopathies rather than forms of myositis. Because they do not display inflammation as a primary symptom, they may in fact be similar, but different diseases to sporadic inclusion body myositis. There are several different types, each inherited in different ways. See hereditary inclusion body myopathy.
A 2007 review concluded there is no indication that the genes responsible for the familial or hereditary conditions are involved in sIBM.
Elevated creatine kinase (CK) levels in the blood (at most ~10 times normal) are typical in sIBM but affected individuals can also present with normal CK levels. Electromyography (EMG) studies display variable abnormalities such as increased insertional activity, increased spontaneous activity (fibrillation potentials and sharp waves), and large/broad or short/narrow motor unit potentials. On EMG, recruitment patterns can be reduced or increased. Findings can vary even within the same muscle of an affected individual. Muscle biopsy may display several common findings including inflammatory cells invading muscle cells, vacuolar degeneration, and inclusion bodies of aggregations of multiple proteins. sIBM is a challenge to the pathologist and even with a biopsy, diagnosis can be ambiguous.
A diagnosis of inclusion body myositis was historically dependent on muscle biopsy results. Antibodies to cytoplasmic 5'-nucleotidase (cN1A; NT5C1A) have been strongly associated with the condition. However, other inflammatory conditions, such as lupus, can have a positive anti-NT5C1A. As of 2019, it remains to be established whether a positive anti-NT5C1A antibody test can make muscle biopsy unneeded.
Muscle imaging can help establish the pattern of muscle involvement and selection of a biopsy site.
IBM is often initially misdiagnosed as polymyositis. A course of prednisone is typically completed with no improvement and eventually, sIBM is confirmed. sIBM weakness comes on over months or years and progresses steadily, whereas polymyositis has an onset of weeks or months. Muscular dystrophy (e.g., limb girdle muscular dystrophy) must be considered as well. sIBM can be mistaken for physical deconditioning.
Hereditary myopathies can mimic sIBM, both in signs and symptoms and in the appearance of muscle biopsies. A small percentage of those initially diagnosed with sIBM are later found to have pathogenic mutations in the genes VCP and SQSTM1, which are known to cause hIBM.
IBM has a distinctive pattern of muscle involvement that distinguishes it among inflammatory myopathies. Characteristic of IBM is weakness of finger flexion, knee extension, and ankle dorsiflexion. Other inflammatory myopathies cause a proximal muscle weakness pattern, such as weakness of hip flexion, abduction, and extension, as well as shoulder abduction. IBM and other inflammatory myopathies both cause bicep/tricep weakness.
There is no standard course of treatment to slow or stop the progression of the disease as of 2019. sIBM patients do not reliably respond to anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressant, or immunomodulatory medications. Most of disease management is supportive care. Prevention of falls is an important consideration. There is no consensus on exercise guidelines; however, physical therapy is recommended to teach the patient a home exercise program, to teach how to compensate during mobility-gait training with an assistive device, transfers and bed mobility. An exercise regimen preferentially minimizes a patient's risk of injury and corresponds to the patient's goals.
When sIBM was originally described, the major feature noted was muscle inflammation. Two other disorders were also known to display muscle inflammation, and sIBM was classified along with them. They are dermatomyositis (DM) and polymyositis (PM) and all three illnesses were called idiopathic (of unknown origin) myositis or inflammatory myopathies.
It appears that sIBM and polymyositis share some features, especially the initial sequence of immune system activation, however, polymyositis comes on over weeks or months, does not display the subsequent muscle degeneration and protein abnormalities as seen in IBM, and as well, polymyositis tends to respond well to treatments, IBM does not. IBM is often confused with (misdiagnosed as) polymyositis. Polymyositis that does not respond to treatment is likely IBM.
Dermatomyositis shares a number of similar physical symptoms and histopathological traits as polymyositis, but exhibits a skin rash not seen in polymyositis or sIBM. It may have different root causes unrelated to either polymyositis or sIBM.
Mutations in valosin-containing protein (VCP) cause multisystem proteinopathy (MSP), which can present (among others) as a rare form of inclusion body myopathy.
Prevalence of disease in a rigorous meta-analysis in 2017 was 46 patients per million. The earliest published prevalence was in 2000 and put at 5 per million. A 2017 study in Ireland reported 112 per million. It is not believed that the disease prevalence is increasing with time, but rather diagnostics and reporting are improving.
Estimates of the mean age of onset range from 61 to 68 years old.
In the biographical drama film Father Stu, the protagonist, a boxer-turned-Catholic priest, has sIBM. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Inclusion body myositis (IBM) (/maɪoʊˈsaɪtɪs/) (sometimes called sporadic inclusion body myositis, sIBM) is the most common inflammatory muscle disease in older adults. The disease is characterized by slowly progressive weakness and wasting of both proximal muscles (located on or close to the torso) and distal muscles (close to hands or feet), most apparent in the finger flexors and knee extensors. IBM is often confused with an entirely different class of diseases, called hereditary inclusion body myopathies (hIBM). The \"M\" in hIBM is an abbreviation for \"myopathy\" while the \"M\" in IBM is for \"myositis\". In IBM, two processes appear to occur in the muscles in parallel, one autoimmune and the other degenerative. Inflammation is evident from the invasion of muscle fibers by immune cells. Degeneration is characterized by the appearance of holes, deposits of abnormal proteins, and filamentous inclusions in the muscle fibers. sIBM is a rare disease, with a prevalence ranging from 1 to 71 individuals per million.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Weakness comes on slowly (over months to years) in an asymmetric manner and progresses steadily, leading to severe weakness and wasting of arm and leg muscles. IBM is more common in men than women. Patients may become unable to perform activities of daily living and most require assistive devices within 5 to 10 years of symptom onset. sIBM does not significantly affect life expectancy, although death related to malnutrition and respiratory failure can occur. The risk of serious injury due to falls is increased. There is no effective treatment for the disease as of 2019.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "IBM stands for \"inclusion body myositis: not \"inclusion body myopathy.\" The 'inclusion body' refers to a histological finding of rimmed vacuoles in muscle tissue. However, IBM does not refer to the collection of diseases that feature these inclusion bodies. It refers to a specific disease entity.",
"title": "Classification and terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Multiple genetic diseases that feature inclusion bodies have been grouped into \"hereditary inclusion body myopathies (hIBM).\" Myopathy is used because inflammation is not a prominent finding. There is inconsistency in what individual disease entities fall under the category of hIBM. The term \"sporadic inclusion body myositis\" (sIBM) was introduced as a way to refer to IBM to avoid confusion with hIBM. However, one author discourages use of sIBM, as it implies that IBM and hIBM differ only in inheritance; they actually have unrelated mechanisms and manifestations of disease.",
"title": "Classification and terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "sIBM causes progressive muscle weakness. How sIBM affects individuals is variable, including the age of onset (which generally varies from the forties upwards) and rate of progression. Because of this variability, there is no \"textbook case\".",
"title": "Signs and symptoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Common early symptoms include frequent tripping and falling and difficulty going up stairs. Foot drop in one or both feet can occur. Part of the cause for this dysfunction is the early involvement of the quadriceps muscles. Weakness of the tibialis anterior muscle is responsible for foot drop. Another common early symptom is trouble manipulating the fingers, such as difficulty with tasks such as turning doorknobs or gripping keys. Weakness of finger flexion and ankle dorsiflexion occurs early. sIBM also preferentially affects the wrist flexors, biceps, and triceps.",
"title": "Signs and symptoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "During the course of the illness, the patient's mobility is progressively restricted as it becomes difficult to bend down, reach for things, and walk quickly. Many patients say they have balance problems and fall easily, as the muscles cannot compensate for an off-balanced posture. Because sIBM makes the leg muscles weak and unstable, patients are very vulnerable to serious injury from tripping or falling down. Although pain has not been traditionally part of the \"textbook\" description, many patients report severe muscle pain, especially in the thighs.",
"title": "Signs and symptoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Progressive difficulty swallowing (dysphagia) is present in 40 to 85% of IBM cases and often leads to death from aspiration pneumonia.",
"title": "Signs and symptoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "IBM can also result in diminished capacity for aerobic exercise. This decline is most likely a consequence of the sedentary lifestyle leading to disuse muscle atrophy that is often associated with the symptoms of IBM (i.e. progressive muscle weakness, decreased mobility, and increased level of fatigue). Therefore, one focus of treatment should be the improvement of aerobic capacity.",
"title": "Signs and symptoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Patients with sIBM usually eventually need to resort to a cane or a walker and in most cases, a wheelchair eventually becomes a necessity.",
"title": "Signs and symptoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "\"The progressive course of s-IBM leads slowly to severe disability. Finger functions can become very impaired, such as manipulating pens, keys, buttons, and zippers, pulling handles, and firmly grasping handshakes. Arising from a chair becomes difficult. Walking becomes more precarious. Sudden falls, sometimes resulting in major injury to the skull or other bones, can occur, even from walking on minimally irregular ground or from other minor imbalances outside or in the home, due to weakness of quadriceps and gluteus muscles depriving the patient of automatic posture maintenance. A foot-drop can increase the likelihood of tripping. Dysphagia can occur, usually caused by upper esophageal constriction that often can be symptomatically improved, for several months to years, by bougie dilation per a GI or ENT physician. Respiratory muscle weakness can sometimes eventuate.\"",
"title": "Signs and symptoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The cause of IBM is unknown. IBM likely results from the interaction of a number of genetic and environmental factors.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There are two major theories about how sIBM is caused. One hypothesis suggests that the inflammation-immune reaction, caused by an unknown trigger – likely an undiscovered virus or an autoimmune disorder – is the primary cause of sIBM and that the degeneration of muscle fibers and protein abnormalities are secondary features. Despite the arguments \"in favor of an adaptive immune response in sIBM, a purely autoimmune hypothesis for sIBM is untenable because of the disease's resistance to most immunotherapy.\"",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The second school of thought advocates the theory that sIBM is a degenerative disorder related to aging of the muscle fibers and that abnormal, potentially pathogenic protein accumulations in myofibrils play a key causative role in sIBM (apparently before the immune system comes into play). This hypothesis emphasizes the abnormal intracellular accumulation of many proteins, protein aggregation and misfolding, proteosome inhibition, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "One review discusses the \"limitations in the beta-amyloid-mediated theory of IBM myofiber injury.\"",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Dalakas (2006) suggested that a chain of events causes IBM – some sort of virus, likely a retrovirus, triggers the cloning of T cells. These T cells appear to be driven by specific antigens to invade muscle fibers. In people with sIBM, the muscle cells display \"flags\" telling the immune system that they are infected or damaged (the muscles ubiquitously express MHC class I antigens) and this immune process leads to the death of muscle cells. The chronic stimulation of these antigens also causes stress inside the muscle cell in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and this ER stress may be enough to cause a self-sustaining T cell response (even after a virus has dissipated). In addition, this ER stress may cause the misfolding of protein. The ER is in charge of processing and folding molecules carrying antigens. In IBM, muscle fibers are overloaded with these major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules that carry the antigen protein pieces, leading to more ER stress and more protein misfolding.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A self-sustaining T cell response would make sIBM a type of autoimmune disorder. When studied carefully, it has not been possible to detect an ongoing viral infection in the muscles. One theory is that a chronic viral infection might be the initial triggering factor setting IBM in motion. There have been a handful of IBM cases – approximately 15 – that have shown clear evidence of a virus called HTLV-1. The HTLV-1 virus can cause leukemia, but in most cases lies dormant and most people end up being lifelong carriers of the virus. One review says that the best evidence points towards a connection with some type of retrovirus and that a retroviral infection combined with immune recognition of the retrovirus is enough to trigger the inflammation process.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "sIBM is not inherited and is not passed on to the children of IBM patients. There are genetic features that do not directly cause IBM but that appear to predispose a person to getting IBM – having this particular combination of genes increases one's susceptibility to getting IBM. Some 67% of IBM patients have a particular combination of human leukocyte antigen genes in a section of the 8.1 ancestral haplotype in the center of the MHC class II region. sIBM is not passed on from generation to generation, although the susceptibility region of genes may be.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "There are also several rare forms of hereditary inclusion body myopathy that are linked to specific genetic defects and that are passed on from generation to generation. Since these forms do not show features of muscle inflammation, they are classified as myopathies rather than forms of myositis. Because they do not display inflammation as a primary symptom, they may in fact be similar, but different diseases to sporadic inclusion body myositis. There are several different types, each inherited in different ways. See hereditary inclusion body myopathy.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A 2007 review concluded there is no indication that the genes responsible for the familial or hereditary conditions are involved in sIBM.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Elevated creatine kinase (CK) levels in the blood (at most ~10 times normal) are typical in sIBM but affected individuals can also present with normal CK levels. Electromyography (EMG) studies display variable abnormalities such as increased insertional activity, increased spontaneous activity (fibrillation potentials and sharp waves), and large/broad or short/narrow motor unit potentials. On EMG, recruitment patterns can be reduced or increased. Findings can vary even within the same muscle of an affected individual. Muscle biopsy may display several common findings including inflammatory cells invading muscle cells, vacuolar degeneration, and inclusion bodies of aggregations of multiple proteins. sIBM is a challenge to the pathologist and even with a biopsy, diagnosis can be ambiguous.",
"title": "Diagnosis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A diagnosis of inclusion body myositis was historically dependent on muscle biopsy results. Antibodies to cytoplasmic 5'-nucleotidase (cN1A; NT5C1A) have been strongly associated with the condition. However, other inflammatory conditions, such as lupus, can have a positive anti-NT5C1A. As of 2019, it remains to be established whether a positive anti-NT5C1A antibody test can make muscle biopsy unneeded.",
"title": "Diagnosis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Muscle imaging can help establish the pattern of muscle involvement and selection of a biopsy site.",
"title": "Diagnosis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "IBM is often initially misdiagnosed as polymyositis. A course of prednisone is typically completed with no improvement and eventually, sIBM is confirmed. sIBM weakness comes on over months or years and progresses steadily, whereas polymyositis has an onset of weeks or months. Muscular dystrophy (e.g., limb girdle muscular dystrophy) must be considered as well. sIBM can be mistaken for physical deconditioning.",
"title": "Diagnosis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Hereditary myopathies can mimic sIBM, both in signs and symptoms and in the appearance of muscle biopsies. A small percentage of those initially diagnosed with sIBM are later found to have pathogenic mutations in the genes VCP and SQSTM1, which are known to cause hIBM.",
"title": "Diagnosis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "IBM has a distinctive pattern of muscle involvement that distinguishes it among inflammatory myopathies. Characteristic of IBM is weakness of finger flexion, knee extension, and ankle dorsiflexion. Other inflammatory myopathies cause a proximal muscle weakness pattern, such as weakness of hip flexion, abduction, and extension, as well as shoulder abduction. IBM and other inflammatory myopathies both cause bicep/tricep weakness.",
"title": "Diagnosis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "There is no standard course of treatment to slow or stop the progression of the disease as of 2019. sIBM patients do not reliably respond to anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressant, or immunomodulatory medications. Most of disease management is supportive care. Prevention of falls is an important consideration. There is no consensus on exercise guidelines; however, physical therapy is recommended to teach the patient a home exercise program, to teach how to compensate during mobility-gait training with an assistive device, transfers and bed mobility. An exercise regimen preferentially minimizes a patient's risk of injury and corresponds to the patient's goals.",
"title": "Management"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "When sIBM was originally described, the major feature noted was muscle inflammation. Two other disorders were also known to display muscle inflammation, and sIBM was classified along with them. They are dermatomyositis (DM) and polymyositis (PM) and all three illnesses were called idiopathic (of unknown origin) myositis or inflammatory myopathies.",
"title": "Other related disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "It appears that sIBM and polymyositis share some features, especially the initial sequence of immune system activation, however, polymyositis comes on over weeks or months, does not display the subsequent muscle degeneration and protein abnormalities as seen in IBM, and as well, polymyositis tends to respond well to treatments, IBM does not. IBM is often confused with (misdiagnosed as) polymyositis. Polymyositis that does not respond to treatment is likely IBM.",
"title": "Other related disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Dermatomyositis shares a number of similar physical symptoms and histopathological traits as polymyositis, but exhibits a skin rash not seen in polymyositis or sIBM. It may have different root causes unrelated to either polymyositis or sIBM.",
"title": "Other related disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Mutations in valosin-containing protein (VCP) cause multisystem proteinopathy (MSP), which can present (among others) as a rare form of inclusion body myopathy.",
"title": "Other related disorders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Prevalence of disease in a rigorous meta-analysis in 2017 was 46 patients per million. The earliest published prevalence was in 2000 and put at 5 per million. A 2017 study in Ireland reported 112 per million. It is not believed that the disease prevalence is increasing with time, but rather diagnostics and reporting are improving.",
"title": "Epidemiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Estimates of the mean age of onset range from 61 to 68 years old.",
"title": "Epidemiology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the biographical drama film Father Stu, the protagonist, a boxer-turned-Catholic priest, has sIBM.",
"title": "Society and culture"
}
]
| Inclusion body myositis (IBM) is the most common inflammatory muscle disease in older adults. The disease is characterized by slowly progressive weakness and wasting of both proximal muscles and distal muscles, most apparent in the finger flexors and knee extensors. IBM is often confused with an entirely different class of diseases, called hereditary inclusion body myopathies (hIBM). The "M" in hIBM is an abbreviation for "myopathy" while the "M" in IBM is for "myositis". In IBM, two processes appear to occur in the muscles in parallel, one autoimmune and the other degenerative. Inflammation is evident from the invasion of muscle fibers by immune cells. Degeneration is characterized by the appearance of holes, deposits of abnormal proteins, and filamentous inclusions in the muscle fibers. sIBM is a rare disease, with a prevalence ranging from 1 to 71 individuals per million. Weakness comes on slowly in an asymmetric manner and progresses steadily, leading to severe weakness and wasting of arm and leg muscles. IBM is more common in men than women. Patients may become unable to perform activities of daily living and most require assistive devices within 5 to 10 years of symptom onset. sIBM does not significantly affect life expectancy, although death related to malnutrition and respiratory failure can occur. The risk of serious injury due to falls is increased. There is no effective treatment for the disease as of 2019. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-27T09:39:17Z | [
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"Template:Cite web",
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]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusion_body_myositis |
15,539 | Ion implantation | Ion implantation is a low-temperature process by which ions of one element are accelerated into a solid target, thereby changing the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of the target. Ion implantation is used in semiconductor device fabrication and in metal finishing, as well as in materials science research. The ions can alter the elemental composition of the target (if the ions differ in composition from the target) if they stop and remain in the target. Ion implantation also causes chemical and physical changes when the ions impinge on the target at high energy. The crystal structure of the target can be damaged or even destroyed by the energetic collision cascades, and ions of sufficiently high energy (tens of MeV) can cause nuclear transmutation.
Ion implantation equipment typically consists of an ion source, where ions of the desired element are produced, an accelerator, where the ions are electrostatically accelerated to a high energy or using radiofrequency, and a target chamber, where the ions impinge on a target, which is the material to be implanted. Thus ion implantation is a special case of particle radiation. Each ion is typically a single atom or molecule, and thus the actual amount of material implanted in the target is the integral over time of the ion current. This amount is called the dose. The currents supplied by implants are typically small (micro-amperes), and thus the dose which can be implanted in a reasonable amount of time is small. Therefore, ion implantation finds application in cases where the amount of chemical change required is small.
Typical ion energies are in the range of 10 to 500 keV (1,600 to 80,000 aJ). Energies in the range 1 to 10 keV (160 to 1,600 aJ) can be used, but result in a penetration of only a few nanometers or less. Energies lower than this result in very little damage to the target, and fall under the designation ion beam deposition. Higher energies can also be used: accelerators capable of 5 MeV (800,000 aJ) are common. However, there is often great structural damage to the target, and because the depth distribution is broad (Bragg peak), the net composition change at any point in the target will be small.
The energy of the ions, as well as the ion species and the composition of the target determine the depth of penetration of the ions in the solid: A monoenergetic ion beam will generally have a broad depth distribution. The average penetration depth is called the range of the ions. Under typical circumstances ion ranges will be between 10 nanometers and 1 micrometer. Thus, ion implantation is especially useful in cases where the chemical or structural change is desired to be near the surface of the target. Ions gradually lose their energy as they travel through the solid, both from occasional collisions with target atoms (which cause abrupt energy transfers) and from a mild drag from overlap of electron orbitals, which is a continuous process. The loss of ion energy in the target is called stopping and can be simulated with the binary collision approximation method.
Accelerator systems for ion implantation are generally classified into medium current (ion beam currents between 10 μA and ~2 mA), high current (ion beam currents up to ~30 mA), high energy (ion energies above 200 keV and up to 10 MeV), and very high dose (efficient implant of dose greater than 10ions/cm).
All varieties of ion implantation beamline designs contain general groups of functional components (see image). The first major segment of an ion beamline includes an ion source used to generate the ion species. The source is closely coupled to biased electrodes for extraction of the ions into the beamline and most often to some means of selecting a particular ion species for transport into the main accelerator section.
The "mass" selection (just like in mass spectrometer) is often accompanied by passage of the extracted ion beam through a magnetic field region with an exit path restricted by blocking apertures, or "slits", that allow only ions with a specific value of the product of mass and velocity/charge to continue down the beamline. If the target surface is larger than the ion beam diameter and a uniform distribution of implanted dose is desired over the target surface, then some combination of beam scanning and wafer motion is used. Finally, the implanted surface is coupled with some method for collecting the accumulated charge of the implanted ions so that the delivered dose can be measured in a continuous fashion and the implant process stopped at the desired dose level.
Semiconductor doping with boron, phosphorus, or arsenic is a common application of ion implantation. When implanted in a semiconductor, each dopant atom can create a charge carrier in the semiconductor after annealing. A hole can be created for a p-type dopant, and an electron for an n-type dopant. This modifies the conductivity of the semiconductor in its vicinity. The technique is used, for example, for adjusting the threshold voltage of a MOSFET.
Ion implantation was developed as a method of producing the p-n junction of photovoltaic devices in the late 1970s and early 1980s, along with the use of pulsed-electron beam for rapid annealing, although pulsed-electron beam for rapid annealing has not to date been used for commercial production.
One prominent method for preparing silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates from conventional silicon substrates is the SIMOX (separation by implantation of oxygen) process, wherein a buried high dose oxygen implant is converted to silicon oxide by a high temperature annealing process.
Mesotaxy is the term for the growth of a crystallographically matching phase underneath the surface of the host crystal (compare to epitaxy, which is the growth of the matching phase on the surface of a substrate). In this process, ions are implanted at a high enough energy and dose into a material to create a layer of a second phase, and the temperature is controlled so that the crystal structure of the target is not destroyed. The crystal orientation of the layer can be engineered to match that of the target, even though the exact crystal structure and lattice constant may be very different. For example, after the implantation of nickel ions into a silicon wafer, a layer of nickel silicide can be grown in which the crystal orientation of the silicide matches that of the silicon.
Nitrogen or other ions can be implanted into a tool steel target (drill bits, for example). The structural change caused by the implantation produces a surface compression in the steel, which prevents crack propagation and thus makes the material more resistant to fracture. The chemical change can also make the tool more resistant to corrosion.
In some applications, for example prosthetic devices such as artificial joints, it is desired to have surfaces very resistant to both chemical corrosion and wear due to friction. Ion implantation is used in such cases to engineer the surfaces of such devices for more reliable performance. As in the case of tool steels, the surface modification caused by ion implantation includes both a surface compression which prevents crack propagation and an alloying of the surface to make it more chemically resistant to corrosion.
Ion implantation can be used to achieve ion beam mixing, i.e. mixing up atoms of different elements at an interface. This may be useful for achieving graded interfaces or strengthening adhesion between layers of immiscible materials.
Ion implantation may be used to induce nano-dimensional particles in oxides such as sapphire and silica. The particles may be formed as a result of precipitation of the ion implanted species, they may be formed as a result of the production of a mixed oxide species that contains both the ion-implanted element and the oxide substrate, and they may be formed as a result of a reduction of the substrate, first reported by Hunt and Hampikian. Typical ion beam energies used to produce nanoparticles range from 50 to 150 keV, with ion fluences that range from 10 to 10 ions/cm. The table below summarizes some of the work that has been done in this field for a sapphire substrate. A wide variety of nanoparticles can be formed, with size ranges from 1 nm on up to 20 nm and with compositions that can contain the implanted species, combinations of the implanted ion and substrate, or that are comprised solely from the cation associated with the substrate.
Composite materials based on dielectrics such as sapphire that contain dispersed metal nanoparticles are promising materials for optoelectronics and nonlinear optics.
Each individual ion produces many point defects in the target crystal on impact such as vacancies and interstitials. Vacancies are crystal lattice points unoccupied by an atom: in this case the ion collides with a target atom, resulting in transfer of a significant amount of energy to the target atom such that it leaves its crystal site. This target atom then itself becomes a projectile in the solid, and can cause successive collision events. Interstitials result when such atoms (or the original ion itself) come to rest in the solid, but find no vacant space in the lattice to reside. These point defects can migrate and cluster with each other, resulting in dislocation loops and other defects.
Because ion implantation causes damage to the crystal structure of the target which is often unwanted, ion implantation processing is often followed by a thermal annealing. This can be referred to as damage recovery.
The amount of crystallographic damage can be enough to completely amorphize the surface of the target: i.e. it can become an amorphous solid (such a solid produced from a melt is called a glass). In some cases, complete amorphization of a target is preferable to a highly defective crystal: An amorphized film can be regrown at a lower temperature than required to anneal a highly damaged crystal. Amorphisation of the substrate can occur as a result of the beam damage. For example, yttrium ion implantation into sapphire at an ion beam energy of 150 keV to a fluence of 5*10 Y/cm produces an amorphous glassy layer approximately 110 nm in thickness, measured from the outer surface. [Hunt, 1999]
Some of the collision events result in atoms being ejected (sputtered) from the surface, and thus ion implantation will slowly etch away a surface. The effect is only appreciable for very large doses.
If there is a crystallographic structure to the target, and especially in semiconductor substrates where the crystal structure is more open, particular crystallographic directions offer much lower stopping than other directions. The result is that the range of an ion can be much longer if the ion travels exactly along a particular direction, for example the <110> direction in silicon and other diamond cubic materials. This effect is called ion channelling, and, like all the channelling effects, is highly nonlinear, with small variations from perfect orientation resulting in extreme differences in implantation depth. For this reason, most implantation is carried out a few degrees off-axis, where tiny alignment errors will have more predictable effects.
Ion channelling can be used directly in Rutherford backscattering and related techniques as an analytical method to determine the amount and depth profile of damage in crystalline thin film materials.
In fabricating wafers, toxic materials such as arsine and phosphine are often used in the ion implanter process. Other common carcinogenic, corrosive, flammable, or toxic elements include antimony, arsenic, phosphorus, and boron. Semiconductor fabrication facilities are highly automated, but residue of hazardous elements in machines can be encountered during servicing and in vacuum pump hardware.
High voltage power supplies used in ion accelerators necessary for ion implantation can pose a risk of electrical injury. In addition, high-energy atomic collisions can generate X-rays and, in some cases, other ionizing radiation and radionuclides. In addition to high voltage, particle accelerators such as radio frequency linear particle accelerators and laser wakefield plasma accelerators present other hazards. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Ion implantation is a low-temperature process by which ions of one element are accelerated into a solid target, thereby changing the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of the target. Ion implantation is used in semiconductor device fabrication and in metal finishing, as well as in materials science research. The ions can alter the elemental composition of the target (if the ions differ in composition from the target) if they stop and remain in the target. Ion implantation also causes chemical and physical changes when the ions impinge on the target at high energy. The crystal structure of the target can be damaged or even destroyed by the energetic collision cascades, and ions of sufficiently high energy (tens of MeV) can cause nuclear transmutation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Ion implantation equipment typically consists of an ion source, where ions of the desired element are produced, an accelerator, where the ions are electrostatically accelerated to a high energy or using radiofrequency, and a target chamber, where the ions impinge on a target, which is the material to be implanted. Thus ion implantation is a special case of particle radiation. Each ion is typically a single atom or molecule, and thus the actual amount of material implanted in the target is the integral over time of the ion current. This amount is called the dose. The currents supplied by implants are typically small (micro-amperes), and thus the dose which can be implanted in a reasonable amount of time is small. Therefore, ion implantation finds application in cases where the amount of chemical change required is small.",
"title": "General principle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Typical ion energies are in the range of 10 to 500 keV (1,600 to 80,000 aJ). Energies in the range 1 to 10 keV (160 to 1,600 aJ) can be used, but result in a penetration of only a few nanometers or less. Energies lower than this result in very little damage to the target, and fall under the designation ion beam deposition. Higher energies can also be used: accelerators capable of 5 MeV (800,000 aJ) are common. However, there is often great structural damage to the target, and because the depth distribution is broad (Bragg peak), the net composition change at any point in the target will be small.",
"title": "General principle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The energy of the ions, as well as the ion species and the composition of the target determine the depth of penetration of the ions in the solid: A monoenergetic ion beam will generally have a broad depth distribution. The average penetration depth is called the range of the ions. Under typical circumstances ion ranges will be between 10 nanometers and 1 micrometer. Thus, ion implantation is especially useful in cases where the chemical or structural change is desired to be near the surface of the target. Ions gradually lose their energy as they travel through the solid, both from occasional collisions with target atoms (which cause abrupt energy transfers) and from a mild drag from overlap of electron orbitals, which is a continuous process. The loss of ion energy in the target is called stopping and can be simulated with the binary collision approximation method.",
"title": "General principle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Accelerator systems for ion implantation are generally classified into medium current (ion beam currents between 10 μA and ~2 mA), high current (ion beam currents up to ~30 mA), high energy (ion energies above 200 keV and up to 10 MeV), and very high dose (efficient implant of dose greater than 10ions/cm).",
"title": "General principle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "All varieties of ion implantation beamline designs contain general groups of functional components (see image). The first major segment of an ion beamline includes an ion source used to generate the ion species. The source is closely coupled to biased electrodes for extraction of the ions into the beamline and most often to some means of selecting a particular ion species for transport into the main accelerator section.",
"title": "General principle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The \"mass\" selection (just like in mass spectrometer) is often accompanied by passage of the extracted ion beam through a magnetic field region with an exit path restricted by blocking apertures, or \"slits\", that allow only ions with a specific value of the product of mass and velocity/charge to continue down the beamline. If the target surface is larger than the ion beam diameter and a uniform distribution of implanted dose is desired over the target surface, then some combination of beam scanning and wafer motion is used. Finally, the implanted surface is coupled with some method for collecting the accumulated charge of the implanted ions so that the delivered dose can be measured in a continuous fashion and the implant process stopped at the desired dose level.",
"title": "General principle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Semiconductor doping with boron, phosphorus, or arsenic is a common application of ion implantation. When implanted in a semiconductor, each dopant atom can create a charge carrier in the semiconductor after annealing. A hole can be created for a p-type dopant, and an electron for an n-type dopant. This modifies the conductivity of the semiconductor in its vicinity. The technique is used, for example, for adjusting the threshold voltage of a MOSFET.",
"title": "Application in semiconductor device fabrication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Ion implantation was developed as a method of producing the p-n junction of photovoltaic devices in the late 1970s and early 1980s, along with the use of pulsed-electron beam for rapid annealing, although pulsed-electron beam for rapid annealing has not to date been used for commercial production.",
"title": "Application in semiconductor device fabrication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "One prominent method for preparing silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates from conventional silicon substrates is the SIMOX (separation by implantation of oxygen) process, wherein a buried high dose oxygen implant is converted to silicon oxide by a high temperature annealing process.",
"title": "Application in semiconductor device fabrication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Mesotaxy is the term for the growth of a crystallographically matching phase underneath the surface of the host crystal (compare to epitaxy, which is the growth of the matching phase on the surface of a substrate). In this process, ions are implanted at a high enough energy and dose into a material to create a layer of a second phase, and the temperature is controlled so that the crystal structure of the target is not destroyed. The crystal orientation of the layer can be engineered to match that of the target, even though the exact crystal structure and lattice constant may be very different. For example, after the implantation of nickel ions into a silicon wafer, a layer of nickel silicide can be grown in which the crystal orientation of the silicide matches that of the silicon.",
"title": "Application in semiconductor device fabrication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Nitrogen or other ions can be implanted into a tool steel target (drill bits, for example). The structural change caused by the implantation produces a surface compression in the steel, which prevents crack propagation and thus makes the material more resistant to fracture. The chemical change can also make the tool more resistant to corrosion.",
"title": "Application in metal finishing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In some applications, for example prosthetic devices such as artificial joints, it is desired to have surfaces very resistant to both chemical corrosion and wear due to friction. Ion implantation is used in such cases to engineer the surfaces of such devices for more reliable performance. As in the case of tool steels, the surface modification caused by ion implantation includes both a surface compression which prevents crack propagation and an alloying of the surface to make it more chemically resistant to corrosion.",
"title": "Application in metal finishing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Ion implantation can be used to achieve ion beam mixing, i.e. mixing up atoms of different elements at an interface. This may be useful for achieving graded interfaces or strengthening adhesion between layers of immiscible materials.",
"title": "Other applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Ion implantation may be used to induce nano-dimensional particles in oxides such as sapphire and silica. The particles may be formed as a result of precipitation of the ion implanted species, they may be formed as a result of the production of a mixed oxide species that contains both the ion-implanted element and the oxide substrate, and they may be formed as a result of a reduction of the substrate, first reported by Hunt and Hampikian. Typical ion beam energies used to produce nanoparticles range from 50 to 150 keV, with ion fluences that range from 10 to 10 ions/cm. The table below summarizes some of the work that has been done in this field for a sapphire substrate. A wide variety of nanoparticles can be formed, with size ranges from 1 nm on up to 20 nm and with compositions that can contain the implanted species, combinations of the implanted ion and substrate, or that are comprised solely from the cation associated with the substrate.",
"title": "Other applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Composite materials based on dielectrics such as sapphire that contain dispersed metal nanoparticles are promising materials for optoelectronics and nonlinear optics.",
"title": "Other applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Each individual ion produces many point defects in the target crystal on impact such as vacancies and interstitials. Vacancies are crystal lattice points unoccupied by an atom: in this case the ion collides with a target atom, resulting in transfer of a significant amount of energy to the target atom such that it leaves its crystal site. This target atom then itself becomes a projectile in the solid, and can cause successive collision events. Interstitials result when such atoms (or the original ion itself) come to rest in the solid, but find no vacant space in the lattice to reside. These point defects can migrate and cluster with each other, resulting in dislocation loops and other defects.",
"title": "Problems with ion implantation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Because ion implantation causes damage to the crystal structure of the target which is often unwanted, ion implantation processing is often followed by a thermal annealing. This can be referred to as damage recovery.",
"title": "Problems with ion implantation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The amount of crystallographic damage can be enough to completely amorphize the surface of the target: i.e. it can become an amorphous solid (such a solid produced from a melt is called a glass). In some cases, complete amorphization of a target is preferable to a highly defective crystal: An amorphized film can be regrown at a lower temperature than required to anneal a highly damaged crystal. Amorphisation of the substrate can occur as a result of the beam damage. For example, yttrium ion implantation into sapphire at an ion beam energy of 150 keV to a fluence of 5*10 Y/cm produces an amorphous glassy layer approximately 110 nm in thickness, measured from the outer surface. [Hunt, 1999]",
"title": "Problems with ion implantation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Some of the collision events result in atoms being ejected (sputtered) from the surface, and thus ion implantation will slowly etch away a surface. The effect is only appreciable for very large doses.",
"title": "Problems with ion implantation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "If there is a crystallographic structure to the target, and especially in semiconductor substrates where the crystal structure is more open, particular crystallographic directions offer much lower stopping than other directions. The result is that the range of an ion can be much longer if the ion travels exactly along a particular direction, for example the <110> direction in silicon and other diamond cubic materials. This effect is called ion channelling, and, like all the channelling effects, is highly nonlinear, with small variations from perfect orientation resulting in extreme differences in implantation depth. For this reason, most implantation is carried out a few degrees off-axis, where tiny alignment errors will have more predictable effects.",
"title": "Problems with ion implantation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Ion channelling can be used directly in Rutherford backscattering and related techniques as an analytical method to determine the amount and depth profile of damage in crystalline thin film materials.",
"title": "Problems with ion implantation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In fabricating wafers, toxic materials such as arsine and phosphine are often used in the ion implanter process. Other common carcinogenic, corrosive, flammable, or toxic elements include antimony, arsenic, phosphorus, and boron. Semiconductor fabrication facilities are highly automated, but residue of hazardous elements in machines can be encountered during servicing and in vacuum pump hardware.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "High voltage power supplies used in ion accelerators necessary for ion implantation can pose a risk of electrical injury. In addition, high-energy atomic collisions can generate X-rays and, in some cases, other ionizing radiation and radionuclides. In addition to high voltage, particle accelerators such as radio frequency linear particle accelerators and laser wakefield plasma accelerators present other hazards.",
"title": "Safety"
}
]
| Ion implantation is a low-temperature process by which ions of one element are accelerated into a solid target, thereby changing the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of the target. Ion implantation is used in semiconductor device fabrication and in metal finishing, as well as in materials science research. The ions can alter the elemental composition of the target if they stop and remain in the target. Ion implantation also causes chemical and physical changes when the ions impinge on the target at high energy. The crystal structure of the target can be damaged or even destroyed by the energetic collision cascades, and ions of sufficiently high energy can cause nuclear transmutation. | 2023-02-25T09:07:49Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_implantation |
|
15,570 | John Ford (disambiguation) | John Ford (1894–1973) was an American film director who won four Academy Awards.
John or Johnny Ford may also refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Ford (1894–1973) was an American film director who won four Academy Awards.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "John or Johnny Ford may also refer to:",
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| John Ford (1894–1973) was an American film director who won four Academy Awards. John or Johnny Ford may also refer to: | 2023-05-17T12:23:19Z | [
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"Template:Human name disambiguation",
"Template:TOC right"
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ford_(disambiguation) |
|
15,571 | John Woo | John Woo Yu-Sen SBS (Chinese: 吳宇森; born September 22, 1946) is a Hong Kong filmmaker, known as a highly influential figure in the action film genre. He is a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films (a crime action film genre involving Chinese triads) and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema, before working in Hollywood films. He is known for his highly chaotic "bullet ballet" action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia, film noir and Western cinema.
Considered one of the major figures of Hong Kong cinema, Woo has directed several notable action films including A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), Hard Boiled (1992) and Red Cliff (2008/2009). His Hollywood films include Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). He also created the comic series Seven Brothers, published by Virgin Comics. He is the founder and chairman of the production company Lion Rock Productions.
Woo is a winner of the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing, as well as a Golden Horse Award, an Asia Pacific Screen Award and a Saturn Award.
Woo was born as Wu Yu-seng (Ng Yu-sum in Cantonese) on September 22, 1946, in Guangzhou, China, amidst the chaotic Chinese Civil War. Due to school age restrictions, his mother changed his birth date to 22 September 1948, which is what remains on his passport. The Woo family, who were Protestant Christians, faced persecution during Mao Zedong's early anti-bourgeois purges after the communist revolution in China, and fled to Hong Kong when he was five.
Impoverished, the Woo family lived in the slums at Shek Kip Mei. His father was a teacher, though rendered unable to work by tuberculosis, and his mother was a manual laborer on construction sites. The family was rendered homeless by the Shek Kip Mei Fire of 1953. Charitable donations from disaster relief efforts enabled the family to relocate; however, violent crime had by then become commonplace in Hong Kong housing projects. At age three he was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Following surgery on his spine, he was unable to walk correctly until eight years old, and as a result his right leg is shorter than his left leg.
His Christian upbringing shows influences in his films. As a young boy, Woo had wanted to be a Christian minister. He later found a passion for movies influenced by the French New Wave especially Jean-Pierre Melville. Woo has said he was shy and had difficulty speaking, but found making movies a way to explore his feelings and thinking and would "use movies as a language".
Woo found respite in Bob Dylan and in American Westerns. He has stated the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made a particular impression on him in his youth: the device of two comrades, each of whom fire pistols from each hand, is a recurrent spectacle later found in his own work.
In 1969, Woo was hired as a script supervisor at Cathay Studios. In 1971, he became an assistant director at Shaw Studios. The same year, he watched Bruce Lee's The Big Boss, which left a strong impression on him due to how different it was from earlier martial arts films. Lee's films inspired to direct his own action films. His directorial debut in 1974 was the feature film The Young Dragons (鐵漢柔情, Tiě hàn róu qíng). In the kung fu film genre, it was choreographed by Jackie Chan, and featured dynamic camera-work and elaborate action scenes. The film was picked up by Golden Harvest Studio where he went on to direct more martial arts films. He later had success as a comedy director with Money Crazy (發錢寒, Fā qián hàn) (1977), starring Hong Kong comedian Ricky Hui and Richard Ng.
By the mid-1980s, Woo was experiencing occupational burnout. Several of his films were commercial disappointments, and he felt a distinct lack of creative control. It was during this period of self-imposed exile that director/producer Tsui Hark provided the funding for Woo to film a longtime pet project, A Better Tomorrow (1986). The story of two brothers—one a law enforcement officer, the other a criminal—was a financial blockbuster. A Better Tomorrow became a defining achievement in Hong Kong action cinema for its combination of emotional drama, slow-motion gunplay, and gritty atmospherics. Its signature visual device of two-handed, two-gunned shootouts within confined quarters—often referred to as "gun fu"—was novel, and its diametrical inversion of the "good-guys-bad guys" formula in its characterization would influence later American films.
Woo would make several more Heroic Bloodshed films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, nearly all starring Chow Yun-Fat. These violent gangster thrillers typically focus on men bound by honor and loyalty, at odds with contemporary values of impermanence and expediency. The protagonists of these films, therefore, may be said to present a common lineage with the Chinese literary tradition of loyalty among generals depicted in classics such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (三國演義).
Woo gained international recognition with the release of The Killer, which became the most successful Hong Kong film in America since Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973) and garnered Woo an American cult following. Bullet in the Head followed a year later, but failed to find an audience that accepted its political undertones, and failed to recoup its massive budget. Woo rebounded the following year with 1991's caper comedy Once a Thief, which was a financial success.
His last Hong Kong film before emigrating to the United States was Hard Boiled (1992), a police thriller that served as the antithesis of his previous glorification of gangsters. Most notable of its numerous action scenes is a 30-minute climax set within a hospital. One particular long take follows two characters for exactly 2 minutes and 42 seconds as they fight their way between hospital floors. On the Criterion DVD and laserdisc, this chapter is referenced as "2 minutes, 42 seconds." The film was considerably darker than most of Woo's previous films, depicting a police force nearly helpless to stop the influx of gangsters in the city, and the senseless slaughter of innocents. As a result, it did not match the success of his other films, but nonetheless garnered positive critical reception and became one of his most popular films in later years.
John Woo: Interviews includes a 36-page interview with Woo by editor Robert K. Elder, which documents the years 1968 to 1990. It includes Woo's early career in working on comedies, his work on kung fu films (during which time he gave Jackie Chan one of his first major film roles), and more recently, his gunpowder morality plays in Hong Kong.
An émigré in 1993, the director experienced difficulty in cultural adjustment while contracted with Universal Studios to direct Jean-Claude Van Damme in Hard Target. Like other foreign national film directors confronted with the Hollywood environment, Woo was unaccustomed to pervasive management concerns over matters such as limitations on violence and completion schedules. When initial cuts failed to yield an "R" rated film, the studio assumed control of the project and edited footage to produce a cut "suitable for American audiences". A "rough cut" of the film, supposedly the original unrated version, is still circulated among his admirers.
A three-year hiatus saw Woo next direct John Travolta and Christian Slater in Broken Arrow. A frenetic chase-themed film, the director once again found himself hampered by studio management and editorial concerns. Despite a larger budget than his previous Hard Target, the final feature lacked the trademark Woo style. Public reception saw modest financial success.
Reluctant to pursue projects which would necessarily entail front-office controls, the director cautiously rejected the script for Face/Off several times until it was rewritten to suit him. (The futuristic setting was changed to a contemporary one.) Paramount Pictures also offered the director significantly more freedom to exercise his speciality: emotional characterisation and elaborate action. A complex story of adversaries—each of whom surgically alters their identity—law enforcement agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage play a cat-and-mouse game, trapped in each other's outward appearance. Face/Off opened in 1997 to critical acclaim and strong attendance. Grosses in the United States exceeded $100 million. Face/Off was also nominated for an Academy Award in the category Sound Effects Editing (Mark Stoeckinger) at the 70th Academy Awards.
Around this period, Woo would also produce and direct several film and TV projects. In 1996, Woo produced and directed Once a Thief, a Canadian made-for-television remake of Woo's 1991 caper film. The teleplay subsequently spawned a television series of the same name, which Woo executive produced. In 1998, Woo directed Blackjack, which featured Dolph Lundgren as a leukophobic bodyguard who hunts down an assassin. The film was intended as a backdoor pilot for a television series, but was not picked up. That same year, Woo served as executive producer and action choreographer on Antoine Fuqua's directorial debut The Replacement Killers, which featured Chow Yun-Fat's first international starring role.
Later, Woo directed Mission: Impossible 2, the second entry in the Tom Cruise-led action film series. Despite receiving mixed reviews, Mission: Impossible 2 grossed over $549 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2000, as well as of Woo's career.
Woo made two additional films in Hollywood: Windtalkers (2002) and Paycheck (2003), both of which fared poorly at the box office and were summarily dismissed by critics. Also in 2003, Woo directed a television pilot entitled The Robinsons: Lost in Space for The WB Television Network, based on the 1960s television series Lost in Space. The pilot was not purchased, although bootleg copies have been made available by fans.
Woo also directed and produced the 2007 video game Stranglehold, which is a sequel to his 1992 film, Hard Boiled. The game features Woo as a multiplayer playable character. That same year he produced the anime movie, Appleseed: Ex Machina, the sequel to Shinji Aramaki's 2004 film Appleseed.
In 2008, Woo returned to Asian cinema with the completion of the two-part epic war film Red Cliff, based on a historical battle from Records of the Three Kingdoms. Produced on a grand scale, it is his first film in China since he emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States in 1993. Part 1 of the film was released throughout Asia in July 2008, to generally favourable reviews and strong attendance. Part 2 was released in China in January 2009.
John Woo was presented with a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2010.
He followed Red Cliff with another two-part film, The Crossing, in 2014 and 2015. Featuring an all-star cast, the four-hour epic tells the parallel stories of several characters who all ultimately find themselves passengers on the doomed Taiping steamer, which sank in 1949 en route from mainland China to Taiwan and has been described as "China's Titanic".
Following the box-office disappointment of The Crossing, Woo and producer Terence Chang disbanded Lion Rock Productions.
Woo followed up The Crossing with Manhunt, a remake of the 1976 Japanese crime thriller of the same name. Production started on Manhunt in June 2016 in Osaka and later reported to be finished filming by the end of November. The film, co-led by Chinese actor Zhang Hanyu and Japanese actor Masaharu Fukuyama, features a large Japanese cast including Yasuaki Kurata, Jun Kunimura, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Nanami Sakuraba, Naoto Takenaka and Tao Okamoto. In addition, Chinese actress Qi Wei, Korean actress Ha Ji-won and Woo's daughter Angeles were cast in key roles in the film. The film was released in China on 24 November 2017.
Following another hiatus, Woo returned to Hollywood to direct the action thriller Silent Night, where a normal father heads into the underworld to avenge his young son's death. Produced by Basil Iwanyk, the film starred Joel Kinnaman and was told entirely without dialogue. It was Woo's first American feature film since Paycheck (2003).
Woo commented in 2015 that he will remake The Killer for American audiences. Initially, actress Lupita Nyong'o had been cast for the lead role, however by March 2023, Nathalie Emmanuel was cast instead, with Omar Sy joining the film as the cop character. The film will be directed by Woo, produced by Universal Studios and released exclusively on Peacock.
In May 2008, Woo announced in Cannes that his next movie would be 1949, an epic love story set between the end of World War II and Chinese Civil War to the founding of the People's Republic of China, the shooting of which would take place in China and Taiwan. Its production was due to begin by the end of 2008, with a theatrical release planned in December 2009. However, in early April 2009, the film was cancelled due to script right issues. Reports indicated that Woo might be working on another World War II film, this time about the American Volunteer Group, or the Flying Tigers. The movie was tentatively titled "Flying Tiger Heroes" and Woo is reported as saying it will feature "The most spectacular aerial battle scenes ever seen in Chinese cinema." It was not clear whether Woo would not be directing the earlier war film, or whether it was put on the back burner. Woo has stated that Flying Tiger Heroes would be an "extremely important production" and will "emphasise US-Chinese friendship and the contributions of the Flying Tigers and the Yunnan people during the war of resistance." Woo has announced he will be using IMAX cameras to film the Flying Tigers project. "It has always been a dream of mine to explore shooting with IMAX cameras and to work in the IMAX format, and the strong visual element of this film is incredibly well-suited to the tastes of cinemagoers today [...] Using IMAX for Flying Tigers would create a new experience for the audience, and I think it would be another breakthrough for Chinese movies".
Woo has been married to Annie Woo Ngau Chun-lung since 1976. They have two daughters, Kimberley Woo, Angeles Woo, and a son Frank Woo. He is a Christian and told BBC in an interview that he believes in God and has utmost admiration for Jesus, whom he calls a "great philosopher".
His three favorite films are David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï.
Producer only | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Woo Yu-Sen SBS (Chinese: 吳宇森; born September 22, 1946) is a Hong Kong filmmaker, known as a highly influential figure in the action film genre. He is a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films (a crime action film genre involving Chinese triads) and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema, before working in Hollywood films. He is known for his highly chaotic \"bullet ballet\" action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia, film noir and Western cinema.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Considered one of the major figures of Hong Kong cinema, Woo has directed several notable action films including A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), Hard Boiled (1992) and Red Cliff (2008/2009). His Hollywood films include Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). He also created the comic series Seven Brothers, published by Virgin Comics. He is the founder and chairman of the production company Lion Rock Productions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Woo is a winner of the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing, as well as a Golden Horse Award, an Asia Pacific Screen Award and a Saturn Award.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Woo was born as Wu Yu-seng (Ng Yu-sum in Cantonese) on September 22, 1946, in Guangzhou, China, amidst the chaotic Chinese Civil War. Due to school age restrictions, his mother changed his birth date to 22 September 1948, which is what remains on his passport. The Woo family, who were Protestant Christians, faced persecution during Mao Zedong's early anti-bourgeois purges after the communist revolution in China, and fled to Hong Kong when he was five.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Impoverished, the Woo family lived in the slums at Shek Kip Mei. His father was a teacher, though rendered unable to work by tuberculosis, and his mother was a manual laborer on construction sites. The family was rendered homeless by the Shek Kip Mei Fire of 1953. Charitable donations from disaster relief efforts enabled the family to relocate; however, violent crime had by then become commonplace in Hong Kong housing projects. At age three he was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Following surgery on his spine, he was unable to walk correctly until eight years old, and as a result his right leg is shorter than his left leg.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "His Christian upbringing shows influences in his films. As a young boy, Woo had wanted to be a Christian minister. He later found a passion for movies influenced by the French New Wave especially Jean-Pierre Melville. Woo has said he was shy and had difficulty speaking, but found making movies a way to explore his feelings and thinking and would \"use movies as a language\".",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Woo found respite in Bob Dylan and in American Westerns. He has stated the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made a particular impression on him in his youth: the device of two comrades, each of whom fire pistols from each hand, is a recurrent spectacle later found in his own work.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1969, Woo was hired as a script supervisor at Cathay Studios. In 1971, he became an assistant director at Shaw Studios. The same year, he watched Bruce Lee's The Big Boss, which left a strong impression on him due to how different it was from earlier martial arts films. Lee's films inspired to direct his own action films. His directorial debut in 1974 was the feature film The Young Dragons (鐵漢柔情, Tiě hàn róu qíng). In the kung fu film genre, it was choreographed by Jackie Chan, and featured dynamic camera-work and elaborate action scenes. The film was picked up by Golden Harvest Studio where he went on to direct more martial arts films. He later had success as a comedy director with Money Crazy (發錢寒, Fā qián hàn) (1977), starring Hong Kong comedian Ricky Hui and Richard Ng.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "By the mid-1980s, Woo was experiencing occupational burnout. Several of his films were commercial disappointments, and he felt a distinct lack of creative control. It was during this period of self-imposed exile that director/producer Tsui Hark provided the funding for Woo to film a longtime pet project, A Better Tomorrow (1986). The story of two brothers—one a law enforcement officer, the other a criminal—was a financial blockbuster. A Better Tomorrow became a defining achievement in Hong Kong action cinema for its combination of emotional drama, slow-motion gunplay, and gritty atmospherics. Its signature visual device of two-handed, two-gunned shootouts within confined quarters—often referred to as \"gun fu\"—was novel, and its diametrical inversion of the \"good-guys-bad guys\" formula in its characterization would influence later American films.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Woo would make several more Heroic Bloodshed films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, nearly all starring Chow Yun-Fat. These violent gangster thrillers typically focus on men bound by honor and loyalty, at odds with contemporary values of impermanence and expediency. The protagonists of these films, therefore, may be said to present a common lineage with the Chinese literary tradition of loyalty among generals depicted in classics such as \"Romance of the Three Kingdoms\" (三國演義).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Woo gained international recognition with the release of The Killer, which became the most successful Hong Kong film in America since Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973) and garnered Woo an American cult following. Bullet in the Head followed a year later, but failed to find an audience that accepted its political undertones, and failed to recoup its massive budget. Woo rebounded the following year with 1991's caper comedy Once a Thief, which was a financial success.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "His last Hong Kong film before emigrating to the United States was Hard Boiled (1992), a police thriller that served as the antithesis of his previous glorification of gangsters. Most notable of its numerous action scenes is a 30-minute climax set within a hospital. One particular long take follows two characters for exactly 2 minutes and 42 seconds as they fight their way between hospital floors. On the Criterion DVD and laserdisc, this chapter is referenced as \"2 minutes, 42 seconds.\" The film was considerably darker than most of Woo's previous films, depicting a police force nearly helpless to stop the influx of gangsters in the city, and the senseless slaughter of innocents. As a result, it did not match the success of his other films, but nonetheless garnered positive critical reception and became one of his most popular films in later years.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "John Woo: Interviews includes a 36-page interview with Woo by editor Robert K. Elder, which documents the years 1968 to 1990. It includes Woo's early career in working on comedies, his work on kung fu films (during which time he gave Jackie Chan one of his first major film roles), and more recently, his gunpowder morality plays in Hong Kong.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "An émigré in 1993, the director experienced difficulty in cultural adjustment while contracted with Universal Studios to direct Jean-Claude Van Damme in Hard Target. Like other foreign national film directors confronted with the Hollywood environment, Woo was unaccustomed to pervasive management concerns over matters such as limitations on violence and completion schedules. When initial cuts failed to yield an \"R\" rated film, the studio assumed control of the project and edited footage to produce a cut \"suitable for American audiences\". A \"rough cut\" of the film, supposedly the original unrated version, is still circulated among his admirers.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A three-year hiatus saw Woo next direct John Travolta and Christian Slater in Broken Arrow. A frenetic chase-themed film, the director once again found himself hampered by studio management and editorial concerns. Despite a larger budget than his previous Hard Target, the final feature lacked the trademark Woo style. Public reception saw modest financial success.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Reluctant to pursue projects which would necessarily entail front-office controls, the director cautiously rejected the script for Face/Off several times until it was rewritten to suit him. (The futuristic setting was changed to a contemporary one.) Paramount Pictures also offered the director significantly more freedom to exercise his speciality: emotional characterisation and elaborate action. A complex story of adversaries—each of whom surgically alters their identity—law enforcement agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage play a cat-and-mouse game, trapped in each other's outward appearance. Face/Off opened in 1997 to critical acclaim and strong attendance. Grosses in the United States exceeded $100 million. Face/Off was also nominated for an Academy Award in the category Sound Effects Editing (Mark Stoeckinger) at the 70th Academy Awards.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Around this period, Woo would also produce and direct several film and TV projects. In 1996, Woo produced and directed Once a Thief, a Canadian made-for-television remake of Woo's 1991 caper film. The teleplay subsequently spawned a television series of the same name, which Woo executive produced. In 1998, Woo directed Blackjack, which featured Dolph Lundgren as a leukophobic bodyguard who hunts down an assassin. The film was intended as a backdoor pilot for a television series, but was not picked up. That same year, Woo served as executive producer and action choreographer on Antoine Fuqua's directorial debut The Replacement Killers, which featured Chow Yun-Fat's first international starring role.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Later, Woo directed Mission: Impossible 2, the second entry in the Tom Cruise-led action film series. Despite receiving mixed reviews, Mission: Impossible 2 grossed over $549 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2000, as well as of Woo's career.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Woo made two additional films in Hollywood: Windtalkers (2002) and Paycheck (2003), both of which fared poorly at the box office and were summarily dismissed by critics. Also in 2003, Woo directed a television pilot entitled The Robinsons: Lost in Space for The WB Television Network, based on the 1960s television series Lost in Space. The pilot was not purchased, although bootleg copies have been made available by fans.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Woo also directed and produced the 2007 video game Stranglehold, which is a sequel to his 1992 film, Hard Boiled. The game features Woo as a multiplayer playable character. That same year he produced the anime movie, Appleseed: Ex Machina, the sequel to Shinji Aramaki's 2004 film Appleseed.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 2008, Woo returned to Asian cinema with the completion of the two-part epic war film Red Cliff, based on a historical battle from Records of the Three Kingdoms. Produced on a grand scale, it is his first film in China since he emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States in 1993. Part 1 of the film was released throughout Asia in July 2008, to generally favourable reviews and strong attendance. Part 2 was released in China in January 2009.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "John Woo was presented with a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2010.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "He followed Red Cliff with another two-part film, The Crossing, in 2014 and 2015. Featuring an all-star cast, the four-hour epic tells the parallel stories of several characters who all ultimately find themselves passengers on the doomed Taiping steamer, which sank in 1949 en route from mainland China to Taiwan and has been described as \"China's Titanic\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Following the box-office disappointment of The Crossing, Woo and producer Terence Chang disbanded Lion Rock Productions.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Woo followed up The Crossing with Manhunt, a remake of the 1976 Japanese crime thriller of the same name. Production started on Manhunt in June 2016 in Osaka and later reported to be finished filming by the end of November. The film, co-led by Chinese actor Zhang Hanyu and Japanese actor Masaharu Fukuyama, features a large Japanese cast including Yasuaki Kurata, Jun Kunimura, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Nanami Sakuraba, Naoto Takenaka and Tao Okamoto. In addition, Chinese actress Qi Wei, Korean actress Ha Ji-won and Woo's daughter Angeles were cast in key roles in the film. The film was released in China on 24 November 2017.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Following another hiatus, Woo returned to Hollywood to direct the action thriller Silent Night, where a normal father heads into the underworld to avenge his young son's death. Produced by Basil Iwanyk, the film starred Joel Kinnaman and was told entirely without dialogue. It was Woo's first American feature film since Paycheck (2003).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Woo commented in 2015 that he will remake The Killer for American audiences. Initially, actress Lupita Nyong'o had been cast for the lead role, however by March 2023, Nathalie Emmanuel was cast instead, with Omar Sy joining the film as the cop character. The film will be directed by Woo, produced by Universal Studios and released exclusively on Peacock.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In May 2008, Woo announced in Cannes that his next movie would be 1949, an epic love story set between the end of World War II and Chinese Civil War to the founding of the People's Republic of China, the shooting of which would take place in China and Taiwan. Its production was due to begin by the end of 2008, with a theatrical release planned in December 2009. However, in early April 2009, the film was cancelled due to script right issues. Reports indicated that Woo might be working on another World War II film, this time about the American Volunteer Group, or the Flying Tigers. The movie was tentatively titled \"Flying Tiger Heroes\" and Woo is reported as saying it will feature \"The most spectacular aerial battle scenes ever seen in Chinese cinema.\" It was not clear whether Woo would not be directing the earlier war film, or whether it was put on the back burner. Woo has stated that Flying Tiger Heroes would be an \"extremely important production\" and will \"emphasise US-Chinese friendship and the contributions of the Flying Tigers and the Yunnan people during the war of resistance.\" Woo has announced he will be using IMAX cameras to film the Flying Tigers project. \"It has always been a dream of mine to explore shooting with IMAX cameras and to work in the IMAX format, and the strong visual element of this film is incredibly well-suited to the tastes of cinemagoers today [...] Using IMAX for Flying Tigers would create a new experience for the audience, and I think it would be another breakthrough for Chinese movies\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Woo has been married to Annie Woo Ngau Chun-lung since 1976. They have two daughters, Kimberley Woo, Angeles Woo, and a son Frank Woo. He is a Christian and told BBC in an interview that he believes in God and has utmost admiration for Jesus, whom he calls a \"great philosopher\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "His three favorite films are David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Producer only",
"title": "Filmography"
}
]
| John Woo Yu-Sen is a Hong Kong filmmaker, known as a highly influential figure in the action film genre. He is a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema, before working in Hollywood films. He is known for his highly chaotic "bullet ballet" action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia, film noir and Western cinema. Considered one of the major figures of Hong Kong cinema, Woo has directed several notable action films including A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), Hard Boiled (1992) and Red Cliff (2008/2009). His Hollywood films include Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). He also created the comic series Seven Brothers, published by Virgin Comics. He is the founder and chairman of the production company Lion Rock Productions. Woo is a winner of the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing, as well as a Golden Horse Award, an Asia Pacific Screen Award and a Saturn Award. | 2001-06-04T20:54:11Z | 2023-12-27T12:42:37Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woo |
15,573 | Japan | Japan (Japanese: 日本, [ɲihoɴ] , Nippon or Nihon, and formally 日本国, Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku) is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.
Japan has over 125 million inhabitants and is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its highly urbanized population on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy, although it is experiencing a population decline due to its very low birth rate.
Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC). Between the fourth and ninth centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution, and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution.
Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet. Japan is a developed country and a great power, with one of the largest economies by nominal GDP. Japan has renounced its right to declare war, though it maintains a Self-Defense Force that ranks as one of the world's strongest militaries. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology, and is one of the world's largest exporters and importers. It is part of multiple major international and intergovernmental institutions.
Japan is considered a cultural superpower as the culture of Japan is well known around the world, including its art, cuisine, film, music, and popular culture, which encompasses prominent manga, anime, and video game industries.
The name for Japan in Japanese is written using the kanji 日本 and is pronounced Nippon or Nihon. Before 日本 was adopted in the early 8th century, the country was known in China as Wa (倭, changed in Japan around 757 to 和) and in Japan by the endonym Yamato. Nippon, the original Sino-Japanese reading of the characters, is favored for official uses, including on Japanese banknotes and postage stamps. Nihon is typically used in everyday speech and reflects shifts in Japanese phonology during the Edo period. The characters 日本 mean "sun origin", which is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun".
The name "Japan" is based on Chinese pronunciations of 日本 and was introduced to European languages through early trade. In the 13th century, Marco Polo recorded the early Mandarin or Wu Chinese pronunciation of the characters 日本國 as Cipangu. The old Malay name for Japan, Japang or Japun, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect and encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia, who brought the word to Europe in the early 16th century. The first version of the name in English appears in a book published in 1577, which spelled the name as Giapan in a translation of a 1565 Portuguese letter.
A Paleolithic culture from around 30,000 BC constitutes the first known habitation of the islands of Japan. This was followed from around 14,500 BC (the start of the Jōmon period) by a Mesolithic to Neolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer culture characterized by pit dwelling and rudimentary agriculture. Clay vessels from the period are among the oldest surviving examples of pottery. From around 700 BC, the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people began to enter the archipelago from the Korean Peninsula, intermingling with the Jōmon; the Yayoi period saw the introduction of practices including wet-rice farming, a new style of pottery, and metallurgy from China and Korea. According to legend, Emperor Jimmu (grandson of Amaterasu) founded a kingdom in central Japan in 660 BC, beginning a continuous imperial line.
Japan first appears in written history in the Chinese Book of Han, completed in 111 AD. Buddhism was introduced to Japan from Baekje (a Korean kingdom) in 552, but the development of Japanese Buddhism was primarily influenced by China. Despite early resistance, Buddhism was promoted by the ruling class, including figures like Prince Shōtoku, and gained widespread acceptance beginning in the Asuka period (592–710).
In 645, the government led by Prince Naka no Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari devised and implemented the far-reaching Taika Reforms. The Reform began with land reform, based on Confucian ideas and philosophies from China. It nationalized all land in Japan, to be distributed equally among cultivators, and ordered the compilation of a household registry as the basis for a new system of taxation. The true aim of the reforms was to bring about greater centralization and to enhance the power of the imperial court, which was also based on the governmental structure of China. Envoys and students were dispatched to China to learn about Chinese writing, politics, art, and religion. The Jinshin War of 672, a bloody conflict between Prince Ōama and his nephew Prince Ōtomo, became a major catalyst for further administrative reforms. These reforms culminated with the promulgation of the Taihō Code, which consolidated existing statutes and established the structure of the central and subordinate local governments. These legal reforms created the ritsuryō state, a system of Chinese-style centralized government that remained in place for half a millennium.
The Nara period (710–784) marked the emergence of a Japanese state centered on the Imperial Court in Heijō-kyō (modern Nara). The period is characterized by the appearance of a nascent literary culture with the completion of the Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720), as well as the development of Buddhist-inspired artwork and architecture. A smallpox epidemic in 735–737 is believed to have killed as much as one-third of Japan's population. In 784, Emperor Kanmu moved the capital, settling on Heian-kyō (modern-day Kyoto) in 794. This marked the beginning of the Heian period (794–1185), during which a distinctly indigenous Japanese culture emerged. Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji and the lyrics of Japan's national anthem "Kimigayo" were written during this time.
Japan's feudal era was characterized by the emergence and dominance of a ruling class of warriors, the samurai. In 1185, following the defeat of the Taira clan by the Minamoto clan in the Genpei War, samurai Minamoto no Yoritomo established a military government at Kamakura. After Yoritomo's death, the Hōjō clan came to power as regents for the shōgun. The Zen school of Buddhism was introduced from China in the Kamakura period (1185–1333) and became popular among the samurai class. The Kamakura shogunate repelled Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281 but was eventually overthrown by Emperor Go-Daigo. Go-Daigo was defeated by Ashikaga Takauji in 1336, beginning the Muromachi period (1336–1573). The succeeding Ashikaga shogunate failed to control the feudal warlords (daimyō) and a civil war began in 1467, opening the century-long Sengoku period ("Warring States").
During the 16th century, Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries reached Japan for the first time, initiating direct commercial and cultural exchange between Japan and the West. Oda Nobunaga used European technology and firearms to conquer many other daimyō; his consolidation of power began what was known as the Azuchi–Momoyama period. After the death of Nobunaga in 1582, his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, unified the nation in the early 1590s and launched two unsuccessful invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597.
Tokugawa Ieyasu served as regent for Hideyoshi's son Toyotomi Hideyori and used his position to gain political and military support. When open war broke out, Ieyasu defeated rival clans in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. He was appointed shōgun by Emperor Go-Yōzei in 1603 and established the Tokugawa shogunate at Edo (modern Tokyo). The shogunate enacted measures including buke shohatto, as a code of conduct to control the autonomous daimyō, and in 1639 the isolationist sakoku ("closed country") policy that spanned the two and a half centuries of tenuous political unity known as the Edo period (1603–1868). Modern Japan's economic growth began in this period, resulting in roads and water transportation routes, as well as financial instruments such as futures contracts, banking and insurance of the Osaka rice brokers. The study of Western sciences (rangaku) continued through contact with the Dutch enclave in Nagasaki. The Edo period gave rise to kokugaku ("national studies"), the study of Japan by the Japanese.
The United States Navy sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry to force the opening of Japan to the outside world. Arriving at Uraga with four "Black Ships" in July 1853, the Perry Expedition resulted in the March 1854 Convention of Kanagawa. Subsequent similar treaties with other Western countries brought economic and political crises. The resignation of the shōgun led to the Boshin War and the establishment of a centralized state nominally unified under the emperor (the Meiji Restoration). Adopting Western political, judicial, and military institutions, the Cabinet organized the Privy Council, introduced the Meiji Constitution (November 29, 1890), and assembled the Imperial Diet. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Empire of Japan emerged as the most developed states in Asia and as an industrialized world power that pursued military conflict to expand its sphere of influence. After victories in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan gained control of Taiwan, Korea and the southern half of Sakhalin. The Japanese population doubled from 35 million in 1873 to 70 million by 1935, with a significant shift to urbanization.
The early 20th century saw a period of Taishō democracy (1912–1926) overshadowed by increasing expansionism and militarization. World War I allowed Japan, which joined the side of the victorious Allies, to capture German possessions in the Pacific and in China. The 1920s saw a political shift towards statism, a period of lawlessness following the 1923 Great Tokyo Earthquake, the passing of laws against political dissent, and a series of attempted coups. This process accelerated during the 1930s, spawning several radical nationalist groups that shared a hostility to liberal democracy and a dedication to expansion in Asia. In 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria; following international condemnation of the occupation, it resigned from the League of Nations two years later. In 1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany; the 1940 Tripartite Pact made it one of the Axis Powers.
The Empire of Japan invaded other parts of China in 1937, precipitating the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). In 1940, the Empire invaded French Indochina, after which the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan. On December 7–8, 1941, Japanese forces carried out surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor, as well as on British forces in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, among others, beginning World War II in the Pacific. Throughout areas occupied by Japan during the war, numerous abuses were committed against local inhabitants, with many forced into sexual slavery. After Allied victories during the next four years, which culminated in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender. The war cost Japan its colonies and millions of lives. The Allies (led by the United States) repatriated millions of Japanese settlers from their former colonies and military camps throughout Asia, largely eliminating the Japanese Empire and its influence over the territories it conquered. The Allies convened the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to prosecute Japanese leaders for war crimes.
In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution emphasizing liberal democratic practices. The Allied occupation ended with the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952, and Japan was granted membership in the United Nations in 1956. A period of record growth propelled Japan to become the second-largest economy in the world; this ended in the mid-1990s after the popping of an asset price bubble, beginning the "Lost Decade". In 2011, Japan suffered one of the largest earthquakes in its recorded history, triggering the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. On May 1, 2019, after the historic abdication of Emperor Akihito, his son Naruhito became Emperor, beginning the Reiwa era.
Japan comprises 14,125 islands extending along the Pacific coast of Asia. It stretches over 3000 km (1900 mi) northeast–southwest from the Sea of Okhotsk to the East China Sea. The country's five main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. The Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, are a chain to the south of Kyushu. The Nanpō Islands are south and east of the main islands of Japan. Together they are often known as the Japanese archipelago. As of 2019, Japan's territory is 377,975.24 km (145,937.06 sq mi). Japan has the sixth-longest coastline in the world at 29,751 km (18,486 mi). Because of its far-flung outlying islands, Japan has the eighth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi).
The Japanese archipelago is 67% forests and 14% agricultural. The primarily rugged and mountainous terrain is restricted for habitation. Thus the habitable zones, mainly in the coastal areas, have very high population densities: Japan is the 40th most densely populated country even without considering that local concentration. Honshu has the highest population density at 450 persons/km (1200/sq mi) as of 2010, while Hokkaido has the lowest density of 64.5 persons/km as of 2016. As of 2014, approximately 0.5% of Japan's total area is reclaimed land (umetatechi). Lake Biwa is an ancient lake and the country's largest freshwater lake.
Japan is substantially prone to earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions because of its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire. It has the 17th highest natural disaster risk as measured in the 2016 World Risk Index. Japan has 111 active volcanoes. Destructive earthquakes, often resulting in tsunami, occur several times each century; the 1923 Tokyo earthquake killed over 140,000 people. More recent major quakes are the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, which triggered a large tsunami.
The climate of Japan is predominantly temperate but varies greatly from north to south. The northernmost region, Hokkaido, has a humid continental climate with long, cold winters and very warm to cool summers. Precipitation is not heavy, but the islands usually develop deep snowbanks in the winter.
In the Sea of Japan region on Honshu's west coast, northwest winter winds bring heavy snowfall during winter. In the summer, the region sometimes experiences extremely hot temperatures because of the foehn. The Central Highland has a typical inland humid continental climate, with large temperature differences between summer and winter. The mountains of the Chūgoku and Shikoku regions shelter the Seto Inland Sea from seasonal winds, bringing mild weather year-round.
The Pacific coast features a humid subtropical climate that experiences milder winters with occasional snowfall and hot, humid summers because of the southeast seasonal wind. The Ryukyu and Nanpō Islands have a subtropical climate, with warm winters and hot summers. Precipitation is very heavy, especially during the rainy season. The main rainy season begins in early May in Okinawa, and the rain front gradually moves north. In late summer and early autumn, typhoons often bring heavy rain. According to the Environment Ministry, heavy rainfall and increasing temperatures have caused problems in the agricultural industry and elsewhere. The highest temperature ever measured in Japan, 41.1 °C (106.0 °F), was recorded on July 23, 2018, and repeated on August 17, 2020.
Japan has nine forest ecoregions which reflect the climate and geography of the islands. They range from subtropical moist broadleaf forests in the Ryūkyū and Bonin Islands, to temperate broadleaf and mixed forests in the mild climate regions of the main islands, to temperate coniferous forests in the cold, winter portions of the northern islands. Japan has over 90,000 species of wildlife as of 2019, including the brown bear, the Japanese macaque, the Japanese raccoon dog, the small Japanese field mouse, and the Japanese giant salamander.
A large network of national parks has been established to protect important areas of flora and fauna as well as 52 Ramsar wetland sites. Four sites have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for their outstanding natural value.
In the period of rapid economic growth after World War II, environmental policies were downplayed by the government and industrial corporations; as a result, environmental pollution was widespread in the 1950s and 1960s. Responding to rising concerns, the government introduced environmental protection laws in 1970. The oil crisis in 1973 also encouraged the efficient use of energy because of Japan's lack of natural resources.
Japan ranks 20th in the 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which measures a country's commitment to environmental sustainability. Japan is the world's fifth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. As the host and signatory of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Japan is under treaty obligation to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and to take other steps to curb climate change. In 2020 the government of Japan announced a target of carbon-neutrality by 2050. Environmental issues include urban air pollution (NOx, suspended particulate matter, and toxics), waste management, water eutrophication, nature conservation, climate change, chemical management and international co-operation for conservation.
Japan is a unitary state and constitutional monarchy in which the power of the Emperor is limited to a ceremonial role. Executive power is instead wielded by the Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet, whose sovereignty is vested in the Japanese people. Naruhito is the Emperor of Japan, having succeeded his father Akihito upon his accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne in 2019.
Japan's legislative organ is the National Diet, a bicameral parliament. It consists of a lower House of Representatives with 465 seats, elected by popular vote every four years or when dissolved, and an upper House of Councillors with 245 seats, whose popularly-elected members serve six-year terms. There is universal suffrage for adults over 18 years of age, with a secret ballot for all elected offices. The prime minister as the head of government has the power to appoint and dismiss Ministers of State, and is appointed by the emperor after being designated from among the members of the Diet. Fumio Kishida is Japan's prime minister; he took office after winning the 2021 Liberal Democratic Party leadership election. The right-wing big tent Liberal Democratic Party has been the dominant party in the country since the 1950s, often called the 1955 System.
Historically influenced by Chinese law, the Japanese legal system developed independently during the Edo period through texts such as Kujikata Osadamegaki. Since the late 19th century, the judicial system has been largely based on the civil law of Europe, notably Germany. In 1896, Japan established a civil code based on the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, which remains in effect with post–World War II modifications. The Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947, is the oldest unamended constitution in the world. Statutory law originates in the legislature, and the constitution requires that the emperor promulgate legislation passed by the Diet without giving him the power to oppose legislation. The main body of Japanese statutory law is called the Six Codes. Japan's court system is divided into four basic tiers: the Supreme Court and three levels of lower courts.
According to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the majority of members of the Japanese parliament are male and range in age from 50 to 70. In April 2023, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, Ryosuke Takashima, 26, is Japan's youngest-ever mayor.
Japan is divided into 47 prefectures, each overseen by an elected governor and legislature. In the following table, the prefectures are grouped by region:
A member state of the United Nations since 1956, Japan is one of the G4 countries seeking reform of the Security Council. Japan is a member of the G7, APEC, and "ASEAN Plus Three", and is a participant in the East Asia Summit. It is the world's fifth-largest donor of official development assistance, donating US$9.2 billion in 2014. In 2021, Japan had the fourth-largest diplomatic network in the world.
Japan has close economic and military relations with the United States, with which it maintains a security alliance. The United States is a major market for Japanese exports and a major source of Japanese imports, and is committed to defending the country, with military bases in Japan. Japan is also a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (more commonly "the Quad"), a multilateral security dialogue reformed in 2017 aiming to limit Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region, along with the United States, Australia, and India, reflecting existing relations and patterns of cooperation.
Japan is engaged in several territorial disputes with its neighbors. Japan contests Russia's control of the Southern Kuril Islands, which were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945. South Korea's control of the Liancourt Rocks is acknowledged but not accepted as they are claimed by Japan. Japan has strained relations with China and Taiwan over the Senkaku Islands and the status of Okinotorishima.
Japan is the second-highest-ranked Asian country in the 2022 Global Peace Index, after Singapore. It spent 1% of its total GDP on its defence budget in 2020, and maintained the tenth-largest military budget in the world in 2022. The country's military (the Japan Self-Defense Forces) is restricted by Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which renounces Japan's right to declare war or use military force in international disputes. The military is governed by the Ministry of Defense, and primarily consists of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. The deployment of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan marked the first overseas use of Japan's military since World War II.
The Government of Japan has been making changes to its security policy which include the establishment of the National Security Council, the adoption of the National Security Strategy, and the development of the National Defense Program Guidelines. In May 2014, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan wanted to shed the passiveness it has maintained since the end of World War II and take more responsibility for regional security. In December 2022, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida further confirmed this trend, instructing the government to increase spending by 65% until 2027. Recent tensions, particularly with North Korea and China, have reignited the debate over the status of the JSDF and its relation to Japanese society.
Domestic security in Japan is provided mainly by the prefectural police departments, under the oversight of the National Police Agency. As the central coordinating body for the Prefectural Police Departments, the National Police Agency is administered by the National Public Safety Commission. The Special Assault Team comprises national-level counter-terrorism tactical units that cooperate with territorial-level Anti-Firearms Squads and Counter-NBC Terrorism Squads. The Japan Coast Guard guards territorial waters surrounding Japan and uses surveillance and control countermeasures against smuggling, marine environmental crime, poaching, piracy, spy ships, unauthorized foreign fishing vessels, and illegal immigration.
The Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law strictly regulates the civilian ownership of guns, swords, and other weaponry. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, among the member states of the UN that report statistics as of 2018, the incidence rates of violent crimes such as murder, abduction, sexual violence, and robbery are very low in Japan.
Japan has faced criticism for not allowing same-sex marriages, despite a majority of Japanese people supporting marriage equality. It is considered to be the least developed out of the G7 countries in terms of LGBT equality. Japan does not explicitly legally ban racial or religious discrimination.
Japan has the world's fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP, after that of the United States, China and Germany; and the fourth-largest economy by PPP. As of 2021, Japan's labor force is the world's eighth-largest, consisting of over 68.6 million workers. As of 2022, Japan has a low unemployment rate of around 2.6%. Its poverty rate is the second highest among the G7 countries, and exceeds 15.7% of the population. Japan has the highest ratio of public debt to GDP among advanced economies, with national debt estimated at 248% relative to GDP as of 2022. The Japanese yen is the world's third-largest reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro.
Japan was the world's fifth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer in 2022. Its exports amounted to 18.2% of its total GDP in 2021. As of 2022, Japan's main export markets were China (23.9 percent, including Hong Kong) and the United States (18.5 percent). Its main exports are motor vehicles, iron and steel products, semiconductors, and auto parts. Japan's main import markets as of 2022 were China (21.1 percent), the United States (9.9 percent), and Australia (9.8 percent). Japan's main imports are machinery and equipment, fossil fuels, foodstuffs, chemicals, and raw materials for its industries.
The Japanese variant of capitalism has many distinct features: keiretsu enterprises are influential, and lifetime employment and seniority-based career advancement are common in the Japanese work environment. Japan has a large cooperative sector, with three of the world's ten largest cooperatives, including the largest consumer cooperative and the largest agricultural cooperative as of 2018. It ranks highly for competitiveness and economic freedom. Japan ranked sixth in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2019. It attracted 31.9 million international tourists in 2019, and was ranked eleventh in the world in 2019 for inbound tourism. The 2021 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Japan first in the world out of 117 countries. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $46.1 billion.
The Japanese agricultural sector accounts for about 1.2% of the total country's GDP as of 2018. Only 11.5% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation. Because of this lack of arable land, a system of terraces is used to farm in small areas. This results in one of the world's highest levels of crop yields per unit area, with an agricultural self-sufficiency rate of about 50% as of 2018. Japan's small agricultural sector is highly subsidized and protected. There has been a growing concern about farming as farmers are aging with a difficult time finding successors.
Japan ranked seventh in the world in tonnage of fish caught and captured 3,167,610 metric tons of fish in 2016, down from an annual average of 4,000,000 tons over the previous decade. Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch, prompting critiques that Japan's fishing is leading to depletion in fish stocks such as tuna. Japan has sparked controversy by supporting commercial whaling.
Japan has a large industrial capacity and is home to some of the "largest and most technologically advanced producers of motor vehicles, machine tools, steel and nonferrous metals, ships, chemical substances, textiles, and processed foods". Japan's industrial sector makes up approximately 27.5% of its GDP. The country's manufacturing output is the third highest in the world as of 2019.
Japan is the third-largest automobile producer in the world as of 2022 and is home to Toyota, the world's largest automobile company by vehicle production. Quantitatively, Japan was the world's largest exporter of cars in 2021, though it was overtaken by China in early 2023. The Japanese shipbuilding industry faces increasing competition from its East Asian neighbors, South Korea and China; as a 2020 government initiative identified this sector as a target for increasing exports.
Japan's service sector accounts for about 69.5% of its total economic output as of 2021. Banking, retail, transportation, and telecommunications are all major industries, with companies such as Toyota, Mitsubishi UFJ, -NTT, ÆON, Softbank, Hitachi, and Itochu listed as among the largest in the world.
Japan is a leading country in scientific research, particularly in the natural sciences and engineering. The country ranked 13th in the Global Innovation Index in 2023. Relative to gross domestic product, Japan's research and development budget is the second highest in the world, with 867,000 researchers sharing a 19-trillion-yen research and development budget as of 2017. The country has produced twenty-two Nobel laureates in either physics, chemistry or medicine, and three Fields medalists.
Japan leads the world in robotics production and use, supplying 45% of the world's 2020 total; down from 55% in 2017. Japan has the second highest number of researchers in science and technology per capita in the world with 14 per 1000 employees.
Once considered the strongest in the world, the Japanese consumer electronics industry is in a state of decline as regional competition arises in neighboring East Asian countries such as South Korea and China. However, Japan's video game sector remains a major industry. In 2014, Japan's consumer video game market grossed $9.6 billion, with $5.8 billion coming from mobile gaming. By 2015, Japan had become the world's fourth-largest PC game market, behind only China, the United States, and South Korea.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is Japan's national space agency; it conducts space, planetary, and aviation research, and leads development of rockets and satellites. It is a participant in the International Space Station: the Japanese Experiment Module (Kibō) was added to the station during Space Shuttle assembly flights in 2008. The space probe Akatsuki was launched in 2010 and achieved orbit around Venus in 2015. Japan's plans in space exploration include building a Moon base and landing astronauts by 2030. In 2007, it launched lunar explorer SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) from Tanegashima Space Center. The largest lunar mission since the Apollo program, its purpose was to gather data on the Moon's origin and evolution. The explorer entered a lunar orbit on October 4, 2007, and was deliberately crashed into the Moon on June 11, 2009.
Japan has invested heavily in transportation infrastructure. The country has approximately 1,200,000 kilometers (750,000 miles) of roads made up of 1,000,000 kilometers (620,000 miles) of city, town and village roads, 130,000 kilometers (81,000 miles) of prefectural roads, 54,736 kilometers (34,011 miles) of general national highways and 7641 kilometers (4748 miles) of national expressways as of 2017.
Since privatization in 1987, dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional and local passenger transportation markets; major companies include seven JR enterprises, Kintetsu, Seibu Railway and Keio Corporation. The high-speed Shinkansen (bullet trains) that connect major cities are known for their safety and punctuality.
There are 175 airports in Japan as of 2013. The largest domestic airport, Haneda Airport in Tokyo, was Asia's second-busiest airport in 2019. The Keihin and Hanshin superport hubs are among the largest in the world, at 7.98 and 5.22 million TEU respectively as of 2017.
As of 2019, 37.1% of energy in Japan was produced from petroleum, 25.1% from coal, 22.4% from natural gas, 3.5% from hydropower and 2.8% from nuclear power, among other sources. Nuclear power was down from 11.2 percent in 2010. By May 2012 all of the country's nuclear power plants had been taken offline because of ongoing public opposition following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, though government officials continued to try to sway public opinion in favor of returning at least some to service. The Sendai Nuclear Power Plant restarted in 2015, and since then several other nuclear power plants have been restarted. Japan lacks significant domestic reserves and has a heavy dependence on imported energy. The country has therefore aimed to diversify its sources and maintain high levels of energy efficiency.
Responsibility for the water and sanitation sector is shared between the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in charge of water supply for domestic use; the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, in charge of water resources development as well as sanitation; the Ministry of the Environment, in charge of ambient water quality and environmental preservation; and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, in charge of performance benchmarking of utilities. Access to an improved water source is universal in Japan. About 98% of the population receives piped water supply from public utilities.
Japan has a population of almost 125 million, of which nearly 122 million are Japanese nationals (2022 estimates). A small population of foreign residents makes up the remainder. Japan is the world's fastest aging country and has the highest proportion of elderly citizens of any country, comprising one-third of its total population; this is the result of a post–World War II baby boom, which was followed by an increase in life expectancy and a decrease in birth rates. Japan has a total fertility rate of 1.4, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1, and is among the world's lowest; it has a median age of 48.4, the highest in the world. As of 2020, over 28.7 percent of the population is over 65, or more than one in four out of the Japanese population. As a growing number of younger Japanese are not marrying or remaining childless, Japan's population is expected to drop to around 88 million by 2065.
The changes in demographic structure have created several social issues, particularly a decline in the workforce population and an increase in the cost of social security benefits. The Government of Japan projects that there will be almost one elderly person for each person of working age by 2060. Immigration and birth incentives are sometimes suggested as a solution to provide younger workers to support the nation's aging population. On April 1, 2019, Japan's revised immigration law was enacted, protecting the rights of foreign workers to help reduce labor shortages in certain sectors.
In 2019, 92% of the total Japanese population lived in cities. The capital city, Tokyo, has a population of 13.9 million (2022). It is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, the biggest metropolitan area in the world with 38,140,000 people (2016). Japan is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with the Japanese people forming 98.1% of the country's population. Minority ethnic groups in the country include the indigenous Ainu and Ryukyuan people. Zainichi Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Brazilians mostly of Japanese descent, and Peruvians mostly of Japanese descent are also among Japan's small minority groups. Burakumin make up a social minority group.
Japan's constitution guarantees full religious freedom. Upper estimates suggest that 84–96 percent of the Japanese population subscribe to Shinto as its indigenous religion. However, these estimates are based on people affiliated with a temple, rather than the number of true believers. Many Japanese people practice both Shinto and Buddhism; they can either identify with both religions or describe themselves as non-religious or spiritual. The level of participation in religious ceremonies as a cultural tradition remains high, especially during festivals and occasions such as the first shrine visit of the New Year. Taoism and Confucianism from China have also influenced Japanese beliefs and customs.
Christianity was first introduced into Japan by Jesuit missions starting in 1549. Today, 1% to 1.5% of the population are Christians. Throughout the latest century, Western customs originally related to Christianity (including Western style weddings, Valentine's Day and Christmas) have become popular as secular customs among many Japanese.
About 90% of those practicing Islam in Japan are foreign-born migrants as of 2016. As of 2018 there were an estimated 105 mosques and 200,000 Muslims in Japan, 43,000 of which were Japanese nationals. Other minority religions include Hinduism, Judaism, and Baháʼí Faith, as well as the animist beliefs of the Ainu.
The Japanese language is Japan's de facto national language and the primary written and spoken language of most people in the country. Japanese writing uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana (syllabaries based on cursive script and radicals used by kanji), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals. English has taken a major role in Japan as a business and international link language. As a result, the prevalence of English in the educational system has increased, with English classes becoming mandatory at all levels of the Japanese school system by 2020. Japanese Sign Language is the primary sign language used in Japan and has gained some official recognition, but its usage has been historically hindered by discriminatory policies and a lack of educational support.
Besides Japanese, the Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama, Yonaguni), part of the Japonic language family, are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands chain. Few children learn these languages, but local governments have sought to increase awareness of the traditional languages. The Ainu language, which is a language isolate, is moribund, with only a few native speakers remaining as of 2014. Additionally, a number of other languages are taught and used by ethnic minorities, immigrant communities, and a growing number of foreign-language students, such as Korean (including a distinct Zainichi Korean dialect), Chinese and Portuguese.
Since the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education, compulsory education in Japan comprises elementary and junior high school, which together last for nine years. Almost all children continue their education at a three-year senior high school. The top-ranking university in the country is the University of Tokyo. Starting in April 2016, various schools began the academic year with elementary school and junior high school integrated into one nine-year compulsory schooling program; MEXT plans for this approach to be adopted nationwide.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) coordinated by the OECD ranks the knowledge and skills of Japanese 15-year-olds as the third best in the world. Japan is one of the top-performing OECD countries in reading literacy, math, and sciences with the average student scoring 520 and has one of the world's highest-educated labor forces among OECD countries. It spent roughly 3.1% of its total GDP on education as of 2018, below the OECD average of 4.9%. In 2021, the country ranked third for the percentage of 25 to 64-year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 55.6%. Approximately 65% of Japanese aged 25 to 34 have some form of tertiary education qualification, with bachelor's degrees being held by 34.2% of Japanese aged 25 to 64, the second most in the OECD after South Korea. Japanese women are more highly educated than the men: 59 percent of women possess a university degree, compared to 52 percent of men.
Health care in Japan is provided by national and local governments. Payment for personal medical services is offered through a universal health insurance system that provides relative equality of access, with fees set by a government committee. People without insurance through employers can participate in a national health insurance program administered by local governments. Since 1973, all elderly persons have been covered by government-sponsored insurance.
Japan spent 10.74% of its total GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Japan at birth was 84.62 years (81.64 years for males and 87.74 years for females), the highest in the world; while it had a very low infant mortality rate (2 per 1,000 live births). Since 1981, the principal cause of death in Japan is cancer, which accounted for 27% of the total deaths in 2018—followed by cardiovascular diseases, which led to 15% of the deaths. Japan has one of the world's highest suicide rates, which is considered a major social issue. Another significant public health issue is smoking among Japanese men. However, Japan has the lowest rate of heart disease in the OECD, and the lowest level of dementia among developed countries.
Contemporary Japanese culture combines influences from Asia, Europe, and North America. Traditional Japanese arts include crafts such as ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, swords and dolls; performances of bunraku, kabuki, noh, dance, and rakugo; and other practices, the tea ceremony, ikebana, martial arts, calligraphy, origami, onsen, Geisha and games. Japan has a developed system for the protection and promotion of both tangible and intangible Cultural Properties and National Treasures. Twenty-two sites have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, eighteen of which are of cultural significance. Japan is considered a cultural superpower.
The history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competition between native Japanese esthetics and imported ideas. The interaction between Japanese and European art has been significant: for example ukiyo-e prints, which began to be exported in the 19th century in the movement known as Japonism, had a significant influence on the development of modern art in the West, most notably on post-Impressionism.
Japanese architecture is a combination of local and other influences. It has traditionally been typified by wooden or mud plaster structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. The Shrines of Ise have been celebrated as the prototype of Japanese architecture. Traditional housing and many temple buildings see the use of tatami mats and sliding doors that break down the distinction between rooms and indoor and outdoor space. Since the 19th century, Japan has incorporated much of Western modern architecture into construction and design. It was not until after World War II that Japanese architects made an impression on the international scene, firstly with the work of architects like Kenzō Tange and then with movements like Metabolism.
The earliest works of Japanese literature include the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles and the Man'yōshū poetry anthology, all from the 8th century and written in Chinese characters. In the early Heian period, the system of phonograms known as kana (hiragana and katakana) was developed. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is considered the oldest extant Japanese narrative. An account of court life is given in The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, while The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is often described as the world's first novel.
During the Edo period, the chōnin ("townspeople") overtook the samurai aristocracy as producers and consumers of literature. The popularity of the works of Saikaku, for example, reveals this change in readership and authorship, while Bashō revivified the poetic tradition of the Kokinshū with his haikai (haiku) and wrote the poetic travelogue Oku no Hosomichi. The Meiji era saw the decline of traditional literary forms as Japanese literature integrated Western influences. Natsume Sōseki and Mori Ōgai were significant novelists in the early 20th century, followed by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Kafū Nagai and, more recently, Haruki Murakami and Kenji Nakagami. Japan has two Nobel Prize-winning authors – Yasunari Kawabata (1968) and Kenzaburō Ōe (1994).
Japanese philosophy has historically been a fusion of both foreign, particularly Chinese and Western, and uniquely Japanese elements. In its literary forms, Japanese philosophy began about fourteen centuries ago. Confucian ideals remain evident in the Japanese concept of society and the self, and in the organization of the government and the structure of society. Buddhism has profoundly impacted Japanese psychology, metaphysics, and esthetics.
Japanese music is eclectic and diverse. Many instruments, such as the koto, were introduced in the 9th and 10th centuries. The popular folk music, with the guitar-like shamisen, dates from the 16th century. Western classical music, introduced in the late 19th century, forms an integral part of Japanese culture. Kumi-daiko (ensemble drumming) was developed in postwar Japan and became very popular in North America. Popular music in post-war Japan has been heavily influenced by American and European trends, which has led to the evolution of J-pop. Karaoke is a significant cultural activity.
The four traditional theaters from Japan are noh, kyōgen, kabuki, and bunraku. Noh is one of the oldest continuous theater traditions in the world.
Officially, Japan has 16 national, government-recognized holidays. Public holidays in Japan are regulated by the Public Holiday Law (国民の祝日に関する法律, Kokumin no Shukujitsu ni Kansuru Hōritsu) of 1948. Beginning in 2000, Japan implemented the Happy Monday System, which moved a number of national holidays to Monday in order to obtain a long weekend. The national holidays in Japan are New Year's Day on January 1, Coming of Age Day on the second Monday of January, National Foundation Day on February 11, The Emperor's Birthday on February 23, Vernal Equinox Day on March 20 or 21, Shōwa Day on April 29, Constitution Memorial Day on May 3, Greenery Day on May 4, Children's Day on May 5, Marine Day on the third Monday of July, Mountain Day on August 11, Respect for the Aged Day on the third Monday of September, Autumnal Equinox on September 23 or 24, Health and Sports Day on the second Monday of October, Culture Day on November 3, and Labor Thanksgiving Day on November 23.
Japanese cuisine offers a vast array of regional specialties that use traditional recipes and local ingredients. Seafood and Japanese rice or noodles are traditional staples. Japanese curry, since its introduction to Japan from British India, is so widely consumed that it can be termed a national dish, alongside ramen and sushi. Traditional Japanese sweets are known as wagashi. Ingredients such as red bean paste and mochi are used. More modern-day tastes include green tea ice cream.
Popular Japanese beverages include sake, which is a brewed rice beverage that typically contains 14–17% alcohol and is made by multiple fermentation of rice. Beer has been brewed in Japan since the late 17th century. Green tea is produced in Japan and prepared in forms such as matcha, used in the Japanese tea ceremony.
According to the 2015 NHK survey on television viewing in Japan, 79 percent of Japanese watch television daily. Japanese television dramas are viewed both within Japan and internationally; other popular shows are in the genres of variety shows, comedy, and news programs. Many Japanese media franchises have gained considerable global popularity and are among the world's highest-grossing media franchises. Japanese newspapers are among the most circulated in the world as of 2016.
Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries globally. Ishirō Honda's Godzilla became an international icon of Japan and spawned an entire subgenre of kaiju films, as well as the longest-running film franchise in history. Japanese comics, known as manga, developed in the mid-20th century and have become popular worldwide. A large number of manga series have become some of the best-selling comics series of all time, rivalling the American comics industry. Japanese animated films and television series, known as anime, were largely influenced by Japanese manga and have become highly popular globally.
Traditionally, sumo is considered Japan's national sport. Japanese martial arts such as judo and kendo are taught as part of the compulsory junior high school curriculum. Baseball is the most popular sport in the country. Japan's top professional league, Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), was established in 1936. Since the establishment of the Japan Professional Football League (J.League) in 1992, association football gained a wide following. The country co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup with South Korea. Japan has one of the most successful football teams in Asia, winning the Asian Cup four times, and the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2011. Golf is also popular in Japan.
In motorsport, Japanese automotive manufacturers have been successful in multiple different categories, with titles and victories in series such as Formula One, MotoGP, and the World Rally Championship. Drivers from Japan have victories at the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans as well as podium finishes in Formula One, in addition to success in domestic championships. Super GT is the most popular national racing series in Japan, while Super Formula is the top-level domestic open-wheel series. The country hosts major races such as the Japanese Grand Prix.
Japan hosted the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 1964 and the Winter Olympics in Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998. The country hosted the official 2006 Basketball World Championship and co-hosted the 2023 Basketball World Championship. Tokyo hosted the 2020 Summer Olympics in 2021, making Tokyo the first Asian city to host the Olympics twice. The country gained the hosting rights for the official Women's Volleyball World Championship on five occasions, more than any other country. Japan is the most successful Asian Rugby Union country and hosted the 2019 IRB Rugby World Cup.
Government
General information
36°N 138°E / 36°N 138°E / 36; 138 | [
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"text": "Japan (Japanese: 日本, [ɲihoɴ] , Nippon or Nihon, and formally 日本国, Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku) is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the \"mainland\"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.",
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"text": "Japan has over 125 million inhabitants and is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its highly urbanized population on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy, although it is experiencing a population decline due to its very low birth rate.",
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"text": "Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC). Between the fourth and ninth centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution, and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution.",
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"text": "Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet. Japan is a developed country and a great power, with one of the largest economies by nominal GDP. Japan has renounced its right to declare war, though it maintains a Self-Defense Force that ranks as one of the world's strongest militaries. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology, and is one of the world's largest exporters and importers. It is part of multiple major international and intergovernmental institutions.",
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"text": "Japan is considered a cultural superpower as the culture of Japan is well known around the world, including its art, cuisine, film, music, and popular culture, which encompasses prominent manga, anime, and video game industries.",
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{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The name for Japan in Japanese is written using the kanji 日本 and is pronounced Nippon or Nihon. Before 日本 was adopted in the early 8th century, the country was known in China as Wa (倭, changed in Japan around 757 to 和) and in Japan by the endonym Yamato. Nippon, the original Sino-Japanese reading of the characters, is favored for official uses, including on Japanese banknotes and postage stamps. Nihon is typically used in everyday speech and reflects shifts in Japanese phonology during the Edo period. The characters 日本 mean \"sun origin\", which is the source of the popular Western epithet \"Land of the Rising Sun\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The name \"Japan\" is based on Chinese pronunciations of 日本 and was introduced to European languages through early trade. In the 13th century, Marco Polo recorded the early Mandarin or Wu Chinese pronunciation of the characters 日本國 as Cipangu. The old Malay name for Japan, Japang or Japun, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect and encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia, who brought the word to Europe in the early 16th century. The first version of the name in English appears in a book published in 1577, which spelled the name as Giapan in a translation of a 1565 Portuguese letter.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A Paleolithic culture from around 30,000 BC constitutes the first known habitation of the islands of Japan. This was followed from around 14,500 BC (the start of the Jōmon period) by a Mesolithic to Neolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer culture characterized by pit dwelling and rudimentary agriculture. Clay vessels from the period are among the oldest surviving examples of pottery. From around 700 BC, the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people began to enter the archipelago from the Korean Peninsula, intermingling with the Jōmon; the Yayoi period saw the introduction of practices including wet-rice farming, a new style of pottery, and metallurgy from China and Korea. According to legend, Emperor Jimmu (grandson of Amaterasu) founded a kingdom in central Japan in 660 BC, beginning a continuous imperial line.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Japan first appears in written history in the Chinese Book of Han, completed in 111 AD. Buddhism was introduced to Japan from Baekje (a Korean kingdom) in 552, but the development of Japanese Buddhism was primarily influenced by China. Despite early resistance, Buddhism was promoted by the ruling class, including figures like Prince Shōtoku, and gained widespread acceptance beginning in the Asuka period (592–710).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 645, the government led by Prince Naka no Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari devised and implemented the far-reaching Taika Reforms. The Reform began with land reform, based on Confucian ideas and philosophies from China. It nationalized all land in Japan, to be distributed equally among cultivators, and ordered the compilation of a household registry as the basis for a new system of taxation. The true aim of the reforms was to bring about greater centralization and to enhance the power of the imperial court, which was also based on the governmental structure of China. Envoys and students were dispatched to China to learn about Chinese writing, politics, art, and religion. The Jinshin War of 672, a bloody conflict between Prince Ōama and his nephew Prince Ōtomo, became a major catalyst for further administrative reforms. These reforms culminated with the promulgation of the Taihō Code, which consolidated existing statutes and established the structure of the central and subordinate local governments. These legal reforms created the ritsuryō state, a system of Chinese-style centralized government that remained in place for half a millennium.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Nara period (710–784) marked the emergence of a Japanese state centered on the Imperial Court in Heijō-kyō (modern Nara). The period is characterized by the appearance of a nascent literary culture with the completion of the Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720), as well as the development of Buddhist-inspired artwork and architecture. A smallpox epidemic in 735–737 is believed to have killed as much as one-third of Japan's population. In 784, Emperor Kanmu moved the capital, settling on Heian-kyō (modern-day Kyoto) in 794. This marked the beginning of the Heian period (794–1185), during which a distinctly indigenous Japanese culture emerged. Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji and the lyrics of Japan's national anthem \"Kimigayo\" were written during this time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Japan's feudal era was characterized by the emergence and dominance of a ruling class of warriors, the samurai. In 1185, following the defeat of the Taira clan by the Minamoto clan in the Genpei War, samurai Minamoto no Yoritomo established a military government at Kamakura. After Yoritomo's death, the Hōjō clan came to power as regents for the shōgun. The Zen school of Buddhism was introduced from China in the Kamakura period (1185–1333) and became popular among the samurai class. The Kamakura shogunate repelled Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281 but was eventually overthrown by Emperor Go-Daigo. Go-Daigo was defeated by Ashikaga Takauji in 1336, beginning the Muromachi period (1336–1573). The succeeding Ashikaga shogunate failed to control the feudal warlords (daimyō) and a civil war began in 1467, opening the century-long Sengoku period (\"Warring States\").",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During the 16th century, Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries reached Japan for the first time, initiating direct commercial and cultural exchange between Japan and the West. Oda Nobunaga used European technology and firearms to conquer many other daimyō; his consolidation of power began what was known as the Azuchi–Momoyama period. After the death of Nobunaga in 1582, his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, unified the nation in the early 1590s and launched two unsuccessful invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Tokugawa Ieyasu served as regent for Hideyoshi's son Toyotomi Hideyori and used his position to gain political and military support. When open war broke out, Ieyasu defeated rival clans in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. He was appointed shōgun by Emperor Go-Yōzei in 1603 and established the Tokugawa shogunate at Edo (modern Tokyo). The shogunate enacted measures including buke shohatto, as a code of conduct to control the autonomous daimyō, and in 1639 the isolationist sakoku (\"closed country\") policy that spanned the two and a half centuries of tenuous political unity known as the Edo period (1603–1868). Modern Japan's economic growth began in this period, resulting in roads and water transportation routes, as well as financial instruments such as futures contracts, banking and insurance of the Osaka rice brokers. The study of Western sciences (rangaku) continued through contact with the Dutch enclave in Nagasaki. The Edo period gave rise to kokugaku (\"national studies\"), the study of Japan by the Japanese.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The United States Navy sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry to force the opening of Japan to the outside world. Arriving at Uraga with four \"Black Ships\" in July 1853, the Perry Expedition resulted in the March 1854 Convention of Kanagawa. Subsequent similar treaties with other Western countries brought economic and political crises. The resignation of the shōgun led to the Boshin War and the establishment of a centralized state nominally unified under the emperor (the Meiji Restoration). Adopting Western political, judicial, and military institutions, the Cabinet organized the Privy Council, introduced the Meiji Constitution (November 29, 1890), and assembled the Imperial Diet. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Empire of Japan emerged as the most developed states in Asia and as an industrialized world power that pursued military conflict to expand its sphere of influence. After victories in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan gained control of Taiwan, Korea and the southern half of Sakhalin. The Japanese population doubled from 35 million in 1873 to 70 million by 1935, with a significant shift to urbanization.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The early 20th century saw a period of Taishō democracy (1912–1926) overshadowed by increasing expansionism and militarization. World War I allowed Japan, which joined the side of the victorious Allies, to capture German possessions in the Pacific and in China. The 1920s saw a political shift towards statism, a period of lawlessness following the 1923 Great Tokyo Earthquake, the passing of laws against political dissent, and a series of attempted coups. This process accelerated during the 1930s, spawning several radical nationalist groups that shared a hostility to liberal democracy and a dedication to expansion in Asia. In 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria; following international condemnation of the occupation, it resigned from the League of Nations two years later. In 1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany; the 1940 Tripartite Pact made it one of the Axis Powers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Empire of Japan invaded other parts of China in 1937, precipitating the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). In 1940, the Empire invaded French Indochina, after which the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan. On December 7–8, 1941, Japanese forces carried out surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor, as well as on British forces in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, among others, beginning World War II in the Pacific. Throughout areas occupied by Japan during the war, numerous abuses were committed against local inhabitants, with many forced into sexual slavery. After Allied victories during the next four years, which culminated in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender. The war cost Japan its colonies and millions of lives. The Allies (led by the United States) repatriated millions of Japanese settlers from their former colonies and military camps throughout Asia, largely eliminating the Japanese Empire and its influence over the territories it conquered. The Allies convened the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to prosecute Japanese leaders for war crimes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution emphasizing liberal democratic practices. The Allied occupation ended with the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952, and Japan was granted membership in the United Nations in 1956. A period of record growth propelled Japan to become the second-largest economy in the world; this ended in the mid-1990s after the popping of an asset price bubble, beginning the \"Lost Decade\". In 2011, Japan suffered one of the largest earthquakes in its recorded history, triggering the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. On May 1, 2019, after the historic abdication of Emperor Akihito, his son Naruhito became Emperor, beginning the Reiwa era.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Japan comprises 14,125 islands extending along the Pacific coast of Asia. It stretches over 3000 km (1900 mi) northeast–southwest from the Sea of Okhotsk to the East China Sea. The country's five main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. The Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, are a chain to the south of Kyushu. The Nanpō Islands are south and east of the main islands of Japan. Together they are often known as the Japanese archipelago. As of 2019, Japan's territory is 377,975.24 km (145,937.06 sq mi). Japan has the sixth-longest coastline in the world at 29,751 km (18,486 mi). Because of its far-flung outlying islands, Japan has the eighth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago is 67% forests and 14% agricultural. The primarily rugged and mountainous terrain is restricted for habitation. Thus the habitable zones, mainly in the coastal areas, have very high population densities: Japan is the 40th most densely populated country even without considering that local concentration. Honshu has the highest population density at 450 persons/km (1200/sq mi) as of 2010, while Hokkaido has the lowest density of 64.5 persons/km as of 2016. As of 2014, approximately 0.5% of Japan's total area is reclaimed land (umetatechi). Lake Biwa is an ancient lake and the country's largest freshwater lake.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Japan is substantially prone to earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions because of its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire. It has the 17th highest natural disaster risk as measured in the 2016 World Risk Index. Japan has 111 active volcanoes. Destructive earthquakes, often resulting in tsunami, occur several times each century; the 1923 Tokyo earthquake killed over 140,000 people. More recent major quakes are the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, which triggered a large tsunami.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The climate of Japan is predominantly temperate but varies greatly from north to south. The northernmost region, Hokkaido, has a humid continental climate with long, cold winters and very warm to cool summers. Precipitation is not heavy, but the islands usually develop deep snowbanks in the winter.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the Sea of Japan region on Honshu's west coast, northwest winter winds bring heavy snowfall during winter. In the summer, the region sometimes experiences extremely hot temperatures because of the foehn. The Central Highland has a typical inland humid continental climate, with large temperature differences between summer and winter. The mountains of the Chūgoku and Shikoku regions shelter the Seto Inland Sea from seasonal winds, bringing mild weather year-round.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Pacific coast features a humid subtropical climate that experiences milder winters with occasional snowfall and hot, humid summers because of the southeast seasonal wind. The Ryukyu and Nanpō Islands have a subtropical climate, with warm winters and hot summers. Precipitation is very heavy, especially during the rainy season. The main rainy season begins in early May in Okinawa, and the rain front gradually moves north. In late summer and early autumn, typhoons often bring heavy rain. According to the Environment Ministry, heavy rainfall and increasing temperatures have caused problems in the agricultural industry and elsewhere. The highest temperature ever measured in Japan, 41.1 °C (106.0 °F), was recorded on July 23, 2018, and repeated on August 17, 2020.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Japan has nine forest ecoregions which reflect the climate and geography of the islands. They range from subtropical moist broadleaf forests in the Ryūkyū and Bonin Islands, to temperate broadleaf and mixed forests in the mild climate regions of the main islands, to temperate coniferous forests in the cold, winter portions of the northern islands. Japan has over 90,000 species of wildlife as of 2019, including the brown bear, the Japanese macaque, the Japanese raccoon dog, the small Japanese field mouse, and the Japanese giant salamander.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A large network of national parks has been established to protect important areas of flora and fauna as well as 52 Ramsar wetland sites. Four sites have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for their outstanding natural value.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In the period of rapid economic growth after World War II, environmental policies were downplayed by the government and industrial corporations; as a result, environmental pollution was widespread in the 1950s and 1960s. Responding to rising concerns, the government introduced environmental protection laws in 1970. The oil crisis in 1973 also encouraged the efficient use of energy because of Japan's lack of natural resources.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Japan ranks 20th in the 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which measures a country's commitment to environmental sustainability. Japan is the world's fifth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. As the host and signatory of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Japan is under treaty obligation to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and to take other steps to curb climate change. In 2020 the government of Japan announced a target of carbon-neutrality by 2050. Environmental issues include urban air pollution (NOx, suspended particulate matter, and toxics), waste management, water eutrophication, nature conservation, climate change, chemical management and international co-operation for conservation.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Japan is a unitary state and constitutional monarchy in which the power of the Emperor is limited to a ceremonial role. Executive power is instead wielded by the Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet, whose sovereignty is vested in the Japanese people. Naruhito is the Emperor of Japan, having succeeded his father Akihito upon his accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne in 2019.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Japan's legislative organ is the National Diet, a bicameral parliament. It consists of a lower House of Representatives with 465 seats, elected by popular vote every four years or when dissolved, and an upper House of Councillors with 245 seats, whose popularly-elected members serve six-year terms. There is universal suffrage for adults over 18 years of age, with a secret ballot for all elected offices. The prime minister as the head of government has the power to appoint and dismiss Ministers of State, and is appointed by the emperor after being designated from among the members of the Diet. Fumio Kishida is Japan's prime minister; he took office after winning the 2021 Liberal Democratic Party leadership election. The right-wing big tent Liberal Democratic Party has been the dominant party in the country since the 1950s, often called the 1955 System.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Historically influenced by Chinese law, the Japanese legal system developed independently during the Edo period through texts such as Kujikata Osadamegaki. Since the late 19th century, the judicial system has been largely based on the civil law of Europe, notably Germany. In 1896, Japan established a civil code based on the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, which remains in effect with post–World War II modifications. The Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947, is the oldest unamended constitution in the world. Statutory law originates in the legislature, and the constitution requires that the emperor promulgate legislation passed by the Diet without giving him the power to oppose legislation. The main body of Japanese statutory law is called the Six Codes. Japan's court system is divided into four basic tiers: the Supreme Court and three levels of lower courts.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "According to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the majority of members of the Japanese parliament are male and range in age from 50 to 70. In April 2023, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, Ryosuke Takashima, 26, is Japan's youngest-ever mayor.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Japan is divided into 47 prefectures, each overseen by an elected governor and legislature. In the following table, the prefectures are grouped by region:",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "A member state of the United Nations since 1956, Japan is one of the G4 countries seeking reform of the Security Council. Japan is a member of the G7, APEC, and \"ASEAN Plus Three\", and is a participant in the East Asia Summit. It is the world's fifth-largest donor of official development assistance, donating US$9.2 billion in 2014. In 2021, Japan had the fourth-largest diplomatic network in the world.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Japan has close economic and military relations with the United States, with which it maintains a security alliance. The United States is a major market for Japanese exports and a major source of Japanese imports, and is committed to defending the country, with military bases in Japan. Japan is also a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (more commonly \"the Quad\"), a multilateral security dialogue reformed in 2017 aiming to limit Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region, along with the United States, Australia, and India, reflecting existing relations and patterns of cooperation.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Japan is engaged in several territorial disputes with its neighbors. Japan contests Russia's control of the Southern Kuril Islands, which were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945. South Korea's control of the Liancourt Rocks is acknowledged but not accepted as they are claimed by Japan. Japan has strained relations with China and Taiwan over the Senkaku Islands and the status of Okinotorishima.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Japan is the second-highest-ranked Asian country in the 2022 Global Peace Index, after Singapore. It spent 1% of its total GDP on its defence budget in 2020, and maintained the tenth-largest military budget in the world in 2022. The country's military (the Japan Self-Defense Forces) is restricted by Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which renounces Japan's right to declare war or use military force in international disputes. The military is governed by the Ministry of Defense, and primarily consists of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. The deployment of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan marked the first overseas use of Japan's military since World War II.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Government of Japan has been making changes to its security policy which include the establishment of the National Security Council, the adoption of the National Security Strategy, and the development of the National Defense Program Guidelines. In May 2014, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan wanted to shed the passiveness it has maintained since the end of World War II and take more responsibility for regional security. In December 2022, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida further confirmed this trend, instructing the government to increase spending by 65% until 2027. Recent tensions, particularly with North Korea and China, have reignited the debate over the status of the JSDF and its relation to Japanese society.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Domestic security in Japan is provided mainly by the prefectural police departments, under the oversight of the National Police Agency. As the central coordinating body for the Prefectural Police Departments, the National Police Agency is administered by the National Public Safety Commission. The Special Assault Team comprises national-level counter-terrorism tactical units that cooperate with territorial-level Anti-Firearms Squads and Counter-NBC Terrorism Squads. The Japan Coast Guard guards territorial waters surrounding Japan and uses surveillance and control countermeasures against smuggling, marine environmental crime, poaching, piracy, spy ships, unauthorized foreign fishing vessels, and illegal immigration.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law strictly regulates the civilian ownership of guns, swords, and other weaponry. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, among the member states of the UN that report statistics as of 2018, the incidence rates of violent crimes such as murder, abduction, sexual violence, and robbery are very low in Japan.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Japan has faced criticism for not allowing same-sex marriages, despite a majority of Japanese people supporting marriage equality. It is considered to be the least developed out of the G7 countries in terms of LGBT equality. Japan does not explicitly legally ban racial or religious discrimination.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Japan has the world's fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP, after that of the United States, China and Germany; and the fourth-largest economy by PPP. As of 2021, Japan's labor force is the world's eighth-largest, consisting of over 68.6 million workers. As of 2022, Japan has a low unemployment rate of around 2.6%. Its poverty rate is the second highest among the G7 countries, and exceeds 15.7% of the population. Japan has the highest ratio of public debt to GDP among advanced economies, with national debt estimated at 248% relative to GDP as of 2022. The Japanese yen is the world's third-largest reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Japan was the world's fifth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer in 2022. Its exports amounted to 18.2% of its total GDP in 2021. As of 2022, Japan's main export markets were China (23.9 percent, including Hong Kong) and the United States (18.5 percent). Its main exports are motor vehicles, iron and steel products, semiconductors, and auto parts. Japan's main import markets as of 2022 were China (21.1 percent), the United States (9.9 percent), and Australia (9.8 percent). Japan's main imports are machinery and equipment, fossil fuels, foodstuffs, chemicals, and raw materials for its industries.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Japanese variant of capitalism has many distinct features: keiretsu enterprises are influential, and lifetime employment and seniority-based career advancement are common in the Japanese work environment. Japan has a large cooperative sector, with three of the world's ten largest cooperatives, including the largest consumer cooperative and the largest agricultural cooperative as of 2018. It ranks highly for competitiveness and economic freedom. Japan ranked sixth in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2019. It attracted 31.9 million international tourists in 2019, and was ranked eleventh in the world in 2019 for inbound tourism. The 2021 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Japan first in the world out of 117 countries. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $46.1 billion.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Japanese agricultural sector accounts for about 1.2% of the total country's GDP as of 2018. Only 11.5% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation. Because of this lack of arable land, a system of terraces is used to farm in small areas. This results in one of the world's highest levels of crop yields per unit area, with an agricultural self-sufficiency rate of about 50% as of 2018. Japan's small agricultural sector is highly subsidized and protected. There has been a growing concern about farming as farmers are aging with a difficult time finding successors.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Japan ranked seventh in the world in tonnage of fish caught and captured 3,167,610 metric tons of fish in 2016, down from an annual average of 4,000,000 tons over the previous decade. Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch, prompting critiques that Japan's fishing is leading to depletion in fish stocks such as tuna. Japan has sparked controversy by supporting commercial whaling.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Japan has a large industrial capacity and is home to some of the \"largest and most technologically advanced producers of motor vehicles, machine tools, steel and nonferrous metals, ships, chemical substances, textiles, and processed foods\". Japan's industrial sector makes up approximately 27.5% of its GDP. The country's manufacturing output is the third highest in the world as of 2019.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Japan is the third-largest automobile producer in the world as of 2022 and is home to Toyota, the world's largest automobile company by vehicle production. Quantitatively, Japan was the world's largest exporter of cars in 2021, though it was overtaken by China in early 2023. The Japanese shipbuilding industry faces increasing competition from its East Asian neighbors, South Korea and China; as a 2020 government initiative identified this sector as a target for increasing exports.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Japan's service sector accounts for about 69.5% of its total economic output as of 2021. Banking, retail, transportation, and telecommunications are all major industries, with companies such as Toyota, Mitsubishi UFJ, -NTT, ÆON, Softbank, Hitachi, and Itochu listed as among the largest in the world.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Japan is a leading country in scientific research, particularly in the natural sciences and engineering. The country ranked 13th in the Global Innovation Index in 2023. Relative to gross domestic product, Japan's research and development budget is the second highest in the world, with 867,000 researchers sharing a 19-trillion-yen research and development budget as of 2017. The country has produced twenty-two Nobel laureates in either physics, chemistry or medicine, and three Fields medalists.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Japan leads the world in robotics production and use, supplying 45% of the world's 2020 total; down from 55% in 2017. Japan has the second highest number of researchers in science and technology per capita in the world with 14 per 1000 employees.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Once considered the strongest in the world, the Japanese consumer electronics industry is in a state of decline as regional competition arises in neighboring East Asian countries such as South Korea and China. However, Japan's video game sector remains a major industry. In 2014, Japan's consumer video game market grossed $9.6 billion, with $5.8 billion coming from mobile gaming. By 2015, Japan had become the world's fourth-largest PC game market, behind only China, the United States, and South Korea.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is Japan's national space agency; it conducts space, planetary, and aviation research, and leads development of rockets and satellites. It is a participant in the International Space Station: the Japanese Experiment Module (Kibō) was added to the station during Space Shuttle assembly flights in 2008. The space probe Akatsuki was launched in 2010 and achieved orbit around Venus in 2015. Japan's plans in space exploration include building a Moon base and landing astronauts by 2030. In 2007, it launched lunar explorer SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) from Tanegashima Space Center. The largest lunar mission since the Apollo program, its purpose was to gather data on the Moon's origin and evolution. The explorer entered a lunar orbit on October 4, 2007, and was deliberately crashed into the Moon on June 11, 2009.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Japan has invested heavily in transportation infrastructure. The country has approximately 1,200,000 kilometers (750,000 miles) of roads made up of 1,000,000 kilometers (620,000 miles) of city, town and village roads, 130,000 kilometers (81,000 miles) of prefectural roads, 54,736 kilometers (34,011 miles) of general national highways and 7641 kilometers (4748 miles) of national expressways as of 2017.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Since privatization in 1987, dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional and local passenger transportation markets; major companies include seven JR enterprises, Kintetsu, Seibu Railway and Keio Corporation. The high-speed Shinkansen (bullet trains) that connect major cities are known for their safety and punctuality.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "There are 175 airports in Japan as of 2013. The largest domestic airport, Haneda Airport in Tokyo, was Asia's second-busiest airport in 2019. The Keihin and Hanshin superport hubs are among the largest in the world, at 7.98 and 5.22 million TEU respectively as of 2017.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "As of 2019, 37.1% of energy in Japan was produced from petroleum, 25.1% from coal, 22.4% from natural gas, 3.5% from hydropower and 2.8% from nuclear power, among other sources. Nuclear power was down from 11.2 percent in 2010. By May 2012 all of the country's nuclear power plants had been taken offline because of ongoing public opposition following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, though government officials continued to try to sway public opinion in favor of returning at least some to service. The Sendai Nuclear Power Plant restarted in 2015, and since then several other nuclear power plants have been restarted. Japan lacks significant domestic reserves and has a heavy dependence on imported energy. The country has therefore aimed to diversify its sources and maintain high levels of energy efficiency.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Responsibility for the water and sanitation sector is shared between the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in charge of water supply for domestic use; the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, in charge of water resources development as well as sanitation; the Ministry of the Environment, in charge of ambient water quality and environmental preservation; and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, in charge of performance benchmarking of utilities. Access to an improved water source is universal in Japan. About 98% of the population receives piped water supply from public utilities.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Japan has a population of almost 125 million, of which nearly 122 million are Japanese nationals (2022 estimates). A small population of foreign residents makes up the remainder. Japan is the world's fastest aging country and has the highest proportion of elderly citizens of any country, comprising one-third of its total population; this is the result of a post–World War II baby boom, which was followed by an increase in life expectancy and a decrease in birth rates. Japan has a total fertility rate of 1.4, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1, and is among the world's lowest; it has a median age of 48.4, the highest in the world. As of 2020, over 28.7 percent of the population is over 65, or more than one in four out of the Japanese population. As a growing number of younger Japanese are not marrying or remaining childless, Japan's population is expected to drop to around 88 million by 2065.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The changes in demographic structure have created several social issues, particularly a decline in the workforce population and an increase in the cost of social security benefits. The Government of Japan projects that there will be almost one elderly person for each person of working age by 2060. Immigration and birth incentives are sometimes suggested as a solution to provide younger workers to support the nation's aging population. On April 1, 2019, Japan's revised immigration law was enacted, protecting the rights of foreign workers to help reduce labor shortages in certain sectors.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In 2019, 92% of the total Japanese population lived in cities. The capital city, Tokyo, has a population of 13.9 million (2022). It is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, the biggest metropolitan area in the world with 38,140,000 people (2016). Japan is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with the Japanese people forming 98.1% of the country's population. Minority ethnic groups in the country include the indigenous Ainu and Ryukyuan people. Zainichi Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Brazilians mostly of Japanese descent, and Peruvians mostly of Japanese descent are also among Japan's small minority groups. Burakumin make up a social minority group.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Japan's constitution guarantees full religious freedom. Upper estimates suggest that 84–96 percent of the Japanese population subscribe to Shinto as its indigenous religion. However, these estimates are based on people affiliated with a temple, rather than the number of true believers. Many Japanese people practice both Shinto and Buddhism; they can either identify with both religions or describe themselves as non-religious or spiritual. The level of participation in religious ceremonies as a cultural tradition remains high, especially during festivals and occasions such as the first shrine visit of the New Year. Taoism and Confucianism from China have also influenced Japanese beliefs and customs.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Christianity was first introduced into Japan by Jesuit missions starting in 1549. Today, 1% to 1.5% of the population are Christians. Throughout the latest century, Western customs originally related to Christianity (including Western style weddings, Valentine's Day and Christmas) have become popular as secular customs among many Japanese.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "About 90% of those practicing Islam in Japan are foreign-born migrants as of 2016. As of 2018 there were an estimated 105 mosques and 200,000 Muslims in Japan, 43,000 of which were Japanese nationals. Other minority religions include Hinduism, Judaism, and Baháʼí Faith, as well as the animist beliefs of the Ainu.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Japanese language is Japan's de facto national language and the primary written and spoken language of most people in the country. Japanese writing uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana (syllabaries based on cursive script and radicals used by kanji), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals. English has taken a major role in Japan as a business and international link language. As a result, the prevalence of English in the educational system has increased, with English classes becoming mandatory at all levels of the Japanese school system by 2020. Japanese Sign Language is the primary sign language used in Japan and has gained some official recognition, but its usage has been historically hindered by discriminatory policies and a lack of educational support.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Besides Japanese, the Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama, Yonaguni), part of the Japonic language family, are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands chain. Few children learn these languages, but local governments have sought to increase awareness of the traditional languages. The Ainu language, which is a language isolate, is moribund, with only a few native speakers remaining as of 2014. Additionally, a number of other languages are taught and used by ethnic minorities, immigrant communities, and a growing number of foreign-language students, such as Korean (including a distinct Zainichi Korean dialect), Chinese and Portuguese.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Since the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education, compulsory education in Japan comprises elementary and junior high school, which together last for nine years. Almost all children continue their education at a three-year senior high school. The top-ranking university in the country is the University of Tokyo. Starting in April 2016, various schools began the academic year with elementary school and junior high school integrated into one nine-year compulsory schooling program; MEXT plans for this approach to be adopted nationwide.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) coordinated by the OECD ranks the knowledge and skills of Japanese 15-year-olds as the third best in the world. Japan is one of the top-performing OECD countries in reading literacy, math, and sciences with the average student scoring 520 and has one of the world's highest-educated labor forces among OECD countries. It spent roughly 3.1% of its total GDP on education as of 2018, below the OECD average of 4.9%. In 2021, the country ranked third for the percentage of 25 to 64-year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 55.6%. Approximately 65% of Japanese aged 25 to 34 have some form of tertiary education qualification, with bachelor's degrees being held by 34.2% of Japanese aged 25 to 64, the second most in the OECD after South Korea. Japanese women are more highly educated than the men: 59 percent of women possess a university degree, compared to 52 percent of men.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Health care in Japan is provided by national and local governments. Payment for personal medical services is offered through a universal health insurance system that provides relative equality of access, with fees set by a government committee. People without insurance through employers can participate in a national health insurance program administered by local governments. Since 1973, all elderly persons have been covered by government-sponsored insurance.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Japan spent 10.74% of its total GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Japan at birth was 84.62 years (81.64 years for males and 87.74 years for females), the highest in the world; while it had a very low infant mortality rate (2 per 1,000 live births). Since 1981, the principal cause of death in Japan is cancer, which accounted for 27% of the total deaths in 2018—followed by cardiovascular diseases, which led to 15% of the deaths. Japan has one of the world's highest suicide rates, which is considered a major social issue. Another significant public health issue is smoking among Japanese men. However, Japan has the lowest rate of heart disease in the OECD, and the lowest level of dementia among developed countries.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Contemporary Japanese culture combines influences from Asia, Europe, and North America. Traditional Japanese arts include crafts such as ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, swords and dolls; performances of bunraku, kabuki, noh, dance, and rakugo; and other practices, the tea ceremony, ikebana, martial arts, calligraphy, origami, onsen, Geisha and games. Japan has a developed system for the protection and promotion of both tangible and intangible Cultural Properties and National Treasures. Twenty-two sites have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, eighteen of which are of cultural significance. Japan is considered a cultural superpower.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competition between native Japanese esthetics and imported ideas. The interaction between Japanese and European art has been significant: for example ukiyo-e prints, which began to be exported in the 19th century in the movement known as Japonism, had a significant influence on the development of modern art in the West, most notably on post-Impressionism.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Japanese architecture is a combination of local and other influences. It has traditionally been typified by wooden or mud plaster structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. The Shrines of Ise have been celebrated as the prototype of Japanese architecture. Traditional housing and many temple buildings see the use of tatami mats and sliding doors that break down the distinction between rooms and indoor and outdoor space. Since the 19th century, Japan has incorporated much of Western modern architecture into construction and design. It was not until after World War II that Japanese architects made an impression on the international scene, firstly with the work of architects like Kenzō Tange and then with movements like Metabolism.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The earliest works of Japanese literature include the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles and the Man'yōshū poetry anthology, all from the 8th century and written in Chinese characters. In the early Heian period, the system of phonograms known as kana (hiragana and katakana) was developed. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is considered the oldest extant Japanese narrative. An account of court life is given in The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, while The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is often described as the world's first novel.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "During the Edo period, the chōnin (\"townspeople\") overtook the samurai aristocracy as producers and consumers of literature. The popularity of the works of Saikaku, for example, reveals this change in readership and authorship, while Bashō revivified the poetic tradition of the Kokinshū with his haikai (haiku) and wrote the poetic travelogue Oku no Hosomichi. The Meiji era saw the decline of traditional literary forms as Japanese literature integrated Western influences. Natsume Sōseki and Mori Ōgai were significant novelists in the early 20th century, followed by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Kafū Nagai and, more recently, Haruki Murakami and Kenji Nakagami. Japan has two Nobel Prize-winning authors – Yasunari Kawabata (1968) and Kenzaburō Ōe (1994).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Japanese philosophy has historically been a fusion of both foreign, particularly Chinese and Western, and uniquely Japanese elements. In its literary forms, Japanese philosophy began about fourteen centuries ago. Confucian ideals remain evident in the Japanese concept of society and the self, and in the organization of the government and the structure of society. Buddhism has profoundly impacted Japanese psychology, metaphysics, and esthetics.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Japanese music is eclectic and diverse. Many instruments, such as the koto, were introduced in the 9th and 10th centuries. The popular folk music, with the guitar-like shamisen, dates from the 16th century. Western classical music, introduced in the late 19th century, forms an integral part of Japanese culture. Kumi-daiko (ensemble drumming) was developed in postwar Japan and became very popular in North America. Popular music in post-war Japan has been heavily influenced by American and European trends, which has led to the evolution of J-pop. Karaoke is a significant cultural activity.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The four traditional theaters from Japan are noh, kyōgen, kabuki, and bunraku. Noh is one of the oldest continuous theater traditions in the world.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Officially, Japan has 16 national, government-recognized holidays. Public holidays in Japan are regulated by the Public Holiday Law (国民の祝日に関する法律, Kokumin no Shukujitsu ni Kansuru Hōritsu) of 1948. Beginning in 2000, Japan implemented the Happy Monday System, which moved a number of national holidays to Monday in order to obtain a long weekend. The national holidays in Japan are New Year's Day on January 1, Coming of Age Day on the second Monday of January, National Foundation Day on February 11, The Emperor's Birthday on February 23, Vernal Equinox Day on March 20 or 21, Shōwa Day on April 29, Constitution Memorial Day on May 3, Greenery Day on May 4, Children's Day on May 5, Marine Day on the third Monday of July, Mountain Day on August 11, Respect for the Aged Day on the third Monday of September, Autumnal Equinox on September 23 or 24, Health and Sports Day on the second Monday of October, Culture Day on November 3, and Labor Thanksgiving Day on November 23.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Japanese cuisine offers a vast array of regional specialties that use traditional recipes and local ingredients. Seafood and Japanese rice or noodles are traditional staples. Japanese curry, since its introduction to Japan from British India, is so widely consumed that it can be termed a national dish, alongside ramen and sushi. Traditional Japanese sweets are known as wagashi. Ingredients such as red bean paste and mochi are used. More modern-day tastes include green tea ice cream.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Popular Japanese beverages include sake, which is a brewed rice beverage that typically contains 14–17% alcohol and is made by multiple fermentation of rice. Beer has been brewed in Japan since the late 17th century. Green tea is produced in Japan and prepared in forms such as matcha, used in the Japanese tea ceremony.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "According to the 2015 NHK survey on television viewing in Japan, 79 percent of Japanese watch television daily. Japanese television dramas are viewed both within Japan and internationally; other popular shows are in the genres of variety shows, comedy, and news programs. Many Japanese media franchises have gained considerable global popularity and are among the world's highest-grossing media franchises. Japanese newspapers are among the most circulated in the world as of 2016.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries globally. Ishirō Honda's Godzilla became an international icon of Japan and spawned an entire subgenre of kaiju films, as well as the longest-running film franchise in history. Japanese comics, known as manga, developed in the mid-20th century and have become popular worldwide. A large number of manga series have become some of the best-selling comics series of all time, rivalling the American comics industry. Japanese animated films and television series, known as anime, were largely influenced by Japanese manga and have become highly popular globally.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Traditionally, sumo is considered Japan's national sport. Japanese martial arts such as judo and kendo are taught as part of the compulsory junior high school curriculum. Baseball is the most popular sport in the country. Japan's top professional league, Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), was established in 1936. Since the establishment of the Japan Professional Football League (J.League) in 1992, association football gained a wide following. The country co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup with South Korea. Japan has one of the most successful football teams in Asia, winning the Asian Cup four times, and the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2011. Golf is also popular in Japan.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In motorsport, Japanese automotive manufacturers have been successful in multiple different categories, with titles and victories in series such as Formula One, MotoGP, and the World Rally Championship. Drivers from Japan have victories at the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans as well as podium finishes in Formula One, in addition to success in domestic championships. Super GT is the most popular national racing series in Japan, while Super Formula is the top-level domestic open-wheel series. The country hosts major races such as the Japanese Grand Prix.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Japan hosted the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 1964 and the Winter Olympics in Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998. The country hosted the official 2006 Basketball World Championship and co-hosted the 2023 Basketball World Championship. Tokyo hosted the 2020 Summer Olympics in 2021, making Tokyo the first Asian city to host the Olympics twice. The country gained the hosting rights for the official Women's Volleyball World Championship on five occasions, more than any other country. Japan is the most successful Asian Rugby Union country and hosted the 2019 IRB Rugby World Cup.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Government",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "General information",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "36°N 138°E / 36°N 138°E / 36; 138",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan has over 125 million inhabitants and is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its highly urbanized population on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy, although it is experiencing a population decline due to its very low birth rate. Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period. Between the fourth and ninth centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution, and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution. Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet. Japan is a developed country and a great power, with one of the largest economies by nominal GDP. Japan has renounced its right to declare war, though it maintains a Self-Defense Force that ranks as one of the world's strongest militaries. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology, and is one of the world's largest exporters and importers. It is part of multiple major international and intergovernmental institutions. Japan is considered a cultural superpower as the culture of Japan is well known around the world, including its art, cuisine, film, music, and popular culture, which encompasses prominent manga, anime, and video game industries. | 2001-10-31T23:04:35Z | 2023-12-30T15:18:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan |
15,575 | Geography of Japan | Japan is an archipelagic country comprising a stratovolcanic archipelago over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) along the Pacific coast of East Asia. It consists of 14,125 islands. The five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Okinawa. The other 14,120 islands are classified as "remote islands" by the Japanese government. The Ryukyu Islands and Nanpō Islands are south and east of the main islands.
The territory covers 377,973.89 km (145,936.53 sq mi). It is the fourth-largest island country in the world and the largest island country in East Asia. The country has the 6th longest coastline at 29,751 km (18,486 mi) and the 8th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi) in the world.
The terrain is mostly rugged and mountainous, with 66% forest. The population is clustered in urban areas along the coast, plains, and valleys. Japan is located in the northwestern Ring of Fire on multiple tectonic plates. East of the Japanese archipelago are three oceanic trenches. The Japan Trench is created as the oceanic Pacific Plate subducts beneath the continental Okhotsk Plate. The continuous subduction process causes frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, and stratovolcanoes. The islands are also affected by typhoons. The subduction plates have pulled the Japanese archipelago eastward, created the Sea of Japan, and separated it from the Asian continent by back-arc spreading 15 million years ago.
The climate varies from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical and tropical rainforests in the south. These differences in climate and landscape have allowed the development of a diverse flora and fauna, with some rare endemic species, especially in the Ogasawara Islands.
Japan extends from 20° to 45° north latitude (Okinotorishima to Benten-jima) and from 122° to 153° east longitude (Yonaguni to Minami Torishima). Japan is surrounded by seas. To the north, the Sea of Okhotsk separates it from the Russian Far East; to the west, the Sea of Japan separates it from the Korean Peninsula; to the southwest, the East China Sea separates the Ryukyu Islands from China and Taiwan; and to the east is the Pacific Ocean.
The Japanese archipelago is over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) long in a north-to-southwardly direction from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Philippine Sea in the Pacific Ocean. It is narrow, and no point in Japan is more than 150 km (93 mi) from the sea. In 2023, a government recount of the islands with digital maps increased the total from 6,852 to 14,125 islands. The five main islands are (from north to south) Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Three of the four major islands (Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku) are separated by narrow straits of the Seto Inland Sea and form a natural entity. The 6,847 smaller islands are called remote islands. This includes the Bonin Islands, Daitō Islands, Minami-Tori-shima, Okinotorishima, the Ryukyu Islands, the Volcano Islands, Nansei Islands, and the Nanpō Islands, as well as numerous islets, of which 430 are inhabited. The Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan but disputed by China. This excludes the disputed Northern Territories (Kuril Islands) and Liancourt Rocks. In total, as of 2021, Japan's territory is 377,973.89 km (145,936.53 sq mi), of which 364,546.41 km (140,752.16 sq mi) is land and 13,430 km (5,190 sq mi) is water. Japan has the sixth longest coastline in the world (29,751 km (18,486 mi)). It is the largest island country in East Asia and the fourth largest island country in the world.
Because of Japan's many far-flung outlying islands and long coastline, the country has extensive marine life and mineral resources in the ocean. The Exclusive Economic Zone of Japan covers 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi) and is the 8th largest in the world. It is more than 11 times the land area of the country. The Exclusive Economic Zone stretches from the baseline out to 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its coast. Its territorial sea is 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi), but between 3 and 12 nmi (5.6 and 22.2 km; 3.5 and 13.8 mi) in the international straits—La Pérouse (or Sōya Strait), Tsugaru Strait, Ōsumi, and Tsushima Strait.
Japan has a population of 126 million in 2019. It is the 11th most populous country in the world and the second most populous island country. 81% of the population lives on Honshu, 10% on Kyushu, 4.2% on Hokkaido, 3% on Shikoku, 1.1% in Okinawa Prefecture, and 0.7% on other Japanese islands such as the Nanpō Islands.
Japan is informally divided into eight regions, from northeast (Hokkaidō) to southwest (Ryukyu Islands):
Each region contains several prefectures, except the Hokkaido region, which comprises only Hokkaido Prefecture.
The regions are not official administrative units but have been traditionally used as the regional division of Japan in a number of contexts. For example, maps and geography textbooks divide Japan into the eight regions; weather reports usually give the weather by region; and many businesses and institutions use their home region as part of their name (Kinki Nippon Railway, Chūgoku Bank, Tohoku University, etc.). While Japan has eight High Courts, their jurisdictions do not correspond with the eight regions.
About 73% of Japan is mountainous, with a mountain range running through each of the main islands. Japan's highest mountain is Mount Fuji, with an elevation of 3,776 m (12,388 ft). Japan's forest cover rate is 68.55% since the mountains are heavily forested. The only other developed nations with such a high forest cover percentage are Finland and Sweden.
Since there is little level ground, many hills and mountainsides at lower elevations around towns and cities are often cultivated. As Japan is situated in a volcanic zone along the Pacific deeps, frequent low-intensity earth tremors and occasional volcanic activity are felt throughout the islands. Destructive earthquakes occur several times a century. Hot springs are numerous and have been exploited by the leisure industry.
The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan measures Japan's territory annually in order to continuously grasp the state of the national land. As of July 1, 2021, Japan's territory is 377,973.89 square kilometres (145,936.53 sq mi). It increases in area due to volcanic eruptions such as Nishinoshima (西之島), the natural expansion of the islands, and land reclamation.
This table shows land use in 2002.
The Japanese archipelago is relatively far away from the Asian continent. Kyushu is closest to the southernmost point of the Korean peninsula, with a distance of 190 km (120 mi), which is almost six times farther away than from England to France across the English Channel. Thus, historically, Kyushu was the gateway between Asia and Japan. China is separated by 800 km (500 mi) of sea from Japan's big main islands. Hokkaido is near Sakhalin, which was occupied by Japan from 1905 to 1945. Most of the population lives on the Pacific coast of Honshū. The west coast facing the Sea of Japan is less densely populated.
The Japanese archipelago has been difficult to reach since ancient history. During the Paleolithic period around 20,000 BCE, at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, there was a land bridge between Hokkaido and Sakhalin that linked Japan with the Asian continent. The land bridge disappeared when sea levels rose in the Jōmon period around 10,000 BCE.
Japan's remote location, surrounded by vast seas, rugged, mountainous terrain, and steep rivers, makes it secure against invaders and uncontrolled migration from the Asian continent. The Japanese can close their civilization with an isolationist foreign policy. During the Edo period, the Tokugawa Shogunate enforced the Sakoku policy, which prohibited most foreign contact and trade from 1641 to 1853. In modern times, the inflow of people is managed via seaports and airports. Thus, Japan is fairly insulated from continental issues.
Throughout history, Japan has never been fully invaded or colonized by other countries. The Mongols tried to invade Japan twice and failed in 1274 and 1281. Japan capitulated only once after nuclear attacks in World War II. At the time, Japan did not have nuclear technology. The insular geography is a major factor in the isolationist, semi-open, and expansionist periods of Japanese history.
The mountainous islands of the Japanese archipelago form a crescent off the eastern coast of Asia. They are separated from the continent by the Sea of Japan, which serves as a protective barrier. Japan has 108 active volcanoes (10% of the world's active volcanoes) because of active plate tectonics in the Ring of Fire.
Around 15 million years ago, the volcanic shoreline of the Asian continent was pushed out into a series of volcanic island arcs. This created the "back-arc basins" known as the Sea of Japan and Sea of Okhotsk with the formal shaping of the Japanese archipelago. The archipelago also has summits on mountain ridges that were uplifted near the outer edge of the continental shelf. About 73 percent of Japan's area is mountainous, and scattered plains and intermontane basins (in which the population is concentrated) cover only about 27 percent. A long chain of mountains runs down the middle of the archipelago, dividing it into two halves: the "face", facing the Pacific Ocean, and the "back", toward the Sea of Japan. On the Pacific side are steep mountains 1,500 to 3,000 meters high, with deep valleys and gorges.
Central Japan is marked by the convergence of the three mountain chains—the Hida, Kiso, and Akaishi mountains—that form the Japanese Alps (Nihon Arupusu), several of whose peaks are higher than 3,000 metres (9,800 ft). The highest point in the Japanese Alps is Mount Kita at 3,193 metres (10,476 ft). The highest point in the country is Mount Fuji (Fujisan, also erroneously called Fujiyama), a volcano dormant since 1707 that rises to 3,776 m (12,388 ft) above sea level in Shizuoka Prefecture. On the Sea of Japan side are plateaus and low mountain districts, with altitudes of 500 to 1,500 meters.
There are three major plains in central Honshū. The largest is the Kantō Plain, which covers 17,000 km (6,600 sq mi) in the Kantō region. The capital Tokyo and the largest metropolitan population are located there. The second largest plain in Honshū is the Nōbi Plain (1,800 km (690 sq mi)), with the third-most-populous urban area being Nagoya. The third-largest plain in Honshū is the Osaka Plain, which covers 1,600 km (620 sq mi) in the Kinki region. It features the second-largest urban area of Osaka (part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area). Osaka and Nagoya extend inland from their bays until they reach steep mountains. The Osaka Plain is connected with Kyoto and Nara. Kyoto is located in the Yamashiro Basin (827.9 km (319.7 sq mi)) and Nara is in the Nara Basin (300 km (120 sq mi)).
The Kantō Plain, Osaka Plain, and Nōbi Plain are the most important economic, political, and cultural areas of Japan. These plains had the largest agricultural production and large bays with ports for fishing and trade. This made them the largest population centers. Kyoto and Nara are the ancient capitals and cultural heart of Japan. The Kantō Plain became Japan's center of power because it is the largest plain with a central location, and historically, it had the most agricultural production that could be taxed. The Tokugawa Shogunate established a bakufu in Edo in 1603. This evolved into the capital of Tokyo by 1868.
Hokkaido has multiple plains, such as the Ishikari Plain (3,800 km (1,500 sq mi)), Tokachi Plain (3,600 km (1,400 sq mi)), the Kushiro Plain, the largest wetland in Japan (2,510 km (970 sq mi)), and the Sarobetsu Plain (200 km (77 sq mi)). There are many farms that produce a plethora of agricultural products. The average farm size in Hokkaido was 26 hectares per farmer in 2013. That is nearly 11 times larger than the national average of 2.4 hectares. This made Hokkaido the most agriculturally rich prefecture in Japan. Nearly one-fourth of Japan's arable land and 22% of Japan's forests are in Hokkaido.
Another important plain is the Sendai Plain around the city of Sendai in northeastern Honshū. Many of these plains are along the coast, and their areas have been increased by land reclamation throughout recorded history.
Rivers are generally steep and swift, and few are suitable for navigation except in their lower reaches. Although most rivers are less than 300 km (190 mi) in length, their rapid flow from the mountains is what provides hydroelectric power. Seasonal variations in flow have led to the extensive development of flood control measures. The longest, the Shinano River, which winds through Nagano Prefecture to Niigata Prefecture and flows into the Sea of Japan, is 367 km (228 mi) long.
These are the 10 longest rivers of Japan.
The largest freshwater lake is Lake Biwa (670.3 km (258.8 sq mi)), northeast of Kyoto in Shiga Prefecture. Lake Biwa is an ancient lake and is estimated to be the 13th oldest lake in the world, dating to at least 4 million years ago. It has consistently carried water for millions of years. Lake Biwa was created by plate tectonics in an active rift zone. This created a very deep lake with a maximum depth of 104 m (341 ft). Thus, it is not naturally filled with sediment. Over the course of millions of years, a diverse ecosystem evolved in the lake. It has more than 1,000 species and subspecies. There are 46 native fish species and subspecies, including 11 species and 5 subspecies that are endemic or near-endemic. Approximately 5,000 water birds visit the lake each year.
The following are the 10 largest lakes of Japan.
Extensive coastal shipping, especially around the Seto Inland Sea, compensates for the lack of navigable rivers. The Pacific coastline south of Tokyo is characterized by long, narrow, gradually shallowing inlets produced by sedimentation, which has created many natural harbors. The Pacific coastline north of Tokyo, the coast of Hokkaidō, and the Sea of Japan coast are generally unindented, with few natural harbors.
A recent global remote sensing analysis suggested that there were 765 km² of tidal flats in Japan, making it the 35th-ranked country in terms of tidal flat extent.
The Japanese archipelago has been transformed by humans into a sort of continuous land, in which the four main islands are entirely reachable and passable by rail and road transportation thanks to the construction of huge bridges and tunnels that connect each other and various islands.
Approximately 0.5% of Japan's total area is reclaimed land (umetatechi). It began in the 12th century. Land was reclaimed from the sea and from river deltas by building dikes, drainage, and rice paddies on terraces carved into mountainsides. The majority of land reclamation projects occurred after World War II, during the Japanese economic miracle. Reclamation of 80% to 90% of all the tidal flatland was done. Large land reclamation projects with landfills were done in coastal areas for maritime and industrial factories, such as Higashi Ogishima in Kawasaki, Osaka Bay, and Nagasaki Airport. Port Island, Rokkō Island, and Kobe Airport were built in Kobe. Late 20th and early 21st century projects include artificial islands such as Chubu Centrair International Airport in Ise Bay, Kansai International Airport in the middle of Osaka Bay, Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, and Wakayama Marina City. The village of Ōgata in Akita was established on land reclaimed from Lake Hachirōgata (Japan's second largest lake at the time) starting in 1957. By 1977, the amount of land reclaimed totaled 172.03 square kilometres (66.42 sq mi).
Examples of land reclamation in Japan include:
Much reclaimed land is made up of landfill waste materials, dredged earth, sand, sediment, sludge, and soil removed from construction sites. It is used to build man-made islands in harbors and embankments in inland areas. On November 8, 2011, Tokyo City began accepting rubble and waste from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami region. This rubble was processed, and when it had the appropriate radiation levels, it was used as a landfill to build new artificial islands in Tokyo Bay. Yamashita Park in Yokohama City was made with rubble from the great Kantō earthquake in 1923.
There is a risk of contamination on artificial islands with landfills and reclaimed land if there was industry that spilled toxic chemicals into the ground. For example, the artificial island of Toyosu was once occupied by a Tokyo gas factory. Toxic substances were discovered in the soil and groundwater at Toyosu. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government spent an additional 3.8 billion yen ($33.5 million) to pump out groundwater by digging hundreds of wells. In June 2017, plans to move the Tsukiji fish market were restarted but delayed from July to the autumn of 2018. After the new site was declared safe following a cleanup operation, Toyosu Market was opened.
Japan's sea territory is 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi). Japan ranks fourth with its exclusive economic zone ocean water volume from 0 to 2,000 m (6,600 ft) depth. Japan ranks fifth with a sea volume of 2,000–3,000 meters, fourth with 3,000–4,000 meters, third with 4,000–5,000 meters, and first with a volume of 5,000 to over 6,000 meters. The relief map of the Japanese archipelago shows that 50% of Japan's sea territory has an ocean volume between 0 and 4,000 m (13,000 ft) deep. The other 50% has a depth of 4,000 m (13,000 ft) to over 6,000 m (20,000 ft). 19% has a depth of 0 to 1,000 m (3,300 ft). Thus, Japan possesses one of the largest ocean territories with a combination of all depths, from shallow to very deep. Multiple long undersea mountain ranges stretch from Japan's main islands to the south. They occasionally reach above the sea surface as islands. East of the undersea mountain ranges are three oceanic trenches: the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench (max depth 10,542 m (34,587 ft)), Japan Trench (max depth 10,375 m (34,039 ft)), and Izu–Ogasawara Trench (max depth 9,810 m (32,190 ft)).
There are large quantities of marine life and mineral resources in the ocean and seabed of Japan. At a depth of over 1,000 m (3,300 ft), there are minerals such as manganese nodules, cobalt in the crust, and hydrothermal deposits.
The Japanese archipelago is the result of subducting tectonic plates over several 100 million years, from the mid-Silurian (443.8 Mya) to the Pleistocene (11,700 years ago). Approximately 15,000 km (9,300 mi) of oceanic floor has passed under the Japanese archipelago in the last 450 million years, with most being fully subducted. It is considered a mature island arc.
The islands of Japan were created by tectonic plate movements:
The Pacific Plate and Philippine Sea Plate are subduction plates. They are deeper than the Eurasian plate. The Philippine Sea Plate moves beneath the continental Amurian Plate and the Okinawa Plate to the south. The Pacific Plate moves under the Okhotsk Plate to the north. These subduction plates pulled Japan eastward and opened the Sea of Japan by back-arc spreading around 15 million years ago. The Strait of Tartary and the Korea Strait opened much later. La Pérouse Strait formed about 60,000 to 11,000 years ago, closing the path used by mammoths, which had earlier moved to northern Hokkaido. The eastern margin of the Sea of Japan is an incipient subduction zone consisting of thrust faults that formed from the compression and reactivation of old faults involved in earlier rifting.
The subduction zone is where the oceanic crust slides beneath the continental crust or other oceanic plates. This is because the oceanic plate's litosphere has a higher density. Subduction zones are sites that usually have a high rate of volcanism and earthquakes. Additionally, subduction zones develop belts of deformation. The subduction zones on the east side of the Japanese archipelago cause frequent low-intensity earth tremors. Major earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis occur several times per century. It is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Northeastern Japan, north of the Tanakura fault, had high volcanic activity 14–17 million years before the present.
The Japan Median Tectonic Line (MTL) is Japan's longest fault system. The MTL begins near Ibaraki Prefecture, where it connects with the Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line (ISTL) and the Fossa Magna. It runs parallel to Japan's volcanic arc, passing through central Honshū to near Nagoya, through Mikawa Bay, then through the Seto Inland Sea from the Kii Channel and Naruto Strait to Shikoku along the Sadamisaki Peninsula and the Bungo Channel and Hōyo Strait to Kyūshū.
The MTL moves right-lateral strike-slip at about 5–10 millimeters per year. The sense of motion is consistent with the direction of the Nankai Trough's oblique convergence. The rate of motion on the MTL is much less than the rate of convergence at the plate boundary. This makes it difficult to distinguish the motion on the MTL from interseismic elastic straining in GPS data.
East of the Japanese archipelago are three oceanic trenches.
The Japanese islands are formed of the mentioned geological units parallel to the subduction front. The parts of islands facing the Pacific Plate are typically younger and display a larger proportion of volcanic products, while island parts facing the Sea of Japan are mostly heavily faulted and folded sedimentary deposits. In northwest Japan, there are thick quaternary deposits. This makes the determination of the geological history and composition difficult, and it is not yet fully understood.
The Japanese island arc system has distributed volcanic series where the volcanic rocks change from tholeiite—calc-alkaline—alkaline with increasing distance from the trench. The geologic province of Japan is mostly basin and has a bit of extended crust.
The Japanese archipelago grows gradually because of perpetual tectonic plate movements, earthquakes, stratovolcanoes, and land reclamation in the Ring of Fire.
For example, during the 20th century, several new volcanoes emerged, including Shōwa-shinzan on Hokkaido and Myōjin-shō off the Bayonnaise Rocks in the Pacific. The 1914 Sakurajima eruption produced lava flows that connected the former island with the Ōsumi Peninsula in Kyushu. It is the most active volcano in Japan.
During the 2013 eruption southeast of Nishinoshima, a new, unnamed volcanic island emerged from the sea. Erosion and shifting sands caused the new island to merge with Nishinoshima. A 1911 survey determined the caldera was 107 m (351 ft) at its deepest.
The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami caused portions of northeastern Japan to shift by 2.4 metres (7 ft 10 in) closer to North America. This made some sections of Japan's landmass wider than before. The areas of Japan closest to the epicenter experienced the largest shifts. A 400-kilometre (250 mi) stretch of coastline dropped vertically by 0.6 metres (2 ft 0 in), allowing the tsunami to travel farther and faster onto land. On 6 April, the Japanese coast guard said that the earthquake shifted the seabed near the epicenter 24 metres (79 ft) and elevated the seabed off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture by 3 metres (9.8 ft). A report by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, published in Science on 2 December 2011, concluded that the seabed in the area between the epicenter and the Japan Trench moved 50 metres (160 ft) east-southeast and rose about 7 metres (23 ft) as a result of the quake. The report also stated that the quake caused several major landslides on the seabed in the affected area.
During the Pleistocene (2.58 million years BCE) glacial cycles, the Japanese islands may have occasionally been connected to the Eurasian Continent via the Korea Strait and the Korean Peninsula or Sakhalin. The Sea of Japan was considered to be a frozen inner lake because of the lack of the warm Tsushima Current. Various plants and large animals, such as Palaeoloxodon naumanni, migrated into the Japanese archipelago.
The Sea of Japan was a landlocked sea when the land bridge of East Asia existed circa 18,000 BCE. During the glacial maximum, the marine elevation was 200 meters lower than present. Thus, Tsushima island in the Korea Strait was a land bridge that connected Kyushu and the southern tip of Honshu with the Korean peninsula. There were still several kilometers of sea to the west of the Ryukyu islands, and most of the Sea of Japan was open sea with a mean depth of 1,752 m (5,748 ft). Comparatively, most of the Yellow Sea (Yellow Plane) had a semi-arid climate (dry steppe) because it was relatively shallow, with a mean depth of 44 m (144 ft). The Korean Peninsula was landlocked on the entire west and south sides of the Yellow Plane. The onset of the formation of the Japan Arc was in the Early Miocene (23 million years ago). The Early Miocene period was when the Sea of Japan started to open and the northern and southern parts of the Japanese archipelago separated from each other. The Sea of Japan expanded during the Miocene.
The northern part of the Japanese archipelago was further fragmented until the orogenesis of the northeastern Japanese archipelago began in the Late Miocene. The orogenesis of the high mountain ranges in northeastern Japan started in the Late Miocene and lasted into the Pliocene. The southern part of the Japanese archipelago remained a relatively large landmass. The land area expanded northward during the Miocene.
During the advance of the last Ice Age, the world sea level dropped. This dried up and closed the exit straits of the Sea of Japan one by one. The deepest, and thus the last to close, was the western channel of the Korea Strait. There is controversy as to whether the Sea of Japan became a huge, cold inland lake. The Japanese archipelago had a taiga biome (open boreal woodlands). It was characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches. Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril islands had mammoth steppe biome (steppe-tundra). The vegetation was dominated by palatable high-productivity grasses, herbs, and willow shrubs.
The Sea of Japan has a surface area of 978,000 km (378,000 sq mi), a mean depth of 1,752 m (5,748 ft), and a maximum depth of 3,742 m (12,277 ft). It has a carrot-like shape, with the major axis extending from southwest to northeast and a wide southern part narrowing toward the north. The coastal length is about 7,600 km (4,700 mi), with the largest part (3,240 km or 2,010 mi) belonging to Russia. The sea extends from north to south for more than 2,255 km (1,401 mi) and has a maximum width of about 1,070 km (660 mi).
There are three major basins: the Yamato Basin in the southeast, the Japan Basin in the north, and the Tsushima Basin in the southwest. The Japan Basin has an oceanic crust and is the deepest part of the sea, whereas the Tsushima Basin is the shallowest, with depths below 2,300 m (7,500 ft). The Yamato Basin and Tsushima Basin have thick oceanic crusts. The continental shelves of the sea are wide on the eastern shores of Japan. On the western shores, they are narrow, particularly along the Korean and Russian coasts, averaging about 30 km (19 mi).
The geographical location of the Japanese archipelago has defined the Sea of Japan for millions of years. Without the Japanese archipelago, it would just be the Pacific Ocean. The term has been the international standard since at least the early 19th century. In 2012, the International Hydrographic Organization, the international governing body for naming bodies of water around the world, recognized the term "Sea of Japan" as the only title for the sea.
The Japanese archipelago is surrounded by eight ocean currents.
There are small deposits of coal, oil, iron, and minerals in the Japanese archipelago. Japan is scarce in critical natural resources and has long been heavily dependent on imported energy and raw materials. The oil crisis in 1973 encouraged the efficient use of energy. Japan has therefore aimed to diversify its sources and maintain high levels of energy efficiency. In regards to agricultural products, the self-sufficiency rate of most items is less than 100%, except for rice. Rice has 100% food self-sufficiency. This makes it difficult to meet Japan's food demand without imports.
The exclusive economic zone of Japan has an estimated large quantity of mineral resources such as methane clathrate, natural gas, metallic minerals, and rare-earth mineral reserves. Seabed mineral resources such as manganese nodules, cobalt-rich crust, and submarine hydrothermal deposits are located at depths over 1,000 m (3,300 ft). Most of these deep-sea resources are unexplored at the seabed. Japan's mining law restricts offshore oil and gas production. There are technological hurdles to mine at such extreme depths and to limit the ecological impact. There are no successful commercial ventures that mine the deep sea yet. So currently, there are few deep sea mining projects to retrieve minerals or deepwater drilling on the ocean floor.
It is estimated that there are approximately 40 trillion cubic feet of methane clathrate in the eastern Nankai Trough of Japan. As of 2019, the methane clathrate in the deep sea remains unexploited because the necessary technology has not been established yet. This is why, currently, Japan has very limited proven reserves like crude oil.
The Kantō region alone is estimated to have over 400 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves. It forms a Minami Kantō gas field in the area spanning Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Ibaraki, and Chiba prefectures. However, mining is strictly regulated in many areas because it is directly below Tokyo and is only slightly mined on the Bōsō Peninsula. In Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture, there have been frequent accidents with natural gas that was released naturally from the Minami Kantō gas field.
In 2018, 250 km (160 mi) south of Minami-Tori-shima at 5,700 m (18,700 ft) deep, approximately 16 million tons of rare-earth minerals were discovered by JAMSTEC in collaboration with Waseda University and the University of Tokyo.
Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch (2014). In 2005, Japan ranked sixth in the world in the tonnage of fish caught. Japan captured 4,074,580 metric tons of fish in 2005, down from 4,987,703 tons in 2000 and 9,864,422 tons in 1980. In 2003, the total aquaculture production was predicted at 1,301,437 tonnes. In 2010, Japan's total fishery production was 4,762,469 fish. Offshore fisheries accounted for an average of 50% of the nation's total fish catches in the late 1980s, although they experienced repeated ups and downs during that period.
As of 2011, 46.1% of energy in Japan was produced from petroleum, 21.3% from coal, 21.4% from natural gas, 4.0% from nuclear power, and 3.3% from hydropower. Nuclear power is a major domestic source of energy and produced 9.2 percent of Japan's electricity as of 2011, down from 24.9 percent the previous year. Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disaster, the nuclear reactors were shut down. Thus, Japan's industrial sector became even more dependent than before on imported fossil fuels. By May 2012, all of the country's nuclear power plants were taken offline because of ongoing public opposition following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, though government officials continued to try to sway public opinion in favor of returning at least some of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors to service. Shinzo Abe's government seeks to restart the nuclear power plants that meet strict new safety standards and is emphasizing nuclear energy's importance as a base-load electricity source. In 2015, Japan successfully restarted one nuclear reactor at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Kagoshima prefecture, and several other reactors around the country have since resumed operations. Opposition from local governments has delayed several restarts that remain pending.
Reforms of the electricity and gas sectors, including the full liberalization of Japan's energy market in April 2016 and the gas market in April 2017, constitute an important part of Prime Minister Abe's economic program.
Japan has the third-largest geothermal reserves in the world. Geothermal energy is being heavily focused on as a source of power following the Fukushima disaster. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry is exploring over 40 locations for potential geothermal energy plants.
On 3 July 2018, Japan's government pledged to increase renewable energy sources from 15% to 22–24%, including wind and solar, by 2030. Nuclear energy will provide 20% of the country's energy needs as an emissions-free energy source. This will help Japan meet climate change commitments.
Japan has 34 National Parks (国立公園, Kokuritsu Kōen) and 56 Quasi-National Parks (国定公園, Kokutei Kōen) in 2019. These are designated and managed for protection and sustainable usage by the Ministry of the Environment under the Natural Parks Law (自然公園法) of 1957. The Quasi-National Parks have slightly less beauty, size, diversity, or preservation. They are recommended for ministerial designation and managed by the prefectures under the supervision of the Ministry of the Environment.
The Japanese archipelago has diverse landscapes. For example, the northern part of Hokkaido has a taiga biome. Hokkaido has 22% of Japan's forestland with coniferous trees (Sakhalin fir and Sakhalin spruce) and broad-leaved trees (Japanese oak, birch, and painted maple). The seasonal views change throughout the year. In the south, the Yaeyama Islands are in the subtropics, with numerous species of subtropical and tropical plants and mangrove forests. Most natural islands have mountain ranges in the center and coastal plains.
The Places of Scenic Beauty and Natural Monuments are selected by the government via the Agency for Cultural Affairs in order to protect Japan's cultural heritage. As of 2017, there are 1,027 Natural Monuments (天然記念物, tennen kinenbutsu) and 410 Places of Scenic Beauty (名勝, meishō). The highest classifications are 75 Special Natural Monuments (特別天然記念物, tokubetsu tennen kinenbutsu) and 36 Special Places of Scenic Beauty (特別名勝, tokubetsu meishō).
The Three Views of Japan (日本三景, Nihon Sankei) is the canonical list of Japan's three most celebrated scenic sights, attributed to 1643 scholar Hayashi Gahō. These are traditionally the pine-clad islands of Matsushima in Miyagi Prefecture, the pine-clad sandbar of Amanohashidate in Kyoto Prefecture, and Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture. In 1915, the New Three Views of Japan were selected in a national election by the Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha (株式会社実業之日本社). In 2003, the Three Major Night Views of Japan were selected by the New Three Major Night Views of Japan and the 100 Night Views of Japan Club (新日本三大夜景・夜景100選事務局).
Most regions of Japan, such as much of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, belong to the temperate zone with a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) characterized by four distinct seasons. However, its climate varies from a cool, humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfa/Dfb) in the north, such as northern Hokkaido, to a warm tropical rainforest climate (Köppen climate classification Af) in the south, such as the Yaeyama Islands and Minami-Tori-shima.
Japan's varied geographical features divide it into six principal climatic zones.
Japan is generally a rainy country with high humidity. Because of its wide range of latitude, seasonal winds, and different types of ocean currents, Japan has a variety of climates, with the latitude range of the inhabited islands ranging from 24°N to 46°N, which is comparable to the range between Nova Scotia and The Bahamas on the east coast of North America. Tokyo is between 35°N and 36°N, which is comparable to that of Tehran, Athens, or Las Vegas.
As Mount Fuji and the coastal Japanese Alps provide a rain shadow, Nagano and Yamanashi Prefectures receive the least precipitation in Honshu, though it still exceeds 900 millimetres (35 in) annually. A similar effect is found in Hokkaido, where Okhotsk Subprefecture receives as little as 750 millimetres (30 in) per year. All other prefectures have coasts on the Pacific Ocean, Sea of Japan, or Seto Inland Sea or have a body of salt water connected to them. Two prefectures—Hokkaido and Okinawa—are composed entirely of islands.
The climate from June to September is marked by hot, wet weather brought by tropical airflows from the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia. These air flows are full of moisture and deposit substantial amounts of rain when they reach land. There is a marked rainy season, beginning in early June and continuing for about a month. It is followed by hot, sticky weather. Five or six typhoons pass over or near Japan every year from early August to early October, sometimes resulting in significant damage. Annual precipitation averages between 1,000 and 2,500 mm (40 and 100 in) except for areas such as Kii Peninsula and Yakushima Island, which is Japan's wettest place, with the annual precipitation being one of the world's highest at 4,000 to 10,000 mm.
Maximum precipitation, like the rest of East Asia, occurs in the summer months except on the Sea of Japan coast, where strong northerly winds produce a maximum in late autumn and early winter. Except for a few sheltered inland valleys during December and January, precipitation in Japan is above 25 millimetres (1 in) of rainfall equivalent in all months of the year, and in the wettest coastal areas it is above 100 millimetres (4 in) per month throughout the year.
Mid-June to mid-July is generally the rainy season in Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, excluding Hokkaidō since the seasonal rain front, or baiu zensen (梅雨前線), dissipates in northern Honshu before reaching Hokkaido. In Okinawa, the rainy season starts early in May and continues until mid-June. Unlike the rainy season in mainland Japan, it rains neither everyday nor all day long during the rainy season in Okinawa. Between July and October, typhoons, grown from tropical depressions generated near the equator, can attack Japan with furious rainstorms.
In winter, the Siberian High develops over the Eurasian land mass and the Aleutian Low develops over the northern Pacific Ocean. The result is a flow of cold air southeastward across Japan that brings freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls to the central mountain ranges facing the Sea of Japan but clear skies to areas fronting the Pacific.
The warmest winter temperatures are found in the Nanpō and Bonin Islands, which enjoy a tropical climate due to the combination of latitude, distance from the Asian continent, and warming effect of winds from the Kuroshio, as well as the Volcano Islands (at the latitude of the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, 24° N). The coolest summer temperatures are found on the northeastern coast of Hokkaidō in Kushiro and Nemuro Subprefectures.
Sunshine, in accordance with Japan's uniformly heavy rainfall, is generally modest in quantity, though no part of Japan receives the consistently gloomy fogs that envelope the Sichuan Basin or Taipei. Amounts range from about six hours per day on the Inland Sea coast and sheltered parts of the Pacific Coast and Kantō Plain to four hours per day on the Sea of Japan coast of Hokkaidō. In December, there is a very pronounced sunshine gradient between the Sea of Japan and Pacific coasts, as the former side can receive less than 30 hours and the Pacific side as much as 180 hours. In summer, however, sunshine hours are lowest on exposed parts of the Pacific coast, where fogs from the Oyashio current create persistent cloud cover similar to that found on the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin.
The highest recorded temperature in Japan was 41.1 °C (106.0 °F) on 23 July 2018. An unverified record of 42.7 °C was taken in Adachi, Tokyo, on 20 July 2004. The high humidity and the maritime influence make temperatures in the 40s rare, with summers dominated by a more stable subtropical monsoon pattern through most of Japan. The lowest was −41.0 °C (−41.8 °F) in Asahikawa on 25 January 1902. However, an unofficial −41.5 °C was taken in Bifuka on 27 January 1931. Mount Fuji broke the Japanese record lows for each month except January, February, March, and December. Record lows for any month were taken as recently as 1984.
Minami-Tori-shima has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen climate classification Aw) and the highest average temperature in Japan of 25 °C.
Japan has a population of 126.3 million in 2019. It is the eleventh most populous country and second most populous island country in the world. The population is clustered in urban areas on the coast, plains and valleys. In 2010, 90.7% of the total Japanese population lived in cities. Japan is an urban society with about only 5% of the labor force working in agriculture. About 80 million of the urban population is heavily concentrated on the Pacific coast of Honshu.
81% of the population lives on Honshu, 10% on Kyushu, 4.2% on Hokkaido, 3% on Shikoku, 1.1% in Okinawa Prefecture and 0.7% on other Japanese islands such as the Nanpō Islands. Nearly 1 in 3 Japanese people live in the Greater Tokyo Area, and over half live in the Kanto, Kinki, and Chukyo metropolitan areas.
Honshū (本州) is the largest island of Japan and the second most populous island in the world. It has a population of 104,000,000 with a population density of 450/km (1,200/sq mi) (2010). Honshu is roughly 1,300 km (810 mi) long and ranges from 50 to 230 km (31 to 143 mi) wide, and the total area is 225,800 km (87,200 sq mi). It is the 7th largest island in the world. This makes it slightly larger than the island of Great Britain 209,331 km (80,823 sq mi).
The Greater Tokyo Area on Honshu is the largest metropolitan area (megacity) in the world with 38,140,000 people (2016). The area is 13,500 km (5,200 sq mi) and has a population density of 2,642 persons/km.
Kyushu (九州) is the third largest island of Japan of the five main islands. As of 2016, Kyushu has a population of 12,970,479 and covers 36,782 km (14,202 sq mi). It has the second highest population density of 307.13 persons/km (2016).
Shikoku (四国) is the second smallest of the five main islands (after Okinawa island), 18,800 km (7,300 sq mi). It is located south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. It has the second smallest population of 3,845,534 million (2015) and the third highest population density of 204.55 persons/km.
Hokkaido (北海道) is the second largest island of Japan, and the largest and northernmost prefecture. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu. It has the third largest population of the five main islands with 5,383,579 (2015) and the lowest population density with just 64.5 persons/km (2016). The island area ranks 21st in the world by area. It is 3.6% smaller than the island of Ireland.
Okinawa Prefecture (沖縄県) is the southernmost prefecture of Japan. It encompasses two thirds of the Ryukyu Islands over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long. It has a population of 1,445,812 (2017) and a density of 662 persons/km. Okinawa Island (沖縄本島 or 沖縄島) is the smallest and most southwestern of the five main islands, 1,206.98 km (466.02 sq mi). It has the smallest population of 1,301,462 (2014) and the highest population density of 1083.6 persons/km.
Nanpō Islands (南方諸島) are the groups of islands that are located to the south and east of the main islands of the Japanese archipelago. They extend from the Izu Peninsula west of Tokyo Bay southward for about 1,200 kilometres (750 mi), to within 500 kilometres (310 mi) of the Mariana Islands. The Nanpō Islands are all administered by Tokyo Metropolis.
The Taiheiyō Belt is a megalopolis that includes the Greater Tokyo Area and Keihanshin megapoles. It is almost 1,200 km (750 mi) long from Ibaraki Prefecture in the northeast to Fukuoka Prefecture in the southwest. Satellite images at night show a dense and continuous strip of light (demarcating urban zones) that delineates the region with overlapping metropolitan areas in Japan. It has a total population of approximately 81,859,345 (2016).
There are plans to build underwater habitats in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone. Currently no underwater city is constructed yet. For example, the Ocean Spiral by Shimizu Corporation would have a floating dome 500 meters in diameter with hotels, residential and commercial complexes. It could be 15 km long. This allows mining of the seabed, research and production of methane from carbon dioxide with micro-organisms. The Ocean Spiral was co-developed with JAMSTEC and Tokyo University.
Japan extends from 20° to 45° north latitude (Okinotorishima to Benten-jima) and from 122° to 153° east longitude (Yonaguni to Minami Torishima). These are the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location in Japan.
The five main islands of Japan are Hokkaidō, Honshū, Kyūshū, Shikoku and Okinawa. These are also called the mainland. All of these points are accessible to the public.
These are the 50 largest islands of Japan. It excludes the disputed Kuril islands known as the northern territories.
Japan has a longstanding claim of the Southern Kuril Islands (Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai Islands). These islands were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945. The Kuril Islands historically belong to Japan. The Kuril Islands were first inhabited by the Ainu people and then controlled by the Japanese Matsumae clan in the Edo Period. The Soviet Union did not sign the San Francisco Treaty in 1951. The U.S. Senate Resolution of April 28, 1952, ratifying of the San Francisco Treaty, explicitly stated that the USSR had no title to the Kurils. This dispute has prevented the signing of a peace treaty between Japan and Russia.
Geographically the Kuril Islands are a northeastern extension of Hokkaido. Kunashiri and the Habomai Islands are visible from the northeastern coast of Hokkaido. Japan considers the northern territories (aka Southern Chishima) part of Nemuro Subprefecture of Hokkaido Prefecture.
There is one time zone in the whole Japanese archipelago. It is 9 hours ahead of UTC. There is no daylight saving time. The easternmost Japanese island Minami-Tori-shima also uses Japan Standard Time while it is geographically 1,848 kilometres (1,148 mi) southeast of Tokyo and in the UTC+10:00 time zone.
Sakhalin uses UTC+11:00 even though it is located directly north of Hokkaido. The Northern Territories and the Kuril islands use UTC+11:00 although they are geographically in UTC+10:00
Japan is substantially prone to earthquakes, tsunami and volcanoes because of its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire. It has the 15th highest natural disaster risk as measured in the 2013 World Risk Index.
As many as 1,500 earthquakes are recorded yearly, and magnitudes of 4 to 6 are common. Minor tremors occur almost daily in one part of the country or another, causing slight shaking of buildings. Undersea earthquakes also expose the Japanese coastline to danger from tsunamis (津波).
Destructive earthquakes, often resulting in tsunami, occur several times each century. The 1923 Tokyo earthquake killed over 140,000 people. More recent major quakes are the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, a 9.1-magnitude quake which hit Japan on March 11, 2011. It triggered a large tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, one of the worst disasters in the history of nuclear power.
The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake was the largest ever recorded in Japan and is the world's fourth largest earthquake to strike since 1900, according to the U.S. Geological Service. It struck offshore about 371 kilometres (231 mi) northeast of Tokyo and 130 kilometres (81 mi) east of the city of Sendai, and created a massive tsunami that devastated Japan's northeastern coastal areas. At least 100 aftershocks registering a 6.0 magnitude or higher have followed the main shock. At least 15,000 people died as a result.
Researchers found the source of great thrust earthquakes and associated tsunamis in the Greater Tokyo Area at the Izu-Ogasawara Trench. There is a 'trench-trench triple junction' of the oceanic Philippine Sea Plate that underthrusts a continental plate and is being subducted by the Pacific Plate.
Reclaimed land and man-made islands are particularly susceptible to liquefaction during an earthquake. As a result, there are specific earthquake resistance standards and ground reform work that applies to all construction in these areas. In an area that was possibly reclaimed in the past, old maps and land condition drawings are checked and drilling is carried out to determine the strength of the ground. However this can be very costly, so for a private residential block of land, a Swedish weight sounding test is more common.
Japan has become a world leader in research on causes and prediction of earthquakes. The development of advanced technology has permitted the construction of skyscrapers even in earthquake-prone areas. Extensive civil defence efforts focus on training in protection against earthquakes, in particular against accompanying fire, which represents the greatest danger.
Japan has 111 active volcanoes. That's 10% of all active volcanoes in the world. Japan has stratovolcanoes near the subduction zones of the tectonic plates. During the 20th century several new volcanoes emerged, including Shōwa-shinzan on Hokkaido and Myōjin-shō off the Bayonnaise Rocks in the Pacific. In 1991, Japan's Unzen Volcano on Kyushu about 40 km (25 mi) east of Nagasaki, awakened from its 200-year slumber to produce a new lava dome at its summit. Beginning in June, repeated collapse of this erupting dome generated ash flows that swept down the mountain's slopes at speeds as high as 200 km/h (120 mph). Unzen erupted in 1792 and killed more than 15,000 people. It is the worst volcanic disaster in the country's recorded history.
Mount Fuji is a dormant stratovolcano that last erupted on 16 December 1707 till about 1 January 1708. The Hōei eruption of Mount Fuji did not have a lava flow, but it did release some 800 million cubic metres (28×10^ cu ft) of volcanic ash. It spread over vast areas around the volcano and reached Edo almost 100 kilometres (60 mi) away. Cinders and ash fell like rain in Izu, Kai, Sagami, and Musashi provinces. In Edo, the volcanic ash was several centimeters thick. The eruption is rated a 5 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.
There are three VEI-7 volcanoes in Japan. These are the Aira Caldera, Kikai Caldera and Aso Caldera. These giant caldera are remnants of past eruptions. Mount Aso is the largest active volcano in Japan. 300,000 to 90,000 years ago there were four eruptions of Mount Aso which emitted huge amounts of volcanic ash that covered all of Kyushu and up to Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Surveys by KOBEC (Kobe Ocean-Bottom Exploration Center) confirm that a giant lava dome of 23 cubic kilometers formed after the Kikai Caldera erupted in 4,300 BC. There is a 1% chance of a giant caldera eruption in the Japanese archipelago within the next 100 years. Appropriately 40 cubic kilometers of magma would be released in one burst and cause enormous damage.
According to a 2014 study by KOBEC of Kobe University, in a worst-case scenario if there is a VEI-7 eruption of the Aso Caldera and if the volcanic ash is carried by westerly winds, then pyroclastic flows would cover the 7 million population near the Aso Caldera within two hours. The pyroclastic flows could reach much of Kyushu. Beyond the pyroclastic area is volcanic ash that falls from the sky. If the volcanic ash continuously flows northward, then the ash fall would make it impossible to live normally in large parts of the main islands of Japan, due to paralysis of traffic and lifelines for a limited period (a few days to 2 weeks) until the eruption subsides. In this scenario, the exception would be eastern and northern Hokkaido (the Ryukyu Islands and southern Nanpo Islands would also be excepted). Professor Yoshiyuki Tatsumi, head of KOBEC told the Mainichi Shimbun "the probability of a gigantic caldera eruption hitting the Japanese archipelago is 1 percent in the next 100 years" with a death toll of many tens of millions of people and wildlife. The potential exists for tens of millions of humans and other living beings to die during a VEI-7 volcanic eruption with significant short-term effects on the global climate. Most casualties would occur in Kyushu by the pyroclastic flows. The potential damage of the volcanic ash depends on the Wind direction. If in another scenario, the wind blows in a western or southern direction then the Volcanic ash could affect the East Asian continent or South-East Asia. If the ash flows eastward then it will spread over the Pacific Ocean. Since the Kikai Caldera is submerged, it is unclear how much damage the hot ash clouds would cause if large quantities of volcanic ash stays beneath the ocean surface. The underwater ash would be swept away by ocean currents.
Paektu Mountain on the Chinese–North Korean border had a VEI-7 eruption in 946. Paektu Mountain is mainly a threat to the surrounding area in North Korea and Manchuria. The west coast of Hokkaido is about 971.62 km (603.74 mi) away. However, a temple in Japan reported "white ash falling like snow" on 3 November 946 AD. So strong winds carried the volcanic ash eastward across the Sea of Japan. An average of 5 cm (2.0 in) of ashfall covered about 1,500,000 km (580,000 sq mi) of the Sea of Japan and northern Japan (Hokkaido and Aomori Prefecture). It took the ash clouds 1 day or so to reach Hokkaido. The total eruption duration was 4 and half to 14 days (111–333 hours).
In October 2021, large quantities of pumice pebbles from the submarine volcano Fukutoku-Okanoba damaged fisheries, tourism, the environment, 11 ports in Okinawa and 19 ports in Kagoshima prefecture. Clean-up operations took 2–3 weeks.
Improving technology and methods to predict volcano and giant caldera eruptions would help to prepare and evacuate people earlier. Technology is needed to accurately capture the state of the magma chamber that spreads thinly with a thickness of less than several kilometers around the middle of the crust. The underground area of Kyushu must be monitored, because it is a dangerous area with a potential caldera eruption. The most protective measure is to stop the hot ash clouds from spreading and devastating areas near the eruption so that people don't need to evacuate. There are currently no protective measures to minimize the spread of millions of tons of deadly hot ash during a VEI-7 eruption.
In 2018 NASA published a theoretical plan to prevent a volcanic eruption by pumping large quantities of cold water down a borehole into the hydrothermal system of a supervolcano. The water would cool the huge body of magma in the chambers below the volcano so that the liquid magma becomes semi-solid. Thus enough heat could be extracted to prevent an eruption. The heat could be used by a geothermal plant to generate geothermal energy and electricity.
Since recording started in 1951, an average of 2.6 typhoons reached the main islands of Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu and Hokkaido per year. Approximately 10.3 typhoons approach within the 300 kilometer range near the coast of Japan. Okinawa is, due to its geographic location, most vulnerable to typhoons with an average of 7 storms per year. The most destructive was Isewan Typhoon with 5,000 casualties in the Tokai region in September 1959. In October 2004, Typhoon Tokage caused heavy rain in Kyushu and central Japan with 98 casualties. Until the 1960s the death toll was hundreds of people per typhoon. Since the 1960s improvements in construction, flood prevention, high tides detection and early warnings substantially reduced the death toll which rarely exceeds a dozen people per typhoon. Japan also has special search and rescue units to save people in distress.
Heavy snowfall during the winter in the snow country regions cause landslides, flooding, and avalanches.
In the 2006 environment annual report, the Ministry of Environment reported that current major issues are: global warming and preservation of the ozone layer, conservation of the atmospheric environment, water and soil, waste management and recycling, measures for chemical substances, conservation of the natural environment and the participation in the international cooperation. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Japan is an archipelagic country comprising a stratovolcanic archipelago over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) along the Pacific coast of East Asia. It consists of 14,125 islands. The five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Okinawa. The other 14,120 islands are classified as \"remote islands\" by the Japanese government. The Ryukyu Islands and Nanpō Islands are south and east of the main islands.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The territory covers 377,973.89 km (145,936.53 sq mi). It is the fourth-largest island country in the world and the largest island country in East Asia. The country has the 6th longest coastline at 29,751 km (18,486 mi) and the 8th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi) in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The terrain is mostly rugged and mountainous, with 66% forest. The population is clustered in urban areas along the coast, plains, and valleys. Japan is located in the northwestern Ring of Fire on multiple tectonic plates. East of the Japanese archipelago are three oceanic trenches. The Japan Trench is created as the oceanic Pacific Plate subducts beneath the continental Okhotsk Plate. The continuous subduction process causes frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, and stratovolcanoes. The islands are also affected by typhoons. The subduction plates have pulled the Japanese archipelago eastward, created the Sea of Japan, and separated it from the Asian continent by back-arc spreading 15 million years ago.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The climate varies from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical and tropical rainforests in the south. These differences in climate and landscape have allowed the development of a diverse flora and fauna, with some rare endemic species, especially in the Ogasawara Islands.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Japan extends from 20° to 45° north latitude (Okinotorishima to Benten-jima) and from 122° to 153° east longitude (Yonaguni to Minami Torishima). Japan is surrounded by seas. To the north, the Sea of Okhotsk separates it from the Russian Far East; to the west, the Sea of Japan separates it from the Korean Peninsula; to the southwest, the East China Sea separates the Ryukyu Islands from China and Taiwan; and to the east is the Pacific Ocean.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago is over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) long in a north-to-southwardly direction from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Philippine Sea in the Pacific Ocean. It is narrow, and no point in Japan is more than 150 km (93 mi) from the sea. In 2023, a government recount of the islands with digital maps increased the total from 6,852 to 14,125 islands. The five main islands are (from north to south) Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Three of the four major islands (Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku) are separated by narrow straits of the Seto Inland Sea and form a natural entity. The 6,847 smaller islands are called remote islands. This includes the Bonin Islands, Daitō Islands, Minami-Tori-shima, Okinotorishima, the Ryukyu Islands, the Volcano Islands, Nansei Islands, and the Nanpō Islands, as well as numerous islets, of which 430 are inhabited. The Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan but disputed by China. This excludes the disputed Northern Territories (Kuril Islands) and Liancourt Rocks. In total, as of 2021, Japan's territory is 377,973.89 km (145,936.53 sq mi), of which 364,546.41 km (140,752.16 sq mi) is land and 13,430 km (5,190 sq mi) is water. Japan has the sixth longest coastline in the world (29,751 km (18,486 mi)). It is the largest island country in East Asia and the fourth largest island country in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Because of Japan's many far-flung outlying islands and long coastline, the country has extensive marine life and mineral resources in the ocean. The Exclusive Economic Zone of Japan covers 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi) and is the 8th largest in the world. It is more than 11 times the land area of the country. The Exclusive Economic Zone stretches from the baseline out to 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its coast. Its territorial sea is 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi), but between 3 and 12 nmi (5.6 and 22.2 km; 3.5 and 13.8 mi) in the international straits—La Pérouse (or Sōya Strait), Tsugaru Strait, Ōsumi, and Tsushima Strait.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Japan has a population of 126 million in 2019. It is the 11th most populous country in the world and the second most populous island country. 81% of the population lives on Honshu, 10% on Kyushu, 4.2% on Hokkaido, 3% on Shikoku, 1.1% in Okinawa Prefecture, and 0.7% on other Japanese islands such as the Nanpō Islands.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Japan is informally divided into eight regions, from northeast (Hokkaidō) to southwest (Ryukyu Islands):",
"title": "Map of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Each region contains several prefectures, except the Hokkaido region, which comprises only Hokkaido Prefecture.",
"title": "Map of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The regions are not official administrative units but have been traditionally used as the regional division of Japan in a number of contexts. For example, maps and geography textbooks divide Japan into the eight regions; weather reports usually give the weather by region; and many businesses and institutions use their home region as part of their name (Kinki Nippon Railway, Chūgoku Bank, Tohoku University, etc.). While Japan has eight High Courts, their jurisdictions do not correspond with the eight regions.",
"title": "Map of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "About 73% of Japan is mountainous, with a mountain range running through each of the main islands. Japan's highest mountain is Mount Fuji, with an elevation of 3,776 m (12,388 ft). Japan's forest cover rate is 68.55% since the mountains are heavily forested. The only other developed nations with such a high forest cover percentage are Finland and Sweden.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Since there is little level ground, many hills and mountainsides at lower elevations around towns and cities are often cultivated. As Japan is situated in a volcanic zone along the Pacific deeps, frequent low-intensity earth tremors and occasional volcanic activity are felt throughout the islands. Destructive earthquakes occur several times a century. Hot springs are numerous and have been exploited by the leisure industry.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan measures Japan's territory annually in order to continuously grasp the state of the national land. As of July 1, 2021, Japan's territory is 377,973.89 square kilometres (145,936.53 sq mi). It increases in area due to volcanic eruptions such as Nishinoshima (西之島), the natural expansion of the islands, and land reclamation.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "This table shows land use in 2002.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago is relatively far away from the Asian continent. Kyushu is closest to the southernmost point of the Korean peninsula, with a distance of 190 km (120 mi), which is almost six times farther away than from England to France across the English Channel. Thus, historically, Kyushu was the gateway between Asia and Japan. China is separated by 800 km (500 mi) of sea from Japan's big main islands. Hokkaido is near Sakhalin, which was occupied by Japan from 1905 to 1945. Most of the population lives on the Pacific coast of Honshū. The west coast facing the Sea of Japan is less densely populated.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago has been difficult to reach since ancient history. During the Paleolithic period around 20,000 BCE, at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, there was a land bridge between Hokkaido and Sakhalin that linked Japan with the Asian continent. The land bridge disappeared when sea levels rose in the Jōmon period around 10,000 BCE.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Japan's remote location, surrounded by vast seas, rugged, mountainous terrain, and steep rivers, makes it secure against invaders and uncontrolled migration from the Asian continent. The Japanese can close their civilization with an isolationist foreign policy. During the Edo period, the Tokugawa Shogunate enforced the Sakoku policy, which prohibited most foreign contact and trade from 1641 to 1853. In modern times, the inflow of people is managed via seaports and airports. Thus, Japan is fairly insulated from continental issues.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Throughout history, Japan has never been fully invaded or colonized by other countries. The Mongols tried to invade Japan twice and failed in 1274 and 1281. Japan capitulated only once after nuclear attacks in World War II. At the time, Japan did not have nuclear technology. The insular geography is a major factor in the isolationist, semi-open, and expansionist periods of Japanese history.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The mountainous islands of the Japanese archipelago form a crescent off the eastern coast of Asia. They are separated from the continent by the Sea of Japan, which serves as a protective barrier. Japan has 108 active volcanoes (10% of the world's active volcanoes) because of active plate tectonics in the Ring of Fire.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Around 15 million years ago, the volcanic shoreline of the Asian continent was pushed out into a series of volcanic island arcs. This created the \"back-arc basins\" known as the Sea of Japan and Sea of Okhotsk with the formal shaping of the Japanese archipelago. The archipelago also has summits on mountain ridges that were uplifted near the outer edge of the continental shelf. About 73 percent of Japan's area is mountainous, and scattered plains and intermontane basins (in which the population is concentrated) cover only about 27 percent. A long chain of mountains runs down the middle of the archipelago, dividing it into two halves: the \"face\", facing the Pacific Ocean, and the \"back\", toward the Sea of Japan. On the Pacific side are steep mountains 1,500 to 3,000 meters high, with deep valleys and gorges.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Central Japan is marked by the convergence of the three mountain chains—the Hida, Kiso, and Akaishi mountains—that form the Japanese Alps (Nihon Arupusu), several of whose peaks are higher than 3,000 metres (9,800 ft). The highest point in the Japanese Alps is Mount Kita at 3,193 metres (10,476 ft). The highest point in the country is Mount Fuji (Fujisan, also erroneously called Fujiyama), a volcano dormant since 1707 that rises to 3,776 m (12,388 ft) above sea level in Shizuoka Prefecture. On the Sea of Japan side are plateaus and low mountain districts, with altitudes of 500 to 1,500 meters.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "There are three major plains in central Honshū. The largest is the Kantō Plain, which covers 17,000 km (6,600 sq mi) in the Kantō region. The capital Tokyo and the largest metropolitan population are located there. The second largest plain in Honshū is the Nōbi Plain (1,800 km (690 sq mi)), with the third-most-populous urban area being Nagoya. The third-largest plain in Honshū is the Osaka Plain, which covers 1,600 km (620 sq mi) in the Kinki region. It features the second-largest urban area of Osaka (part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area). Osaka and Nagoya extend inland from their bays until they reach steep mountains. The Osaka Plain is connected with Kyoto and Nara. Kyoto is located in the Yamashiro Basin (827.9 km (319.7 sq mi)) and Nara is in the Nara Basin (300 km (120 sq mi)).",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Kantō Plain, Osaka Plain, and Nōbi Plain are the most important economic, political, and cultural areas of Japan. These plains had the largest agricultural production and large bays with ports for fishing and trade. This made them the largest population centers. Kyoto and Nara are the ancient capitals and cultural heart of Japan. The Kantō Plain became Japan's center of power because it is the largest plain with a central location, and historically, it had the most agricultural production that could be taxed. The Tokugawa Shogunate established a bakufu in Edo in 1603. This evolved into the capital of Tokyo by 1868.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Hokkaido has multiple plains, such as the Ishikari Plain (3,800 km (1,500 sq mi)), Tokachi Plain (3,600 km (1,400 sq mi)), the Kushiro Plain, the largest wetland in Japan (2,510 km (970 sq mi)), and the Sarobetsu Plain (200 km (77 sq mi)). There are many farms that produce a plethora of agricultural products. The average farm size in Hokkaido was 26 hectares per farmer in 2013. That is nearly 11 times larger than the national average of 2.4 hectares. This made Hokkaido the most agriculturally rich prefecture in Japan. Nearly one-fourth of Japan's arable land and 22% of Japan's forests are in Hokkaido.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Another important plain is the Sendai Plain around the city of Sendai in northeastern Honshū. Many of these plains are along the coast, and their areas have been increased by land reclamation throughout recorded history.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Rivers are generally steep and swift, and few are suitable for navigation except in their lower reaches. Although most rivers are less than 300 km (190 mi) in length, their rapid flow from the mountains is what provides hydroelectric power. Seasonal variations in flow have led to the extensive development of flood control measures. The longest, the Shinano River, which winds through Nagano Prefecture to Niigata Prefecture and flows into the Sea of Japan, is 367 km (228 mi) long.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "These are the 10 longest rivers of Japan.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The largest freshwater lake is Lake Biwa (670.3 km (258.8 sq mi)), northeast of Kyoto in Shiga Prefecture. Lake Biwa is an ancient lake and is estimated to be the 13th oldest lake in the world, dating to at least 4 million years ago. It has consistently carried water for millions of years. Lake Biwa was created by plate tectonics in an active rift zone. This created a very deep lake with a maximum depth of 104 m (341 ft). Thus, it is not naturally filled with sediment. Over the course of millions of years, a diverse ecosystem evolved in the lake. It has more than 1,000 species and subspecies. There are 46 native fish species and subspecies, including 11 species and 5 subspecies that are endemic or near-endemic. Approximately 5,000 water birds visit the lake each year.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The following are the 10 largest lakes of Japan.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Extensive coastal shipping, especially around the Seto Inland Sea, compensates for the lack of navigable rivers. The Pacific coastline south of Tokyo is characterized by long, narrow, gradually shallowing inlets produced by sedimentation, which has created many natural harbors. The Pacific coastline north of Tokyo, the coast of Hokkaidō, and the Sea of Japan coast are generally unindented, with few natural harbors.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A recent global remote sensing analysis suggested that there were 765 km² of tidal flats in Japan, making it the 35th-ranked country in terms of tidal flat extent.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago has been transformed by humans into a sort of continuous land, in which the four main islands are entirely reachable and passable by rail and road transportation thanks to the construction of huge bridges and tunnels that connect each other and various islands.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Approximately 0.5% of Japan's total area is reclaimed land (umetatechi). It began in the 12th century. Land was reclaimed from the sea and from river deltas by building dikes, drainage, and rice paddies on terraces carved into mountainsides. The majority of land reclamation projects occurred after World War II, during the Japanese economic miracle. Reclamation of 80% to 90% of all the tidal flatland was done. Large land reclamation projects with landfills were done in coastal areas for maritime and industrial factories, such as Higashi Ogishima in Kawasaki, Osaka Bay, and Nagasaki Airport. Port Island, Rokkō Island, and Kobe Airport were built in Kobe. Late 20th and early 21st century projects include artificial islands such as Chubu Centrair International Airport in Ise Bay, Kansai International Airport in the middle of Osaka Bay, Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, and Wakayama Marina City. The village of Ōgata in Akita was established on land reclaimed from Lake Hachirōgata (Japan's second largest lake at the time) starting in 1957. By 1977, the amount of land reclaimed totaled 172.03 square kilometres (66.42 sq mi).",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Examples of land reclamation in Japan include:",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Much reclaimed land is made up of landfill waste materials, dredged earth, sand, sediment, sludge, and soil removed from construction sites. It is used to build man-made islands in harbors and embankments in inland areas. On November 8, 2011, Tokyo City began accepting rubble and waste from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami region. This rubble was processed, and when it had the appropriate radiation levels, it was used as a landfill to build new artificial islands in Tokyo Bay. Yamashita Park in Yokohama City was made with rubble from the great Kantō earthquake in 1923.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "There is a risk of contamination on artificial islands with landfills and reclaimed land if there was industry that spilled toxic chemicals into the ground. For example, the artificial island of Toyosu was once occupied by a Tokyo gas factory. Toxic substances were discovered in the soil and groundwater at Toyosu. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government spent an additional 3.8 billion yen ($33.5 million) to pump out groundwater by digging hundreds of wells. In June 2017, plans to move the Tsukiji fish market were restarted but delayed from July to the autumn of 2018. After the new site was declared safe following a cleanup operation, Toyosu Market was opened.",
"title": "Composition, topography and geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Japan's sea territory is 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi). Japan ranks fourth with its exclusive economic zone ocean water volume from 0 to 2,000 m (6,600 ft) depth. Japan ranks fifth with a sea volume of 2,000–3,000 meters, fourth with 3,000–4,000 meters, third with 4,000–5,000 meters, and first with a volume of 5,000 to over 6,000 meters. The relief map of the Japanese archipelago shows that 50% of Japan's sea territory has an ocean volume between 0 and 4,000 m (13,000 ft) deep. The other 50% has a depth of 4,000 m (13,000 ft) to over 6,000 m (20,000 ft). 19% has a depth of 0 to 1,000 m (3,300 ft). Thus, Japan possesses one of the largest ocean territories with a combination of all depths, from shallow to very deep. Multiple long undersea mountain ranges stretch from Japan's main islands to the south. They occasionally reach above the sea surface as islands. East of the undersea mountain ranges are three oceanic trenches: the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench (max depth 10,542 m (34,587 ft)), Japan Trench (max depth 10,375 m (34,039 ft)), and Izu–Ogasawara Trench (max depth 9,810 m (32,190 ft)).",
"title": "Oceanography and seabed of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "There are large quantities of marine life and mineral resources in the ocean and seabed of Japan. At a depth of over 1,000 m (3,300 ft), there are minerals such as manganese nodules, cobalt in the crust, and hydrothermal deposits.",
"title": "Oceanography and seabed of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago is the result of subducting tectonic plates over several 100 million years, from the mid-Silurian (443.8 Mya) to the Pleistocene (11,700 years ago). Approximately 15,000 km (9,300 mi) of oceanic floor has passed under the Japanese archipelago in the last 450 million years, with most being fully subducted. It is considered a mature island arc.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The islands of Japan were created by tectonic plate movements:",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Pacific Plate and Philippine Sea Plate are subduction plates. They are deeper than the Eurasian plate. The Philippine Sea Plate moves beneath the continental Amurian Plate and the Okinawa Plate to the south. The Pacific Plate moves under the Okhotsk Plate to the north. These subduction plates pulled Japan eastward and opened the Sea of Japan by back-arc spreading around 15 million years ago. The Strait of Tartary and the Korea Strait opened much later. La Pérouse Strait formed about 60,000 to 11,000 years ago, closing the path used by mammoths, which had earlier moved to northern Hokkaido. The eastern margin of the Sea of Japan is an incipient subduction zone consisting of thrust faults that formed from the compression and reactivation of old faults involved in earlier rifting.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The subduction zone is where the oceanic crust slides beneath the continental crust or other oceanic plates. This is because the oceanic plate's litosphere has a higher density. Subduction zones are sites that usually have a high rate of volcanism and earthquakes. Additionally, subduction zones develop belts of deformation. The subduction zones on the east side of the Japanese archipelago cause frequent low-intensity earth tremors. Major earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis occur several times per century. It is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Northeastern Japan, north of the Tanakura fault, had high volcanic activity 14–17 million years before the present.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Japan Median Tectonic Line (MTL) is Japan's longest fault system. The MTL begins near Ibaraki Prefecture, where it connects with the Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line (ISTL) and the Fossa Magna. It runs parallel to Japan's volcanic arc, passing through central Honshū to near Nagoya, through Mikawa Bay, then through the Seto Inland Sea from the Kii Channel and Naruto Strait to Shikoku along the Sadamisaki Peninsula and the Bungo Channel and Hōyo Strait to Kyūshū.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The MTL moves right-lateral strike-slip at about 5–10 millimeters per year. The sense of motion is consistent with the direction of the Nankai Trough's oblique convergence. The rate of motion on the MTL is much less than the rate of convergence at the plate boundary. This makes it difficult to distinguish the motion on the MTL from interseismic elastic straining in GPS data.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "East of the Japanese archipelago are three oceanic trenches.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Japanese islands are formed of the mentioned geological units parallel to the subduction front. The parts of islands facing the Pacific Plate are typically younger and display a larger proportion of volcanic products, while island parts facing the Sea of Japan are mostly heavily faulted and folded sedimentary deposits. In northwest Japan, there are thick quaternary deposits. This makes the determination of the geological history and composition difficult, and it is not yet fully understood.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Japanese island arc system has distributed volcanic series where the volcanic rocks change from tholeiite—calc-alkaline—alkaline with increasing distance from the trench. The geologic province of Japan is mostly basin and has a bit of extended crust.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago grows gradually because of perpetual tectonic plate movements, earthquakes, stratovolcanoes, and land reclamation in the Ring of Fire.",
"title": "Growing archipelago"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "For example, during the 20th century, several new volcanoes emerged, including Shōwa-shinzan on Hokkaido and Myōjin-shō off the Bayonnaise Rocks in the Pacific. The 1914 Sakurajima eruption produced lava flows that connected the former island with the Ōsumi Peninsula in Kyushu. It is the most active volcano in Japan.",
"title": "Growing archipelago"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "During the 2013 eruption southeast of Nishinoshima, a new, unnamed volcanic island emerged from the sea. Erosion and shifting sands caused the new island to merge with Nishinoshima. A 1911 survey determined the caldera was 107 m (351 ft) at its deepest.",
"title": "Growing archipelago"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami caused portions of northeastern Japan to shift by 2.4 metres (7 ft 10 in) closer to North America. This made some sections of Japan's landmass wider than before. The areas of Japan closest to the epicenter experienced the largest shifts. A 400-kilometre (250 mi) stretch of coastline dropped vertically by 0.6 metres (2 ft 0 in), allowing the tsunami to travel farther and faster onto land. On 6 April, the Japanese coast guard said that the earthquake shifted the seabed near the epicenter 24 metres (79 ft) and elevated the seabed off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture by 3 metres (9.8 ft). A report by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, published in Science on 2 December 2011, concluded that the seabed in the area between the epicenter and the Japan Trench moved 50 metres (160 ft) east-southeast and rose about 7 metres (23 ft) as a result of the quake. The report also stated that the quake caused several major landslides on the seabed in the affected area.",
"title": "Growing archipelago"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "During the Pleistocene (2.58 million years BCE) glacial cycles, the Japanese islands may have occasionally been connected to the Eurasian Continent via the Korea Strait and the Korean Peninsula or Sakhalin. The Sea of Japan was considered to be a frozen inner lake because of the lack of the warm Tsushima Current. Various plants and large animals, such as Palaeoloxodon naumanni, migrated into the Japanese archipelago.",
"title": "Sea of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Sea of Japan was a landlocked sea when the land bridge of East Asia existed circa 18,000 BCE. During the glacial maximum, the marine elevation was 200 meters lower than present. Thus, Tsushima island in the Korea Strait was a land bridge that connected Kyushu and the southern tip of Honshu with the Korean peninsula. There were still several kilometers of sea to the west of the Ryukyu islands, and most of the Sea of Japan was open sea with a mean depth of 1,752 m (5,748 ft). Comparatively, most of the Yellow Sea (Yellow Plane) had a semi-arid climate (dry steppe) because it was relatively shallow, with a mean depth of 44 m (144 ft). The Korean Peninsula was landlocked on the entire west and south sides of the Yellow Plane. The onset of the formation of the Japan Arc was in the Early Miocene (23 million years ago). The Early Miocene period was when the Sea of Japan started to open and the northern and southern parts of the Japanese archipelago separated from each other. The Sea of Japan expanded during the Miocene.",
"title": "Sea of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The northern part of the Japanese archipelago was further fragmented until the orogenesis of the northeastern Japanese archipelago began in the Late Miocene. The orogenesis of the high mountain ranges in northeastern Japan started in the Late Miocene and lasted into the Pliocene. The southern part of the Japanese archipelago remained a relatively large landmass. The land area expanded northward during the Miocene.",
"title": "Sea of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "During the advance of the last Ice Age, the world sea level dropped. This dried up and closed the exit straits of the Sea of Japan one by one. The deepest, and thus the last to close, was the western channel of the Korea Strait. There is controversy as to whether the Sea of Japan became a huge, cold inland lake. The Japanese archipelago had a taiga biome (open boreal woodlands). It was characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches. Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril islands had mammoth steppe biome (steppe-tundra). The vegetation was dominated by palatable high-productivity grasses, herbs, and willow shrubs.",
"title": "Sea of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Sea of Japan has a surface area of 978,000 km (378,000 sq mi), a mean depth of 1,752 m (5,748 ft), and a maximum depth of 3,742 m (12,277 ft). It has a carrot-like shape, with the major axis extending from southwest to northeast and a wide southern part narrowing toward the north. The coastal length is about 7,600 km (4,700 mi), with the largest part (3,240 km or 2,010 mi) belonging to Russia. The sea extends from north to south for more than 2,255 km (1,401 mi) and has a maximum width of about 1,070 km (660 mi).",
"title": "Sea of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "There are three major basins: the Yamato Basin in the southeast, the Japan Basin in the north, and the Tsushima Basin in the southwest. The Japan Basin has an oceanic crust and is the deepest part of the sea, whereas the Tsushima Basin is the shallowest, with depths below 2,300 m (7,500 ft). The Yamato Basin and Tsushima Basin have thick oceanic crusts. The continental shelves of the sea are wide on the eastern shores of Japan. On the western shores, they are narrow, particularly along the Korean and Russian coasts, averaging about 30 km (19 mi).",
"title": "Sea of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The geographical location of the Japanese archipelago has defined the Sea of Japan for millions of years. Without the Japanese archipelago, it would just be the Pacific Ocean. The term has been the international standard since at least the early 19th century. In 2012, the International Hydrographic Organization, the international governing body for naming bodies of water around the world, recognized the term \"Sea of Japan\" as the only title for the sea.",
"title": "Sea of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago is surrounded by eight ocean currents.",
"title": "Ocean currents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "There are small deposits of coal, oil, iron, and minerals in the Japanese archipelago. Japan is scarce in critical natural resources and has long been heavily dependent on imported energy and raw materials. The oil crisis in 1973 encouraged the efficient use of energy. Japan has therefore aimed to diversify its sources and maintain high levels of energy efficiency. In regards to agricultural products, the self-sufficiency rate of most items is less than 100%, except for rice. Rice has 100% food self-sufficiency. This makes it difficult to meet Japan's food demand without imports.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The exclusive economic zone of Japan has an estimated large quantity of mineral resources such as methane clathrate, natural gas, metallic minerals, and rare-earth mineral reserves. Seabed mineral resources such as manganese nodules, cobalt-rich crust, and submarine hydrothermal deposits are located at depths over 1,000 m (3,300 ft). Most of these deep-sea resources are unexplored at the seabed. Japan's mining law restricts offshore oil and gas production. There are technological hurdles to mine at such extreme depths and to limit the ecological impact. There are no successful commercial ventures that mine the deep sea yet. So currently, there are few deep sea mining projects to retrieve minerals or deepwater drilling on the ocean floor.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "It is estimated that there are approximately 40 trillion cubic feet of methane clathrate in the eastern Nankai Trough of Japan. As of 2019, the methane clathrate in the deep sea remains unexploited because the necessary technology has not been established yet. This is why, currently, Japan has very limited proven reserves like crude oil.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Kantō region alone is estimated to have over 400 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves. It forms a Minami Kantō gas field in the area spanning Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Ibaraki, and Chiba prefectures. However, mining is strictly regulated in many areas because it is directly below Tokyo and is only slightly mined on the Bōsō Peninsula. In Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture, there have been frequent accidents with natural gas that was released naturally from the Minami Kantō gas field.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 2018, 250 km (160 mi) south of Minami-Tori-shima at 5,700 m (18,700 ft) deep, approximately 16 million tons of rare-earth minerals were discovered by JAMSTEC in collaboration with Waseda University and the University of Tokyo.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch (2014). In 2005, Japan ranked sixth in the world in the tonnage of fish caught. Japan captured 4,074,580 metric tons of fish in 2005, down from 4,987,703 tons in 2000 and 9,864,422 tons in 1980. In 2003, the total aquaculture production was predicted at 1,301,437 tonnes. In 2010, Japan's total fishery production was 4,762,469 fish. Offshore fisheries accounted for an average of 50% of the nation's total fish catches in the late 1980s, although they experienced repeated ups and downs during that period.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "As of 2011, 46.1% of energy in Japan was produced from petroleum, 21.3% from coal, 21.4% from natural gas, 4.0% from nuclear power, and 3.3% from hydropower. Nuclear power is a major domestic source of energy and produced 9.2 percent of Japan's electricity as of 2011, down from 24.9 percent the previous year. Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disaster, the nuclear reactors were shut down. Thus, Japan's industrial sector became even more dependent than before on imported fossil fuels. By May 2012, all of the country's nuclear power plants were taken offline because of ongoing public opposition following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, though government officials continued to try to sway public opinion in favor of returning at least some of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors to service. Shinzo Abe's government seeks to restart the nuclear power plants that meet strict new safety standards and is emphasizing nuclear energy's importance as a base-load electricity source. In 2015, Japan successfully restarted one nuclear reactor at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Kagoshima prefecture, and several other reactors around the country have since resumed operations. Opposition from local governments has delayed several restarts that remain pending.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Reforms of the electricity and gas sectors, including the full liberalization of Japan's energy market in April 2016 and the gas market in April 2017, constitute an important part of Prime Minister Abe's economic program.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Japan has the third-largest geothermal reserves in the world. Geothermal energy is being heavily focused on as a source of power following the Fukushima disaster. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry is exploring over 40 locations for potential geothermal energy plants.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "On 3 July 2018, Japan's government pledged to increase renewable energy sources from 15% to 22–24%, including wind and solar, by 2030. Nuclear energy will provide 20% of the country's energy needs as an emissions-free energy source. This will help Japan meet climate change commitments.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Japan has 34 National Parks (国立公園, Kokuritsu Kōen) and 56 Quasi-National Parks (国定公園, Kokutei Kōen) in 2019. These are designated and managed for protection and sustainable usage by the Ministry of the Environment under the Natural Parks Law (自然公園法) of 1957. The Quasi-National Parks have slightly less beauty, size, diversity, or preservation. They are recommended for ministerial designation and managed by the prefectures under the supervision of the Ministry of the Environment.",
"title": "National Parks and Scenic Beauty"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Japanese archipelago has diverse landscapes. For example, the northern part of Hokkaido has a taiga biome. Hokkaido has 22% of Japan's forestland with coniferous trees (Sakhalin fir and Sakhalin spruce) and broad-leaved trees (Japanese oak, birch, and painted maple). The seasonal views change throughout the year. In the south, the Yaeyama Islands are in the subtropics, with numerous species of subtropical and tropical plants and mangrove forests. Most natural islands have mountain ranges in the center and coastal plains.",
"title": "National Parks and Scenic Beauty"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Places of Scenic Beauty and Natural Monuments are selected by the government via the Agency for Cultural Affairs in order to protect Japan's cultural heritage. As of 2017, there are 1,027 Natural Monuments (天然記念物, tennen kinenbutsu) and 410 Places of Scenic Beauty (名勝, meishō). The highest classifications are 75 Special Natural Monuments (特別天然記念物, tokubetsu tennen kinenbutsu) and 36 Special Places of Scenic Beauty (特別名勝, tokubetsu meishō).",
"title": "National Parks and Scenic Beauty"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Three Views of Japan (日本三景, Nihon Sankei) is the canonical list of Japan's three most celebrated scenic sights, attributed to 1643 scholar Hayashi Gahō. These are traditionally the pine-clad islands of Matsushima in Miyagi Prefecture, the pine-clad sandbar of Amanohashidate in Kyoto Prefecture, and Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture. In 1915, the New Three Views of Japan were selected in a national election by the Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha (株式会社実業之日本社). In 2003, the Three Major Night Views of Japan were selected by the New Three Major Night Views of Japan and the 100 Night Views of Japan Club (新日本三大夜景・夜景100選事務局).",
"title": "National Parks and Scenic Beauty"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Most regions of Japan, such as much of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, belong to the temperate zone with a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) characterized by four distinct seasons. However, its climate varies from a cool, humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfa/Dfb) in the north, such as northern Hokkaido, to a warm tropical rainforest climate (Köppen climate classification Af) in the south, such as the Yaeyama Islands and Minami-Tori-shima.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Japan's varied geographical features divide it into six principal climatic zones.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Japan is generally a rainy country with high humidity. Because of its wide range of latitude, seasonal winds, and different types of ocean currents, Japan has a variety of climates, with the latitude range of the inhabited islands ranging from 24°N to 46°N, which is comparable to the range between Nova Scotia and The Bahamas on the east coast of North America. Tokyo is between 35°N and 36°N, which is comparable to that of Tehran, Athens, or Las Vegas.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "As Mount Fuji and the coastal Japanese Alps provide a rain shadow, Nagano and Yamanashi Prefectures receive the least precipitation in Honshu, though it still exceeds 900 millimetres (35 in) annually. A similar effect is found in Hokkaido, where Okhotsk Subprefecture receives as little as 750 millimetres (30 in) per year. All other prefectures have coasts on the Pacific Ocean, Sea of Japan, or Seto Inland Sea or have a body of salt water connected to them. Two prefectures—Hokkaido and Okinawa—are composed entirely of islands.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The climate from June to September is marked by hot, wet weather brought by tropical airflows from the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia. These air flows are full of moisture and deposit substantial amounts of rain when they reach land. There is a marked rainy season, beginning in early June and continuing for about a month. It is followed by hot, sticky weather. Five or six typhoons pass over or near Japan every year from early August to early October, sometimes resulting in significant damage. Annual precipitation averages between 1,000 and 2,500 mm (40 and 100 in) except for areas such as Kii Peninsula and Yakushima Island, which is Japan's wettest place, with the annual precipitation being one of the world's highest at 4,000 to 10,000 mm.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Maximum precipitation, like the rest of East Asia, occurs in the summer months except on the Sea of Japan coast, where strong northerly winds produce a maximum in late autumn and early winter. Except for a few sheltered inland valleys during December and January, precipitation in Japan is above 25 millimetres (1 in) of rainfall equivalent in all months of the year, and in the wettest coastal areas it is above 100 millimetres (4 in) per month throughout the year.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Mid-June to mid-July is generally the rainy season in Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, excluding Hokkaidō since the seasonal rain front, or baiu zensen (梅雨前線), dissipates in northern Honshu before reaching Hokkaido. In Okinawa, the rainy season starts early in May and continues until mid-June. Unlike the rainy season in mainland Japan, it rains neither everyday nor all day long during the rainy season in Okinawa. Between July and October, typhoons, grown from tropical depressions generated near the equator, can attack Japan with furious rainstorms.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In winter, the Siberian High develops over the Eurasian land mass and the Aleutian Low develops over the northern Pacific Ocean. The result is a flow of cold air southeastward across Japan that brings freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls to the central mountain ranges facing the Sea of Japan but clear skies to areas fronting the Pacific.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The warmest winter temperatures are found in the Nanpō and Bonin Islands, which enjoy a tropical climate due to the combination of latitude, distance from the Asian continent, and warming effect of winds from the Kuroshio, as well as the Volcano Islands (at the latitude of the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, 24° N). The coolest summer temperatures are found on the northeastern coast of Hokkaidō in Kushiro and Nemuro Subprefectures.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Sunshine, in accordance with Japan's uniformly heavy rainfall, is generally modest in quantity, though no part of Japan receives the consistently gloomy fogs that envelope the Sichuan Basin or Taipei. Amounts range from about six hours per day on the Inland Sea coast and sheltered parts of the Pacific Coast and Kantō Plain to four hours per day on the Sea of Japan coast of Hokkaidō. In December, there is a very pronounced sunshine gradient between the Sea of Japan and Pacific coasts, as the former side can receive less than 30 hours and the Pacific side as much as 180 hours. In summer, however, sunshine hours are lowest on exposed parts of the Pacific coast, where fogs from the Oyashio current create persistent cloud cover similar to that found on the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The highest recorded temperature in Japan was 41.1 °C (106.0 °F) on 23 July 2018. An unverified record of 42.7 °C was taken in Adachi, Tokyo, on 20 July 2004. The high humidity and the maritime influence make temperatures in the 40s rare, with summers dominated by a more stable subtropical monsoon pattern through most of Japan. The lowest was −41.0 °C (−41.8 °F) in Asahikawa on 25 January 1902. However, an unofficial −41.5 °C was taken in Bifuka on 27 January 1931. Mount Fuji broke the Japanese record lows for each month except January, February, March, and December. Record lows for any month were taken as recently as 1984.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Minami-Tori-shima has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen climate classification Aw) and the highest average temperature in Japan of 25 °C.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Japan has a population of 126.3 million in 2019. It is the eleventh most populous country and second most populous island country in the world. The population is clustered in urban areas on the coast, plains and valleys. In 2010, 90.7% of the total Japanese population lived in cities. Japan is an urban society with about only 5% of the labor force working in agriculture. About 80 million of the urban population is heavily concentrated on the Pacific coast of Honshu.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "81% of the population lives on Honshu, 10% on Kyushu, 4.2% on Hokkaido, 3% on Shikoku, 1.1% in Okinawa Prefecture and 0.7% on other Japanese islands such as the Nanpō Islands. Nearly 1 in 3 Japanese people live in the Greater Tokyo Area, and over half live in the Kanto, Kinki, and Chukyo metropolitan areas.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Honshū (本州) is the largest island of Japan and the second most populous island in the world. It has a population of 104,000,000 with a population density of 450/km (1,200/sq mi) (2010). Honshu is roughly 1,300 km (810 mi) long and ranges from 50 to 230 km (31 to 143 mi) wide, and the total area is 225,800 km (87,200 sq mi). It is the 7th largest island in the world. This makes it slightly larger than the island of Great Britain 209,331 km (80,823 sq mi).",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The Greater Tokyo Area on Honshu is the largest metropolitan area (megacity) in the world with 38,140,000 people (2016). The area is 13,500 km (5,200 sq mi) and has a population density of 2,642 persons/km.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Kyushu (九州) is the third largest island of Japan of the five main islands. As of 2016, Kyushu has a population of 12,970,479 and covers 36,782 km (14,202 sq mi). It has the second highest population density of 307.13 persons/km (2016).",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Shikoku (四国) is the second smallest of the five main islands (after Okinawa island), 18,800 km (7,300 sq mi). It is located south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. It has the second smallest population of 3,845,534 million (2015) and the third highest population density of 204.55 persons/km.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Hokkaido (北海道) is the second largest island of Japan, and the largest and northernmost prefecture. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu. It has the third largest population of the five main islands with 5,383,579 (2015) and the lowest population density with just 64.5 persons/km (2016). The island area ranks 21st in the world by area. It is 3.6% smaller than the island of Ireland.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Okinawa Prefecture (沖縄県) is the southernmost prefecture of Japan. It encompasses two thirds of the Ryukyu Islands over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long. It has a population of 1,445,812 (2017) and a density of 662 persons/km. Okinawa Island (沖縄本島 or 沖縄島) is the smallest and most southwestern of the five main islands, 1,206.98 km (466.02 sq mi). It has the smallest population of 1,301,462 (2014) and the highest population density of 1083.6 persons/km.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Nanpō Islands (南方諸島) are the groups of islands that are located to the south and east of the main islands of the Japanese archipelago. They extend from the Izu Peninsula west of Tokyo Bay southward for about 1,200 kilometres (750 mi), to within 500 kilometres (310 mi) of the Mariana Islands. The Nanpō Islands are all administered by Tokyo Metropolis.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The Taiheiyō Belt is a megalopolis that includes the Greater Tokyo Area and Keihanshin megapoles. It is almost 1,200 km (750 mi) long from Ibaraki Prefecture in the northeast to Fukuoka Prefecture in the southwest. Satellite images at night show a dense and continuous strip of light (demarcating urban zones) that delineates the region with overlapping metropolitan areas in Japan. It has a total population of approximately 81,859,345 (2016).",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "There are plans to build underwater habitats in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone. Currently no underwater city is constructed yet. For example, the Ocean Spiral by Shimizu Corporation would have a floating dome 500 meters in diameter with hotels, residential and commercial complexes. It could be 15 km long. This allows mining of the seabed, research and production of methane from carbon dioxide with micro-organisms. The Ocean Spiral was co-developed with JAMSTEC and Tokyo University.",
"title": "Population distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Japan extends from 20° to 45° north latitude (Okinotorishima to Benten-jima) and from 122° to 153° east longitude (Yonaguni to Minami Torishima). These are the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location in Japan.",
"title": "Extreme points"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The five main islands of Japan are Hokkaidō, Honshū, Kyūshū, Shikoku and Okinawa. These are also called the mainland. All of these points are accessible to the public.",
"title": "Extreme points"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "These are the 50 largest islands of Japan. It excludes the disputed Kuril islands known as the northern territories.",
"title": "Largest islands of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Japan has a longstanding claim of the Southern Kuril Islands (Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai Islands). These islands were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945. The Kuril Islands historically belong to Japan. The Kuril Islands were first inhabited by the Ainu people and then controlled by the Japanese Matsumae clan in the Edo Period. The Soviet Union did not sign the San Francisco Treaty in 1951. The U.S. Senate Resolution of April 28, 1952, ratifying of the San Francisco Treaty, explicitly stated that the USSR had no title to the Kurils. This dispute has prevented the signing of a peace treaty between Japan and Russia.",
"title": "Largest islands of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Geographically the Kuril Islands are a northeastern extension of Hokkaido. Kunashiri and the Habomai Islands are visible from the northeastern coast of Hokkaido. Japan considers the northern territories (aka Southern Chishima) part of Nemuro Subprefecture of Hokkaido Prefecture.",
"title": "Largest islands of Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "There is one time zone in the whole Japanese archipelago. It is 9 hours ahead of UTC. There is no daylight saving time. The easternmost Japanese island Minami-Tori-shima also uses Japan Standard Time while it is geographically 1,848 kilometres (1,148 mi) southeast of Tokyo and in the UTC+10:00 time zone.",
"title": "Time zone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Sakhalin uses UTC+11:00 even though it is located directly north of Hokkaido. The Northern Territories and the Kuril islands use UTC+11:00 although they are geographically in UTC+10:00",
"title": "Time zone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Japan is substantially prone to earthquakes, tsunami and volcanoes because of its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire. It has the 15th highest natural disaster risk as measured in the 2013 World Risk Index.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "As many as 1,500 earthquakes are recorded yearly, and magnitudes of 4 to 6 are common. Minor tremors occur almost daily in one part of the country or another, causing slight shaking of buildings. Undersea earthquakes also expose the Japanese coastline to danger from tsunamis (津波).",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Destructive earthquakes, often resulting in tsunami, occur several times each century. The 1923 Tokyo earthquake killed over 140,000 people. More recent major quakes are the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, a 9.1-magnitude quake which hit Japan on March 11, 2011. It triggered a large tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, one of the worst disasters in the history of nuclear power.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake was the largest ever recorded in Japan and is the world's fourth largest earthquake to strike since 1900, according to the U.S. Geological Service. It struck offshore about 371 kilometres (231 mi) northeast of Tokyo and 130 kilometres (81 mi) east of the city of Sendai, and created a massive tsunami that devastated Japan's northeastern coastal areas. At least 100 aftershocks registering a 6.0 magnitude or higher have followed the main shock. At least 15,000 people died as a result.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Researchers found the source of great thrust earthquakes and associated tsunamis in the Greater Tokyo Area at the Izu-Ogasawara Trench. There is a 'trench-trench triple junction' of the oceanic Philippine Sea Plate that underthrusts a continental plate and is being subducted by the Pacific Plate.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Reclaimed land and man-made islands are particularly susceptible to liquefaction during an earthquake. As a result, there are specific earthquake resistance standards and ground reform work that applies to all construction in these areas. In an area that was possibly reclaimed in the past, old maps and land condition drawings are checked and drilling is carried out to determine the strength of the ground. However this can be very costly, so for a private residential block of land, a Swedish weight sounding test is more common.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Japan has become a world leader in research on causes and prediction of earthquakes. The development of advanced technology has permitted the construction of skyscrapers even in earthquake-prone areas. Extensive civil defence efforts focus on training in protection against earthquakes, in particular against accompanying fire, which represents the greatest danger.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Japan has 111 active volcanoes. That's 10% of all active volcanoes in the world. Japan has stratovolcanoes near the subduction zones of the tectonic plates. During the 20th century several new volcanoes emerged, including Shōwa-shinzan on Hokkaido and Myōjin-shō off the Bayonnaise Rocks in the Pacific. In 1991, Japan's Unzen Volcano on Kyushu about 40 km (25 mi) east of Nagasaki, awakened from its 200-year slumber to produce a new lava dome at its summit. Beginning in June, repeated collapse of this erupting dome generated ash flows that swept down the mountain's slopes at speeds as high as 200 km/h (120 mph). Unzen erupted in 1792 and killed more than 15,000 people. It is the worst volcanic disaster in the country's recorded history.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Mount Fuji is a dormant stratovolcano that last erupted on 16 December 1707 till about 1 January 1708. The Hōei eruption of Mount Fuji did not have a lava flow, but it did release some 800 million cubic metres (28×10^ cu ft) of volcanic ash. It spread over vast areas around the volcano and reached Edo almost 100 kilometres (60 mi) away. Cinders and ash fell like rain in Izu, Kai, Sagami, and Musashi provinces. In Edo, the volcanic ash was several centimeters thick. The eruption is rated a 5 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "There are three VEI-7 volcanoes in Japan. These are the Aira Caldera, Kikai Caldera and Aso Caldera. These giant caldera are remnants of past eruptions. Mount Aso is the largest active volcano in Japan. 300,000 to 90,000 years ago there were four eruptions of Mount Aso which emitted huge amounts of volcanic ash that covered all of Kyushu and up to Yamaguchi Prefecture.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Surveys by KOBEC (Kobe Ocean-Bottom Exploration Center) confirm that a giant lava dome of 23 cubic kilometers formed after the Kikai Caldera erupted in 4,300 BC. There is a 1% chance of a giant caldera eruption in the Japanese archipelago within the next 100 years. Appropriately 40 cubic kilometers of magma would be released in one burst and cause enormous damage.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "According to a 2014 study by KOBEC of Kobe University, in a worst-case scenario if there is a VEI-7 eruption of the Aso Caldera and if the volcanic ash is carried by westerly winds, then pyroclastic flows would cover the 7 million population near the Aso Caldera within two hours. The pyroclastic flows could reach much of Kyushu. Beyond the pyroclastic area is volcanic ash that falls from the sky. If the volcanic ash continuously flows northward, then the ash fall would make it impossible to live normally in large parts of the main islands of Japan, due to paralysis of traffic and lifelines for a limited period (a few days to 2 weeks) until the eruption subsides. In this scenario, the exception would be eastern and northern Hokkaido (the Ryukyu Islands and southern Nanpo Islands would also be excepted). Professor Yoshiyuki Tatsumi, head of KOBEC told the Mainichi Shimbun \"the probability of a gigantic caldera eruption hitting the Japanese archipelago is 1 percent in the next 100 years\" with a death toll of many tens of millions of people and wildlife. The potential exists for tens of millions of humans and other living beings to die during a VEI-7 volcanic eruption with significant short-term effects on the global climate. Most casualties would occur in Kyushu by the pyroclastic flows. The potential damage of the volcanic ash depends on the Wind direction. If in another scenario, the wind blows in a western or southern direction then the Volcanic ash could affect the East Asian continent or South-East Asia. If the ash flows eastward then it will spread over the Pacific Ocean. Since the Kikai Caldera is submerged, it is unclear how much damage the hot ash clouds would cause if large quantities of volcanic ash stays beneath the ocean surface. The underwater ash would be swept away by ocean currents.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Paektu Mountain on the Chinese–North Korean border had a VEI-7 eruption in 946. Paektu Mountain is mainly a threat to the surrounding area in North Korea and Manchuria. The west coast of Hokkaido is about 971.62 km (603.74 mi) away. However, a temple in Japan reported \"white ash falling like snow\" on 3 November 946 AD. So strong winds carried the volcanic ash eastward across the Sea of Japan. An average of 5 cm (2.0 in) of ashfall covered about 1,500,000 km (580,000 sq mi) of the Sea of Japan and northern Japan (Hokkaido and Aomori Prefecture). It took the ash clouds 1 day or so to reach Hokkaido. The total eruption duration was 4 and half to 14 days (111–333 hours).",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "In October 2021, large quantities of pumice pebbles from the submarine volcano Fukutoku-Okanoba damaged fisheries, tourism, the environment, 11 ports in Okinawa and 19 ports in Kagoshima prefecture. Clean-up operations took 2–3 weeks.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Improving technology and methods to predict volcano and giant caldera eruptions would help to prepare and evacuate people earlier. Technology is needed to accurately capture the state of the magma chamber that spreads thinly with a thickness of less than several kilometers around the middle of the crust. The underground area of Kyushu must be monitored, because it is a dangerous area with a potential caldera eruption. The most protective measure is to stop the hot ash clouds from spreading and devastating areas near the eruption so that people don't need to evacuate. There are currently no protective measures to minimize the spread of millions of tons of deadly hot ash during a VEI-7 eruption.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "In 2018 NASA published a theoretical plan to prevent a volcanic eruption by pumping large quantities of cold water down a borehole into the hydrothermal system of a supervolcano. The water would cool the huge body of magma in the chambers below the volcano so that the liquid magma becomes semi-solid. Thus enough heat could be extracted to prevent an eruption. The heat could be used by a geothermal plant to generate geothermal energy and electricity.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Since recording started in 1951, an average of 2.6 typhoons reached the main islands of Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu and Hokkaido per year. Approximately 10.3 typhoons approach within the 300 kilometer range near the coast of Japan. Okinawa is, due to its geographic location, most vulnerable to typhoons with an average of 7 storms per year. The most destructive was Isewan Typhoon with 5,000 casualties in the Tokai region in September 1959. In October 2004, Typhoon Tokage caused heavy rain in Kyushu and central Japan with 98 casualties. Until the 1960s the death toll was hundreds of people per typhoon. Since the 1960s improvements in construction, flood prevention, high tides detection and early warnings substantially reduced the death toll which rarely exceeds a dozen people per typhoon. Japan also has special search and rescue units to save people in distress.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Heavy snowfall during the winter in the snow country regions cause landslides, flooding, and avalanches.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "In the 2006 environment annual report, the Ministry of Environment reported that current major issues are: global warming and preservation of the ozone layer, conservation of the atmospheric environment, water and soil, waste management and recycling, measures for chemical substances, conservation of the natural environment and the participation in the international cooperation.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
}
]
| Japan is an archipelagic country comprising a stratovolcanic archipelago over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) along the Pacific coast of East Asia. It consists of 14,125 islands. The five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Okinawa. The other 14,120 islands are classified as "remote islands" by the Japanese government. The Ryukyu Islands and Nanpō Islands are south and east of the main islands. The territory covers 377,973.89 km2 (145,936.53 sq mi). It is the fourth-largest island country in the world and the largest island country in East Asia. The country has the 6th longest coastline at 29,751 km (18,486 mi) and the 8th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 4,470,000 km2 (1,730,000 sq mi) in the world. The terrain is mostly rugged and mountainous, with 66% forest. The population is clustered in urban areas along the coast, plains, and valleys. Japan is located in the northwestern Ring of Fire on multiple tectonic plates. East of the Japanese archipelago are three oceanic trenches. The Japan Trench is created as the oceanic Pacific Plate subducts beneath the continental Okhotsk Plate. The continuous subduction process causes frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, and stratovolcanoes. The islands are also affected by typhoons. The subduction plates have pulled the Japanese archipelago eastward, created the Sea of Japan, and separated it from the Asian continent by back-arc spreading 15 million years ago. The climate varies from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical and tropical rainforests in the south. These differences in climate and landscape have allowed the development of a diverse flora and fauna, with some rare endemic species, especially in the Ogasawara Islands. Japan extends from 20° to 45° north latitude and from 122° to 153° east longitude. Japan is surrounded by seas. To the north, the Sea of Okhotsk separates it from the Russian Far East; to the west, the Sea of Japan separates it from the Korean Peninsula; to the southwest, the East China Sea separates the Ryukyu Islands from China and Taiwan; and to the east is the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese archipelago is over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) long in a north-to-southwardly direction from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Philippine Sea in the Pacific Ocean. It is narrow, and no point in Japan is more than 150 km (93 mi) from the sea. In 2023, a government recount of the islands with digital maps increased the total from 6,852 to 14,125 islands. The five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Three of the four major islands are separated by narrow straits of the Seto Inland Sea and form a natural entity. The 6,847 smaller islands are called remote islands. This includes the Bonin Islands, Daitō Islands, Minami-Tori-shima, Okinotorishima, the Ryukyu Islands, the Volcano Islands, Nansei Islands, and the Nanpō Islands, as well as numerous islets, of which 430 are inhabited. The Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan but disputed by China. This excludes the disputed Northern Territories and Liancourt Rocks. In total, as of 2021, Japan's territory is 377,973.89 km2 (145,936.53 sq mi), of which 364,546.41 km2 (140,752.16 sq mi) is land and 13,430 km2 (5,190 sq mi) is water. Japan has the sixth longest coastline in the world. It is the largest island country in East Asia and the fourth largest island country in the world. Because of Japan's many far-flung outlying islands and long coastline, the country has extensive marine life and mineral resources in the ocean. The Exclusive Economic Zone of Japan covers 4,470,000 km2 (1,730,000 sq mi) and is the 8th largest in the world. It is more than 11 times the land area of the country. The Exclusive Economic Zone stretches from the baseline out to 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its coast. Its territorial sea is 12 nmi, but between 3 and 12 nmi in the international straits—La Pérouse, Tsugaru Strait, Ōsumi, and Tsushima Strait. Japan has a population of 126 million in 2019. It is the 11th most populous country in the world and the second most populous island country. 81% of the population lives on Honshu, 10% on Kyushu, 4.2% on Hokkaido, 3% on Shikoku, 1.1% in Okinawa Prefecture, and 0.7% on other Japanese islands such as the Nanpō Islands. | 2001-02-22T04:17:10Z | 2023-11-28T14:30:48Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Japan |
15,576 | Demographics of Japan | The demographics of Japan include Japanese population, birth and death rates, age distribution, population density, ethnicity, education level, healthcare system of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects regarding the population. As of July 2011, according to the United Nations estimated reports, Japan's total memorial population was 128,007,256 people, making it the 3rd-most populous country in Asia-Pacific region (Behind Greater China and Indonesia), and with the 10th-most populous country in the world.
In 2022, the median age of Japanese was projected 48.6 years, highest level since 1950, compared to 28.7 for India, 38.4 for China, and 38.9 for the United States. Japan is the second highest median age in the world (behind Monaco). An improved quality of life and regular health checks are just two reasons why Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world.
The life expectancy from birth in Japan improved significantly after World War II, rising 20 years in the decade between 1945 and 1955. As life expectancy rising, Japan expects difficulties caring for the older generation in the future. Shortages in the service sector are already a major concern, with demand for nurses and care workers increasing.
The fertility rate among Japanese population has been around 1.4 children per woman since 2010. Apart from a small baby boom in the early 1970s, the crude birth rate in Japan has been declining since 1950, and is expected to be as low as 7.5 births per thousand people in 2020. With a falling birth rates and such a large share of its inhabitants reaching their later years, Japan's total population is expected to continue declining since mid-2010.
Japanese is a principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by Japanese people, which is separated into several dialects with the Tokyo dialect considered Standard Japanese. It has around 128 million speakers in total memorial population, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora across the globe.
The sex ratio in Japan in 2021 was 95.38 males per 100 females. There are 61.53 million males and 64.52 million females in Japan. The percentage of female population is 51.18%, compared to 48.82% male population. Japan has 2.98 million more females than males.
As of 2017, Japan was the world's eleventh-most populous country. The total population had declined by 0.8 percent from the time of the census five years previously, the first time it had declined since the 1945 census.
Since 2010, Japan has experienced net population loss due to falling birth rates and minimal immigration, despite having one of the highest life expectancies in the world, at 85.00 years as of 2016 (it stood at 81.25 as of 2006). Using the annual estimate for October of each year, the population peaked in 2008 at 128,083,960 and had fallen by 2,983,352 by October 2021.
Based on 2012 data from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan's population will keep declining by about one million people every year in the coming decades, which would leave it with a population of around 70 million by 2060 and 42 million by early 22nd century if the current projections do not change. More than 40% of the population is expected to be over the age of 65 in 2060. In 2021 the population had for fifteen consecutive years declined by 644,000 on this year, the largest drop on record since 1945 and also reflecting a record low of 831,000 births. As of 2013 more than 20 percent of the population of Japan were aged 65 and over.
The population consisted of 47,062,743 households, with 78.7% in urban areas (July 2000). High population density; 329.5 people per square kilometer for total area; 1,523 persons per square kilometer for habitable land. More than 50% of the population lives on 2% of the land. (July 1993). According to research in 2009, the population to land density ratio has gradually increased, now at 127 million per 337 km2. Compared to the findings of July 1993 as well as in July 2000, the population density has greatly increased, from 50% of the population living on 2% of the land to 77%. However, as the years have progressed since the last recordings of the population, Japan's population has decreased, raising concern about the future of Japan. There are many causes, such as the declining birthrates, as well as the ratio of men to women since the last measurements from the years of 2006 and 2010. According to the Japanese Health Ministry, the population is estimated to drop from its current state of 125.58 million to 86.74 million by the year 2060.
Japan dropped from the 7th most populous country in the world to 8th in 1990, to 9th in 1998, to 10th in the early 21st century, and to 11th in 2020. Over the period of 2010 to 2015, the population shrank by almost a million, and Japan lost a half-million in 2022 alone. The number of Japanese citizens decreased by 801,000 to 122,423,038 in 2022 from a year earlier, which was the most severe decrease and the first time all 47 prefectures have suffered a decline since the launch of the poll in 1968. The nation's population reached 128,057,352 Japanese people by early 2010. However, the long-lasting effects of Japanese economic crisis during the Great Recession strongly slowed down immigration rates in Japan in 2010s.
In March 2011, Japan suffered from a massive earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, resulting 16,146 deaths, a reduction of about 1.39 years in the average life expectancy, an ultimate decrease in birth rates, and a marked decrease in immigration rates following the natural disasters, worst since the end of World War II.
According to studies from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, from January 2020 to the end of September 2021 as a direct effect of COVID-19 pandemic, Japan has registered 112,000 excess deaths, a loss of about 2.6 years in the average life expectancy, a noticeable decrease in birth rates and a marked decrease in immigration rates, the overall effect being a record natural population decline of 798,214 units in that year, although excess mortality rates for all causes has been estimated at between 100,000 and 130,000 deaths. It is the largest ever recorded since 1914 (at the time of World War I, Spanish flu pandemic, and the Great Kanto earthquake).
According to a demographic study conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japanese population (including foreign residents) has declined from 128 million people in 2010 to 124.3 million people in 2023, lowest level on record since 1900, with fewer of almost 511,000 people from the previous year.
Japan collects census information every five years, with censuses conducted by the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The latest population census reflects the situation as of 2020.
Japan's population density was 336 people per square kilometer as of 2014 (874 people per square mile) according to World Development Indicators. It ranks 35th in a list of countries by population density. Between 1955 and 1989, land prices in the six largest cities increased by 15,000% (+12% per year compound). Urban land prices generally increased 40% from 1980 to 1987; in the six largest cities, the price of land doubled over that period. For many families, this trend put housing in central cities out of reach.
The result was lengthy commutes for many workers in the big cities, especially in the Tokyo area where daily commutes of two hours each way are common. In 1991, as the bubble economy started to collapse, land prices began a steep decline, and within a few years fell 60% below their peak. After a decade of declining land prices, residents began moving back into central city areas (especially Tokyo's 23 wards), as evidenced by 2005 census figures. Despite nearly 70% of Japan being covered by forests, parks in many major cities—especially Tokyo and Osaka—are smaller and scarcer than in major West European or North American cities. As of 2014, parkland per inhabitant in Tokyo is 5.78 square meters, which is roughly half of the 11.5 square meters of Madrid.
National and regional governments devote resources to making regional cities and rural areas more attractive by developing transportation networks, social services, industry, and educational institutions to try to decentralize settlement and improve the quality of life. Nevertheless, major cities, especially Tokyo, Yokohama and Fukuoka, and to a lesser extent Kyoto, Osaka and Nagoya, remain attractive to young people seeking education and jobs.
Japan has a high population concentration in urban areas on the plains since 75% of Japan's land area is made up of mountains, and also Japan has a forest cover rate of 68.5% (the only other developed countries with such a high forest cover percentage are Finland and Sweden). The 2010 census shows 90.7% of the total Japanese population live in cities.
Japan is an urban society with about only 5% of the labor force working in agriculture. Many farmers supplement their income with part-time jobs in nearby towns and cities. About 80 million of the urban population is heavily concentrated on the Pacific shore of Honshu.
Metropolitan Tokyo-Yokohama, with its population of 35 million residents, is the world's most populous city. Japan faces the same problems that confront urban industrialized societies throughout the world: overcrowded cities and congested highways.
Japan's population is aging faster than that of any other nation. The population of those 65 years or older roughly doubled in 24 years, from 7.1% of the population in 1970 to 14.1% in 1994. The same increase took 61 years in Italy, 85 years in Sweden, and 115 years in France. In 2014, 26% of Japan's population was estimated to be 65 years or older, and the Health and Welfare Ministry has estimated that over-65s will account for 40% of the population by 2060. The demographic shift in Japan's age profile has triggered concerns about the nation's economic future and the viability of its welfare state.
Sources: Our World In Data and the United Nations.
1865–1949
1950–2015
Source: UN World Population Prospects
As of 2022, Japan's total fertility rate was 1.26, among the lowest in the world and far below the replacement rate of 2.1. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to take urgent steps to tackle the country's declining birth rate, calling it "now or never" for Japan's aging society, and plans to double the budget for child-related policies by June and set up a new government agency in April.
Live births, birth and death rates, overall fertility rate, and net change in Japan from 1899 to present. The statistics below do not include foreign nationalities.
Between 6 million and 7 million people moved their residences each year during the 1980s. About 50% of these moves were within the same prefecture; the others were relocations from one prefecture to another. During Japan's economic development in the twentieth century, and especially during the 1950s and 1960s, migration was characterized by urbanization as people from rural areas in increasing numbers moved to the larger metropolitan areas in search of better jobs and education. Out-migration from rural prefectures continued in the late 1980s, but more slowly than in previous decades.
In the 1980s, government policy provided support for new urban development away from the large cities, particularly Tokyo, and assisted regional cities to attract young people to live and work there. Regional cities offered familiarity to those from nearby areas, lower costs of living, shorter commutes, and, in general, a more relaxed lifestyle than could be had in larger cities. Young people continued to move to large cities, however, to attend universities and find work, but some returned to regional cities (a pattern known as U-turn) or to their prefecture of origin (referred to as "J-turn"), or even moved to a rural area for the first time ("I-turn").
Government statistics show that in the 1980s significant numbers of people left the largest central cities (Tokyo and Osaka) to move to suburbs within their metropolitan areas. In 1988, more than 500,000 people left Tokyo, which experienced a net loss through migration of nearly 73,000 for the year. Osaka had a net loss of nearly 36,000 in the same year.
With a decreasing total population, internal migration results in only eight prefectures showing an increase in population. These are Okinawa (2.9%), Tokyo (2.7%), Aichi (1.0%), Saitama (1.0%), Kanagawa (0.9%), Fukuoka (0.6%), Shiga (0.2%), and Chiba (0.1%).
About 663,300 Japanese were living abroad, approximately 75,000 of whom had permanent foreign residency, more than six times the number who had that status in 1975. More than 200,000 Japanese went abroad in 1990 for extended periods of study, research, or business assignments. As the government and private corporations have stressed internationalization, greater numbers of individuals have been directly affected, decreasing Japan's historical insularity. By the late 1980s, these problems, particularly the bullying of returnee children in schools, had become a major public issue both in Japan and in Japanese communities abroad.
Cities with significant populations of Japanese nationals in 2015 included:
Note: The above data shows the number of Japanese nationals living overseas. It was published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and relates to 2015.
According to the Japanese immigration centre, the number of foreign residents in Japan has steadily increased, and the number of foreign residents exceeded 2.8 million people in 2020.
In 2020, the number of foreigners in Japan was 2,887,116. This includes 325,000 Filipinos, many of whom are married to Japanese nationals and possessing some degree of Japanese ancestry, 208,538 Brazilians, the majority possessing some degree of Japanese ancestry, 778,112 Chinese, 448,053 Vietnamese and 426,908 South Koreans. Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Filipinos and Brazilians account for about 77% of foreign residents in Japan.
The current issue of the shrinking workforce in Japan alongside its aging population has resulted in a recent need to attract foreign labour to the country. Reforms which took effect in 2015 relax visa requirements for "Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals" and create a new type of residence status with an unlimited period of stay.
The number of naturalizations peaked in 2008 at 16,000, declining to over 9,000 in the most recent year for which data are available. Most of the decline is accounted for by a steep reduction in the number of Japan-born Koreans taking Japanese citizenship. Historically the bulk of those taking Japanese citizenship have not been foreign-born immigrants but rather Japanese-born descendants of Koreans and Taiwanese who lost their citizenship in the Japanese Empire in 1947 as part of the American Occupation policy for Japan.
Japanese statistical authorities do not collect information on ethnicity, only nationality. As a result, both native and naturalized Japanese citizens are counted in a single group. Although official statistics therefore show homogeneity, other analyses describe the population as “multi-ethnic”.
In addition to the Japanese language, Ryūkyūan languages are spoken in Okinawa and parts of Kagoshima in the Ryūkyū Islands. Along with Japanese, these languages are part of the Japonic language family, but they are separate languages, and are not mutually intelligible with Japanese, or with each other. All of the spoken Ryukyuan languages are classified by UNESCO as endangered.
In Hokkaidō, there is the Ainu language, which is spoken by the Ainu people, who are the indigenous people of the island. The Ainu languages, of which Hokkaidō Ainu is the only extant variety, are isolated and do not fall under any language family. Ever since the Meiji period, Japanese has become widely used among the Ainu people and consequently Ainu languages have been classified critically endangered by UNESCO.
The Japanese society of Yamato people is linguistically homogeneous with small populations of Koreans (0.9 million), Chinese/Taiwanese (0.65 million), Filipino (306,000 some being Japanese Filipino; children of Japanese and Filipino parentage). This can be also said for Brazilians (300,000, many of whom are ethnically Japanese) as well as Peruvians and Argentineans of both Latin American and Japanese descent. Japan has indigenous minority groups such as the Ainu and Ryukyuans, who generally speak Japanese.
Japanese citizenship is conferred jure sanguinis, and monolingual Japanese-speaking minorities often reside in Japan for generations under permanent residency status without acquiring citizenship in their country of birth, although legally they are allowed to do so. This is because Japanese law does not recognise dual citizenship after the age of adulthood, and so people becoming naturalised Japanese citizens must relinquish their previous citizenship upon reaching the age of 20 years
In addition, people taking Japanese citizenship must take a name using one or more of the Japanese character sets (hiragana, katakana, kanji). Names written in the Western alphabet, Korean alphabet, Arabic characters, etc., are not acceptable as legal names. Chinese characters are usually legally acceptable as nearly all Chinese characters are recognized as valid by the Japanese government. Transliterations of non-Japanese names using katakana (e.g. スミス "Sumisu" for "Smith") are also legally acceptable.
However, some naturalizing foreigners feel that becoming a Japanese citizen should mean that they have a Japanese name and that they should abandon their foreign name, and some foreign residents do not wish to do this—although most Special Permanent Resident Koreans and Chinese already use Japanese names. Nonetheless, some 10,000 Zainichi Koreans naturalize every year. Approximately 98.6% of the population are Japanese citizens, and 99% of the population speak Japanese as their first language. Non-ethnic Japanese in the past, and to an extent in the present, also live in small numbers in the Japanese archipelago.
Japanese people enjoy a high standard of living, and nearly 90% of the population consider themselves part of the middle class. However, many studies on happiness and satisfaction with life tend to find that Japanese people average relatively low levels of life satisfaction and happiness when compared with most of the highly developed world; the levels have remained consistent if not declining slightly over the last half century. Japanese have been surveyed to be relatively lacking in financial satisfaction. The societal view generally disapproves of out-of-wedlock births and premarital pregnancies.
Social isolation is a problem for a segment of Japanese society, with almost 500,000 young people belonging to this group, they are also known as hikikomori.
The Japanese management working culture in Japan has led some to work-related deaths due to heart attack or stroke, this has led to the term karoshi (lit. "overwork death"). The government has received 200 claims of karoshi related work injuries each year, with some leading to suicide.
Many Japanese lead a sexless marriage. Japan has the lowest level of couples having sex at 45 times per year, well below the global average of 103 times. With reasons of "tired" and "bored with intercourse" usually given as an answer. Despite this, Japan ranks as number two globally on the amount spent on pornography, after South Korea.
Naturalized Japanese citizens and native-born Japanese nationals with a multi-ethnic background are all considered to be Japanese in the population census of Japan.
Three native Japanese minority groups can be identified. The largest are the hisabetsu buraku or "discriminated communities", also known as the burakumin. These descendants of premodern outcast hereditary occupational groups, such as butchers, leatherworkers, funeral directors, and certain entertainers, may be considered a Japanese analog of India's Dalits. Discrimination against these occupational groups arose historically because of Buddhist prohibitions against killing and Shinto notions of pollution, as well as governmental attempts at social control.
During the Edo period, such people were required to live in special buraku and, like the rest of the population, were bound by sumptuary laws based on the inheritance of social class. The Meiji government abolished most derogatory names applied to these discriminated communities in 1871, but the new laws had little effect on the social discrimination faced by the former outcasts and their descendants. The laws, however, did eliminate the economic monopoly they had over certain occupations. The buraku continued to be treated as social outcasts and some casual interactions with the majority caste were perceived taboo until the era after World War II.
Estimates of their number range from 2 to 4 million (about 4% of the national population in 2022). Although members of these discriminated communities are physically indistinguishable from other Japanese, they often live in urban ghettoes or in the traditional special hamlets in rural areas, and membership can be surmised from the location of the family home, occupation, dialect, or mannerisms. Checks on family background designed to ferret out buraku were commonly performed as part of marriage arrangements and employment applications, but have been illegal since 1985 in Osaka.
Past and current discrimination has resulted in lower educational attainment and socioeconomic status among hisabetsu buraku than among the majority of Japanese. Movements with objectives ranging from "liberation" to encouraging integration have tried to change this situation, with some success. Nadamoto Masahisa of the Buraku History Institute estimates that as of 1998, between 60 and 80% of burakumin marry a non-burakumin.
One of the largest minority groups among Japanese citizens is the Ryukyuan people. They are primarily distinguished by their use of several distinct Ryukyuan languages, though use of Ryukyuan is dying out. The Ryukyuan people and language originated in the Ryukyu Islands, which are in Okinawa prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture.
The third largest minority group among Japanese citizens is the Ainu, whose language is an isolate. Historically, the Ainu were an indigenous hunting and gathering population who occupied most of northern Honshū as late as the Nara period (A.D. 710–94). As Japanese settlement expanded, the Ainu were pushed northward, by the Tokugawa shogunate, the Ainu were pushed into the island of Hokkaido.
Characterized as remnants of a primitive circumpolar culture, the fewer than 20,000 Ainu in 1990 were considered racially distinct and thus not fully Japanese. Disease and a low birth rate had severely diminished their numbers over the past two centuries, and intermarriage had brought about an almost completely mixed population.
Although no longer in daily use, the Ainu language is preserved in epics, songs, and stories transmitted orally over succeeding generations. Distinctive rhythmic music and dances and some Ainu festivals and crafts are preserved, but mainly in order to take advantage of tourism.
Hāfu (a kana rendition of "half") is a term used for people who are biracial and ethnically half Japanese. Of the one million children born in Japan in 2013, 2.2% had one or two non-Japanese parents. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, one in forty-nine babies born in Japan today are born into families with one non-Japanese parent. Most intermarriages in Japan are between Japanese men and women from other Asian countries, including China, the Philippines and South Korea. Southeast Asia too, also has significant populations of people with half-Japanese ancestry, particularly in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
In the 1940s, biracial Japanese children (Ainoko), specifically Amerasian children, encountered social problems such as poverty, perception of impurity and discrimination due to negative treatment in Japan. In the 21st century, discrimination against hāfu occurs based on how different their identity, behavior and appearance is from a typical Japanese person.
In 2021, there were 2,887,116 foreign residents in Japan, representing 2.3% of the Japanese population. Foreign Army personnel, of which there were up to 430,000 from the SCAP (post-occupation, United States Forces Japan) and 40,000 BCOF in the immediate post-war years, have not been at any time included in Japanese foreign resident statistics. Most foreign residents in Japan come from Brazil or from other Asian countries, particularly from China, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, and Nepal.
A number of long-term resident Koreans in Japan today retain familial links with the descendants of Koreans, that either immigrated voluntarily or were forcibly relocated during the Japanese Occupation of the Korea. Within this group, a number hold Special Permanent Resident status, granted under the terms of the Normalisation Treaty (22. June 1965) between South Korea and Japan. In many cases special residents, despite being born in Japan and speaking Japanese, have chosen not to take advantage of the mostly automatic granting of citizenship to special resident applicants.
Beginning in 1947 the Japanese government started to repatriate Korean nationals, who had nominally been granted Japanese citizenship during the years of military occupation. When the Treaty of San Francisco came into force many ethnic Koreans lost their Japanese citizenship from April 28, 1952, and with it the right to welfare grants, to hold a government job of any kind or to attend Japanese schools. In the following year the government contrived, with the help of the Red Cross, a scheme to "repatriate" Korean residents, who mainly were from the Southern Provinces, to their "home" of North Korea. Between 1959 and 1984 93,430 people used this route, of whom 6,737 were Japanese or Chinese dependents. Most of these departures – 78,276 – occurred before 1962.
All non-Japanese without special residential status (people whose residential roots go back to before WWII) are required by law to register with the government and carry alien registration cards. From the early 1980s, a civil disobedience movement encouraged refusal of the fingerprinting that accompanied registration every five years.
Opponents of fingerprinting argued that it was discriminatory because the only Japanese who were fingerprinted were criminals. The courts upheld fingerprinting, but the law was changed so that fingerprinting was done once rather than with each renewal of the registration, which until a law reform in 1989 was usually required every six months for anybody from the age of 16. Those refusing fingerprinting were denied re-entry permits, thus depriving them of freedom of movement.
Of these foreign residents below, the new wave started in 2014 comes to Japan as students or trainees. These foreigners are registered under student visa or trainee visa, which gives them the student residency status. Most of these new foreigners are under this visa. Almost all of these foreign students and trainees will return to their home country after three to four years (one valid period); few students extend their visa. Vietnamese makes the largest increase, however Burmese, Cambodians, Filipinos and Chinese are also increasing.
Asian migrant wives of Japanese men have also contributed to the foreign-born population in the country. Many young single Japanese male farmers choose foreign wives, mainly from the Philippines, Thailand, China and South Korea, due to a lack of interest from Japanese women living a farming life. Migrant wives often travel as mail-order brides as a result of arranged marriages with Japanese men. Additionally, Japanese men in urban parts of the country have also begun marrying foreign Asian women.
There was an increase of 110,358 foreign residents from 2014 to 2015. Vietnamese made the largest proportion of these new foreign residents, whilst Nepalese, Filipino, Chinese and Taiwanese are also significant in numbers. Together these countries makes up 91,126 or 82.6% of all new residents from 2014 to 2015. However, the majority of these immigrants will only remain in Japan for a maximum of five years, as many of them have entered the country in order to complete trainee programmes. Once they complete their programmes, they will be required to return to their home countries.
As of December 2014 there were 2,121,831 foreigners residing in Japan, 677,019 of whom were long-term residents in Japan, according to national demographics figures. The majority of long-term residents were from Asia, totalling 478,953. Chinese made up the largest portion of them with 215,155, followed by Filipinos with 115,857, and Koreans with 65,711. Thai, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese long-term residents totaled 47,956, and those from other Asian countries totaled 34,274. The Korean figures do not include zainichi Koreans with tokubetsu eijusha ("special permanent resident") visas, of whom there were 354,503 (of a total of 358,409 of all nationalities with such visas). The total number of permanent residents had declined over the previous five years due to high cost of living.
The number of foreign residents of Japan reached a high of 2.93 million in 2019 before falling to 2.76 million at the end of 2021. The number of foreign workers was 1.46 million in 2018, 29.7% are in the manufacturing sector; 389,000 are from Vietnam and 316,000 are from China.
On April 1, 2019, Japan's revised immigration law was enacted. The revision clarifies and better protects the rights of foreign workers. Japan formally accepts foreign blue-collar workers. This helps reduce labour shortage in certain sectors of the economy. The reform changes the status of foreign workers to regular employees and they can obtain permanent residence status. The reform includes a new visa status called tokutei gino (特定技能, "designated skills"). In order to qualify, applicants must pass a language and skills test (level N4 or higher of the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test). In the old "Technical Trainee programme" a foreign employee was tied to their employer. This caused numerous cases of exploitation. The revision gives foreign workers more freedom to leave and change their employer.
Shinto and Buddhism are Japan's two major religions. They have co-existed for more than a thousand years. However, most Japanese people generally do not exclusively identify themselves as adherents of one religion, but rather incorporate various elements in a syncretic fashion. There are small Christian and other minorities as well, with the Christian population dating to as early as the 1500s, as a result of European missionary work before sakoku was implemented from 1635 to 1853. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The demographics of Japan include Japanese population, birth and death rates, age distribution, population density, ethnicity, education level, healthcare system of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects regarding the population. As of July 2011, according to the United Nations estimated reports, Japan's total memorial population was 128,007,256 people, making it the 3rd-most populous country in Asia-Pacific region (Behind Greater China and Indonesia), and with the 10th-most populous country in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 2022, the median age of Japanese was projected 48.6 years, highest level since 1950, compared to 28.7 for India, 38.4 for China, and 38.9 for the United States. Japan is the second highest median age in the world (behind Monaco). An improved quality of life and regular health checks are just two reasons why Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The life expectancy from birth in Japan improved significantly after World War II, rising 20 years in the decade between 1945 and 1955. As life expectancy rising, Japan expects difficulties caring for the older generation in the future. Shortages in the service sector are already a major concern, with demand for nurses and care workers increasing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The fertility rate among Japanese population has been around 1.4 children per woman since 2010. Apart from a small baby boom in the early 1970s, the crude birth rate in Japan has been declining since 1950, and is expected to be as low as 7.5 births per thousand people in 2020. With a falling birth rates and such a large share of its inhabitants reaching their later years, Japan's total population is expected to continue declining since mid-2010.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Japanese is a principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by Japanese people, which is separated into several dialects with the Tokyo dialect considered Standard Japanese. It has around 128 million speakers in total memorial population, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora across the globe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The sex ratio in Japan in 2021 was 95.38 males per 100 females. There are 61.53 million males and 64.52 million females in Japan. The percentage of female population is 51.18%, compared to 48.82% male population. Japan has 2.98 million more females than males.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "As of 2017, Japan was the world's eleventh-most populous country. The total population had declined by 0.8 percent from the time of the census five years previously, the first time it had declined since the 1945 census.",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Since 2010, Japan has experienced net population loss due to falling birth rates and minimal immigration, despite having one of the highest life expectancies in the world, at 85.00 years as of 2016 (it stood at 81.25 as of 2006). Using the annual estimate for October of each year, the population peaked in 2008 at 128,083,960 and had fallen by 2,983,352 by October 2021.",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Based on 2012 data from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan's population will keep declining by about one million people every year in the coming decades, which would leave it with a population of around 70 million by 2060 and 42 million by early 22nd century if the current projections do not change. More than 40% of the population is expected to be over the age of 65 in 2060. In 2021 the population had for fifteen consecutive years declined by 644,000 on this year, the largest drop on record since 1945 and also reflecting a record low of 831,000 births. As of 2013 more than 20 percent of the population of Japan were aged 65 and over.",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The population consisted of 47,062,743 households, with 78.7% in urban areas (July 2000). High population density; 329.5 people per square kilometer for total area; 1,523 persons per square kilometer for habitable land. More than 50% of the population lives on 2% of the land. (July 1993). According to research in 2009, the population to land density ratio has gradually increased, now at 127 million per 337 km2. Compared to the findings of July 1993 as well as in July 2000, the population density has greatly increased, from 50% of the population living on 2% of the land to 77%. However, as the years have progressed since the last recordings of the population, Japan's population has decreased, raising concern about the future of Japan. There are many causes, such as the declining birthrates, as well as the ratio of men to women since the last measurements from the years of 2006 and 2010. According to the Japanese Health Ministry, the population is estimated to drop from its current state of 125.58 million to 86.74 million by the year 2060.",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Japan dropped from the 7th most populous country in the world to 8th in 1990, to 9th in 1998, to 10th in the early 21st century, and to 11th in 2020. Over the period of 2010 to 2015, the population shrank by almost a million, and Japan lost a half-million in 2022 alone. The number of Japanese citizens decreased by 801,000 to 122,423,038 in 2022 from a year earlier, which was the most severe decrease and the first time all 47 prefectures have suffered a decline since the launch of the poll in 1968. The nation's population reached 128,057,352 Japanese people by early 2010. However, the long-lasting effects of Japanese economic crisis during the Great Recession strongly slowed down immigration rates in Japan in 2010s.",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In March 2011, Japan suffered from a massive earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, resulting 16,146 deaths, a reduction of about 1.39 years in the average life expectancy, an ultimate decrease in birth rates, and a marked decrease in immigration rates following the natural disasters, worst since the end of World War II.",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "According to studies from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, from January 2020 to the end of September 2021 as a direct effect of COVID-19 pandemic, Japan has registered 112,000 excess deaths, a loss of about 2.6 years in the average life expectancy, a noticeable decrease in birth rates and a marked decrease in immigration rates, the overall effect being a record natural population decline of 798,214 units in that year, although excess mortality rates for all causes has been estimated at between 100,000 and 130,000 deaths. It is the largest ever recorded since 1914 (at the time of World War I, Spanish flu pandemic, and the Great Kanto earthquake).",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "According to a demographic study conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japanese population (including foreign residents) has declined from 128 million people in 2010 to 124.3 million people in 2023, lowest level on record since 1900, with fewer of almost 511,000 people from the previous year.",
"title": "Historical overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Japan collects census information every five years, with censuses conducted by the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The latest population census reflects the situation as of 2020.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Japan's population density was 336 people per square kilometer as of 2014 (874 people per square mile) according to World Development Indicators. It ranks 35th in a list of countries by population density. Between 1955 and 1989, land prices in the six largest cities increased by 15,000% (+12% per year compound). Urban land prices generally increased 40% from 1980 to 1987; in the six largest cities, the price of land doubled over that period. For many families, this trend put housing in central cities out of reach.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The result was lengthy commutes for many workers in the big cities, especially in the Tokyo area where daily commutes of two hours each way are common. In 1991, as the bubble economy started to collapse, land prices began a steep decline, and within a few years fell 60% below their peak. After a decade of declining land prices, residents began moving back into central city areas (especially Tokyo's 23 wards), as evidenced by 2005 census figures. Despite nearly 70% of Japan being covered by forests, parks in many major cities—especially Tokyo and Osaka—are smaller and scarcer than in major West European or North American cities. As of 2014, parkland per inhabitant in Tokyo is 5.78 square meters, which is roughly half of the 11.5 square meters of Madrid.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "National and regional governments devote resources to making regional cities and rural areas more attractive by developing transportation networks, social services, industry, and educational institutions to try to decentralize settlement and improve the quality of life. Nevertheless, major cities, especially Tokyo, Yokohama and Fukuoka, and to a lesser extent Kyoto, Osaka and Nagoya, remain attractive to young people seeking education and jobs.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Japan has a high population concentration in urban areas on the plains since 75% of Japan's land area is made up of mountains, and also Japan has a forest cover rate of 68.5% (the only other developed countries with such a high forest cover percentage are Finland and Sweden). The 2010 census shows 90.7% of the total Japanese population live in cities.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Japan is an urban society with about only 5% of the labor force working in agriculture. Many farmers supplement their income with part-time jobs in nearby towns and cities. About 80 million of the urban population is heavily concentrated on the Pacific shore of Honshu.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Metropolitan Tokyo-Yokohama, with its population of 35 million residents, is the world's most populous city. Japan faces the same problems that confront urban industrialized societies throughout the world: overcrowded cities and congested highways.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Japan's population is aging faster than that of any other nation. The population of those 65 years or older roughly doubled in 24 years, from 7.1% of the population in 1970 to 14.1% in 1994. The same increase took 61 years in Italy, 85 years in Sweden, and 115 years in France. In 2014, 26% of Japan's population was estimated to be 65 years or older, and the Health and Welfare Ministry has estimated that over-65s will account for 40% of the population by 2060. The demographic shift in Japan's age profile has triggered concerns about the nation's economic future and the viability of its welfare state.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Sources: Our World In Data and the United Nations.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "1865–1949",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "1950–2015",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Source: UN World Population Prospects",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "As of 2022, Japan's total fertility rate was 1.26, among the lowest in the world and far below the replacement rate of 2.1. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to take urgent steps to tackle the country's declining birth rate, calling it \"now or never\" for Japan's aging society, and plans to double the budget for child-related policies by June and set up a new government agency in April.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Live births, birth and death rates, overall fertility rate, and net change in Japan from 1899 to present. The statistics below do not include foreign nationalities.",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Between 6 million and 7 million people moved their residences each year during the 1980s. About 50% of these moves were within the same prefecture; the others were relocations from one prefecture to another. During Japan's economic development in the twentieth century, and especially during the 1950s and 1960s, migration was characterized by urbanization as people from rural areas in increasing numbers moved to the larger metropolitan areas in search of better jobs and education. Out-migration from rural prefectures continued in the late 1980s, but more slowly than in previous decades.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In the 1980s, government policy provided support for new urban development away from the large cities, particularly Tokyo, and assisted regional cities to attract young people to live and work there. Regional cities offered familiarity to those from nearby areas, lower costs of living, shorter commutes, and, in general, a more relaxed lifestyle than could be had in larger cities. Young people continued to move to large cities, however, to attend universities and find work, but some returned to regional cities (a pattern known as U-turn) or to their prefecture of origin (referred to as \"J-turn\"), or even moved to a rural area for the first time (\"I-turn\").",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Government statistics show that in the 1980s significant numbers of people left the largest central cities (Tokyo and Osaka) to move to suburbs within their metropolitan areas. In 1988, more than 500,000 people left Tokyo, which experienced a net loss through migration of nearly 73,000 for the year. Osaka had a net loss of nearly 36,000 in the same year.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "With a decreasing total population, internal migration results in only eight prefectures showing an increase in population. These are Okinawa (2.9%), Tokyo (2.7%), Aichi (1.0%), Saitama (1.0%), Kanagawa (0.9%), Fukuoka (0.6%), Shiga (0.2%), and Chiba (0.1%).",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "About 663,300 Japanese were living abroad, approximately 75,000 of whom had permanent foreign residency, more than six times the number who had that status in 1975. More than 200,000 Japanese went abroad in 1990 for extended periods of study, research, or business assignments. As the government and private corporations have stressed internationalization, greater numbers of individuals have been directly affected, decreasing Japan's historical insularity. By the late 1980s, these problems, particularly the bullying of returnee children in schools, had become a major public issue both in Japan and in Japanese communities abroad.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Cities with significant populations of Japanese nationals in 2015 included:",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Note: The above data shows the number of Japanese nationals living overseas. It was published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and relates to 2015.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "According to the Japanese immigration centre, the number of foreign residents in Japan has steadily increased, and the number of foreign residents exceeded 2.8 million people in 2020.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2020, the number of foreigners in Japan was 2,887,116. This includes 325,000 Filipinos, many of whom are married to Japanese nationals and possessing some degree of Japanese ancestry, 208,538 Brazilians, the majority possessing some degree of Japanese ancestry, 778,112 Chinese, 448,053 Vietnamese and 426,908 South Koreans. Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Filipinos and Brazilians account for about 77% of foreign residents in Japan.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The current issue of the shrinking workforce in Japan alongside its aging population has resulted in a recent need to attract foreign labour to the country. Reforms which took effect in 2015 relax visa requirements for \"Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals\" and create a new type of residence status with an unlimited period of stay.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The number of naturalizations peaked in 2008 at 16,000, declining to over 9,000 in the most recent year for which data are available. Most of the decline is accounted for by a steep reduction in the number of Japan-born Koreans taking Japanese citizenship. Historically the bulk of those taking Japanese citizenship have not been foreign-born immigrants but rather Japanese-born descendants of Koreans and Taiwanese who lost their citizenship in the Japanese Empire in 1947 as part of the American Occupation policy for Japan.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Japanese statistical authorities do not collect information on ethnicity, only nationality. As a result, both native and naturalized Japanese citizens are counted in a single group. Although official statistics therefore show homogeneity, other analyses describe the population as “multi-ethnic”.",
"title": "Migration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In addition to the Japanese language, Ryūkyūan languages are spoken in Okinawa and parts of Kagoshima in the Ryūkyū Islands. Along with Japanese, these languages are part of the Japonic language family, but they are separate languages, and are not mutually intelligible with Japanese, or with each other. All of the spoken Ryukyuan languages are classified by UNESCO as endangered.",
"title": "Languages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In Hokkaidō, there is the Ainu language, which is spoken by the Ainu people, who are the indigenous people of the island. The Ainu languages, of which Hokkaidō Ainu is the only extant variety, are isolated and do not fall under any language family. Ever since the Meiji period, Japanese has become widely used among the Ainu people and consequently Ainu languages have been classified critically endangered by UNESCO.",
"title": "Languages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Japanese society of Yamato people is linguistically homogeneous with small populations of Koreans (0.9 million), Chinese/Taiwanese (0.65 million), Filipino (306,000 some being Japanese Filipino; children of Japanese and Filipino parentage). This can be also said for Brazilians (300,000, many of whom are ethnically Japanese) as well as Peruvians and Argentineans of both Latin American and Japanese descent. Japan has indigenous minority groups such as the Ainu and Ryukyuans, who generally speak Japanese.",
"title": "Languages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Japanese citizenship is conferred jure sanguinis, and monolingual Japanese-speaking minorities often reside in Japan for generations under permanent residency status without acquiring citizenship in their country of birth, although legally they are allowed to do so. This is because Japanese law does not recognise dual citizenship after the age of adulthood, and so people becoming naturalised Japanese citizens must relinquish their previous citizenship upon reaching the age of 20 years",
"title": "Citizenship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In addition, people taking Japanese citizenship must take a name using one or more of the Japanese character sets (hiragana, katakana, kanji). Names written in the Western alphabet, Korean alphabet, Arabic characters, etc., are not acceptable as legal names. Chinese characters are usually legally acceptable as nearly all Chinese characters are recognized as valid by the Japanese government. Transliterations of non-Japanese names using katakana (e.g. スミス \"Sumisu\" for \"Smith\") are also legally acceptable.",
"title": "Citizenship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "However, some naturalizing foreigners feel that becoming a Japanese citizen should mean that they have a Japanese name and that they should abandon their foreign name, and some foreign residents do not wish to do this—although most Special Permanent Resident Koreans and Chinese already use Japanese names. Nonetheless, some 10,000 Zainichi Koreans naturalize every year. Approximately 98.6% of the population are Japanese citizens, and 99% of the population speak Japanese as their first language. Non-ethnic Japanese in the past, and to an extent in the present, also live in small numbers in the Japanese archipelago.",
"title": "Citizenship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Japanese people enjoy a high standard of living, and nearly 90% of the population consider themselves part of the middle class. However, many studies on happiness and satisfaction with life tend to find that Japanese people average relatively low levels of life satisfaction and happiness when compared with most of the highly developed world; the levels have remained consistent if not declining slightly over the last half century. Japanese have been surveyed to be relatively lacking in financial satisfaction. The societal view generally disapproves of out-of-wedlock births and premarital pregnancies.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Social isolation is a problem for a segment of Japanese society, with almost 500,000 young people belonging to this group, they are also known as hikikomori.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Japanese management working culture in Japan has led some to work-related deaths due to heart attack or stroke, this has led to the term karoshi (lit. \"overwork death\"). The government has received 200 claims of karoshi related work injuries each year, with some leading to suicide.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Many Japanese lead a sexless marriage. Japan has the lowest level of couples having sex at 45 times per year, well below the global average of 103 times. With reasons of \"tired\" and \"bored with intercourse\" usually given as an answer. Despite this, Japan ranks as number two globally on the amount spent on pornography, after South Korea.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Naturalized Japanese citizens and native-born Japanese nationals with a multi-ethnic background are all considered to be Japanese in the population census of Japan.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Three native Japanese minority groups can be identified. The largest are the hisabetsu buraku or \"discriminated communities\", also known as the burakumin. These descendants of premodern outcast hereditary occupational groups, such as butchers, leatherworkers, funeral directors, and certain entertainers, may be considered a Japanese analog of India's Dalits. Discrimination against these occupational groups arose historically because of Buddhist prohibitions against killing and Shinto notions of pollution, as well as governmental attempts at social control.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "During the Edo period, such people were required to live in special buraku and, like the rest of the population, were bound by sumptuary laws based on the inheritance of social class. The Meiji government abolished most derogatory names applied to these discriminated communities in 1871, but the new laws had little effect on the social discrimination faced by the former outcasts and their descendants. The laws, however, did eliminate the economic monopoly they had over certain occupations. The buraku continued to be treated as social outcasts and some casual interactions with the majority caste were perceived taboo until the era after World War II.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Estimates of their number range from 2 to 4 million (about 4% of the national population in 2022). Although members of these discriminated communities are physically indistinguishable from other Japanese, they often live in urban ghettoes or in the traditional special hamlets in rural areas, and membership can be surmised from the location of the family home, occupation, dialect, or mannerisms. Checks on family background designed to ferret out buraku were commonly performed as part of marriage arrangements and employment applications, but have been illegal since 1985 in Osaka.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Past and current discrimination has resulted in lower educational attainment and socioeconomic status among hisabetsu buraku than among the majority of Japanese. Movements with objectives ranging from \"liberation\" to encouraging integration have tried to change this situation, with some success. Nadamoto Masahisa of the Buraku History Institute estimates that as of 1998, between 60 and 80% of burakumin marry a non-burakumin.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "One of the largest minority groups among Japanese citizens is the Ryukyuan people. They are primarily distinguished by their use of several distinct Ryukyuan languages, though use of Ryukyuan is dying out. The Ryukyuan people and language originated in the Ryukyu Islands, which are in Okinawa prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The third largest minority group among Japanese citizens is the Ainu, whose language is an isolate. Historically, the Ainu were an indigenous hunting and gathering population who occupied most of northern Honshū as late as the Nara period (A.D. 710–94). As Japanese settlement expanded, the Ainu were pushed northward, by the Tokugawa shogunate, the Ainu were pushed into the island of Hokkaido.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Characterized as remnants of a primitive circumpolar culture, the fewer than 20,000 Ainu in 1990 were considered racially distinct and thus not fully Japanese. Disease and a low birth rate had severely diminished their numbers over the past two centuries, and intermarriage had brought about an almost completely mixed population.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Although no longer in daily use, the Ainu language is preserved in epics, songs, and stories transmitted orally over succeeding generations. Distinctive rhythmic music and dances and some Ainu festivals and crafts are preserved, but mainly in order to take advantage of tourism.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Hāfu (a kana rendition of \"half\") is a term used for people who are biracial and ethnically half Japanese. Of the one million children born in Japan in 2013, 2.2% had one or two non-Japanese parents. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, one in forty-nine babies born in Japan today are born into families with one non-Japanese parent. Most intermarriages in Japan are between Japanese men and women from other Asian countries, including China, the Philippines and South Korea. Southeast Asia too, also has significant populations of people with half-Japanese ancestry, particularly in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In the 1940s, biracial Japanese children (Ainoko), specifically Amerasian children, encountered social problems such as poverty, perception of impurity and discrimination due to negative treatment in Japan. In the 21st century, discrimination against hāfu occurs based on how different their identity, behavior and appearance is from a typical Japanese person.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In 2021, there were 2,887,116 foreign residents in Japan, representing 2.3% of the Japanese population. Foreign Army personnel, of which there were up to 430,000 from the SCAP (post-occupation, United States Forces Japan) and 40,000 BCOF in the immediate post-war years, have not been at any time included in Japanese foreign resident statistics. Most foreign residents in Japan come from Brazil or from other Asian countries, particularly from China, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, and Nepal.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "A number of long-term resident Koreans in Japan today retain familial links with the descendants of Koreans, that either immigrated voluntarily or were forcibly relocated during the Japanese Occupation of the Korea. Within this group, a number hold Special Permanent Resident status, granted under the terms of the Normalisation Treaty (22. June 1965) between South Korea and Japan. In many cases special residents, despite being born in Japan and speaking Japanese, have chosen not to take advantage of the mostly automatic granting of citizenship to special resident applicants.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Beginning in 1947 the Japanese government started to repatriate Korean nationals, who had nominally been granted Japanese citizenship during the years of military occupation. When the Treaty of San Francisco came into force many ethnic Koreans lost their Japanese citizenship from April 28, 1952, and with it the right to welfare grants, to hold a government job of any kind or to attend Japanese schools. In the following year the government contrived, with the help of the Red Cross, a scheme to \"repatriate\" Korean residents, who mainly were from the Southern Provinces, to their \"home\" of North Korea. Between 1959 and 1984 93,430 people used this route, of whom 6,737 were Japanese or Chinese dependents. Most of these departures – 78,276 – occurred before 1962.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "All non-Japanese without special residential status (people whose residential roots go back to before WWII) are required by law to register with the government and carry alien registration cards. From the early 1980s, a civil disobedience movement encouraged refusal of the fingerprinting that accompanied registration every five years.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Opponents of fingerprinting argued that it was discriminatory because the only Japanese who were fingerprinted were criminals. The courts upheld fingerprinting, but the law was changed so that fingerprinting was done once rather than with each renewal of the registration, which until a law reform in 1989 was usually required every six months for anybody from the age of 16. Those refusing fingerprinting were denied re-entry permits, thus depriving them of freedom of movement.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Of these foreign residents below, the new wave started in 2014 comes to Japan as students or trainees. These foreigners are registered under student visa or trainee visa, which gives them the student residency status. Most of these new foreigners are under this visa. Almost all of these foreign students and trainees will return to their home country after three to four years (one valid period); few students extend their visa. Vietnamese makes the largest increase, however Burmese, Cambodians, Filipinos and Chinese are also increasing.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Asian migrant wives of Japanese men have also contributed to the foreign-born population in the country. Many young single Japanese male farmers choose foreign wives, mainly from the Philippines, Thailand, China and South Korea, due to a lack of interest from Japanese women living a farming life. Migrant wives often travel as mail-order brides as a result of arranged marriages with Japanese men. Additionally, Japanese men in urban parts of the country have also begun marrying foreign Asian women.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "There was an increase of 110,358 foreign residents from 2014 to 2015. Vietnamese made the largest proportion of these new foreign residents, whilst Nepalese, Filipino, Chinese and Taiwanese are also significant in numbers. Together these countries makes up 91,126 or 82.6% of all new residents from 2014 to 2015. However, the majority of these immigrants will only remain in Japan for a maximum of five years, as many of them have entered the country in order to complete trainee programmes. Once they complete their programmes, they will be required to return to their home countries.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "As of December 2014 there were 2,121,831 foreigners residing in Japan, 677,019 of whom were long-term residents in Japan, according to national demographics figures. The majority of long-term residents were from Asia, totalling 478,953. Chinese made up the largest portion of them with 215,155, followed by Filipinos with 115,857, and Koreans with 65,711. Thai, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese long-term residents totaled 47,956, and those from other Asian countries totaled 34,274. The Korean figures do not include zainichi Koreans with tokubetsu eijusha (\"special permanent resident\") visas, of whom there were 354,503 (of a total of 358,409 of all nationalities with such visas). The total number of permanent residents had declined over the previous five years due to high cost of living.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The number of foreign residents of Japan reached a high of 2.93 million in 2019 before falling to 2.76 million at the end of 2021. The number of foreign workers was 1.46 million in 2018, 29.7% are in the manufacturing sector; 389,000 are from Vietnam and 316,000 are from China.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "On April 1, 2019, Japan's revised immigration law was enacted. The revision clarifies and better protects the rights of foreign workers. Japan formally accepts foreign blue-collar workers. This helps reduce labour shortage in certain sectors of the economy. The reform changes the status of foreign workers to regular employees and they can obtain permanent residence status. The reform includes a new visa status called tokutei gino (特定技能, \"designated skills\"). In order to qualify, applicants must pass a language and skills test (level N4 or higher of the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test). In the old \"Technical Trainee programme\" a foreign employee was tied to their employer. This caused numerous cases of exploitation. The revision gives foreign workers more freedom to leave and change their employer.",
"title": "Foreign residents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Shinto and Buddhism are Japan's two major religions. They have co-existed for more than a thousand years. However, most Japanese people generally do not exclusively identify themselves as adherents of one religion, but rather incorporate various elements in a syncretic fashion. There are small Christian and other minorities as well, with the Christian population dating to as early as the 1500s, as a result of European missionary work before sakoku was implemented from 1635 to 1853.",
"title": "Religion"
}
]
| The demographics of Japan include Japanese population, birth and death rates, age distribution, population density, ethnicity, education level, healthcare system of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects regarding the population. As of July 2011, according to the United Nations estimated reports, Japan's total memorial population was 128,007,256 people, making it the 3rd-most populous country in Asia-Pacific region, and with the 10th-most populous country in the world. In 2022, the median age of Japanese was projected 48.6 years, highest level since 1950, compared to 28.7 for India, 38.4 for China, and 38.9 for the United States. Japan is the second highest median age in the world. An improved quality of life and regular health checks are just two reasons why Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. The life expectancy from birth in Japan improved significantly after World War II, rising 20 years in the decade between 1945 and 1955. As life expectancy rising, Japan expects difficulties caring for the older generation in the future. Shortages in the service sector are already a major concern, with demand for nurses and care workers increasing. The fertility rate among Japanese population has been around 1.4 children per woman since 2010. Apart from a small baby boom in the early 1970s, the crude birth rate in Japan has been declining since 1950, and is expected to be as low as 7.5 births per thousand people in 2020. With a falling birth rates and such a large share of its inhabitants reaching their later years, Japan's total population is expected to continue declining since mid-2010. Japanese is a principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by Japanese people, which is separated into several dialects with the Tokyo dialect considered Standard Japanese. It has around 128 million speakers in total memorial population, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora across the globe. The sex ratio in Japan in 2021 was 95.38 males per 100 females. There are 61.53 million males and 64.52 million females in Japan. The percentage of female population is 51.18%, compared to 48.82% male population. Japan has 2.98 million more females than males. | 2001-02-22T04:18:20Z | 2023-12-27T01:40:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan |
15,577 | Politics of Japan | Politics of Japan are conducted in a framework of a dominant-party bicameral parliamentary constitutional monarchy, in which the Emperor is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government and the head of the Cabinet, which directs the executive branch.
Legislative power is vested in the National Diet, which consists of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. The House of Representatives has eighteen standing committees ranging in size from 20 to 50 members and The House of Councillors has sixteen ranging from 10 to 45 members.
Judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court and lower courts, and sovereignty is vested in the people of Japan by the 1947 Constitution, which was written during the Occupation of Japan primarily by American officials and had replaced the previous Meiji Constitution. Japan is considered a constitutional monarchy with a system of civil law.
Politics in Japan in the post-war period has largely been dominated by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955, a phenomenon known as the 1955 System. Of the 31 prime ministers since the end of the country's occupation, 24 as well as the longest serving ones have been members of the LDP. Consequently, Japan has been described as a de facto one-party state.
The creation and ratification of this current document has been widely viewed by many geopolitical analysts and historians as one that was forced upon Japan by the United States after the end of World War II.
Although this "imposition" claim arose originally as a rallying cry among conservative politicians in favour of constitutional revision in the 1950s, and that it wasn't "inherently Japanese", it has also been supported by the research of several independent American and Japanese historians of the period.
A competing claim, which also emerged from the political maelstrom of the 1950s revision debate, holds that the ratification decision was actually the result of apparent "collaboration" between American occupation authorities, successive Japanese governments of the time, and private sector "actors".
Article 1 of the Constitution of Japan (日本国憲法, Nihon-koku kenpō) defines the Emperor (天皇, Tennō) to be "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people". He performs ceremonial duties and holds no real power. Political power is held mainly by the Prime Minister, Cabinet, and other elected members of the National Diet. The Imperial Throne is succeeded by a paternal male member of the Imperial House as designated by the Imperial Household Law.
The chief of the executive branch and head of government, the Prime Minister (内閣総理大臣, Naikaku Sōri-Daijin), is appointed by the Emperor as directed by the National Diet. They are a member of either house of the National Diet and must be a civilian. The Cabinet (内閣, Naikaku) members are nominated by the Prime Minister, and are also required to be civilian. With the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in power, it has been convention that the President of the party serves as the Prime Minister.
Japanese constitution states that the National Diet (国会, Kokkai), its law-making institution, shall consist of two Houses, namely the House of Representatives (衆議院, Shūgiin) and the House of Councillors (参議院, Sangiin). The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole law-making organ of the State. It states that both Houses shall consist of elected members, representative of all the people and that the number of the members of each House shall be fixed by law. Both houses pass legislation in identical form for it to become law. Similarly to other parliamentary systems, most legislation that is considered in the National Diet is proposed by the cabinet. The cabinet then relies on the expertise of the bureaucracy to draft actual bills.
The lower house, the House of Representatives, the most powerful of the two, holds power over the government, being able to force its resignation. The lower house also has ultimate control of the passage of the budget, the ratification of treaties, and the selection of the Prime Minister. Its power over its sister house is, if a bill is passed by the lower house (the House of Representatives) but is voted down by the upper house (the House of Councillors), the ability to override the decision of the House of Councillors. Members of the lower house, as a result of the Prime Minister's power to dissolve them, more frequently serve for less than four years in any given terms.
The upper house, the House of Councillors, is very weak and bills are sent to the House of Councillors only to be approved, not made. Members of the upper house are elected for six-year terms with half the members elected every three years.
It is possible for different parties to control the lower house and the upper house, a situation referred to as a "twisted Diet", something that has become more common since the JSP took control of the upper house in 1989.
Several political parties exist in Japan. However, the politics of Japan have primarily been dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 1955, with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) playing an important role as the opposition several times. The DPJ was the ruling party from 2009 to 2012 with the LDP as the opposition. The LDP was the ruling party for decades since 1955, despite the existence of multiple parties. Most of the prime ministers (presidents of the LDP) were elected from inner factions of the LDP.
Many polls had predicted a weakened LDP or even a complete loss of government control in the elections, with one poll by The Japan Times suggesting the party would lose around 40 seats. Though the LDP did lose 25 seats compared to the previous elections, they comfortably maintained their single-party majority in the Diet.
The opposition coalition of CDP, JCP, SDP and Reiwa Shinsengumi failed to increase its seat share, suffering a net loss of thirteen seats compared to the outgoing parliament. The CDP itself remained the largest opposition party, finishing second with 96 seats; although this marked an increase on the 55 seats won by the original CDP in the 2017 elections, the party had held 109 seats going into the elections following the merger with the Democratic Party for the People. The JCP lost two seats going from 12 to 10, the SDP kept its one constituency seat in Okinawa, and Reiwa Shinsengumi increased its seats from one prior to the election to three.
The Osaka-based Nippon Ishin no Kai saw a strong third-place finish with 41 seats, a net gain of 30. The party won all seats in Osaka prefecture, except for four where they did not stand a candidate. The party also finished first in the Kinki Proportional Block.
Despite an increasingly unpredictable domestic and international environment, policy making conforms to well established postwar patterns. The close collaboration of the ruling party, the elite bureaucracy and important interest groups often make it difficult to tell who exactly is responsible for specific policy decisions.
After a largely informal process within elite circles in which ideas were discussed and developed, steps might be taken to institute more formal policy development. This process often took place in deliberation councils (shingikai). There were about 200 shingikai, each attached to a ministry; their members were both officials and prominent private individuals in business, education, and other fields. The shingikai played a large role in facilitating communication among those who ordinarily might not meet.
Given the tendency for real negotiations in Japan to be conducted privately (in the nemawashi, or root binding, process of consensus building), the shingikai often represented a fairly advanced stage in policy formulation in which relatively minor differences could be thrashed out and the resulting decisions couched in language acceptable to all. These bodies were legally established but had no authority to oblige governments to adopt their recommendations. The most important deliberation council during the 1980s was the Provisional Commission for Administrative Reform, established in March 1981 by Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko. The commission had nine members, assisted in their deliberations by six advisers, twenty-one "expert members," and around fifty "councillors" representing a wide range of groups. Its head, Keidanren president Doko Toshio, insisted that the government agree to take its recommendations seriously and commit itself to reforming the administrative structure and the tax system.
In 1982, the commission had arrived at several recommendations that by the end of the decade had been actualized. These implementations included tax reform, a policy to limit government growth, the establishment in 1984 of the Management and Coordination Agency to replace the Administrative Management Agency in the Office of the Prime Minister, and privatization of the state-owned railroad and telephone systems. In April 1990, another deliberation council, the Election Systems Research Council, submitted proposals that included the establishment of single-seat constituencies in place of the multiple-seat system.
Another significant policy-making institution in the early 1990s was the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council. It consisted of a number of committees, composed of LDP Diet members, with the committees corresponding to the different executive agencies. Committee members worked closely with their official counterparts, advancing the requests of their constituents, in one of the most effective means through which interest groups could state their case to the bureaucracy through the channel of the ruling party.
Political parties had begun to revive almost immediately after the Allied occupation began because of surrender of Japan in World War II. Left-wing organizations, such as the Japan Socialist Party and the Japanese Communist Party, quickly reestablished themselves, as did various conservative parties. The old Rikken Seiyūkai and Rikken Minseitō came back as, the Liberal Party (Nihon Jiyūtō) and the Japan Progressive Party (Nihon Shimpotō) respectively. The first postwar general election was held in 1946 (women were given the franchise for the first time in 1946), and the Liberal Party's vice president, Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967), became prime minister.
For the 1947 general election, anti-Yoshida forces left the Liberal Party and joined forces with the Progressive Party to establish the new Democratic Party (Minshutō). This divisiveness in conservative ranks gave a plurality to the Japan Socialist Party, which was allowed to form a cabinet, which lasted less than a year. Thereafter, the socialist party steadily declined in its electoral successes. After a short period of Democratic Party administration, Yoshida returned in late 1948 and continued to serve as prime minister until 1954.
Even before Japan regained full sovereignty, the government had rehabilitated nearly 80,000 people who had been purged, many of whom returned to their former political and government positions. A debate over limitations on military spending and the sovereignty of the Emperor ensued, contributing to the great reduction in the Liberal Party's majority in the first post-occupation elections (October 1952). After several reorganizations of the armed forces, in 1954 the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were established under a civilian director. Cold War realities and the hot war in nearby Korea also contributed significantly to the United States-influenced economic redevelopment, the suppression of communism, and the discouragement of organized labor in Japan during this period.
Continual fragmentation of parties and a succession of minority governments led conservative forces to merge the Liberal Party (Jiyūtō) with the Japan Democratic Party (Nihon Minshutō), an offshoot of the earlier Democratic Party, to form the Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyū-Minshutō; LDP) in November 1955, called 1955 System. This party continuously held power from 1955 through 1993, except for a short while when it was replaced by a new minority government. LDP leadership was drawn from the elite who had seen Japan through the defeat and occupation. It attracted former bureaucrats, local politicians, businessmen, journalists, other professionals, farmers, and university graduates.
In October 1955, socialist groups reunited under the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), which emerged as the second most powerful political force. It was followed closely in popularity by the Komeito, founded in 1964 as the political arm of the Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society), until 1991, a lay organization affiliated with the Nichiren Shōshū Buddhist sect. The Komeito emphasized the traditional Japanese beliefs and attracted urban laborers, former rural residents, and women. Like the Japan Socialist Party, it favored the gradual modification and dissolution of the Japan-United States Mutual Security Assistance Pact.
The LDP domination lasted until the National Diet Lower House general election on 18 July 1993, in which LDP failed to win a majority. A coalition of new parties and existing opposition parties formed a governing majority and elected a new non-LDP prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa (leader of Japan New Party), in August 1993. His government's major legislative objective was political reform, consisting of a package of new political financing restrictions and major changes in the electoral system. The coalition succeeded in passing landmark political reform legislation in January 1994.
In April 1994, Prime Minister Hosokawa resigned. Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata (leader of Japan Renewal Party) formed the successor coalition government, Japan's first minority government in almost 40 years. Prime Minister Hata resigned less than two months later. Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama (leader of JSP) formed the next government in June 1994 with the coalition of JSP, the LDP, and the small New Party Sakigake. The advent of a coalition containing the JSP and LDP shocked many observers because of their previously fierce rivalry.
Prime Minister Murayama served from June 1994 to January 1996. He was succeeded by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (president of the LDP), who served from January 1996 to July 1998. Prime Minister Hashimoto headed a loose coalition of three parties until the July 1998 Upper House election, when the two smaller parties cut ties with the LDP. Hashimoto resigned due to a poor electoral performance by the LDP in the Upper House elections. He was succeeded as party president of the LDP and prime minister by Keizō Obuchi, who took office on 30 July 1998. The LDP formed a governing coalition with the Liberal Party in January 1999, and Obuchi remained prime minister. The LDP-Liberal coalition expanded to include the New Komeito Party in October 1999.
Prime Minister Obuchi suffered a stroke in April 2000 and was replaced by Yoshirō Mori. After the Liberal Party left the coalition in April 2000, Prime Minister Mori welcomed a Liberal Party splinter group, the New Conservative Party, into the ruling coalition. The three-party coalition made up of the LDP, New Komeito, and the New Conservative Party maintained its majority in the Diet following the June 2000 Lower House elections.
After a turbulent year in office in which he saw his approval ratings plummet to the single digits, Prime Minister Mori agreed to hold early elections for the LDP presidency in order to improve his party's chances in crucial July 2001 Upper House elections. On 24 April 2001, riding a wave of grassroots desire for change, maverick politician Junichiro Koizumi defeated former Prime Minister Hashimoto and other party stalwarts on a platform of economic and political reform.
Koizumi was elected as Japan's 56th Prime Minister on 26 April 2001. On 11 October 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi dissolved the lower house and he was re-elected as the president of the LDP. Likewise, that year, the LDP won the general election, even though it suffered setbacks from the new opposition party, the liberal and social-democratic Democratic Party (DPJ). A similar event occurred during the 2004 Upper House election as well.
In a strong move, on 8 August 2005, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called for a snap general election to the lower house, as threatened, after LDP stalwarts and opposition DPJ parliamentarians defeated his proposal for a large-scale reform and privatization of Japan Post, which besides being Japan's state-owned postal monopoly is arguably the world's largest financial institution, with nearly 331 trillion yen of assets. The election was scheduled for 11 September 2005, with the LDP achieving a landslide victory under Junichiro Koizumi's leadership.
The ruling LDP started losing hold in 2006. No prime minister except Koizumi had good public support. On 26 September 2006, the new LDP President Shinzo Abe was elected by a special session of the National Diet to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as the next Prime Minister. He was Japan's youngest post-World War II prime minister and the first born after the war. On 12 September 2007, Abe surprised Japan by announcing his resignation from office. He was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, a veteran of LDP.
In the meantime, on 4 November 2007, the leader of the main opposition party, Ichirō Ozawa announced his resignation from the post of party president, after controversy over an offer to the DPJ to join the ruling coalition in a grand coalition, but has since, with some embarrassment, rescinded his resignation.
On 11 January 2008, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda forced a bill allowing ships to continue a refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of US-led operations in Afghanistan. To do so, PM Fukuda used the LDP's overwhelming majority in the Lower House to ignore a previous "no-vote" of the opposition-controlled Upper House. This was the first time in 50 years that the Lower House voted to ignore the opinion of the Upper House. Fukuda resigned suddenly on 1 September 2008, just a few weeks after reshuffling his cabinet. On 1 September 2008, Fukuda's resignation was designed so that the LDP did not suffer a "power vacuum". It thus caused a leadership election within the LDP, and the winner, Tarō Asō (Shigeru Yoshida's grandson) was chosen as the new LDP president on 24 September 2008, he was appointed as the 92nd Prime Minister after the House of Representatives voted in his favor in the extraordinary session of the National Diet.
Later, on 21 July 2009, Prime Minister Asō dissolved the House of Representatives and general election was held on 30 August. The election results for the House of Representatives were announced on 30 and 31 August 2009. The opposition party DPJ led by Yukio Hatoyama (Ichirō Hatoyama's grandson), won a majority by gaining 308 seats (10 seats were won by its allies the Social Democratic Party and the People's New Party). On 16 September 2009, the leader of DPJ, Hatoyama was elected by the House of Representatives as the 93rd Prime Minister of Japan.
On 2 June 2010, Hatoyama resigned due to lack of fulfillments of his policies, both domestically and internationally and soon after, on 8 June, Akihito, Emperor of Japan ceremonially swore in the newly elected DPJ's leader, Naoto Kan as the 94th prime minister. Kan suffered an early setback in the 2010 Japanese House of Councillors election. In a routine political change in Japan, DPJ's new leader and former finance minister of Kan Cabinet, Yoshihiko Noda was cleared and elected by the National Diet as 95th prime minister on 30 August 2011. He was officially appointed as prime minister in the attestation ceremony by Emperor Akihito at the Tokyo Imperial Palace on 2 September 2011.
Noda dissolved the lower house on 16 November 2012 (as he failed to get support outside the Diet on various domestic issues i.e. consumption tax, nuclear energy) and general election was held on 16 December. The results were in favor of the LDP, which won an absolute majority in the leadership of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He was appointed as the 96th Prime Minister of Japan on 26 December 2012. With the changing political situation, earlier in November 2014, Prime Minister Abe called for a fresh mandate for the Lower House. In an opinion poll the government failed to win public trust due to bad economic achievements in the two consecutive quarters and on the tax reforms.
The general election was held on 14 December 2014, and the results were in favor of the LDP and its ally New Komeito. Together they managed to secure a huge majority by winning 325 seats for the Lower House. The opposition, DPJ, could not manage to provide alternatives to the voters with its policies and programs. "Abenomics", the ambitious self-titled fiscal policy of the current prime minister, managed to attract more voters in this election, many Japanese voters supported the policies. Shinzō Abe was sworn as the 97th prime minister on 24 December 2014 and would go ahead with his agenda of economic revitalization and structural reforms in Japan.
Prime Minister Abe was elected again for a fourth term after the 2017 general election. It was a snap election called by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Abe's ruling coalition won a clear majority with more than two-thirds of 465 seats in the lower house of Parliament (House of Representatives). The opposition was in deep political crisis.
In July 2019, Japan had a national election. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Prime Minister Abe won a majority of seats in the upper house of Parliament (House of Councillors). However, Abe failed to achieve the two-thirds majority, and the ruling coalition could not amend the constitution.
On 28 August 2020 following reports of ill-health, Abe resigned citing health concerns, triggering a leadership election to replace him as Prime Minister. Abe was the longest-serving Prime Minister in the political history of Japan.
After winning the leadership of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, a close ally of his predecessor, was elected as the 99th prime minister of Japan by the National Diet on 16 September 2020. He became the first prime minister appointed by Emperor Naruhito at the Tokyo Imperial Palace. Suga’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, as the architect of the GoTo tourism program criticised for helping the virus spread, along with high case numbers in April 2021 ahead of the Tokyo Olympics has since negatively affected perceptions of his administration. On 2 September 2021, Suga announced that he would not seek reelection as LDP President, effectively ending his term as Prime Minister. On 4 October 2021, Fumio Kishida took office as new prime minister. Kishida was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) previous week. He was officially confirmed as the 100th prime minister following a parliamentary vote with appointment by Emperor Naruhito at Tokyo Imperial Palace. On 31 October 2021, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) held onto its single party majority in the general election.
On 8 July 2022, Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed at a campaign rally in Nara for the 2022 Japanese House of Councillors election. State funeral of Abe was held on 27 September at Nippon Budokan. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Politics of Japan are conducted in a framework of a dominant-party bicameral parliamentary constitutional monarchy, in which the Emperor is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government and the head of the Cabinet, which directs the executive branch.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Legislative power is vested in the National Diet, which consists of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. The House of Representatives has eighteen standing committees ranging in size from 20 to 50 members and The House of Councillors has sixteen ranging from 10 to 45 members.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court and lower courts, and sovereignty is vested in the people of Japan by the 1947 Constitution, which was written during the Occupation of Japan primarily by American officials and had replaced the previous Meiji Constitution. Japan is considered a constitutional monarchy with a system of civil law.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Politics in Japan in the post-war period has largely been dominated by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955, a phenomenon known as the 1955 System. Of the 31 prime ministers since the end of the country's occupation, 24 as well as the longest serving ones have been members of the LDP. Consequently, Japan has been described as a de facto one-party state.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The creation and ratification of this current document has been widely viewed by many geopolitical analysts and historians as one that was forced upon Japan by the United States after the end of World War II.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Although this \"imposition\" claim arose originally as a rallying cry among conservative politicians in favour of constitutional revision in the 1950s, and that it wasn't \"inherently Japanese\", it has also been supported by the research of several independent American and Japanese historians of the period.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A competing claim, which also emerged from the political maelstrom of the 1950s revision debate, holds that the ratification decision was actually the result of apparent \"collaboration\" between American occupation authorities, successive Japanese governments of the time, and private sector \"actors\".",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Article 1 of the Constitution of Japan (日本国憲法, Nihon-koku kenpō) defines the Emperor (天皇, Tennō) to be \"the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people\". He performs ceremonial duties and holds no real power. Political power is held mainly by the Prime Minister, Cabinet, and other elected members of the National Diet. The Imperial Throne is succeeded by a paternal male member of the Imperial House as designated by the Imperial Household Law.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The chief of the executive branch and head of government, the Prime Minister (内閣総理大臣, Naikaku Sōri-Daijin), is appointed by the Emperor as directed by the National Diet. They are a member of either house of the National Diet and must be a civilian. The Cabinet (内閣, Naikaku) members are nominated by the Prime Minister, and are also required to be civilian. With the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in power, it has been convention that the President of the party serves as the Prime Minister.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Japanese constitution states that the National Diet (国会, Kokkai), its law-making institution, shall consist of two Houses, namely the House of Representatives (衆議院, Shūgiin) and the House of Councillors (参議院, Sangiin). The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole law-making organ of the State. It states that both Houses shall consist of elected members, representative of all the people and that the number of the members of each House shall be fixed by law. Both houses pass legislation in identical form for it to become law. Similarly to other parliamentary systems, most legislation that is considered in the National Diet is proposed by the cabinet. The cabinet then relies on the expertise of the bureaucracy to draft actual bills.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The lower house, the House of Representatives, the most powerful of the two, holds power over the government, being able to force its resignation. The lower house also has ultimate control of the passage of the budget, the ratification of treaties, and the selection of the Prime Minister. Its power over its sister house is, if a bill is passed by the lower house (the House of Representatives) but is voted down by the upper house (the House of Councillors), the ability to override the decision of the House of Councillors. Members of the lower house, as a result of the Prime Minister's power to dissolve them, more frequently serve for less than four years in any given terms.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The upper house, the House of Councillors, is very weak and bills are sent to the House of Councillors only to be approved, not made. Members of the upper house are elected for six-year terms with half the members elected every three years.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It is possible for different parties to control the lower house and the upper house, a situation referred to as a \"twisted Diet\", something that has become more common since the JSP took control of the upper house in 1989.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Several political parties exist in Japan. However, the politics of Japan have primarily been dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 1955, with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) playing an important role as the opposition several times. The DPJ was the ruling party from 2009 to 2012 with the LDP as the opposition. The LDP was the ruling party for decades since 1955, despite the existence of multiple parties. Most of the prime ministers (presidents of the LDP) were elected from inner factions of the LDP.",
"title": "Political parties and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Many polls had predicted a weakened LDP or even a complete loss of government control in the elections, with one poll by The Japan Times suggesting the party would lose around 40 seats. Though the LDP did lose 25 seats compared to the previous elections, they comfortably maintained their single-party majority in the Diet.",
"title": "Political parties and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The opposition coalition of CDP, JCP, SDP and Reiwa Shinsengumi failed to increase its seat share, suffering a net loss of thirteen seats compared to the outgoing parliament. The CDP itself remained the largest opposition party, finishing second with 96 seats; although this marked an increase on the 55 seats won by the original CDP in the 2017 elections, the party had held 109 seats going into the elections following the merger with the Democratic Party for the People. The JCP lost two seats going from 12 to 10, the SDP kept its one constituency seat in Okinawa, and Reiwa Shinsengumi increased its seats from one prior to the election to three.",
"title": "Political parties and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Osaka-based Nippon Ishin no Kai saw a strong third-place finish with 41 seats, a net gain of 30. The party won all seats in Osaka prefecture, except for four where they did not stand a candidate. The party also finished first in the Kinki Proportional Block.",
"title": "Political parties and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Despite an increasingly unpredictable domestic and international environment, policy making conforms to well established postwar patterns. The close collaboration of the ruling party, the elite bureaucracy and important interest groups often make it difficult to tell who exactly is responsible for specific policy decisions.",
"title": "Policy making"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After a largely informal process within elite circles in which ideas were discussed and developed, steps might be taken to institute more formal policy development. This process often took place in deliberation councils (shingikai). There were about 200 shingikai, each attached to a ministry; their members were both officials and prominent private individuals in business, education, and other fields. The shingikai played a large role in facilitating communication among those who ordinarily might not meet.",
"title": "Policy making"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Given the tendency for real negotiations in Japan to be conducted privately (in the nemawashi, or root binding, process of consensus building), the shingikai often represented a fairly advanced stage in policy formulation in which relatively minor differences could be thrashed out and the resulting decisions couched in language acceptable to all. These bodies were legally established but had no authority to oblige governments to adopt their recommendations. The most important deliberation council during the 1980s was the Provisional Commission for Administrative Reform, established in March 1981 by Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko. The commission had nine members, assisted in their deliberations by six advisers, twenty-one \"expert members,\" and around fifty \"councillors\" representing a wide range of groups. Its head, Keidanren president Doko Toshio, insisted that the government agree to take its recommendations seriously and commit itself to reforming the administrative structure and the tax system.",
"title": "Policy making"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1982, the commission had arrived at several recommendations that by the end of the decade had been actualized. These implementations included tax reform, a policy to limit government growth, the establishment in 1984 of the Management and Coordination Agency to replace the Administrative Management Agency in the Office of the Prime Minister, and privatization of the state-owned railroad and telephone systems. In April 1990, another deliberation council, the Election Systems Research Council, submitted proposals that included the establishment of single-seat constituencies in place of the multiple-seat system.",
"title": "Policy making"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Another significant policy-making institution in the early 1990s was the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council. It consisted of a number of committees, composed of LDP Diet members, with the committees corresponding to the different executive agencies. Committee members worked closely with their official counterparts, advancing the requests of their constituents, in one of the most effective means through which interest groups could state their case to the bureaucracy through the channel of the ruling party.",
"title": "Policy making"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Political parties had begun to revive almost immediately after the Allied occupation began because of surrender of Japan in World War II. Left-wing organizations, such as the Japan Socialist Party and the Japanese Communist Party, quickly reestablished themselves, as did various conservative parties. The old Rikken Seiyūkai and Rikken Minseitō came back as, the Liberal Party (Nihon Jiyūtō) and the Japan Progressive Party (Nihon Shimpotō) respectively. The first postwar general election was held in 1946 (women were given the franchise for the first time in 1946), and the Liberal Party's vice president, Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967), became prime minister.",
"title": "Post-war political developments in Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "For the 1947 general election, anti-Yoshida forces left the Liberal Party and joined forces with the Progressive Party to establish the new Democratic Party (Minshutō). This divisiveness in conservative ranks gave a plurality to the Japan Socialist Party, which was allowed to form a cabinet, which lasted less than a year. Thereafter, the socialist party steadily declined in its electoral successes. After a short period of Democratic Party administration, Yoshida returned in late 1948 and continued to serve as prime minister until 1954.",
"title": "Post-war political developments in Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Even before Japan regained full sovereignty, the government had rehabilitated nearly 80,000 people who had been purged, many of whom returned to their former political and government positions. A debate over limitations on military spending and the sovereignty of the Emperor ensued, contributing to the great reduction in the Liberal Party's majority in the first post-occupation elections (October 1952). After several reorganizations of the armed forces, in 1954 the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were established under a civilian director. Cold War realities and the hot war in nearby Korea also contributed significantly to the United States-influenced economic redevelopment, the suppression of communism, and the discouragement of organized labor in Japan during this period.",
"title": "Post-war political developments in Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Continual fragmentation of parties and a succession of minority governments led conservative forces to merge the Liberal Party (Jiyūtō) with the Japan Democratic Party (Nihon Minshutō), an offshoot of the earlier Democratic Party, to form the Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyū-Minshutō; LDP) in November 1955, called 1955 System. This party continuously held power from 1955 through 1993, except for a short while when it was replaced by a new minority government. LDP leadership was drawn from the elite who had seen Japan through the defeat and occupation. It attracted former bureaucrats, local politicians, businessmen, journalists, other professionals, farmers, and university graduates.",
"title": "Post-war political developments in Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In October 1955, socialist groups reunited under the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), which emerged as the second most powerful political force. It was followed closely in popularity by the Komeito, founded in 1964 as the political arm of the Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society), until 1991, a lay organization affiliated with the Nichiren Shōshū Buddhist sect. The Komeito emphasized the traditional Japanese beliefs and attracted urban laborers, former rural residents, and women. Like the Japan Socialist Party, it favored the gradual modification and dissolution of the Japan-United States Mutual Security Assistance Pact.",
"title": "Post-war political developments in Japan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The LDP domination lasted until the National Diet Lower House general election on 18 July 1993, in which LDP failed to win a majority. A coalition of new parties and existing opposition parties formed a governing majority and elected a new non-LDP prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa (leader of Japan New Party), in August 1993. His government's major legislative objective was political reform, consisting of a package of new political financing restrictions and major changes in the electoral system. The coalition succeeded in passing landmark political reform legislation in January 1994.",
"title": "Political developments since 1990"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In April 1994, Prime Minister Hosokawa resigned. Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata (leader of Japan Renewal Party) formed the successor coalition government, Japan's first minority government in almost 40 years. Prime Minister Hata resigned less than two months later. Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama (leader of JSP) formed the next government in June 1994 with the coalition of JSP, the LDP, and the small New Party Sakigake. The advent of a coalition containing the JSP and LDP shocked many observers because of their previously fierce rivalry.",
"title": "Political developments since 1990"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Prime Minister Murayama served from June 1994 to January 1996. He was succeeded by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (president of the LDP), who served from January 1996 to July 1998. Prime Minister Hashimoto headed a loose coalition of three parties until the July 1998 Upper House election, when the two smaller parties cut ties with the LDP. Hashimoto resigned due to a poor electoral performance by the LDP in the Upper House elections. He was succeeded as party president of the LDP and prime minister by Keizō Obuchi, who took office on 30 July 1998. The LDP formed a governing coalition with the Liberal Party in January 1999, and Obuchi remained prime minister. The LDP-Liberal coalition expanded to include the New Komeito Party in October 1999.",
"title": "Political developments since 1990"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Prime Minister Obuchi suffered a stroke in April 2000 and was replaced by Yoshirō Mori. After the Liberal Party left the coalition in April 2000, Prime Minister Mori welcomed a Liberal Party splinter group, the New Conservative Party, into the ruling coalition. The three-party coalition made up of the LDP, New Komeito, and the New Conservative Party maintained its majority in the Diet following the June 2000 Lower House elections.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "After a turbulent year in office in which he saw his approval ratings plummet to the single digits, Prime Minister Mori agreed to hold early elections for the LDP presidency in order to improve his party's chances in crucial July 2001 Upper House elections. On 24 April 2001, riding a wave of grassroots desire for change, maverick politician Junichiro Koizumi defeated former Prime Minister Hashimoto and other party stalwarts on a platform of economic and political reform.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Koizumi was elected as Japan's 56th Prime Minister on 26 April 2001. On 11 October 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi dissolved the lower house and he was re-elected as the president of the LDP. Likewise, that year, the LDP won the general election, even though it suffered setbacks from the new opposition party, the liberal and social-democratic Democratic Party (DPJ). A similar event occurred during the 2004 Upper House election as well.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In a strong move, on 8 August 2005, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called for a snap general election to the lower house, as threatened, after LDP stalwarts and opposition DPJ parliamentarians defeated his proposal for a large-scale reform and privatization of Japan Post, which besides being Japan's state-owned postal monopoly is arguably the world's largest financial institution, with nearly 331 trillion yen of assets. The election was scheduled for 11 September 2005, with the LDP achieving a landslide victory under Junichiro Koizumi's leadership.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The ruling LDP started losing hold in 2006. No prime minister except Koizumi had good public support. On 26 September 2006, the new LDP President Shinzo Abe was elected by a special session of the National Diet to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as the next Prime Minister. He was Japan's youngest post-World War II prime minister and the first born after the war. On 12 September 2007, Abe surprised Japan by announcing his resignation from office. He was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, a veteran of LDP.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In the meantime, on 4 November 2007, the leader of the main opposition party, Ichirō Ozawa announced his resignation from the post of party president, after controversy over an offer to the DPJ to join the ruling coalition in a grand coalition, but has since, with some embarrassment, rescinded his resignation.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On 11 January 2008, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda forced a bill allowing ships to continue a refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of US-led operations in Afghanistan. To do so, PM Fukuda used the LDP's overwhelming majority in the Lower House to ignore a previous \"no-vote\" of the opposition-controlled Upper House. This was the first time in 50 years that the Lower House voted to ignore the opinion of the Upper House. Fukuda resigned suddenly on 1 September 2008, just a few weeks after reshuffling his cabinet. On 1 September 2008, Fukuda's resignation was designed so that the LDP did not suffer a \"power vacuum\". It thus caused a leadership election within the LDP, and the winner, Tarō Asō (Shigeru Yoshida's grandson) was chosen as the new LDP president on 24 September 2008, he was appointed as the 92nd Prime Minister after the House of Representatives voted in his favor in the extraordinary session of the National Diet.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Later, on 21 July 2009, Prime Minister Asō dissolved the House of Representatives and general election was held on 30 August. The election results for the House of Representatives were announced on 30 and 31 August 2009. The opposition party DPJ led by Yukio Hatoyama (Ichirō Hatoyama's grandson), won a majority by gaining 308 seats (10 seats were won by its allies the Social Democratic Party and the People's New Party). On 16 September 2009, the leader of DPJ, Hatoyama was elected by the House of Representatives as the 93rd Prime Minister of Japan.",
"title": "Political developments since 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "On 2 June 2010, Hatoyama resigned due to lack of fulfillments of his policies, both domestically and internationally and soon after, on 8 June, Akihito, Emperor of Japan ceremonially swore in the newly elected DPJ's leader, Naoto Kan as the 94th prime minister. Kan suffered an early setback in the 2010 Japanese House of Councillors election. In a routine political change in Japan, DPJ's new leader and former finance minister of Kan Cabinet, Yoshihiko Noda was cleared and elected by the National Diet as 95th prime minister on 30 August 2011. He was officially appointed as prime minister in the attestation ceremony by Emperor Akihito at the Tokyo Imperial Palace on 2 September 2011.",
"title": "Political developments since 2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Noda dissolved the lower house on 16 November 2012 (as he failed to get support outside the Diet on various domestic issues i.e. consumption tax, nuclear energy) and general election was held on 16 December. The results were in favor of the LDP, which won an absolute majority in the leadership of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He was appointed as the 96th Prime Minister of Japan on 26 December 2012. With the changing political situation, earlier in November 2014, Prime Minister Abe called for a fresh mandate for the Lower House. In an opinion poll the government failed to win public trust due to bad economic achievements in the two consecutive quarters and on the tax reforms.",
"title": "Political developments since 2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The general election was held on 14 December 2014, and the results were in favor of the LDP and its ally New Komeito. Together they managed to secure a huge majority by winning 325 seats for the Lower House. The opposition, DPJ, could not manage to provide alternatives to the voters with its policies and programs. \"Abenomics\", the ambitious self-titled fiscal policy of the current prime minister, managed to attract more voters in this election, many Japanese voters supported the policies. Shinzō Abe was sworn as the 97th prime minister on 24 December 2014 and would go ahead with his agenda of economic revitalization and structural reforms in Japan.",
"title": "Political developments since 2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Prime Minister Abe was elected again for a fourth term after the 2017 general election. It was a snap election called by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Abe's ruling coalition won a clear majority with more than two-thirds of 465 seats in the lower house of Parliament (House of Representatives). The opposition was in deep political crisis.",
"title": "Political developments since 2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In July 2019, Japan had a national election. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Prime Minister Abe won a majority of seats in the upper house of Parliament (House of Councillors). However, Abe failed to achieve the two-thirds majority, and the ruling coalition could not amend the constitution.",
"title": "Political developments since 2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On 28 August 2020 following reports of ill-health, Abe resigned citing health concerns, triggering a leadership election to replace him as Prime Minister. Abe was the longest-serving Prime Minister in the political history of Japan.",
"title": "Political developments since 2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "After winning the leadership of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, a close ally of his predecessor, was elected as the 99th prime minister of Japan by the National Diet on 16 September 2020. He became the first prime minister appointed by Emperor Naruhito at the Tokyo Imperial Palace. Suga’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, as the architect of the GoTo tourism program criticised for helping the virus spread, along with high case numbers in April 2021 ahead of the Tokyo Olympics has since negatively affected perceptions of his administration. On 2 September 2021, Suga announced that he would not seek reelection as LDP President, effectively ending his term as Prime Minister. On 4 October 2021, Fumio Kishida took office as new prime minister. Kishida was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) previous week. He was officially confirmed as the 100th prime minister following a parliamentary vote with appointment by Emperor Naruhito at Tokyo Imperial Palace. On 31 October 2021, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) held onto its single party majority in the general election.",
"title": "Political developments since 2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On 8 July 2022, Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed at a campaign rally in Nara for the 2022 Japanese House of Councillors election. State funeral of Abe was held on 27 September at Nippon Budokan.",
"title": "Political developments since 2020"
}
]
| Politics of Japan are conducted in a framework of a dominant-party bicameral parliamentary constitutional monarchy, in which the Emperor is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government and the head of the Cabinet, which directs the executive branch. Legislative power is vested in the National Diet, which consists of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. The House of Representatives has eighteen standing committees ranging in size from 20 to 50 members and The House of Councillors has sixteen ranging from 10 to 45 members. Judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court and lower courts, and sovereignty is vested in the people of Japan by the 1947 Constitution, which was written during the Occupation of Japan primarily by American officials and had replaced the previous Meiji Constitution. Japan is considered a constitutional monarchy with a system of civil law. Politics in Japan in the post-war period has largely been dominated by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955, a phenomenon known as the 1955 System. Of the 31 prime ministers since the end of the country's occupation, 24 as well as the longest serving ones have been members of the LDP. Consequently, Japan has been described as a de facto one-party state. | 2001-09-16T18:15:07Z | 2023-12-29T19:22:39Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Japan |
15,578 | Economy of Japan | The economy of Japan is a highly developed/advanced social market economy, often referred to as an East Asian model. It is the fourth-largest in the world by nominal GDP and also the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Japan is a member of both the G7 and G20. According to the IMF, the country's per capita GDP (PPP) was at $52,120 (2023). Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, Japan's GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates sharply. The Japanese economy is forecast by the Quarterly Tankan survey of business sentiment conducted by the Bank of Japan. The Nikkei 225 presents the monthly report of top blue chip equities on the Japan Exchange Group, which is the world's fifth-largest stock exchange by market capitalisation. In 2018, Japan was the world's fourth-largest importer and the fourth-largest exporter. It has the world's second-largest foreign-exchange reserves, worth $1.4 trillion. It ranks 5th on the Global Competitiveness Report. It ranks first in the world in the Economic Complexity Index. Japan is also the world's fourth-largest consumer market.
Japan is the world's second-largest automobile manufacturing country. It is often ranked among the world's most innovative countries, leading several measures of global patent filings. Facing increasing competition from China and South Korea, manufacturing in Japan currently focuses primarily on high-tech and precision goods, such as integrated circuits, hybrid vehicles, and robotics. Besides the Kantō region, the Kansai region is one of the leading industrial clusters and manufacturing centers for the Japanese economy. Japan is the world's largest creditor nation. Japan generally runs an annual trade surplus and has a considerable net international investment surplus. Japan has the third-largest financial assets in the world, valued at $12 trillion, or 8.6% of the global GDP total as of 2020. As of 2022, 47 of the Fortune Global 500 companies are based in Japan. The country is the third-largest in the world by total wealth.
Japan formerly had the second-largest assets and wealth, behind only the United States in both categories, until it was surpassed by China in both assets and wealth. Japan also had the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP behind the United States. In 2010, it was surpassed by China.
Japan's asset price bubble collapse in 1991 led to a period of economic stagnation known as the "lost decade", sometimes extended to a "lost 20 years" or greater. From 1995 to 2007 GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $5.04 trillion in nominal terms. From the early 2000s, the Bank of Japan set out to encourage economic growth through a novel policy of quantitative easing. Debt levels continued to rise in response to the national crises, such as the Great Recession in 2008, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, and with COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. As of 2021, Japan has significantly higher levels of public debt than any other developed nation at approximately 260% of GDP. 45% of this debt is held by the Bank of Japan. The Japanese economy faces considerable challenges posed by an aging and declining population, which peaked at 128 million in 2010 and has fallen to 125.5 million as of 2022. Projections show the population will continue to fall, potentially to below 100 million by the middle of the 21st century.
In the three decades of economic development following 1960, rapid economic growth referred to as the Japanese post-war economic miracle occurred. By the guidance of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, with average growth rates of 10% in the 1960s, 5% in the 1970s, and 4% in the 1980s, Japan was able to establish and maintain itself as the world's second-largest economy from 1978 until 2010, when it was surpassed by the People's Republic of China. By 1990, income per capita in Japan equaled or surpassed that in most countries in the West.
During the second half of the 1980s, rising stock and real estate prices created an economic bubble. The economic bubble came to an abrupt end as the Tokyo Stock Exchange crashed in 1990–92 and real estate prices peaked in 1991. Growth in Japan throughout the 1990s at 1.5% was slower than global growth, giving rise to the term Lost Decade. After another decade of low growth rate, the term became the Lost 20 Years. Nonetheless, GDP per capita growth from 2001 to 2010 has still managed to outpace Europe and the United States. With this low growth rate, the national debt of Japan has expanded due to its considerable social welfare spending in an aging society with a shrinking tax-base. The scenario of "Abandoned homes" continues to spread from rural areas to urban areas in Japan.
A mountainous, volcanic island country, Japan has inadequate natural resources to support its growing economy and large population, and therefore exports goods in which it has a comparative advantage such as engineering-oriented, research and development-led industrial products in exchange for the import of raw materials and petroleum. Japan is among the top-three importers for agricultural products in the world next to the European Union and the United States in total volume for covering of its own domestic agricultural consumption. Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market is the largest wholesale market for primary products in Japan, including the renowned Toyosu fish market. Japanese whaling, ostensibly for research purposes, has been sued as illegal under international law.
Although many kinds of minerals were extracted throughout the country, most mineral resources had to be imported in the postwar era. Local deposits of metal-bearing ores were difficult to process because they were low grade. The nation's large and varied forest resources, which covered 70 per cent of the country in the late 1980s, were not utilized extensively. Because of political decisions on local, prefectural, and national levels, Japan decided not to exploit its forest resources for economic gain. Domestic sources only supplied between 25 and 30 per cent of the nation's timber needs. Agriculture and fishing were the best-developed resources, but only through years of painstaking investment and toil. The nation, therefore, built up the manufacturing and processing industries to convert raw materials imported from abroad. This strategy of economic development necessitated the establishment of a strong economic infrastructure to provide the needed energy, transportation, communications, and technological know-how.
Deposits of gold, magnesium, and silver meet current industrial demands, but Japan is dependent on foreign sources for many of the minerals essential to modern industry. Iron ore, copper, bauxite, and alumina must be imported, as well as many forest products.
Compared to other industrialized economies, Japan is characterized by its low levels of exports relative to the size of its GDP. From the period 1970-2018, Japan was either the least or second least export-dependent economy in the G7, and one of the least export-dependent economies in the world. It has also been one of the least trade-dependent economies in the 1970-2018 period.
Japan receives exceptionally low levels of foreign investment. Its inward FDI stock was by far the smallest in the G7 as of 2018, and less than those of much smaller economies such as Austria, Poland, and Sweden. Relative to GDP, its ratio of inward FDI stock is one of the lowest in the world.
Japan lags behind other developed countries in labor productivity. From 1970 to 2018 Japan has consistently had the lowest labor productivity in the G7. In 2020, Japan ranked 23rd in labor productivity among OECD nations. A particularity of the Japanese economy are very long-established businesses (shinise), of which some are over a thousand years old and enjoy great prestige. In contrast, startup culture is not as prominent in Japan as elsewhere. As of December 2021, Japan had just 6 i.e. less than 0.64% of world's total unicorn startups. One of the reasons for lagging behind in the startup scene has been the traditional cultural value systems, which conflict with the startup culture.
The economic history of Japan is one of the most studied. First was the foundation of Edo (in 1603) to whole inland economic developments, second was the Meiji Restoration (in 1868) to be the first non-European power, third was after the defeat of World War II (in 1945) when the island nation rose to become the world's second largest economy.
Japan was considered as a country rich in precious metals, mainly owing to Marco Polo's accounts of gilded temples and palaces, but also due to the relative abundance of surface ores characteristic of a massive huge volcanic country, before large-scale deep-mining became possible in Industrial times. Japan was to become a major exporter of silver, copper, and gold during the period until exports for those minerals were banned.
Renaissance Japan was also perceived as a sophisticated feudal society with a high culture and a strong pre-industrial technology. It was densely populated and urbanized. Prominent European observers of the time seemed to agree that the Japanese "excel not only all the other Oriental peoples, they surpass the Europeans as well" (Alessandro Valignano, 1584, "Historia del Principo y Progresso de la Compania de Jesus en las Indias Orientales).
Early European visitors were amazed by the quality of Japanese craftsmanship and metalsmithing. This stems from the fact that Japan itself is rather rich in natural resources found commonly in Europe, especially iron.
The cargo of the first Portuguese ships (usually about 4 smaller-sized ships every year) arriving in Japan almost entirely consisted of Chinese goods (silk, porcelain). The Japanese were very much looking forward to acquiring such goods, but had been prohibited from any contacts with the Emperor of China, as a punishment for Wakō pirate raids. The Portuguese (who were called Nanban, lit. Southern Barbarians) therefore found the opportunity to act as intermediaries in Asian trade.
The beginning of the Edo period coincides with the last decades of the Nanban trade period, during which intense interaction with European powers, on the economic and religious plane, took place. It is at the beginning of the Edo period that Japan built her first ocean-going Western-style warships, such as the San Juan Bautista, a 500-ton galleon-type ship that transported a Japanese embassy headed by Hasekura Tsunenaga to the Americas, which then continued to Europe. Also during that period, the bakufu commissioned around 350 Red Seal Ships, three-masted and armed trade ships, for intra-Asian commerce. Japanese adventurers, such as Yamada Nagamasa, were active throughout Asia.
In order to eradicate the influence of Christianization, Japan entered in a period of isolation called sakoku, during which its economy enjoyed stability and mild progress. But not long after, in the 1650s, the production of Japanese export porcelain increased greatly when civil war put the main Chinese center of porcelain production, in Jingdezhen, out of action for several decades. For the rest of the 17th century, most Japanese porcelain production was for export, mostly in Kyushu. The trade dwindled under renewed Chinese competition by the 1740s, before resuming after the opening of Japan in the mid-19th century.
Economic development during the Edo period included urbanization, increased shipping of commodities, a significant expansion of domestic and, initially, foreign commerce, and a diffusion of trade and handicraft industries. The construction trades flourished, along with banking facilities and merchant associations. Increasingly, han authorities oversaw the rising agricultural production and the spread of rural handicrafts.
By the mid-eighteenth century, Edo had a population of more than 1 million and Osaka and Kyoto each had more than 400,000 inhabitants. Many other castle towns grew as well. Osaka and Kyoto became busy trading and handicraft production centers, while Edo was the center for the supply of food and essential urban consumer goods.
Rice was the base of the economy, as the daimyō collected the taxes from the peasants in the form of rice. Taxes were high, about 40% of the harvest. The rice was sold at the fudasashi market in Edo. To raise money, the daimyō used forward contracts to sell rice that was not even harvested yet. These contracts were similar to modern futures trading.
Japan reopened its economy to the West after being pressured by the United States of America. During the period, Japan progressively studied Western sciences and techniques (called rangaku, literally "Dutch studies") through the information and books received through the Dutch traders in Dejima. The main areas that were studied included geography, medicine, natural sciences, astronomy, art, languages, physical sciences such as the study of electrical phenomena, and mechanical sciences as exemplified by the development of Japanese clockwatches, or wadokei, inspired from Western techniques.
Since the mid-19th century, after the Meiji Restoration, the country was opened up to Western commerce and influence and Japan has gone through two periods of economic development. The first began in earnest in 1868 and extended through to World War I; the second began in 1945 and a very rapid economic growth took place till 1973, slowed down a bit but continued till 1991.
Economic developments of the prewar period began with the "Rich State and Strong Army Policy" by the Meiji government. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), leaders inaugurated a new Western-based education system for all young people, sent thousands of students to the United States and Europe, and hired more than 3,000 Westerners to teach modern science, mathematics, technology, and foreign languages in Japan (Oyatoi gaikokujin). The government also built railroads, improved road, and inaugurated a land reform program to prepare the country for further development.
To promote industrialization, the government decided that, while it should help private business to allocate resources and to plan, the private sector was best equipped to stimulate economic growth. The greatest role of government was to help provide good economic conditions for business. In short, government was to be the guide and business the producer. In the early Meiji period, the government built factories and shipyards that were sold to entrepreneurs at a fraction of their value. Many of these businesses grew rapidly into the larger conglomerates. Government emerged as chief promoter of private enterprise, enacting a series of pro-business policies.
In the mid-1930s, the Japanese nominal wage rates were "10 times less" than the one of the U.S (based on mid-1930s exchange rates), while the price level is estimated to have been about 44% the one of the U.S.
The size and industrial structure of cities in Japan have maintained tight regularities despite substantial churning of population and industries across cities overtime.
Government control and influence over businesses is widespread than most other countries. Instead of taking legislation action, their control is exercised through constant consultation with businesses and through the government's deep involvement in banking.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, overall real economic growth was extremely large: a 10% average in the 1960s, a 5% average in the 1970s and a 4% average in the 1980s. By the end of said period, Japan had moved into being a high-wage economy.
Growth slowed markedly in the late 1990s also termed the Lost Decade after the collapse of Japanese asset price bubble. As a consequence Japan ran massive budget deficits (added trillions in Yen to Japanese financial system) to finance large public works programs.
By 1998, Japan's public works projects still could not stimulate demand enough to end the economy's stagnation. In desperation, the Japanese government undertook "structural reform" policies intended to wring speculative excesses from the stock and real estate markets. Unfortunately, these policies led Japan into deflation on numerous occasions between 1999 and 2004. The Bank of Japan used quantitative easing to expand the country's money supply in order to raise expectations of inflation and spur economic growth. Initially, the policy failed to induce any growth, but it eventually began to affect inflationary expectations. By late 2005, the economy finally began what seems to be a sustained recovery. GDP growth for that year was 2.8%, with an annualized fourth quarter expansion of 5.5%, surpassing the growth rates of the US and European Union during the same period. Unlike previous recovery trends, domestic consumption has been the dominant factor of growth.
Despite having interest rates down near zero for a long period of time, the quantitative easing strategy did not succeed in stopping price deflation. This led some economists, such as Paul Krugman, and some Japanese politicians, to advocate the generation of higher inflation expectations. In July 2006, the zero-rate policy was ended. In 2008, the Japanese Central Bank still had the lowest interest rates in the developed world, but deflation had still not been eliminated and the Nikkei 225 has fallen over approximately 50% (between June 2007 and December 2008). However, on 5 April 2013, the Bank of Japan announced that it would be purchasing 60–70 trillion yen in bonds and securities in an attempt to eliminate deflation by doubling the money supply in Japan over the course of two years. Markets around the world have responded positively to the government's current proactive policies, with the Nikkei 225 adding more than 42% since November 2012. The Economist has suggested that improvements to bankruptcy law, land transfer law, and tax laws will aid Japan's economy. In recent years, Japan has been the top export market for almost 15 trading nations worldwide.
In December 2018, a free trade agreement between Japan and the European Union was cleared to commence in February 2019. It creates the world's largest free trade zone valued at 1/3rd of global gross domestic product. This reduces tariffs on Japanese cars by 10%, duties by 30% on cheese and 10% on wines and opens service markets.
Since early January 2020, Japanese economy began to suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic as several countries reported a significant increase in cases by March 2020. However, in early April, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he declared state of emergency, citing gave the nation its worst economic crisis since the end of World War II. Jun Saito of the Japan Center for Economic Research stated that the pandemic delivered the "final blow" to Japan's long fledging economy, which also resumed slow growth in 2018. Less than a quarter of Japanese people expect living conditions to improve in the coming decades.
In October 2020 during the pandemic, Japan and the United Kingdom formally signed the first free-trade agreement post-Brexit, which will boost trade by approximately £15.2 billion. It enables tariff-free trade on 99% of exports to Japan.
On 15 February 2021, the Nikkei average breached the 30k benchmark, the highest since November 1991. It is due to strong corporate earnings, GDP data and optimism over COVID-19 vaccination program in the country.
In the year ending of March 2021 despite COVID-19 spreading, SoftBank Group made a record net profit of 45.88 billion, which is largely due to the debut of e-commerce company Coupang. However, this is the largest annual profit by a Japanese company in the nation's history.
As of result, Japanese economic impact of COVID-19 was officially ended by early October 2021 as the country ahead of the endemic phase.
At the end of March 2022, the Ministry of Finance announced that the national debt reached precisely 1.017 million billion yen. The total public debt of the country, which includes debts contracted by local governments, represents 1.210 million billion yen (9,200 billion dollars) which is nearly 250% of Japan’s GDP. Economist Kohei Iwahara said such an exceptional debt to GDP level is only possible because Japanese hold most of the debt: "“Japanese households hold most of their savings in bank accounts (48%) and these sums are used by commercial banks to buy Japanese government bonds. Thus, 85.7% of these bonds are held by Japanese investors.” However, an aging population could decrease savings.
By 2022, the yen will be at 151 to the dollar, the first depreciation of the yen in 32 years in terms of nominal effective exchange rate and the first depreciation of the yen in 52 years in terms of real effective exchange rate. The Asahi Shimbun and other media have reported that the decline in the currency's value has made it a junk currency.
Japan's annual exports grew much-less than expected in June 2023, highlighting weak Chinese and Western demand that continues to undercut the post-COVID recovery in the world's fourth-biggest economy.
In 2018, Japan ranked 5th overall in the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index, and 2nd in the infrastructure category.
In 2005, one half of Japan's energy was produced from petroleum, a fifth from coal, and 14% from natural gas. Nuclear power in Japan made a quarter of electricity production but due to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster there has been a large desire to end Japan's nuclear power program. In September 2013, Japan closed its last 50 nuclear power plants nationwide, causing the nation to be nuclear free. The country has since then opted to restart a few of its nuclear reactors.
Japan's spendings on roads has been considered large. The 1.2 million kilometers of paved road are one of the major means of transportation. Japan has left-hand traffic. A single network of speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major cities and are operated by toll-collecting enterprises. New and used cars are inexpensive, and the Japanese government has encouraged people to buy hybrid vehicles. Car ownership fees and fuel levies are used to promote energy-efficiency.
Rail transport is a major means of transport in Japan. Dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional and local passenger transportation markets; for instance, 6 passenger JR enterprises, Kintetsu Railway, Seibu Railway, and Keio Corporation. Often, strategies of these enterprises contain real estate or department stores next to stations, and many major stations have major department stores near them. The Japanese cities of Fukuoka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo and Yokohama all have subway systems. Some 250 high-speed Shinkansen trains connect major cities. All trains are known for punctuality, and a delay of 90 seconds can be considered late for some train services.
There are 98 passenger and 175 total airports in Japan, and flying is a popular way to travel. The largest domestic airport, Tokyo International Airport, is Asia's second busiest airport. The largest international gateways are Narita International Airport (Tokyo area), Kansai International Airport (Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto area), and Chūbu Centrair International Airport (Nagoya area). The largest ports in Japan include Nagoya Port, the Port of Yokohama, the Port of Tokyo and the Port of Kobe.
About 84% of Japan's energy is imported from other countries. Japan is the world's largest liquefied natural gas importer, second largest coal importer, and third largest net oil importer. Given its heavy dependence on imported energy, Japan has aimed to diversify its sources. Since the oil shocks of the 1970s, Japan has reduced dependence on petroleum as a source of energy from 77.4% in 1973 to about 43.7% in 2010 and increased dependence on natural gas and nuclear power. In September 2019, Japan will invest 10 billion on liquefied natural gas projects worldwide, in a strategy to boost the global LNG market and reinforce the security of energy supply. Other important energy source includes coal, and hydroelectricity is Japan's biggest renewable energy source. Japan's solar market is also currently booming. Kerosene is also used extensively for home heating in portable heaters, especially farther north. Many taxi companies run their fleets on liquefied natural gas. A recent success towards greater fuel economy was the introduction of mass-produced hybrid vehicles. Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who was working on Japan's economic revival, signed a treaty with Saudi Arabia and UAE about the rising prices of oil, ensuring Japan's stable deliveries from that region.
This is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Japan at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of Japanese Yen. See also:
For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US dollar was exchanged at ¥109 in 2010.
Industries by GDP value-added 2012. Values are converted using the exchange rate on 13 April 2013.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2021 (with IMF staff estimates in 2022–2027). Inflation under 5% is in green.
The Japanese agricultural sector accounts for about 1.1% (2017) of the total country's GDP. Only 12% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation. Due to this lack of arable land, a system of terraces is used to farm in small areas. This results in one of the world's highest levels of crop yields per unit area, with an overall agricultural self-sufficiency rate of about 50% on fewer than 56,000 km (14 million acres) cultivated.
Japan's small agricultural sector, however, is also highly subsidized and protected, with government regulations that favor small-scale cultivation instead of large-scale agriculture as practiced in North America. There has been a growing concern about farming as the current farmers are aging with a difficult time finding successors.
Rice accounts for almost all of Japan's cereal production. Japan is the second-largest agricultural product importer in the world. Rice, the most protected crop, is subject to tariffs of 777.7%.
Although Japan is usually self-sufficient in rice (except for its use in making rice crackers and processed foods) and wheat, the country must import about 50% of its requirements of other grain and fodder crops and relies on imports for half of its supply of meat. Japan imports large quantities of wheat and soybeans. Japan is the 5th largest market for the European Union's agricultural exports. Over 90% of mandarin oranges in Japan are grown in Japan. Apples are also grown due to restrictions on apple imports.
Japan ranked fourth in the world in 1996 in tonnage of fish caught. Japan captured 4,074,580 metric tons of fish in 2005, down from 4,987,703 tons in 2000, 9,558,615 tons in 1990, 9,864,422 tons in 1980, 8,520,397 tons in 1970, 5,583,796 tons in 1960 and 2,881,855 tons in 1950. In 2003, the total aquaculture production was predicted at 1,301,437 tonnes. In 2010, Japan's total fisheries production was 4,762,469 fish. Offshore fisheries accounted for an average of 50% of the nation's total fish catches in the late 1980s although they experienced repeated ups and downs during that period.
Coastal fishing by small boats, set nets, or breeding techniques accounts for about one third of the industry's total production, while offshore fishing by medium-sized boats makes up for more than half the total production. Deep-sea fishing from larger vessels makes up the rest. Among the many species of seafood caught are sardines, skipjack tuna, crab, shrimp, salmon, pollock, squid, clams, mackerel, sea bream, sauries, tuna and Japanese amberjack. Freshwater fishing, including salmon, trout and eel hatcheries and fish farms, takes up about 30% of Japan's fishing industry. Among the nearly 300 fish species in the rivers of Japan are native varieties of catfish, chub, herring and goby, as well as such freshwater crustaceans as crabs and crayfish. Marine and freshwater aquaculture is conducted in all 47 prefectures in Japan.
Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch, prompting some claims that Japan's fishing is leading to depletion in fish stocks such as tuna. Japan has also sparked controversy by supporting quasi-commercial whaling.
Japanese manufacturing and industry is very diversified, with a variety of advanced industries that are highly successful. Industry accounts for 30.1% (2017) of the nation's GDP. The country's manufacturing output is the third highest in the world.
Industry is concentrated in several regions, with the Kantō region surrounding Tokyo, (the Keihin industrial region) as well as the Kansai region surrounding Osaka (the Hanshin industrial region) and the Tōkai region surrounding Nagoya (the Chūkyō–Tōkai industrial region) the main industrial centers. Other industrial centers include the southwestern part of Honshū and northern Shikoku around the Seto Inland Sea (the Setouchi industrial region); and the northern part of Kyūshū (Kitakyūshū). In addition, a long narrow belt of industrial centers called the Taiheiyō Belt is found between Tokyo and Fukuoka, established by particular industries, that have developed as mill towns.
Japan enjoys high technological development in many fields, including consumer electronics, automobile manufacturing, semiconductor manufacturing, optical fibers, optoelectronics, optical media, facsimile and copy machines, and fermentation processes in food and biochemistry. However, many Japanese companies are facing emerging rivals from the United States, South Korea, and China.
Japan is the third biggest producer of automobiles in the world. Toyota is currently the world's largest car maker, and the Japanese car makers Nissan, Honda, Suzuki, and Mazda also count for some of the largest car makers in the world. By number, Japan is the world's largest exporter of cars as of 2021.
Japan's mining production has been minimal, and Japan has very little mining deposits. However, massive deposits of rare earths have been found off the coast of Japan. In the 2011 fiscal year, the domestic yield of crude oil was 820 thousand kiloliters, which was 0.4% of Japan's total crude processing volume.
In 2019, Japan was the 2nd largest world producer of iodine, 4th largest worldwide producer of bismuth, the world's 9th largest producer of sulfur and the 10th largest producer of gypsum.
Japan's service sector accounts for 68.7% (2017) of its total economic output. Banking, insurance, real estate, retailing, transportation, and telecommunications are all major industries such as Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho, NTT, TEPCO, Nomura, Mitsubishi Estate, ÆON, Mitsui Sumitomo, Softbank, JR East, Seven & I, KDDI and Japan Airlines counting as one of the largest companies in the world. Four of the five most circulated newspapers in the world are Japanese newspapers. The Koizumi government set Japan Post, one of the country's largest providers of savings and insurance services for privatization by 2015. The six major keiretsus are the Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Fuyo, Mitsui, Dai-Ichi Kangyo and Sanwa Groups. Japan is home to 251 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 or 12.55% (as of 2013).
In 2012, Japan was the fifth most visited country in Asia and the Pacific, with over 8.3 million tourists. In 2013, due to the weaker yen and easier visa requirements for southwest Asian countries, Japan received a record 11.25 million visitors, which was higher than the government's projected goal of 10 million visitors. The government hopes to attract 40 million visitors a year by the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Some of the most popular visited places include the Shinjuku, Ginza, Shibuya and Asakusa areas in Tokyo, and the cities of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, as well as Himeji Castle. Hokkaido is also a popular winter destination for visitors with several ski resorts and luxury hotels being built there.
Japan's economy is less dependent on international tourism than those of other G7 countries and OECD countries in general; from 1995 to 2014, it was by far the least visited country in the G7 despite being the second largest country in the group, and as of 2013 was one of the least visited countries in the OECD on a per capita basis. In 2013, international tourist receipts was 0.3% of Japan's GDP, while the corresponding figure was 1.3% for the United States and 2.3% for France.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the third largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization, as well as the 2nd largest stock market in Asia, with 2,292 listed companies. The Nikkei 225 and the TOPIX are the two important stock market indexes of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Stock Exchange, another major stock exchange in Japan, merged on 1 January 2013, creating one of the world's largest stock exchanges. Other stock exchanges in Japan include the Nagoya Stock Exchange, Fukuoka Stock Exchange and Sapporo Securities Exchange.
The unemployment rate in December 2013 was 3.7%, down 1.5 percentage points from the claimed unemployment rate of 5.2% in June 2009 due to the strong economic recovery.
In 2008 Japan's labor force consisted of some 66 million workers—40% of whom were women—and was rapidly shrinking. One major long-term concern for the Japanese labor force is its low birthrate. In 2005, the number of deaths in Japan exceeded the number of births, indicating that the decline in population had already started. While one countermeasure for a declining birthrate would be to increase immigration, Japan has struggled to attract potential migrants despite immigration laws being relatively lenient (especially for high-skilled workers) compared to other developed countries. This is also apparent when looking at Japan's work visa programme for "specified skilled worker", which had less than 3,000 applicants, despite an annual goal of attracting 40,000 overseas workers, suggesting Japan faces major challenges in attracting migrants compared to other developed countries regardless of its immigration policies. A Gallup poll found that few potential migrants wished to migrate to Japan compared to other G7 countries, consistent with the country's low migrant inflow.
In 1989, the predominantly public sector union confederation, SOHYO (General Council of Trade Unions of Japan), merged with RENGO (Japanese Private Sector Trade Union Confederation) to form the Japanese Trade Union Confederation. Labor union membership is about 12 million.
As of 2019 Japan's unemployment rate was the lowest in the G7. Its employment rate for the working-age population (15-64) was the highest in the G7.
Japan ranks 27th of 185 countries in the ease of doing business index 2013.
Japan has one of the smallest tax rates in the developed world. After deductions, the majority of workers are free from personal income taxes. Consumption tax rate is 10%, while corporate tax rates are high, second highest corporate tax rate in the world, at 36.8%. However, the House of Representatives has passed a bill which increased the consumption tax to 10% in October 2015. The government has also decided to reduce corporate tax and to phase out automobile tax.
In 2016, the IMF encouraged Japan to adopt an income policy that pushes firms to raise employee wages in combination with reforms to tackle the labor market dual tiered employment system to drive higher wages, on top of monetary and fiscal stimulus. Shinzo Abe has encouraged firms to raise wages by at least three per cent annually (the inflation target plus average productivity growth).
Shareholder activism is rare despite the fact that the corporate law gives shareholders strong powers over managers. Under Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, corporate governance reform has been a key initiative to encourage economic growth. In 2012 around 40% of leading Japanese companies had any independent directors while in 2016 most all have begun to appoint independent directors.
The government's liabilities include the second largest public debt of any nation with debt of over one quadrillion yen, or 8,535,340,000,000 in USD. Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan has called the situation 'urgent'.
Japan's central bank has the second largest foreign-exchange reserves after the People's Republic of China, with over one trillion US Dollars in foreign reserves.
Nemawashi (根回し), or "consensus building", in Japanese culture is an informal process of quietly laying the foundation for some proposed change or project, by talking to the people concerned, gathering support and feedback, and so forth. It is considered an important element in any major change, before any formal steps are taken, and successful nemawashi enables changes to be carried out with the consent of all sides.
Japanese companies are known for management methods such as "The Toyota Way". Kaizen (改善, Japanese for "improvement") is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. When applied to the workplace, Kaizen activities continually improve all functions of a business, from manufacturing to management and from the CEO to the assembly line workers. By improving standardized activities and processes, Kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see Lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses during the country's recovery after World War II, including Toyota, and has since spread to businesses throughout the world. Within certain value systems, it is ironic that Japanese workers labor amongst the most hours per day, even though kaizen is supposed to improve all aspects of life. According to the OECD, annual hours worked per employee is below the OECD average and in the middle among G7 countries.
Some companies have powerful enterprise unions and shuntō. The Nenko System or Nenko Joretsu, as it is called in Japan, is the Japanese system of promoting an employee based on his or her proximity to retirement. The advantage of the system is that it allows older employees to achieve a higher salary level before retirement and it usually brings more experience to the executive ranks. The disadvantage of the system is that it does not allow new talent to be combined with experience and those with specialized skills cannot be promoted to the already crowded executive ranks. It also does not guarantee or even attempt to bring the "right person for the right job".
Relationships between government bureaucrats and companies are often close. Amakudari (天下り, amakudari, "descent from heaven") is the institutionalised practice where Japanese senior bureaucrats retire to high-profile positions in the private and public sectors. The practice is increasingly viewed as corrupt and a limitation on efforts to reduce ties between the private sector and the state that prevent economic and political reforms. Lifetime employment (shūshin koyō) and seniority-based career advancement have been common in the Japanese work environment. Japan has begun to gradually move away from some of these norms.
Salaryman (サラリーマン, Sararīman, salaried man) refers to someone whose income is salary based; particularly those working for corporations. Its frequent use by Japanese corporations, and its prevalence in Japanese manga and anime has gradually led to its acceptance in English-speaking countries as a noun for a Japanese white-collar businessman. The word can be found in many books and articles pertaining to Japanese culture. Immediately following World War II, becoming a salaryman was viewed as a gateway to a stable, middle-class lifestyle. In modern use, the term carries associations of long working hours, low prestige in the corporate hierarchy, absence of significant sources of income other than salary, wage slavery, and karōshi. The term salaryman refers almost exclusively to males.
An office lady, often abbreviated OL (Japanese: オーエル Ōeru), is a female office worker in Japan who performs generally pink collar tasks such as serving tea and secretarial or clerical work. Like many unmarried Japanese, OLs often live with their parents well into early adulthood. Office ladies are usually full-time permanent staff, although the jobs they do usually have little opportunity for promotion, and there is usually the tacit expectation that they leave their jobs once they get married.
Freeter (フリーター, furītā) is a Japanese expression for people between the age of 15 and 34 who lack full-time employment or are unemployed, excluding homemakers and students. They may also be described as underemployed or freelance workers. These people do not start a career after high school or university but instead usually live as parasite singles with their parents and earn some money with low skilled and low paid jobs. The low income makes it difficult for freeters to start a family, and the lack of qualifications makes it difficult to start a career at a later point in life.
Karōshi (過労死, karōshi), which can be translated quite literally from Japanese as "death from overwork", is occupational sudden death. The major medical causes of karōshi deaths are heart attack and stroke due to stress.
Sōkaiya (総会屋, sōkaiya), (sometimes also translated as corporate bouncers, meeting-men, or corporate blackmailers) are a form of specialized racketeer unique to Japan, and often associated with the yakuza that extort money from or blackmail companies by threatening to publicly humiliate companies and their management, usually in their annual meeting (総会, sōkai). Sarakin (サラ金) is a Japanese term for moneylender, or loan shark. It is a contraction of the Japanese words for salaryman and cash. Around 14 million people, or 10% of the Japanese population, have borrowed from a sarakin. In total, there are about 10,000 firms (down from 30,000 a decade ago); however, the top seven firms make up 70% of the market. The value of outstanding loans totals 100 billion. The biggest sarakin are publicly traded and often allied with big banks.
The first "Western-style" department store in Japan was Mitsukoshi, founded in 1904, which has its root as a kimono store called Echigoya from 1673. When the roots are considered, however, Matsuzakaya has an even longer history, dated from 1611. The kimono store changed to a department store in 1910. In 1924, Matsuzakaya store in Ginza allowed street shoes to be worn indoors, something innovative at the time. These former kimono shop department stores dominated the market in its earlier history. They sold, or rather displayed, luxurious products, which contributed for their sophisticated atmospheres. Another origin of Japanese department store is that from railway company. There have been many private railway operators in the nation, and from the 1920s, they started to build department stores directly linked to their lines' termini. Seibu and Hankyu are the typical examples of this type. From the 1980s onwards, Japanese department stores face fierce competition from supermarkets and convenience stores, gradually losing their presences. Still, depāto are bastions of several aspects of cultural conservatism in the country. Gift certificates for prestigious department stores are frequently given as formal presents in Japan. Department stores in Japan generally offer a wide range of services and can include foreign exchange, travel reservations, ticket sales for local concerts and other events.
A keiretsu (系列, "system" or "series") is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. A keiretsu unequivocally exists as an identical form of business structure to the affiliate, or an associate. It is a type of business group. The prototypical keiretsu appeared in Japan during the "economic miracle" following World War II. Before Japan's surrender, Japanese industry was controlled by large family-controlled vertical monopolies called zaibatsu. The Allies dismantled the zaibatsu in the late 1940s, but the companies formed from the dismantling of the zaibatsu were reintegrated. The dispersed corporations were re-interlinked through share purchases to form horizontally integrated alliances across many industries. Where possible, keiretsu companies would also supply one another, making the alliances vertically integrated as well. In this period, official government policy promoted the creation of robust trade corporations that could withstand pressures from intensified world trade competition.
The major keiretsu were each centered on one bank, which lent money to the keiretsu's member companies and held equity positions in the companies. Each central bank had great control over the companies in the keiretsu and acted as a monitoring entity and as an emergency bail-out entity. One effect of this structure was to minimize the presence of hostile takeovers in Japan, because no entities could challenge the power of the banks.
There are two types of keiretsu: vertical and horizontal. Vertical keiretsu illustrates the organization and relationships within a company (for example all factors of production of a certain product are connected), while a horizontal keiretsu shows relationships between entities and industries, normally centered on a bank and trading company. Both are complexly woven together and sustain each other.
The Japanese recession in the 1990s had profound effects on the keiretsu. Many of the largest banks were hit hard by bad loan portfolios and forced to merge or go out of business. This had the effect of blurring the lines between the keiretsu: Sumitomo Bank and Mitsui Bank, for instance, became Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in 2001, while Sanwa Bank (the banker for the Hankyu-Toho Group) became part of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, now known as MUFG Bank. Additionally, many companies from outside the keiretsu system, such as Sony, began outperforming their counterparts within the system.
Generally, these causes gave rise to a strong notion in the business community that the old keiretsu system was not an effective business model, and led to an overall loosening of keiretsu alliances. While the keiretsu still exist, they are not as centralized or integrated as they were before the 1990s. This, in turn, has led to a growing corporate acquisition industry in Japan, as companies are no longer able to be easily "bailed out" by their banks, as well as rising derivative litigation by more independent shareholders.
Japanese companies have been involved in 50,759 deals between 1985 and 2018. This cumulates to a total value of 2,636 bil. USD which translates to 281,469.9 bil. YEN. In the year 1999 there was an all-time high in terms of value of deals with almost 220 bil. USD. The most active year so far was 2017 with over 3,150 deals, but only a total value of 114 bil. USD (see graph "M&A in Japan by number and value").
Here is a list of the most important deals (ranked by value in bil. USD) in Japanese history:
Among the top 50 deals by value, 92% of the time the acquiring nation is Japan. Foreign direct investment is playing a much smaller role than national M&A in Japan.
Net international investment position: 266,223 / billion (1st)
Industrial production growth rate: 7.5% (2010 est.)
Investment (gross fixed): 20.3% of GDP (2010 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
Agriculture products: rice, sugar beets, vegetables, fruit, pork, poultry, dairy products, eggs, fish
Export commodities: machinery and equipment, motor vehicles, semiconductors, chemicals
Import commodities: machinery and equipment, fuels, foodstuffs, chemicals, textiles, raw materials (2001)
Exchange rates: Japanese Yen per US$1 – 88.67 (2010), 93.57 (2009), 103.58 (2008), 117.99 (2007), 116.18 (2006), 109.69 (2005), 115.93 (2003), 125.39 (2002), 121.53 (2001), 105.16 (January 2000), 113.91 (1999), 130.91 (1998), 120.99 (1997), 108.78 (1996), 94.06 (1995)
Electricity:
Electricity production by source:
Electricity standards:
Oil: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Japan is a highly developed/advanced social market economy, often referred to as an East Asian model. It is the fourth-largest in the world by nominal GDP and also the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Japan is a member of both the G7 and G20. According to the IMF, the country's per capita GDP (PPP) was at $52,120 (2023). Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, Japan's GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates sharply. The Japanese economy is forecast by the Quarterly Tankan survey of business sentiment conducted by the Bank of Japan. The Nikkei 225 presents the monthly report of top blue chip equities on the Japan Exchange Group, which is the world's fifth-largest stock exchange by market capitalisation. In 2018, Japan was the world's fourth-largest importer and the fourth-largest exporter. It has the world's second-largest foreign-exchange reserves, worth $1.4 trillion. It ranks 5th on the Global Competitiveness Report. It ranks first in the world in the Economic Complexity Index. Japan is also the world's fourth-largest consumer market.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Japan is the world's second-largest automobile manufacturing country. It is often ranked among the world's most innovative countries, leading several measures of global patent filings. Facing increasing competition from China and South Korea, manufacturing in Japan currently focuses primarily on high-tech and precision goods, such as integrated circuits, hybrid vehicles, and robotics. Besides the Kantō region, the Kansai region is one of the leading industrial clusters and manufacturing centers for the Japanese economy. Japan is the world's largest creditor nation. Japan generally runs an annual trade surplus and has a considerable net international investment surplus. Japan has the third-largest financial assets in the world, valued at $12 trillion, or 8.6% of the global GDP total as of 2020. As of 2022, 47 of the Fortune Global 500 companies are based in Japan. The country is the third-largest in the world by total wealth.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Japan formerly had the second-largest assets and wealth, behind only the United States in both categories, until it was surpassed by China in both assets and wealth. Japan also had the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP behind the United States. In 2010, it was surpassed by China.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Japan's asset price bubble collapse in 1991 led to a period of economic stagnation known as the \"lost decade\", sometimes extended to a \"lost 20 years\" or greater. From 1995 to 2007 GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $5.04 trillion in nominal terms. From the early 2000s, the Bank of Japan set out to encourage economic growth through a novel policy of quantitative easing. Debt levels continued to rise in response to the national crises, such as the Great Recession in 2008, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, and with COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. As of 2021, Japan has significantly higher levels of public debt than any other developed nation at approximately 260% of GDP. 45% of this debt is held by the Bank of Japan. The Japanese economy faces considerable challenges posed by an aging and declining population, which peaked at 128 million in 2010 and has fallen to 125.5 million as of 2022. Projections show the population will continue to fall, potentially to below 100 million by the middle of the 21st century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In the three decades of economic development following 1960, rapid economic growth referred to as the Japanese post-war economic miracle occurred. By the guidance of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, with average growth rates of 10% in the 1960s, 5% in the 1970s, and 4% in the 1980s, Japan was able to establish and maintain itself as the world's second-largest economy from 1978 until 2010, when it was surpassed by the People's Republic of China. By 1990, income per capita in Japan equaled or surpassed that in most countries in the West.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "During the second half of the 1980s, rising stock and real estate prices created an economic bubble. The economic bubble came to an abrupt end as the Tokyo Stock Exchange crashed in 1990–92 and real estate prices peaked in 1991. Growth in Japan throughout the 1990s at 1.5% was slower than global growth, giving rise to the term Lost Decade. After another decade of low growth rate, the term became the Lost 20 Years. Nonetheless, GDP per capita growth from 2001 to 2010 has still managed to outpace Europe and the United States. With this low growth rate, the national debt of Japan has expanded due to its considerable social welfare spending in an aging society with a shrinking tax-base. The scenario of \"Abandoned homes\" continues to spread from rural areas to urban areas in Japan.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A mountainous, volcanic island country, Japan has inadequate natural resources to support its growing economy and large population, and therefore exports goods in which it has a comparative advantage such as engineering-oriented, research and development-led industrial products in exchange for the import of raw materials and petroleum. Japan is among the top-three importers for agricultural products in the world next to the European Union and the United States in total volume for covering of its own domestic agricultural consumption. Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market is the largest wholesale market for primary products in Japan, including the renowned Toyosu fish market. Japanese whaling, ostensibly for research purposes, has been sued as illegal under international law.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Although many kinds of minerals were extracted throughout the country, most mineral resources had to be imported in the postwar era. Local deposits of metal-bearing ores were difficult to process because they were low grade. The nation's large and varied forest resources, which covered 70 per cent of the country in the late 1980s, were not utilized extensively. Because of political decisions on local, prefectural, and national levels, Japan decided not to exploit its forest resources for economic gain. Domestic sources only supplied between 25 and 30 per cent of the nation's timber needs. Agriculture and fishing were the best-developed resources, but only through years of painstaking investment and toil. The nation, therefore, built up the manufacturing and processing industries to convert raw materials imported from abroad. This strategy of economic development necessitated the establishment of a strong economic infrastructure to provide the needed energy, transportation, communications, and technological know-how.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Deposits of gold, magnesium, and silver meet current industrial demands, but Japan is dependent on foreign sources for many of the minerals essential to modern industry. Iron ore, copper, bauxite, and alumina must be imported, as well as many forest products.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Compared to other industrialized economies, Japan is characterized by its low levels of exports relative to the size of its GDP. From the period 1970-2018, Japan was either the least or second least export-dependent economy in the G7, and one of the least export-dependent economies in the world. It has also been one of the least trade-dependent economies in the 1970-2018 period.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Japan receives exceptionally low levels of foreign investment. Its inward FDI stock was by far the smallest in the G7 as of 2018, and less than those of much smaller economies such as Austria, Poland, and Sweden. Relative to GDP, its ratio of inward FDI stock is one of the lowest in the world.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Japan lags behind other developed countries in labor productivity. From 1970 to 2018 Japan has consistently had the lowest labor productivity in the G7. In 2020, Japan ranked 23rd in labor productivity among OECD nations. A particularity of the Japanese economy are very long-established businesses (shinise), of which some are over a thousand years old and enjoy great prestige. In contrast, startup culture is not as prominent in Japan as elsewhere. As of December 2021, Japan had just 6 i.e. less than 0.64% of world's total unicorn startups. One of the reasons for lagging behind in the startup scene has been the traditional cultural value systems, which conflict with the startup culture.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The economic history of Japan is one of the most studied. First was the foundation of Edo (in 1603) to whole inland economic developments, second was the Meiji Restoration (in 1868) to be the first non-European power, third was after the defeat of World War II (in 1945) when the island nation rose to become the world's second largest economy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Japan was considered as a country rich in precious metals, mainly owing to Marco Polo's accounts of gilded temples and palaces, but also due to the relative abundance of surface ores characteristic of a massive huge volcanic country, before large-scale deep-mining became possible in Industrial times. Japan was to become a major exporter of silver, copper, and gold during the period until exports for those minerals were banned.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Renaissance Japan was also perceived as a sophisticated feudal society with a high culture and a strong pre-industrial technology. It was densely populated and urbanized. Prominent European observers of the time seemed to agree that the Japanese \"excel not only all the other Oriental peoples, they surpass the Europeans as well\" (Alessandro Valignano, 1584, \"Historia del Principo y Progresso de la Compania de Jesus en las Indias Orientales).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Early European visitors were amazed by the quality of Japanese craftsmanship and metalsmithing. This stems from the fact that Japan itself is rather rich in natural resources found commonly in Europe, especially iron.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The cargo of the first Portuguese ships (usually about 4 smaller-sized ships every year) arriving in Japan almost entirely consisted of Chinese goods (silk, porcelain). The Japanese were very much looking forward to acquiring such goods, but had been prohibited from any contacts with the Emperor of China, as a punishment for Wakō pirate raids. The Portuguese (who were called Nanban, lit. Southern Barbarians) therefore found the opportunity to act as intermediaries in Asian trade.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The beginning of the Edo period coincides with the last decades of the Nanban trade period, during which intense interaction with European powers, on the economic and religious plane, took place. It is at the beginning of the Edo period that Japan built her first ocean-going Western-style warships, such as the San Juan Bautista, a 500-ton galleon-type ship that transported a Japanese embassy headed by Hasekura Tsunenaga to the Americas, which then continued to Europe. Also during that period, the bakufu commissioned around 350 Red Seal Ships, three-masted and armed trade ships, for intra-Asian commerce. Japanese adventurers, such as Yamada Nagamasa, were active throughout Asia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In order to eradicate the influence of Christianization, Japan entered in a period of isolation called sakoku, during which its economy enjoyed stability and mild progress. But not long after, in the 1650s, the production of Japanese export porcelain increased greatly when civil war put the main Chinese center of porcelain production, in Jingdezhen, out of action for several decades. For the rest of the 17th century, most Japanese porcelain production was for export, mostly in Kyushu. The trade dwindled under renewed Chinese competition by the 1740s, before resuming after the opening of Japan in the mid-19th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Economic development during the Edo period included urbanization, increased shipping of commodities, a significant expansion of domestic and, initially, foreign commerce, and a diffusion of trade and handicraft industries. The construction trades flourished, along with banking facilities and merchant associations. Increasingly, han authorities oversaw the rising agricultural production and the spread of rural handicrafts.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "By the mid-eighteenth century, Edo had a population of more than 1 million and Osaka and Kyoto each had more than 400,000 inhabitants. Many other castle towns grew as well. Osaka and Kyoto became busy trading and handicraft production centers, while Edo was the center for the supply of food and essential urban consumer goods.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Rice was the base of the economy, as the daimyō collected the taxes from the peasants in the form of rice. Taxes were high, about 40% of the harvest. The rice was sold at the fudasashi market in Edo. To raise money, the daimyō used forward contracts to sell rice that was not even harvested yet. These contracts were similar to modern futures trading.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Japan reopened its economy to the West after being pressured by the United States of America. During the period, Japan progressively studied Western sciences and techniques (called rangaku, literally \"Dutch studies\") through the information and books received through the Dutch traders in Dejima. The main areas that were studied included geography, medicine, natural sciences, astronomy, art, languages, physical sciences such as the study of electrical phenomena, and mechanical sciences as exemplified by the development of Japanese clockwatches, or wadokei, inspired from Western techniques.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Since the mid-19th century, after the Meiji Restoration, the country was opened up to Western commerce and influence and Japan has gone through two periods of economic development. The first began in earnest in 1868 and extended through to World War I; the second began in 1945 and a very rapid economic growth took place till 1973, slowed down a bit but continued till 1991.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Economic developments of the prewar period began with the \"Rich State and Strong Army Policy\" by the Meiji government. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), leaders inaugurated a new Western-based education system for all young people, sent thousands of students to the United States and Europe, and hired more than 3,000 Westerners to teach modern science, mathematics, technology, and foreign languages in Japan (Oyatoi gaikokujin). The government also built railroads, improved road, and inaugurated a land reform program to prepare the country for further development.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "To promote industrialization, the government decided that, while it should help private business to allocate resources and to plan, the private sector was best equipped to stimulate economic growth. The greatest role of government was to help provide good economic conditions for business. In short, government was to be the guide and business the producer. In the early Meiji period, the government built factories and shipyards that were sold to entrepreneurs at a fraction of their value. Many of these businesses grew rapidly into the larger conglomerates. Government emerged as chief promoter of private enterprise, enacting a series of pro-business policies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In the mid-1930s, the Japanese nominal wage rates were \"10 times less\" than the one of the U.S (based on mid-1930s exchange rates), while the price level is estimated to have been about 44% the one of the U.S.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The size and industrial structure of cities in Japan have maintained tight regularities despite substantial churning of population and industries across cities overtime.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Government control and influence over businesses is widespread than most other countries. Instead of taking legislation action, their control is exercised through constant consultation with businesses and through the government's deep involvement in banking.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "From the 1960s to the 1980s, overall real economic growth was extremely large: a 10% average in the 1960s, a 5% average in the 1970s and a 4% average in the 1980s. By the end of said period, Japan had moved into being a high-wage economy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Growth slowed markedly in the late 1990s also termed the Lost Decade after the collapse of Japanese asset price bubble. As a consequence Japan ran massive budget deficits (added trillions in Yen to Japanese financial system) to finance large public works programs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "By 1998, Japan's public works projects still could not stimulate demand enough to end the economy's stagnation. In desperation, the Japanese government undertook \"structural reform\" policies intended to wring speculative excesses from the stock and real estate markets. Unfortunately, these policies led Japan into deflation on numerous occasions between 1999 and 2004. The Bank of Japan used quantitative easing to expand the country's money supply in order to raise expectations of inflation and spur economic growth. Initially, the policy failed to induce any growth, but it eventually began to affect inflationary expectations. By late 2005, the economy finally began what seems to be a sustained recovery. GDP growth for that year was 2.8%, with an annualized fourth quarter expansion of 5.5%, surpassing the growth rates of the US and European Union during the same period. Unlike previous recovery trends, domestic consumption has been the dominant factor of growth.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Despite having interest rates down near zero for a long period of time, the quantitative easing strategy did not succeed in stopping price deflation. This led some economists, such as Paul Krugman, and some Japanese politicians, to advocate the generation of higher inflation expectations. In July 2006, the zero-rate policy was ended. In 2008, the Japanese Central Bank still had the lowest interest rates in the developed world, but deflation had still not been eliminated and the Nikkei 225 has fallen over approximately 50% (between June 2007 and December 2008). However, on 5 April 2013, the Bank of Japan announced that it would be purchasing 60–70 trillion yen in bonds and securities in an attempt to eliminate deflation by doubling the money supply in Japan over the course of two years. Markets around the world have responded positively to the government's current proactive policies, with the Nikkei 225 adding more than 42% since November 2012. The Economist has suggested that improvements to bankruptcy law, land transfer law, and tax laws will aid Japan's economy. In recent years, Japan has been the top export market for almost 15 trading nations worldwide.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In December 2018, a free trade agreement between Japan and the European Union was cleared to commence in February 2019. It creates the world's largest free trade zone valued at 1/3rd of global gross domestic product. This reduces tariffs on Japanese cars by 10%, duties by 30% on cheese and 10% on wines and opens service markets.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Since early January 2020, Japanese economy began to suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic as several countries reported a significant increase in cases by March 2020. However, in early April, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he declared state of emergency, citing gave the nation its worst economic crisis since the end of World War II. Jun Saito of the Japan Center for Economic Research stated that the pandemic delivered the \"final blow\" to Japan's long fledging economy, which also resumed slow growth in 2018. Less than a quarter of Japanese people expect living conditions to improve in the coming decades.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In October 2020 during the pandemic, Japan and the United Kingdom formally signed the first free-trade agreement post-Brexit, which will boost trade by approximately £15.2 billion. It enables tariff-free trade on 99% of exports to Japan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On 15 February 2021, the Nikkei average breached the 30k benchmark, the highest since November 1991. It is due to strong corporate earnings, GDP data and optimism over COVID-19 vaccination program in the country.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the year ending of March 2021 despite COVID-19 spreading, SoftBank Group made a record net profit of 45.88 billion, which is largely due to the debut of e-commerce company Coupang. However, this is the largest annual profit by a Japanese company in the nation's history.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "As of result, Japanese economic impact of COVID-19 was officially ended by early October 2021 as the country ahead of the endemic phase.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "At the end of March 2022, the Ministry of Finance announced that the national debt reached precisely 1.017 million billion yen. The total public debt of the country, which includes debts contracted by local governments, represents 1.210 million billion yen (9,200 billion dollars) which is nearly 250% of Japan’s GDP. Economist Kohei Iwahara said such an exceptional debt to GDP level is only possible because Japanese hold most of the debt: \"“Japanese households hold most of their savings in bank accounts (48%) and these sums are used by commercial banks to buy Japanese government bonds. Thus, 85.7% of these bonds are held by Japanese investors.” However, an aging population could decrease savings.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "By 2022, the yen will be at 151 to the dollar, the first depreciation of the yen in 32 years in terms of nominal effective exchange rate and the first depreciation of the yen in 52 years in terms of real effective exchange rate. The Asahi Shimbun and other media have reported that the decline in the currency's value has made it a junk currency.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Japan's annual exports grew much-less than expected in June 2023, highlighting weak Chinese and Western demand that continues to undercut the post-COVID recovery in the world's fourth-biggest economy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 2018, Japan ranked 5th overall in the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index, and 2nd in the infrastructure category.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 2005, one half of Japan's energy was produced from petroleum, a fifth from coal, and 14% from natural gas. Nuclear power in Japan made a quarter of electricity production but due to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster there has been a large desire to end Japan's nuclear power program. In September 2013, Japan closed its last 50 nuclear power plants nationwide, causing the nation to be nuclear free. The country has since then opted to restart a few of its nuclear reactors.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Japan's spendings on roads has been considered large. The 1.2 million kilometers of paved road are one of the major means of transportation. Japan has left-hand traffic. A single network of speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major cities and are operated by toll-collecting enterprises. New and used cars are inexpensive, and the Japanese government has encouraged people to buy hybrid vehicles. Car ownership fees and fuel levies are used to promote energy-efficiency.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Rail transport is a major means of transport in Japan. Dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional and local passenger transportation markets; for instance, 6 passenger JR enterprises, Kintetsu Railway, Seibu Railway, and Keio Corporation. Often, strategies of these enterprises contain real estate or department stores next to stations, and many major stations have major department stores near them. The Japanese cities of Fukuoka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo and Yokohama all have subway systems. Some 250 high-speed Shinkansen trains connect major cities. All trains are known for punctuality, and a delay of 90 seconds can be considered late for some train services.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "There are 98 passenger and 175 total airports in Japan, and flying is a popular way to travel. The largest domestic airport, Tokyo International Airport, is Asia's second busiest airport. The largest international gateways are Narita International Airport (Tokyo area), Kansai International Airport (Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto area), and Chūbu Centrair International Airport (Nagoya area). The largest ports in Japan include Nagoya Port, the Port of Yokohama, the Port of Tokyo and the Port of Kobe.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "About 84% of Japan's energy is imported from other countries. Japan is the world's largest liquefied natural gas importer, second largest coal importer, and third largest net oil importer. Given its heavy dependence on imported energy, Japan has aimed to diversify its sources. Since the oil shocks of the 1970s, Japan has reduced dependence on petroleum as a source of energy from 77.4% in 1973 to about 43.7% in 2010 and increased dependence on natural gas and nuclear power. In September 2019, Japan will invest 10 billion on liquefied natural gas projects worldwide, in a strategy to boost the global LNG market and reinforce the security of energy supply. Other important energy source includes coal, and hydroelectricity is Japan's biggest renewable energy source. Japan's solar market is also currently booming. Kerosene is also used extensively for home heating in portable heaters, especially farther north. Many taxi companies run their fleets on liquefied natural gas. A recent success towards greater fuel economy was the introduction of mass-produced hybrid vehicles. Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who was working on Japan's economic revival, signed a treaty with Saudi Arabia and UAE about the rising prices of oil, ensuring Japan's stable deliveries from that region.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "This is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Japan at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of Japanese Yen. See also:",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US dollar was exchanged at ¥109 in 2010.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Industries by GDP value-added 2012. Values are converted using the exchange rate on 13 April 2013.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2021 (with IMF staff estimates in 2022–2027). Inflation under 5% is in green.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Japanese agricultural sector accounts for about 1.1% (2017) of the total country's GDP. Only 12% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation. Due to this lack of arable land, a system of terraces is used to farm in small areas. This results in one of the world's highest levels of crop yields per unit area, with an overall agricultural self-sufficiency rate of about 50% on fewer than 56,000 km (14 million acres) cultivated.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Japan's small agricultural sector, however, is also highly subsidized and protected, with government regulations that favor small-scale cultivation instead of large-scale agriculture as practiced in North America. There has been a growing concern about farming as the current farmers are aging with a difficult time finding successors.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Rice accounts for almost all of Japan's cereal production. Japan is the second-largest agricultural product importer in the world. Rice, the most protected crop, is subject to tariffs of 777.7%.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Although Japan is usually self-sufficient in rice (except for its use in making rice crackers and processed foods) and wheat, the country must import about 50% of its requirements of other grain and fodder crops and relies on imports for half of its supply of meat. Japan imports large quantities of wheat and soybeans. Japan is the 5th largest market for the European Union's agricultural exports. Over 90% of mandarin oranges in Japan are grown in Japan. Apples are also grown due to restrictions on apple imports.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Japan ranked fourth in the world in 1996 in tonnage of fish caught. Japan captured 4,074,580 metric tons of fish in 2005, down from 4,987,703 tons in 2000, 9,558,615 tons in 1990, 9,864,422 tons in 1980, 8,520,397 tons in 1970, 5,583,796 tons in 1960 and 2,881,855 tons in 1950. In 2003, the total aquaculture production was predicted at 1,301,437 tonnes. In 2010, Japan's total fisheries production was 4,762,469 fish. Offshore fisheries accounted for an average of 50% of the nation's total fish catches in the late 1980s although they experienced repeated ups and downs during that period.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Coastal fishing by small boats, set nets, or breeding techniques accounts for about one third of the industry's total production, while offshore fishing by medium-sized boats makes up for more than half the total production. Deep-sea fishing from larger vessels makes up the rest. Among the many species of seafood caught are sardines, skipjack tuna, crab, shrimp, salmon, pollock, squid, clams, mackerel, sea bream, sauries, tuna and Japanese amberjack. Freshwater fishing, including salmon, trout and eel hatcheries and fish farms, takes up about 30% of Japan's fishing industry. Among the nearly 300 fish species in the rivers of Japan are native varieties of catfish, chub, herring and goby, as well as such freshwater crustaceans as crabs and crayfish. Marine and freshwater aquaculture is conducted in all 47 prefectures in Japan.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch, prompting some claims that Japan's fishing is leading to depletion in fish stocks such as tuna. Japan has also sparked controversy by supporting quasi-commercial whaling.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Japanese manufacturing and industry is very diversified, with a variety of advanced industries that are highly successful. Industry accounts for 30.1% (2017) of the nation's GDP. The country's manufacturing output is the third highest in the world.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Industry is concentrated in several regions, with the Kantō region surrounding Tokyo, (the Keihin industrial region) as well as the Kansai region surrounding Osaka (the Hanshin industrial region) and the Tōkai region surrounding Nagoya (the Chūkyō–Tōkai industrial region) the main industrial centers. Other industrial centers include the southwestern part of Honshū and northern Shikoku around the Seto Inland Sea (the Setouchi industrial region); and the northern part of Kyūshū (Kitakyūshū). In addition, a long narrow belt of industrial centers called the Taiheiyō Belt is found between Tokyo and Fukuoka, established by particular industries, that have developed as mill towns.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Japan enjoys high technological development in many fields, including consumer electronics, automobile manufacturing, semiconductor manufacturing, optical fibers, optoelectronics, optical media, facsimile and copy machines, and fermentation processes in food and biochemistry. However, many Japanese companies are facing emerging rivals from the United States, South Korea, and China.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Japan is the third biggest producer of automobiles in the world. Toyota is currently the world's largest car maker, and the Japanese car makers Nissan, Honda, Suzuki, and Mazda also count for some of the largest car makers in the world. By number, Japan is the world's largest exporter of cars as of 2021.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Japan's mining production has been minimal, and Japan has very little mining deposits. However, massive deposits of rare earths have been found off the coast of Japan. In the 2011 fiscal year, the domestic yield of crude oil was 820 thousand kiloliters, which was 0.4% of Japan's total crude processing volume.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 2019, Japan was the 2nd largest world producer of iodine, 4th largest worldwide producer of bismuth, the world's 9th largest producer of sulfur and the 10th largest producer of gypsum.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Japan's service sector accounts for 68.7% (2017) of its total economic output. Banking, insurance, real estate, retailing, transportation, and telecommunications are all major industries such as Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho, NTT, TEPCO, Nomura, Mitsubishi Estate, ÆON, Mitsui Sumitomo, Softbank, JR East, Seven & I, KDDI and Japan Airlines counting as one of the largest companies in the world. Four of the five most circulated newspapers in the world are Japanese newspapers. The Koizumi government set Japan Post, one of the country's largest providers of savings and insurance services for privatization by 2015. The six major keiretsus are the Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Fuyo, Mitsui, Dai-Ichi Kangyo and Sanwa Groups. Japan is home to 251 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 or 12.55% (as of 2013).",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In 2012, Japan was the fifth most visited country in Asia and the Pacific, with over 8.3 million tourists. In 2013, due to the weaker yen and easier visa requirements for southwest Asian countries, Japan received a record 11.25 million visitors, which was higher than the government's projected goal of 10 million visitors. The government hopes to attract 40 million visitors a year by the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Some of the most popular visited places include the Shinjuku, Ginza, Shibuya and Asakusa areas in Tokyo, and the cities of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, as well as Himeji Castle. Hokkaido is also a popular winter destination for visitors with several ski resorts and luxury hotels being built there.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Japan's economy is less dependent on international tourism than those of other G7 countries and OECD countries in general; from 1995 to 2014, it was by far the least visited country in the G7 despite being the second largest country in the group, and as of 2013 was one of the least visited countries in the OECD on a per capita basis. In 2013, international tourist receipts was 0.3% of Japan's GDP, while the corresponding figure was 1.3% for the United States and 2.3% for France.",
"title": "Sectors of the economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the third largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization, as well as the 2nd largest stock market in Asia, with 2,292 listed companies. The Nikkei 225 and the TOPIX are the two important stock market indexes of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Stock Exchange, another major stock exchange in Japan, merged on 1 January 2013, creating one of the world's largest stock exchanges. Other stock exchanges in Japan include the Nagoya Stock Exchange, Fukuoka Stock Exchange and Sapporo Securities Exchange.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The unemployment rate in December 2013 was 3.7%, down 1.5 percentage points from the claimed unemployment rate of 5.2% in June 2009 due to the strong economic recovery.",
"title": "Labor force"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In 2008 Japan's labor force consisted of some 66 million workers—40% of whom were women—and was rapidly shrinking. One major long-term concern for the Japanese labor force is its low birthrate. In 2005, the number of deaths in Japan exceeded the number of births, indicating that the decline in population had already started. While one countermeasure for a declining birthrate would be to increase immigration, Japan has struggled to attract potential migrants despite immigration laws being relatively lenient (especially for high-skilled workers) compared to other developed countries. This is also apparent when looking at Japan's work visa programme for \"specified skilled worker\", which had less than 3,000 applicants, despite an annual goal of attracting 40,000 overseas workers, suggesting Japan faces major challenges in attracting migrants compared to other developed countries regardless of its immigration policies. A Gallup poll found that few potential migrants wished to migrate to Japan compared to other G7 countries, consistent with the country's low migrant inflow.",
"title": "Labor force"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In 1989, the predominantly public sector union confederation, SOHYO (General Council of Trade Unions of Japan), merged with RENGO (Japanese Private Sector Trade Union Confederation) to form the Japanese Trade Union Confederation. Labor union membership is about 12 million.",
"title": "Labor force"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "As of 2019 Japan's unemployment rate was the lowest in the G7. Its employment rate for the working-age population (15-64) was the highest in the G7.",
"title": "Labor force"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Japan ranks 27th of 185 countries in the ease of doing business index 2013.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Japan has one of the smallest tax rates in the developed world. After deductions, the majority of workers are free from personal income taxes. Consumption tax rate is 10%, while corporate tax rates are high, second highest corporate tax rate in the world, at 36.8%. However, the House of Representatives has passed a bill which increased the consumption tax to 10% in October 2015. The government has also decided to reduce corporate tax and to phase out automobile tax.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In 2016, the IMF encouraged Japan to adopt an income policy that pushes firms to raise employee wages in combination with reforms to tackle the labor market dual tiered employment system to drive higher wages, on top of monetary and fiscal stimulus. Shinzo Abe has encouraged firms to raise wages by at least three per cent annually (the inflation target plus average productivity growth).",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Shareholder activism is rare despite the fact that the corporate law gives shareholders strong powers over managers. Under Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, corporate governance reform has been a key initiative to encourage economic growth. In 2012 around 40% of leading Japanese companies had any independent directors while in 2016 most all have begun to appoint independent directors.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The government's liabilities include the second largest public debt of any nation with debt of over one quadrillion yen, or 8,535,340,000,000 in USD. Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan has called the situation 'urgent'.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Japan's central bank has the second largest foreign-exchange reserves after the People's Republic of China, with over one trillion US Dollars in foreign reserves.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Nemawashi (根回し), or \"consensus building\", in Japanese culture is an informal process of quietly laying the foundation for some proposed change or project, by talking to the people concerned, gathering support and feedback, and so forth. It is considered an important element in any major change, before any formal steps are taken, and successful nemawashi enables changes to be carried out with the consent of all sides.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Japanese companies are known for management methods such as \"The Toyota Way\". Kaizen (改善, Japanese for \"improvement\") is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. When applied to the workplace, Kaizen activities continually improve all functions of a business, from manufacturing to management and from the CEO to the assembly line workers. By improving standardized activities and processes, Kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see Lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses during the country's recovery after World War II, including Toyota, and has since spread to businesses throughout the world. Within certain value systems, it is ironic that Japanese workers labor amongst the most hours per day, even though kaizen is supposed to improve all aspects of life. According to the OECD, annual hours worked per employee is below the OECD average and in the middle among G7 countries.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Some companies have powerful enterprise unions and shuntō. The Nenko System or Nenko Joretsu, as it is called in Japan, is the Japanese system of promoting an employee based on his or her proximity to retirement. The advantage of the system is that it allows older employees to achieve a higher salary level before retirement and it usually brings more experience to the executive ranks. The disadvantage of the system is that it does not allow new talent to be combined with experience and those with specialized skills cannot be promoted to the already crowded executive ranks. It also does not guarantee or even attempt to bring the \"right person for the right job\".",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Relationships between government bureaucrats and companies are often close. Amakudari (天下り, amakudari, \"descent from heaven\") is the institutionalised practice where Japanese senior bureaucrats retire to high-profile positions in the private and public sectors. The practice is increasingly viewed as corrupt and a limitation on efforts to reduce ties between the private sector and the state that prevent economic and political reforms. Lifetime employment (shūshin koyō) and seniority-based career advancement have been common in the Japanese work environment. Japan has begun to gradually move away from some of these norms.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Salaryman (サラリーマン, Sararīman, salaried man) refers to someone whose income is salary based; particularly those working for corporations. Its frequent use by Japanese corporations, and its prevalence in Japanese manga and anime has gradually led to its acceptance in English-speaking countries as a noun for a Japanese white-collar businessman. The word can be found in many books and articles pertaining to Japanese culture. Immediately following World War II, becoming a salaryman was viewed as a gateway to a stable, middle-class lifestyle. In modern use, the term carries associations of long working hours, low prestige in the corporate hierarchy, absence of significant sources of income other than salary, wage slavery, and karōshi. The term salaryman refers almost exclusively to males.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "An office lady, often abbreviated OL (Japanese: オーエル Ōeru), is a female office worker in Japan who performs generally pink collar tasks such as serving tea and secretarial or clerical work. Like many unmarried Japanese, OLs often live with their parents well into early adulthood. Office ladies are usually full-time permanent staff, although the jobs they do usually have little opportunity for promotion, and there is usually the tacit expectation that they leave their jobs once they get married.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Freeter (フリーター, furītā) is a Japanese expression for people between the age of 15 and 34 who lack full-time employment or are unemployed, excluding homemakers and students. They may also be described as underemployed or freelance workers. These people do not start a career after high school or university but instead usually live as parasite singles with their parents and earn some money with low skilled and low paid jobs. The low income makes it difficult for freeters to start a family, and the lack of qualifications makes it difficult to start a career at a later point in life.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Karōshi (過労死, karōshi), which can be translated quite literally from Japanese as \"death from overwork\", is occupational sudden death. The major medical causes of karōshi deaths are heart attack and stroke due to stress.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Sōkaiya (総会屋, sōkaiya), (sometimes also translated as corporate bouncers, meeting-men, or corporate blackmailers) are a form of specialized racketeer unique to Japan, and often associated with the yakuza that extort money from or blackmail companies by threatening to publicly humiliate companies and their management, usually in their annual meeting (総会, sōkai). Sarakin (サラ金) is a Japanese term for moneylender, or loan shark. It is a contraction of the Japanese words for salaryman and cash. Around 14 million people, or 10% of the Japanese population, have borrowed from a sarakin. In total, there are about 10,000 firms (down from 30,000 a decade ago); however, the top seven firms make up 70% of the market. The value of outstanding loans totals 100 billion. The biggest sarakin are publicly traded and often allied with big banks.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The first \"Western-style\" department store in Japan was Mitsukoshi, founded in 1904, which has its root as a kimono store called Echigoya from 1673. When the roots are considered, however, Matsuzakaya has an even longer history, dated from 1611. The kimono store changed to a department store in 1910. In 1924, Matsuzakaya store in Ginza allowed street shoes to be worn indoors, something innovative at the time. These former kimono shop department stores dominated the market in its earlier history. They sold, or rather displayed, luxurious products, which contributed for their sophisticated atmospheres. Another origin of Japanese department store is that from railway company. There have been many private railway operators in the nation, and from the 1920s, they started to build department stores directly linked to their lines' termini. Seibu and Hankyu are the typical examples of this type. From the 1980s onwards, Japanese department stores face fierce competition from supermarkets and convenience stores, gradually losing their presences. Still, depāto are bastions of several aspects of cultural conservatism in the country. Gift certificates for prestigious department stores are frequently given as formal presents in Japan. Department stores in Japan generally offer a wide range of services and can include foreign exchange, travel reservations, ticket sales for local concerts and other events.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "A keiretsu (系列, \"system\" or \"series\") is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. A keiretsu unequivocally exists as an identical form of business structure to the affiliate, or an associate. It is a type of business group. The prototypical keiretsu appeared in Japan during the \"economic miracle\" following World War II. Before Japan's surrender, Japanese industry was controlled by large family-controlled vertical monopolies called zaibatsu. The Allies dismantled the zaibatsu in the late 1940s, but the companies formed from the dismantling of the zaibatsu were reintegrated. The dispersed corporations were re-interlinked through share purchases to form horizontally integrated alliances across many industries. Where possible, keiretsu companies would also supply one another, making the alliances vertically integrated as well. In this period, official government policy promoted the creation of robust trade corporations that could withstand pressures from intensified world trade competition.",
"title": "Keiretsu"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The major keiretsu were each centered on one bank, which lent money to the keiretsu's member companies and held equity positions in the companies. Each central bank had great control over the companies in the keiretsu and acted as a monitoring entity and as an emergency bail-out entity. One effect of this structure was to minimize the presence of hostile takeovers in Japan, because no entities could challenge the power of the banks.",
"title": "Keiretsu"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "There are two types of keiretsu: vertical and horizontal. Vertical keiretsu illustrates the organization and relationships within a company (for example all factors of production of a certain product are connected), while a horizontal keiretsu shows relationships between entities and industries, normally centered on a bank and trading company. Both are complexly woven together and sustain each other.",
"title": "Keiretsu"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The Japanese recession in the 1990s had profound effects on the keiretsu. Many of the largest banks were hit hard by bad loan portfolios and forced to merge or go out of business. This had the effect of blurring the lines between the keiretsu: Sumitomo Bank and Mitsui Bank, for instance, became Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in 2001, while Sanwa Bank (the banker for the Hankyu-Toho Group) became part of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, now known as MUFG Bank. Additionally, many companies from outside the keiretsu system, such as Sony, began outperforming their counterparts within the system.",
"title": "Keiretsu"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Generally, these causes gave rise to a strong notion in the business community that the old keiretsu system was not an effective business model, and led to an overall loosening of keiretsu alliances. While the keiretsu still exist, they are not as centralized or integrated as they were before the 1990s. This, in turn, has led to a growing corporate acquisition industry in Japan, as companies are no longer able to be easily \"bailed out\" by their banks, as well as rising derivative litigation by more independent shareholders.",
"title": "Keiretsu"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Japanese companies have been involved in 50,759 deals between 1985 and 2018. This cumulates to a total value of 2,636 bil. USD which translates to 281,469.9 bil. YEN. In the year 1999 there was an all-time high in terms of value of deals with almost 220 bil. USD. The most active year so far was 2017 with over 3,150 deals, but only a total value of 114 bil. USD (see graph \"M&A in Japan by number and value\").",
"title": "Mergers and acquisitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Here is a list of the most important deals (ranked by value in bil. USD) in Japanese history:",
"title": "Mergers and acquisitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Among the top 50 deals by value, 92% of the time the acquiring nation is Japan. Foreign direct investment is playing a much smaller role than national M&A in Japan.",
"title": "Mergers and acquisitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Net international investment position: 266,223 / billion (1st)",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Industrial production growth rate: 7.5% (2010 est.)",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Investment (gross fixed): 20.3% of GDP (2010 est.)",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Household income or consumption by percentage share:",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Agriculture products: rice, sugar beets, vegetables, fruit, pork, poultry, dairy products, eggs, fish",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Export commodities: machinery and equipment, motor vehicles, semiconductors, chemicals",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Import commodities: machinery and equipment, fuels, foodstuffs, chemicals, textiles, raw materials (2001)",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Exchange rates: Japanese Yen per US$1 – 88.67 (2010), 93.57 (2009), 103.58 (2008), 117.99 (2007), 116.18 (2006), 109.69 (2005), 115.93 (2003), 125.39 (2002), 121.53 (2001), 105.16 (January 2000), 113.91 (1999), 130.91 (1998), 120.99 (1997), 108.78 (1996), 94.06 (1995)",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Electricity:",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Electricity production by source:",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Electricity standards:",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Oil:",
"title": "Other economic indicators"
}
]
| The economy of Japan is a highly developed/advanced social market economy, often referred to as an East Asian model. It is the fourth-largest in the world by nominal GDP and also the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Japan is a member of both the G7 and G20. According to the IMF, the country's per capita GDP (PPP) was at $52,120 (2023). Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, Japan's GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates sharply. The Japanese economy is forecast by the Quarterly Tankan survey of business sentiment conducted by the Bank of Japan. The Nikkei 225 presents the monthly report of top blue chip equities on the Japan Exchange Group, which is the world's fifth-largest stock exchange by market capitalisation. In 2018, Japan was the world's fourth-largest importer and the fourth-largest exporter. It has the world's second-largest foreign-exchange reserves, worth $1.4 trillion. It ranks 5th on the Global Competitiveness Report. It ranks first in the world in the Economic Complexity Index. Japan is also the world's fourth-largest consumer market. Japan is the world's second-largest automobile manufacturing country. It is often ranked among the world's most innovative countries, leading several measures of global patent filings. Facing increasing competition from China and South Korea, manufacturing in Japan currently focuses primarily on high-tech and precision goods, such as integrated circuits, hybrid vehicles, and robotics. Besides the Kantō region, the Kansai region is one of the leading industrial clusters and manufacturing centers for the Japanese economy. Japan is the world's largest creditor nation. Japan generally runs an annual trade surplus and has a considerable net international investment surplus. Japan has the third-largest financial assets in the world, valued at $12 trillion, or 8.6% of the global GDP total as of 2020. As of 2022, 47 of the Fortune Global 500 companies are based in Japan. The country is the third-largest in the world by total wealth. Japan formerly had the second-largest assets and wealth, behind only the United States in both categories, until it was surpassed by China in both assets and wealth. Japan also had the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP behind the United States. In 2010, it was surpassed by China. Japan's asset price bubble collapse in 1991 led to a period of economic stagnation known as the "lost decade", sometimes extended to a "lost 20 years" or greater. From 1995 to 2007 GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $5.04 trillion in nominal terms. From the early 2000s, the Bank of Japan set out to encourage economic growth through a novel policy of quantitative easing. Debt levels continued to rise in response to the national crises, such as the Great Recession in 2008, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, and with COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. As of 2021, Japan has significantly higher levels of public debt than any other developed nation at approximately 260% of GDP. 45% of this debt is held by the Bank of Japan. The Japanese economy faces considerable challenges posed by an aging and declining population, which peaked at 128 million in 2010 and has fallen to 125.5 million as of 2022. Projections show the population will continue to fall, potentially to below 100 million by the middle of the 21st century. | 2001-04-13T17:42:49Z | 2023-12-31T11:34:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Japan |
15,579 | Communications in Japan | The nation of Japan currently possesses one of the most advanced communication networks in the world. For example, by 2008 the Japanese government's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry stated that about 75 million people used mobile phones to access the Internet, said total accounting for about 82% of individual Internet users.
Telephones and ISDN – main lines in use: 52.3981 million (2007)
IP phone lines in use: 16.766 million (2007)
Mobile and PHS lines in use: 105.297 million (2007)
There are four nationwide mobile phone service providers: NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Ymobile, and Rakuten mobile.
Radio broadcast stations: AM 190, FM 88, shortwave 24 (1999)
Radios: 120.5 million (1997)
Television broadcast stations: 7,108 (plus 441 repeaters; note – in addition, US Forces are served by 3 TV stations and 2 TV cable services) (1999)
Televisions: 86.5 million (1997)
Amateur radio: 446,602 licensed stations as of October 2011. See Amateur radio call signs of Japan.
Number of Broadband Users by Access (April 2005)
Number of Broadband Users by Access (June 2004)
Number of Broadband Users by Access (June 2002)
Country code (Top-level domain): JP
Japan's first modern postal service got started in 1871, with mail professionally traveling between Kyoto and Tokyo as well as the latter city and Osaka. This took place in the midst of the rapid industrialization and social reorganization that the Meiji period symbolized in Japanese history. Given how the nation's railroad technology was in its infancy, Japan's growing postal system relied heavily on human-powered transport, including rickshaws, as well as horse-drawn methods of delivery. For example, while commemorating the 50th anniversary of Japan's postal service, the country's 1921 government released decorative postcards depicting intrepid horseback riders carrying the mail.
In communication terms, British technicians had already been employed in assisting with Japanese lighthouses, and the country's budding mail system looked to hybridize British ideas with local practicalities. Shipping along the nation's coastline in particular demonstrates a key instance of how the Japanese economy developed: the government closely working with private companies to industrially expand in a way that met social needs while also allowing for large profits. Mitsubishi's contract for mail transport by sea proved lucrative enough that it assisted with the firm becoming one of the famous "zaibatsu".
Since 2007, the nation's post offices have been managed by the firm Japan Post Network, which, in turn, is a part of the larger Japan Post Holdings conglomerate. As of December 2017, the smaller company has been managed by CEO Koji Furukawa. The simple Japanese postal mark, predating mass literacy in the nation, is still used to this day.
An example of the dawn of modern Japanese communications is the shift in newspaper publication. News vendors of the Tokugawa period, taking place from 1603 to 1867, typically promoted publications by reading the contents aloud and handed out papers that were printed from hand-graven blocks. Widespread adoption of movable type took place as Japanese society modernized. In particular, Yomiuri Shimbun, a national daily newspaper that became the country's largest by circulation, was founded in 1874 and designed to be read in detail using standard Japanese vernacular. Five such dailies got started early in the Meiji period, taking place from 1868 to 1912. Yomiuri specifically took direct influence from American publications controlled by William Randolph Hearst.
The first such mass newspaper to be founded was the Nagasaki Shipping List & Advertiser, established in 1861 in Nagasaki by the Englishman A.W. Hansard. Its first issue ran 22 June of that year. The newspaper, which notably discussed matters in the English language, laid the groundwork for Hansard's later publication Japan Herald.
The broadcast industry has been dominated by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nippon Hoso Kyokai—NHK) since its founding in 1925.
In the postwar period, NHK's budget and operations were under the purview of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the Broadcasting Law of 1950 provides for independent management and programming by NHK. Television broadcasting began in 1953, and color television was introduced in 1960. Cable television was introduced in 1969. In 1978 an experimental broadcast satellite with two color television channels was launched. Operational satellites for television use were launched between 1984 and 1990. Television viewing spread so rapidly that, by 1987, 99 percent of Japan's households had color television sets and the average family had its set on at least five hours a day. Starting in 1987, NHK began full-scale experimental broadcasting on two channels using satellite-to-audience signals, thus bringing service to remote and mountainous parts of the country that earlier had experienced poor reception. The new system also provided twenty-four hours a day, nonstop service.
In the late 1980s, NHK operated two public television and three radio networks nationally, producing about 1,700 programs per week. Its general and education programs were broadcast through more than 6,900 television stations and nearly 330 AM and more than 500 FM radio transmitting stations. Comprehensive service in twenty-one languages is available throughout the world.
Rapid improvements, innovations, and diversification in communications technology, including optical fiber cables, communications satellites, and fax machines, led to rapid growth of the communications industry in the 1980s. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, owned by the government until 1985, had dominated the communications industry until April 1985, when new common carriers, including Daini Denden, were permitted to enter the field. NTT Worldwide Telecommunications Corp (Kokusai Denshin Denwa Company, commonly known as KDD, now part of KDDI Inc.) lost its monopoly hold on international communications activities in 1989, when Nihon Kokusai Tsushin and other private overseas communications firms began operations.
In 1992 Japan also had more than 12,000 televisions stations, and the country had more than 350 radio stations, 300 AM radio stations and 58 FM. Broadcasting innovations in the 1980s included sound multiplex (two-language or stereo) broadcasting, satellite broadcasting, and in 1985 the University of the Air and teletext services were inaugurated.
Japan has been the world leader in telecommunications in the 1980s, but this position that has been challenged by the United States' dot-com industry in the 1990s and the emerging tiger states in Asia. While the United States is leading in digital content, South Korea is leading in broadband access, India is leading in software, and Taiwan is leading in research and development.
Japan went into the 21st century after achieving widespread saturation with telecommunication devices. For instance, by 2008 the government's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry stated that about 75 million people used mobile phones to access the Internet, accounting for about 82% of individual internet users. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The nation of Japan currently possesses one of the most advanced communication networks in the world. For example, by 2008 the Japanese government's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry stated that about 75 million people used mobile phones to access the Internet, said total accounting for about 82% of individual Internet users.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Telephones and ISDN – main lines in use: 52.3981 million (2007)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "IP phone lines in use: 16.766 million (2007)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Mobile and PHS lines in use: 105.297 million (2007)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "There are four nationwide mobile phone service providers: NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Ymobile, and Rakuten mobile.",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Radio broadcast stations: AM 190, FM 88, shortwave 24 (1999)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Radios: 120.5 million (1997)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Television broadcast stations: 7,108 (plus 441 repeaters; note – in addition, US Forces are served by 3 TV stations and 2 TV cable services) (1999)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Televisions: 86.5 million (1997)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Amateur radio: 446,602 licensed stations as of October 2011. See Amateur radio call signs of Japan.",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Number of Broadband Users by Access (April 2005)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Number of Broadband Users by Access (June 2004)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Number of Broadband Users by Access (June 2002)",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Country code (Top-level domain): JP",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Japan's first modern postal service got started in 1871, with mail professionally traveling between Kyoto and Tokyo as well as the latter city and Osaka. This took place in the midst of the rapid industrialization and social reorganization that the Meiji period symbolized in Japanese history. Given how the nation's railroad technology was in its infancy, Japan's growing postal system relied heavily on human-powered transport, including rickshaws, as well as horse-drawn methods of delivery. For example, while commemorating the 50th anniversary of Japan's postal service, the country's 1921 government released decorative postcards depicting intrepid horseback riders carrying the mail.",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In communication terms, British technicians had already been employed in assisting with Japanese lighthouses, and the country's budding mail system looked to hybridize British ideas with local practicalities. Shipping along the nation's coastline in particular demonstrates a key instance of how the Japanese economy developed: the government closely working with private companies to industrially expand in a way that met social needs while also allowing for large profits. Mitsubishi's contract for mail transport by sea proved lucrative enough that it assisted with the firm becoming one of the famous \"zaibatsu\".",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Since 2007, the nation's post offices have been managed by the firm Japan Post Network, which, in turn, is a part of the larger Japan Post Holdings conglomerate. As of December 2017, the smaller company has been managed by CEO Koji Furukawa. The simple Japanese postal mark, predating mass literacy in the nation, is still used to this day.",
"title": "Overview of communication services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "An example of the dawn of modern Japanese communications is the shift in newspaper publication. News vendors of the Tokugawa period, taking place from 1603 to 1867, typically promoted publications by reading the contents aloud and handed out papers that were printed from hand-graven blocks. Widespread adoption of movable type took place as Japanese society modernized. In particular, Yomiuri Shimbun, a national daily newspaper that became the country's largest by circulation, was founded in 1874 and designed to be read in detail using standard Japanese vernacular. Five such dailies got started early in the Meiji period, taking place from 1868 to 1912. Yomiuri specifically took direct influence from American publications controlled by William Randolph Hearst.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The first such mass newspaper to be founded was the Nagasaki Shipping List & Advertiser, established in 1861 in Nagasaki by the Englishman A.W. Hansard. Its first issue ran 22 June of that year. The newspaper, which notably discussed matters in the English language, laid the groundwork for Hansard's later publication Japan Herald.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The broadcast industry has been dominated by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nippon Hoso Kyokai—NHK) since its founding in 1925.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the postwar period, NHK's budget and operations were under the purview of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the Broadcasting Law of 1950 provides for independent management and programming by NHK. Television broadcasting began in 1953, and color television was introduced in 1960. Cable television was introduced in 1969. In 1978 an experimental broadcast satellite with two color television channels was launched. Operational satellites for television use were launched between 1984 and 1990. Television viewing spread so rapidly that, by 1987, 99 percent of Japan's households had color television sets and the average family had its set on at least five hours a day. Starting in 1987, NHK began full-scale experimental broadcasting on two channels using satellite-to-audience signals, thus bringing service to remote and mountainous parts of the country that earlier had experienced poor reception. The new system also provided twenty-four hours a day, nonstop service.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the late 1980s, NHK operated two public television and three radio networks nationally, producing about 1,700 programs per week. Its general and education programs were broadcast through more than 6,900 television stations and nearly 330 AM and more than 500 FM radio transmitting stations. Comprehensive service in twenty-one languages is available throughout the world.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Rapid improvements, innovations, and diversification in communications technology, including optical fiber cables, communications satellites, and fax machines, led to rapid growth of the communications industry in the 1980s. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, owned by the government until 1985, had dominated the communications industry until April 1985, when new common carriers, including Daini Denden, were permitted to enter the field. NTT Worldwide Telecommunications Corp (Kokusai Denshin Denwa Company, commonly known as KDD, now part of KDDI Inc.) lost its monopoly hold on international communications activities in 1989, when Nihon Kokusai Tsushin and other private overseas communications firms began operations.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1992 Japan also had more than 12,000 televisions stations, and the country had more than 350 radio stations, 300 AM radio stations and 58 FM. Broadcasting innovations in the 1980s included sound multiplex (two-language or stereo) broadcasting, satellite broadcasting, and in 1985 the University of the Air and teletext services were inaugurated.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Japan has been the world leader in telecommunications in the 1980s, but this position that has been challenged by the United States' dot-com industry in the 1990s and the emerging tiger states in Asia. While the United States is leading in digital content, South Korea is leading in broadband access, India is leading in software, and Taiwan is leading in research and development.",
"title": "General background and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Japan went into the 21st century after achieving widespread saturation with telecommunication devices. For instance, by 2008 the government's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry stated that about 75 million people used mobile phones to access the Internet, accounting for about 82% of individual internet users.",
"title": "General background and history"
}
]
| The nation of Japan currently possesses one of the most advanced communication networks in the world. For example, by 2008 the Japanese government's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry stated that about 75 million people used mobile phones to access the Internet, said total accounting for about 82% of individual Internet users. | 2023-07-19T19:57:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Japan |
|
15,580 | Transport in Japan | Transportation in Japan is modern and highly developed. Japan's transport sector stands out for its energy efficiency: it uses less energy per person compared to other countries, thanks to a high share of rail transport and low overall travel distances. Transport in Japan is also very expensive in international comparison, reflecting high tolls and taxes, particularly on automobile transport. Japan's spending on roads has been large. The 1.2 million kilometres of paved road are the main means of transport. Traffic in Japan drives on the left. A single network of high-speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major cities, which are operated by toll-collecting enterprises.
Dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional and local passenger transport markets; for instance, seven JR Group companies, Kintetsu Railway, Seibu Railway, and Keio Corporation. Often, strategies of these enterprises contain real estate or department stores next to stations. Some 250 high-speed Shinkansen trains connect major cities. All trains are known for punctuality.
There are 176 airports, and the largest domestic airport, Haneda Airport, was by passenger traffic the third-busiest in Asia and the fourth-busiest in the world in 2018, but not in the top ten in 2022. The largest international gateways are Narita International Airport (Tokyo area), Kansai International Airport (Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto area), and Chūbu Centrair International Airport (Nagoya area). The largest ports include Nagoya Port.
In Japan, railways are a major means of passenger transport, especially for mass and high-speed transport between major cities and for commuter transport in metropolitan areas. Seven Japan Railways Group companies, state-owned until 1987, cover most parts of Japan. There also are railway services operated by private rail companies, regional governments, and companies funded by both regional governments and private companies.
Total railways of 27,182 km (16,890 mi) include several track gauges, the most common of which is 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) narrow gauge, with 22,301 km (13,857 mi) of track of which 15,222 km (9,459 mi) is electrified.
Fukuoka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo, and Yokohama have subway systems.
Most Japanese people traveled on foot until the later part of the 19th century. The first railway was built between Tokyo's Shimbashi Station and Yokohama's former Yokohama Station (now Sakuragichō Station) in 1872. Many more railways developed soon afterward.
Modern Japan is home to one of the world's most developed transport networks. Mass transport is well developed in Japan, but the road system lags and is inadequate for the number of cars owned in Japan. This is often attributed to the fact that road construction is difficult in Japan because of its very high population density, and the limited amount of available usable land for road construction.
The Shinkansen, or "bullet trains", as they are known colloquially, are the high-speed rail trains that run across Japan. The 2,387 km (1,485 mi) of 8 Shinkansen lines run on completely separate lines from their commuting train counterparts, with a few exceptions. Shinkansen takes up a large portion of the long-distance travel in Japan, with the whole system carrying over 10 billion passengers in its lifetime. 1,114,000 journeys are made daily, with the fastest train being the JR East E5 and E6 series trains, which operate at a maximum speed of 320 km/h (200 mph). Shinkansen trains are known to be very safe, with no accident-related deaths or injuries from passengers in their 50-plus year history. Shinkansen trains are also known to be very punctual, following suit with all other Japanese transport; in 2003, the average delay per train on the Tokaido Shinkansen was a mere 6 seconds. Japan has been trying to sell its Shinkansen technology overseas, and has struck deals to help build systems in India, Thailand, and the United States.
The first Shinkansen line opened between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964, and trains can now make the journey in 2 hours and 25 minutes. Additional Shinkansen lines connect Tokyo to Aomori, Niigata, Kanazawa, and Hakodate and Osaka to Fukuoka and Kagoshima, with new lines under construction to Tsuruga and Sapporo. A separate line heads out to Nagasaki, albeit through a separate relay service.
Japan has been developing maglev technology trains, and broke the world maglev speed record in April 2015 with a train traveling at the speed of 603 km/h (375 mph). The Chūō Shinkansen, a commercial maglev service, is currently under construction from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka, and when completed in 2045 will cover the distance in 67 minutes, half the time of the current Shinkansen.
According to Japan Statistical Yearbook 2015, Japan in April 2012 had approximately 1,215,000 km of roads made up of 1,022,000 km of city, town and village roads, 129,000 km of prefectural roads, 55,000 km of general national highways and 8,050 km of national expressways. The Foreign Press Center/Japan cites a total length of expressways at 7,641 km (fiscal 2008). A single network of high-speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major cities on Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Hokkaido has a separate network, and Okinawa Island has a highway of this type. In the year 2005, the toll collecting companies, formerly Japan Highway Public Corporation, have been transformed into private companies in public ownership, and there are plans to sell parts of them. This policy aims to encourage competition and decrease tolls.
Road passenger and freight transport expanded considerably during the 1980s as private ownership of motor vehicles greatly increased along with the quality and extent of the nation's roads. Bus companies including the JR Bus companies operate long-distance bus services on the nation's expanding expressway network. In addition to relatively low fares and deluxe seating, the buses are well utilized because they continue service during the night when air and train services are limited.
The cargo sector grew rapidly in the 1980s, recording 274.2 billion tonne-kilometres in 1990. The freight handled by motor vehicles, mainly trucks, in 1990, was over 6 billion tonnes, accounting for 90 percent of domestic freight tonnage and about 50 percent of tonne-kilometers.
Recent large infrastructure projects were the construction of the Great Seto Bridge and the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line (opened 1997).
Road fatalities have decreased in Japan, due in part to stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws:
In Tokyo, road safety is 13 killed per million.
In 2013, Japan had the fourth largest passenger air market in the world with 105,913,000 passengers. In 2013 Japan had 98 airports. The main international gateways are Narita International Airport (Tokyo area), Kansai International Airport (Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto area), and Chūbu Centrair International Airport (Nagoya area). The main domestic hub is Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport), by passenger traffic the third-busiest in Asia and the fourth-busiest in the world in 2018, but not in the top ten in 2022; other major traffic hubs include Osaka International Airport, New Chitose Airport outside Sapporo, and Fukuoka Airport. 14 heliports are estimated to exist (1999).
The two main airlines are Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways. Other passenger carriers include Skymark Airlines, Solaseed Air, Air Do, StarFlyer and Fuji Dream Airlines. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, formerly Northwest Airlines, are major international operators from Narita Airport.
Domestic air travel in Japan has historically been highly regulated. From 1972, the three major domestic airlines (JAL, ANA, and JAS) were allocated certain routes, with JAL and ANA sharing trunk routes, and ANA and JAS sharing local feeder routes. JAL and JAS have since been merged to help compete with ANA. JAL also had a flag-carrier monopoly on international routes until 1986. Airfares were set by the government until 2000, although carriers had the freedom to adjust the standard fares starting in 1995 (when discounts of up to 50% were permitted). Today, fares can be set by carriers, but the government retains the ability to veto fares that are too high.
There are 1770 km of waterways in Japan; seagoing craft ply all coastal inland seas.
There are some 994 ports in Japan as of April 2014. There are overlapping classifications of these ports, some of which are multi-purpose, e.g. cargo, passenger, naval, and fishery. The five designated "super" container ports are Yokkaichi, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka. 23 are designated major/international, 125 designated as important, while there are also purely fisherman ports.
The twenty-three major seaports designated as special, important ports by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism: Chiba, Fushiki/Toyama, Himeji, Hiroshima, Kawasaki, Kitakyushu, Kobe, Kudamatsu, Muroran, Nagoya, Niigata, Osaka, Sakai/Senpoku, Sendai/Shiogama, Shimizu, Shimonoseki, Tokyo, Tomakomai, Wakayama, Yokkaichi, and Yokohama.
Japan has 988 ships of 1,000 gross tonnage (GT) or over on its national ship register, totaling 38,053,000 tonnes deadweight (DWT). However, only 17% of Japanese-owned capacity is registered in Japan. UNCTAD estimates that 224 million dwt of tonnage is controlled by Japanese owners, making Japan the second largest beneficial owner of tonnage after Greece.
Ferries connect Hokkaido to Honshu, and Okinawa Island to Kyushu and Honshu. They also connect other smaller islands and the main islands. The scheduled international passenger routes are to China, Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan. Coastal and cross-channel ferries on the main islands decreased in routes and frequencies following the development of bridges and expressways but some are still operating (as of 2007).
Japan has 84 km of pipelines for crude oil, 322 km for petroleum products, and 1,800 km for natural gas. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Transportation in Japan is modern and highly developed. Japan's transport sector stands out for its energy efficiency: it uses less energy per person compared to other countries, thanks to a high share of rail transport and low overall travel distances. Transport in Japan is also very expensive in international comparison, reflecting high tolls and taxes, particularly on automobile transport. Japan's spending on roads has been large. The 1.2 million kilometres of paved road are the main means of transport. Traffic in Japan drives on the left. A single network of high-speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major cities, which are operated by toll-collecting enterprises.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional and local passenger transport markets; for instance, seven JR Group companies, Kintetsu Railway, Seibu Railway, and Keio Corporation. Often, strategies of these enterprises contain real estate or department stores next to stations. Some 250 high-speed Shinkansen trains connect major cities. All trains are known for punctuality.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "There are 176 airports, and the largest domestic airport, Haneda Airport, was by passenger traffic the third-busiest in Asia and the fourth-busiest in the world in 2018, but not in the top ten in 2022. The largest international gateways are Narita International Airport (Tokyo area), Kansai International Airport (Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto area), and Chūbu Centrair International Airport (Nagoya area). The largest ports include Nagoya Port.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In Japan, railways are a major means of passenger transport, especially for mass and high-speed transport between major cities and for commuter transport in metropolitan areas. Seven Japan Railways Group companies, state-owned until 1987, cover most parts of Japan. There also are railway services operated by private rail companies, regional governments, and companies funded by both regional governments and private companies.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Total railways of 27,182 km (16,890 mi) include several track gauges, the most common of which is 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) narrow gauge, with 22,301 km (13,857 mi) of track of which 15,222 km (9,459 mi) is electrified.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Fukuoka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo, and Yokohama have subway systems.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Most Japanese people traveled on foot until the later part of the 19th century. The first railway was built between Tokyo's Shimbashi Station and Yokohama's former Yokohama Station (now Sakuragichō Station) in 1872. Many more railways developed soon afterward.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Modern Japan is home to one of the world's most developed transport networks. Mass transport is well developed in Japan, but the road system lags and is inadequate for the number of cars owned in Japan. This is often attributed to the fact that road construction is difficult in Japan because of its very high population density, and the limited amount of available usable land for road construction.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Shinkansen, or \"bullet trains\", as they are known colloquially, are the high-speed rail trains that run across Japan. The 2,387 km (1,485 mi) of 8 Shinkansen lines run on completely separate lines from their commuting train counterparts, with a few exceptions. Shinkansen takes up a large portion of the long-distance travel in Japan, with the whole system carrying over 10 billion passengers in its lifetime. 1,114,000 journeys are made daily, with the fastest train being the JR East E5 and E6 series trains, which operate at a maximum speed of 320 km/h (200 mph). Shinkansen trains are known to be very safe, with no accident-related deaths or injuries from passengers in their 50-plus year history. Shinkansen trains are also known to be very punctual, following suit with all other Japanese transport; in 2003, the average delay per train on the Tokaido Shinkansen was a mere 6 seconds. Japan has been trying to sell its Shinkansen technology overseas, and has struck deals to help build systems in India, Thailand, and the United States.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The first Shinkansen line opened between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964, and trains can now make the journey in 2 hours and 25 minutes. Additional Shinkansen lines connect Tokyo to Aomori, Niigata, Kanazawa, and Hakodate and Osaka to Fukuoka and Kagoshima, with new lines under construction to Tsuruga and Sapporo. A separate line heads out to Nagasaki, albeit through a separate relay service.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Japan has been developing maglev technology trains, and broke the world maglev speed record in April 2015 with a train traveling at the speed of 603 km/h (375 mph). The Chūō Shinkansen, a commercial maglev service, is currently under construction from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka, and when completed in 2045 will cover the distance in 67 minutes, half the time of the current Shinkansen.",
"title": "Railway"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "According to Japan Statistical Yearbook 2015, Japan in April 2012 had approximately 1,215,000 km of roads made up of 1,022,000 km of city, town and village roads, 129,000 km of prefectural roads, 55,000 km of general national highways and 8,050 km of national expressways. The Foreign Press Center/Japan cites a total length of expressways at 7,641 km (fiscal 2008). A single network of high-speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major cities on Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Hokkaido has a separate network, and Okinawa Island has a highway of this type. In the year 2005, the toll collecting companies, formerly Japan Highway Public Corporation, have been transformed into private companies in public ownership, and there are plans to sell parts of them. This policy aims to encourage competition and decrease tolls.",
"title": "Road"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Road passenger and freight transport expanded considerably during the 1980s as private ownership of motor vehicles greatly increased along with the quality and extent of the nation's roads. Bus companies including the JR Bus companies operate long-distance bus services on the nation's expanding expressway network. In addition to relatively low fares and deluxe seating, the buses are well utilized because they continue service during the night when air and train services are limited.",
"title": "Road"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The cargo sector grew rapidly in the 1980s, recording 274.2 billion tonne-kilometres in 1990. The freight handled by motor vehicles, mainly trucks, in 1990, was over 6 billion tonnes, accounting for 90 percent of domestic freight tonnage and about 50 percent of tonne-kilometers.",
"title": "Road"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Recent large infrastructure projects were the construction of the Great Seto Bridge and the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line (opened 1997).",
"title": "Road"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Road fatalities have decreased in Japan, due in part to stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws:",
"title": "Road"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In Tokyo, road safety is 13 killed per million.",
"title": "Road"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 2013, Japan had the fourth largest passenger air market in the world with 105,913,000 passengers. In 2013 Japan had 98 airports. The main international gateways are Narita International Airport (Tokyo area), Kansai International Airport (Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto area), and Chūbu Centrair International Airport (Nagoya area). The main domestic hub is Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport), by passenger traffic the third-busiest in Asia and the fourth-busiest in the world in 2018, but not in the top ten in 2022; other major traffic hubs include Osaka International Airport, New Chitose Airport outside Sapporo, and Fukuoka Airport. 14 heliports are estimated to exist (1999).",
"title": "Air transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The two main airlines are Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways. Other passenger carriers include Skymark Airlines, Solaseed Air, Air Do, StarFlyer and Fuji Dream Airlines. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, formerly Northwest Airlines, are major international operators from Narita Airport.",
"title": "Air transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Domestic air travel in Japan has historically been highly regulated. From 1972, the three major domestic airlines (JAL, ANA, and JAS) were allocated certain routes, with JAL and ANA sharing trunk routes, and ANA and JAS sharing local feeder routes. JAL and JAS have since been merged to help compete with ANA. JAL also had a flag-carrier monopoly on international routes until 1986. Airfares were set by the government until 2000, although carriers had the freedom to adjust the standard fares starting in 1995 (when discounts of up to 50% were permitted). Today, fares can be set by carriers, but the government retains the ability to veto fares that are too high.",
"title": "Air transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There are 1770 km of waterways in Japan; seagoing craft ply all coastal inland seas.",
"title": "Maritime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "There are some 994 ports in Japan as of April 2014. There are overlapping classifications of these ports, some of which are multi-purpose, e.g. cargo, passenger, naval, and fishery. The five designated \"super\" container ports are Yokkaichi, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka. 23 are designated major/international, 125 designated as important, while there are also purely fisherman ports.",
"title": "Maritime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The twenty-three major seaports designated as special, important ports by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism: Chiba, Fushiki/Toyama, Himeji, Hiroshima, Kawasaki, Kitakyushu, Kobe, Kudamatsu, Muroran, Nagoya, Niigata, Osaka, Sakai/Senpoku, Sendai/Shiogama, Shimizu, Shimonoseki, Tokyo, Tomakomai, Wakayama, Yokkaichi, and Yokohama.",
"title": "Maritime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Japan has 988 ships of 1,000 gross tonnage (GT) or over on its national ship register, totaling 38,053,000 tonnes deadweight (DWT). However, only 17% of Japanese-owned capacity is registered in Japan. UNCTAD estimates that 224 million dwt of tonnage is controlled by Japanese owners, making Japan the second largest beneficial owner of tonnage after Greece.",
"title": "Maritime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Ferries connect Hokkaido to Honshu, and Okinawa Island to Kyushu and Honshu. They also connect other smaller islands and the main islands. The scheduled international passenger routes are to China, Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan. Coastal and cross-channel ferries on the main islands decreased in routes and frequencies following the development of bridges and expressways but some are still operating (as of 2007).",
"title": "Maritime"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Japan has 84 km of pipelines for crude oil, 322 km for petroleum products, and 1,800 km for natural gas.",
"title": "Pipelines"
}
]
| Transportation in Japan is modern and highly developed. Japan's transport sector stands out for its energy efficiency: it uses less energy per person compared to other countries, thanks to a high share of rail transport and low overall travel distances. Transport in Japan is also very expensive in international comparison, reflecting high tolls and taxes, particularly on automobile transport.
Japan's spending on roads has been large. The 1.2 million kilometres of paved road are the main means of transport. Traffic in Japan drives on the left. A single network of high-speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major cities, which are operated by toll-collecting enterprises. Dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional and local passenger transport markets; for instance, seven JR Group companies, Kintetsu Railway, Seibu Railway, and Keio Corporation. Often, strategies of these enterprises contain real estate or department stores next to stations. Some 250 high-speed Shinkansen trains connect major cities. All trains are known for punctuality. There are 176 airports, and the largest domestic airport, Haneda Airport, was by passenger traffic the third-busiest in Asia and the fourth-busiest in the world in 2018, but not in the top ten in 2022. The largest international gateways are Narita International Airport, Kansai International Airport, and Chūbu Centrair International Airport. The largest ports include Nagoya Port. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-05T11:56:27Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Japan |
15,582 | Foreign relations of Japan | The foreign relations of Japan (日本の国際関係, Nihon no kokusai kankei) are handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
Japan maintains diplomatic relations with every United Nations member state except for North Korea, in addition to UN observer states Holy See, as well as Kosovo, Cook Islands and Niue.
Japanese foreign relations had earliest beginnings in 14th century and after their opening to the world in 1854 with the Convention of Kanagawa. Japan rapidly modernized and built a strong military. It was imperialistic seeking control of nearby areas—with major wars against China and Russia. It gained control of parts of China and Manchuria, as well as Korea and islands such as Taiwan and Okinawa. It lost in World War II and was stripped of all of its foreign conquests and possessions. See History of Japanese foreign relations. American general Douglas MacArthur, acting for the Allied powers, supervised occupied Japan 1945–51. Since occupation ended diplomatic policy has been based on close partnership with the United States and seeking trade agreements, In the Cold War, Japan was demilitarized but it allied with the U.S. in the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It played a major support role in the Korean War (1950-1953). In the rapid economic developments in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan was one of the major economic powers in the world.
By the 1990s Japan participated in the Peacekeeping operations by the UN, and sent troops to Cambodia, Mozambique, Golan Heights and the East Timor. After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, Japanese naval vessels have been assigned to resupply duties in the Indian Ocean to the present date. The Ground Self-Defense Force also dispatched their troops to Southern Iraq for the restoration of basic infrastructures.
Beyond its immediate neighbors, Japan has pursued a more active foreign policy in recent years, recognizing the responsibility which accompanies its economic strength. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda stressed a changing direction in a policy speech to the National Diet: "Japan aspires to become a hub of human resource development as well as for research and intellectual contribution to further promote cooperation in the field of peace-building." This follows the modest success of a Japanese-conceived peace plan which became the foundation for nationwide elections in Cambodia in 1998.
List of countries which Japan maintains diplomatic relations with:
Japan is increasingly active in Africa. In May 2008, the first Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize will be awarded at Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), which signals a changing emphasis in bilateral relations.
Japan has continued to extend significant support to development and technical assistance projects in Latin America.
By 1990 Japan's interaction with the vast majority of Asia-Pacific countries, especially its burgeoning economic exchanges, was multifaceted and increasingly important to the recipient countries. The developing countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regarded Japan as critical to their development. Japan's aid to the ASEAN countries totaled US$1.9 billion in Japanese fiscal year (FY) 1988 versus about US$333 million for the United States during U.S. FY 1988. As of the late 1980s, Japan was the number one foreign investor in the ASEAN countries, with cumulative investment as of March 1989 of about US$14.5 billion, more than twice that of the United States. Japan's share of total foreign investment in ASEAN countries in the same period ranged from 70 to 80 percent in Thailand to 20 percent in Indonesia.
In the late 1980s, the Japanese government was making a concerted effort to enhance its diplomatic stature, especially in Asia. Toshiki Kaifu's much publicized spring 1991 tour of five Southeast Asian nations—Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines—culminated in a 3 May major foreign policy address in Singapore, in which he called for a new partnership with the ASEAN and pledged that Japan would go beyond the purely economic sphere to seek an "appropriate role in the political sphere as a nation of peace." As evidence of this new role, Japan took an active part in promoting negotiations to resolve the Cambodian conflict.
In 1997, the ASEAN member nations and the People's Republic of China, South Korea and Japan agreed to hold yearly talks to further strengthen regional cooperation, the ASEAN Plus Three meetings. In 2005 the ASEAN plus Three countries together with India, Australia and New Zealand held the inaugural East Asia Summit (EAS).
In South Asia, Japan's role is mainly that of an aid donor. Japan's aid to seven South Asian countries totaled US$1.1 billion in 1988. Except for Pakistan, which received heavy inputs of aid from the United States, all other South Asian countries received most of their aid from Japan as of the early 1990s. Four South Asian nations—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka—are in the top ten list of Tokyo's aid recipients worldwide as of the early 1990s. A point to note is that Indian Government has receive no aid since the 2004 Tsunami that struck India but Indian registered NGOs look to Japan for much investment in their projects.
Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu signaled a broadening of Japan's interest in South Asia with his swing through the region in April 1990. In an address to the Indian parliament, Kaifu stressed the role of free markets and democracy in bringing about "a new international order," and he emphasized the need for a settlement of the Kashmir territorial dispute between India and Pakistan and for economic liberalization to attract foreign investment and promote dynamic growth. To India, which was very short of hard currency, Kaifu pledged a new concessional loan of ¥100 billion (about US$650 million) for the coming year.
In what became known as the Tenshō embassy, the first ambassadors from Japan to European powers reached Lisbon, Portugal in August 1584. From Lisbon, the ambassadors left for the Vatican in Rome, which was the main goal of their journey. The embassy returned to Japan in 1590, after which time the four nobleman ambassadors were ordained by Alessandro Valignano as the first Japanese Jesuit fathers.
A second embassy, headed by Hasekura Tsunenaga and sponsored by Date Masamune, was also a diplomatic mission to the Vatican. The embassy left 28 October 1613 from Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in the northern Tōhoku region of Japan, where Date was daimyō. It traveled to Europe by way of New Spain, arriving in Acapulco on 25 January 1614, Mexico City in March, Havana in July, and finally Seville on 23 October 1614. After a short stop-over in France, the embassy reached Rome in November 1615, where it was received by Pope Paul V. After return travel by way of New Spain and the Philippines, the embassy reached the harbor of Nagasaki in August 1620. While the embassy was gone, Japan had undergone significant change, starting with the 1614 Osaka Rebellion, leading to a 1616 decree from the Tokugawa shogunate that all interaction with non-Chinese foreigners was confined to Hirado and Nagasaki. In fact, the only western country that was allowed to trade with Japan was the Dutch Republic. This was the beginning of "sakoku", where Japan was essentially closed to the western world until 1854.
The cultural and non-economic ties with Western Europe grew significantly during the 1980s, although the economic nexus remained by far the most important element of Japanese – West European relations throughout the decade. Events in West European relations, as well as political, economic, or even military matters, were topics of concern to most Japanese commentators because of the immediate implications for Japan. The major issues centred on the effect of the coming West European economic unification on Japan's trade, investment, and other opportunities in Western Europe. Some West European leaders were anxious to restrict Japanese access to the newly integrated European Union, but others appeared open to Japanese trade and investment. In partial response to the strengthening economic ties among nations in Western Europe and to the United States–Canada–Mexico North American Free Trade Agreement, Japan and other countries along the Asia-Pacific rim began moving in the late 1980s toward greater economic cooperation.
On 18 July 1991, after several months of difficult negotiations, Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu signed a joint statement with the Dutch prime minister and head of the European Community Council, Ruud Lubbers, and with the European Commission president, Jacques Delors, pledging closer Japanese – European Community consultations on foreign relations, scientific and technological cooperation, assistance to developing countries, and efforts to reduce trade conflicts. Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials hoped that this agreement would help to broaden Japanese – European Community political links and raise them above the narrow confines of trade disputes.
Japan has several territorial disputes with its neighbors concerning the control of certain outlying islands.
Japan contests Russia's control of the Southern Kuril Islands (including Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai group) which were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945. South Korea's assertions concerning Liancourt Rocks (Japanese: "Takeshima", Korean: "Dokdo") are acknowledged, but not accepted by Japan. Japan has strained relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) over the Senkaku Islands; and with the People's Republic of China over the status of Okinotorishima. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The foreign relations of Japan (日本の国際関係, Nihon no kokusai kankei) are handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Japan maintains diplomatic relations with every United Nations member state except for North Korea, in addition to UN observer states Holy See, as well as Kosovo, Cook Islands and Niue.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Japanese foreign relations had earliest beginnings in 14th century and after their opening to the world in 1854 with the Convention of Kanagawa. Japan rapidly modernized and built a strong military. It was imperialistic seeking control of nearby areas—with major wars against China and Russia. It gained control of parts of China and Manchuria, as well as Korea and islands such as Taiwan and Okinawa. It lost in World War II and was stripped of all of its foreign conquests and possessions. See History of Japanese foreign relations. American general Douglas MacArthur, acting for the Allied powers, supervised occupied Japan 1945–51. Since occupation ended diplomatic policy has been based on close partnership with the United States and seeking trade agreements, In the Cold War, Japan was demilitarized but it allied with the U.S. in the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It played a major support role in the Korean War (1950-1953). In the rapid economic developments in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan was one of the major economic powers in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "By the 1990s Japan participated in the Peacekeeping operations by the UN, and sent troops to Cambodia, Mozambique, Golan Heights and the East Timor. After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, Japanese naval vessels have been assigned to resupply duties in the Indian Ocean to the present date. The Ground Self-Defense Force also dispatched their troops to Southern Iraq for the restoration of basic infrastructures.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Beyond its immediate neighbors, Japan has pursued a more active foreign policy in recent years, recognizing the responsibility which accompanies its economic strength. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda stressed a changing direction in a policy speech to the National Diet: \"Japan aspires to become a hub of human resource development as well as for research and intellectual contribution to further promote cooperation in the field of peace-building.\" This follows the modest success of a Japanese-conceived peace plan which became the foundation for nationwide elections in Cambodia in 1998.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "List of countries which Japan maintains diplomatic relations with:",
"title": "Diplomatic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Japan is increasingly active in Africa. In May 2008, the first Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize will be awarded at Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), which signals a changing emphasis in bilateral relations.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Japan has continued to extend significant support to development and technical assistance projects in Latin America.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "By 1990 Japan's interaction with the vast majority of Asia-Pacific countries, especially its burgeoning economic exchanges, was multifaceted and increasingly important to the recipient countries. The developing countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regarded Japan as critical to their development. Japan's aid to the ASEAN countries totaled US$1.9 billion in Japanese fiscal year (FY) 1988 versus about US$333 million for the United States during U.S. FY 1988. As of the late 1980s, Japan was the number one foreign investor in the ASEAN countries, with cumulative investment as of March 1989 of about US$14.5 billion, more than twice that of the United States. Japan's share of total foreign investment in ASEAN countries in the same period ranged from 70 to 80 percent in Thailand to 20 percent in Indonesia.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the late 1980s, the Japanese government was making a concerted effort to enhance its diplomatic stature, especially in Asia. Toshiki Kaifu's much publicized spring 1991 tour of five Southeast Asian nations—Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines—culminated in a 3 May major foreign policy address in Singapore, in which he called for a new partnership with the ASEAN and pledged that Japan would go beyond the purely economic sphere to seek an \"appropriate role in the political sphere as a nation of peace.\" As evidence of this new role, Japan took an active part in promoting negotiations to resolve the Cambodian conflict.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1997, the ASEAN member nations and the People's Republic of China, South Korea and Japan agreed to hold yearly talks to further strengthen regional cooperation, the ASEAN Plus Three meetings. In 2005 the ASEAN plus Three countries together with India, Australia and New Zealand held the inaugural East Asia Summit (EAS).",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In South Asia, Japan's role is mainly that of an aid donor. Japan's aid to seven South Asian countries totaled US$1.1 billion in 1988. Except for Pakistan, which received heavy inputs of aid from the United States, all other South Asian countries received most of their aid from Japan as of the early 1990s. Four South Asian nations—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka—are in the top ten list of Tokyo's aid recipients worldwide as of the early 1990s. A point to note is that Indian Government has receive no aid since the 2004 Tsunami that struck India but Indian registered NGOs look to Japan for much investment in their projects.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu signaled a broadening of Japan's interest in South Asia with his swing through the region in April 1990. In an address to the Indian parliament, Kaifu stressed the role of free markets and democracy in bringing about \"a new international order,\" and he emphasized the need for a settlement of the Kashmir territorial dispute between India and Pakistan and for economic liberalization to attract foreign investment and promote dynamic growth. To India, which was very short of hard currency, Kaifu pledged a new concessional loan of ¥100 billion (about US$650 million) for the coming year.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In what became known as the Tenshō embassy, the first ambassadors from Japan to European powers reached Lisbon, Portugal in August 1584. From Lisbon, the ambassadors left for the Vatican in Rome, which was the main goal of their journey. The embassy returned to Japan in 1590, after which time the four nobleman ambassadors were ordained by Alessandro Valignano as the first Japanese Jesuit fathers.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A second embassy, headed by Hasekura Tsunenaga and sponsored by Date Masamune, was also a diplomatic mission to the Vatican. The embassy left 28 October 1613 from Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in the northern Tōhoku region of Japan, where Date was daimyō. It traveled to Europe by way of New Spain, arriving in Acapulco on 25 January 1614, Mexico City in March, Havana in July, and finally Seville on 23 October 1614. After a short stop-over in France, the embassy reached Rome in November 1615, where it was received by Pope Paul V. After return travel by way of New Spain and the Philippines, the embassy reached the harbor of Nagasaki in August 1620. While the embassy was gone, Japan had undergone significant change, starting with the 1614 Osaka Rebellion, leading to a 1616 decree from the Tokugawa shogunate that all interaction with non-Chinese foreigners was confined to Hirado and Nagasaki. In fact, the only western country that was allowed to trade with Japan was the Dutch Republic. This was the beginning of \"sakoku\", where Japan was essentially closed to the western world until 1854.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The cultural and non-economic ties with Western Europe grew significantly during the 1980s, although the economic nexus remained by far the most important element of Japanese – West European relations throughout the decade. Events in West European relations, as well as political, economic, or even military matters, were topics of concern to most Japanese commentators because of the immediate implications for Japan. The major issues centred on the effect of the coming West European economic unification on Japan's trade, investment, and other opportunities in Western Europe. Some West European leaders were anxious to restrict Japanese access to the newly integrated European Union, but others appeared open to Japanese trade and investment. In partial response to the strengthening economic ties among nations in Western Europe and to the United States–Canada–Mexico North American Free Trade Agreement, Japan and other countries along the Asia-Pacific rim began moving in the late 1980s toward greater economic cooperation.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On 18 July 1991, after several months of difficult negotiations, Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu signed a joint statement with the Dutch prime minister and head of the European Community Council, Ruud Lubbers, and with the European Commission president, Jacques Delors, pledging closer Japanese – European Community consultations on foreign relations, scientific and technological cooperation, assistance to developing countries, and efforts to reduce trade conflicts. Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials hoped that this agreement would help to broaden Japanese – European Community political links and raise them above the narrow confines of trade disputes.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Japan has several territorial disputes with its neighbors concerning the control of certain outlying islands.",
"title": "Disputed territories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Japan contests Russia's control of the Southern Kuril Islands (including Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai group) which were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945. South Korea's assertions concerning Liancourt Rocks (Japanese: \"Takeshima\", Korean: \"Dokdo\") are acknowledged, but not accepted by Japan. Japan has strained relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) over the Senkaku Islands; and with the People's Republic of China over the status of Okinotorishima.",
"title": "Disputed territories"
}
]
| The foreign relations of Japan are handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. Japan maintains diplomatic relations with every United Nations member state except for North Korea, in addition to UN observer states Holy See, as well as Kosovo, Cook Islands and Niue. Japanese foreign relations had earliest beginnings in 14th century and after their opening to the world in 1854 with the Convention of Kanagawa. Japan rapidly modernized and built a strong military. It was imperialistic seeking control of nearby areas—with major wars against China and Russia. It gained control of parts of China and Manchuria, as well as Korea and islands such as Taiwan and Okinawa. It lost in World War II and was stripped of all of its foreign conquests and possessions. See History of Japanese foreign relations. American general Douglas MacArthur, acting for the Allied powers, supervised occupied Japan 1945–51. Since occupation ended diplomatic policy has been based on close partnership with the United States and seeking trade agreements, In the Cold War, Japan was demilitarized but it allied with the U.S. in the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It played a major support role in the Korean War (1950-1953). In the rapid economic developments in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan was one of the major economic powers in the world. By the 1990s Japan participated in the Peacekeeping operations by the UN, and sent troops to Cambodia, Mozambique, Golan Heights and the East Timor. After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, Japanese naval vessels have been assigned to resupply duties in the Indian Ocean to the present date. The Ground Self-Defense Force also dispatched their troops to Southern Iraq for the restoration of basic infrastructures. | 2001-02-22T04:25:22Z | 2023-12-28T19:47:40Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Japan |
15,587 | Joshua Jackson | Joshua Carter Jackson (born June 11, 1978) is a Canadian actor. He is known for his portrayals of Pacey Witter on The WB's teen drama Dawson's Creek (1998–2003), Peter Bishop in the Fox science fiction series Fringe (2008–2013), Cole Lockhart on Showtime's The Affair (2014–2018), Dan Gallagher in the Paramount+ series Fatal Attraction, and Dr. Christopher Duntsch in the Peacock crime drama series Dr. Death (2021). For the latter, he was nominated for the 2022 Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Limited Series. His other credits include When They See Us (2019), and Little Fires Everywhere (2020).
Outside of television, Jackson came to prominence playing Charlie Conway in the Mighty Ducks film series (1992–1996). His other film appearances include Apt Pupil (1998), Urban Legend (1998), Cruel Intentions (1999), The Skulls (2000), Gossip (2000), The Safety of Objects (2001), The Laramie Project (2002), Cursed (2005), Bobby (2006), and Shutter (2008). For his performance in the Canadian independent drama One Week (2008), Jackson won the 2010 Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.
Jackson was born on June 11, 1978, in Vancouver to parents John and Fiona. His mother is a casting director. Jackson's father is from Texas, and his mother is a native of Ballyfermot, Ireland, having immigrated to North America in the late 1960s. He has a younger sister, Aisleagh, and two older half brothers, Jonathan and Lyman. He was raised Catholic.
Jackson lived in California until the age of 8. He moved to Vancouver with his mother and younger sister. He attended Ideal Mini School and later switched to Kitsilano Secondary School. He attended high school with actor Ryan Reynolds. In an interview with The New York Times, Jackson said he was kicked out of high school once because of The Jon Stewart Show: "[The show] played, at least where I grew up, at 1:30 in the morning, so I would stay up at night to watch Jon Stewart, but then I'd be too tired—or too lazy—to go to school in the morning. So I'd just take the first couple of classes off, 'cause I wanted to be fresh when I got there."
Jackson started acting in a small role in the film Crooked Hearts in 1991. The next year, he played the role of Charlie in a musical version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. At this point, with the help of the play's casting director Laura Kennedy, he joined the William Morris Agency. Soon after, he landed the role of Charlie (#96) in The Mighty Ducks series, playing a young and aspiring hockey player.
Jackson went on to appear as Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek, which was created by Kevin Williamson and ran on the WB network from 1998 to 2003, and also starred James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams, and Katie Holmes. While the show was on hiatus, he appeared in several movies including Cruel Intentions (an adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses that also starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe), The Skulls, The Safety of Objects, The Laramie Project and a short cameo in the remake of Ocean's Eleven in which he appears as himself in a poker scene with Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Holly Marie Combs. In 2000, he also guest-starred in Season 12 of The Simpsons, voicing the character of Jesse Grass, a "hunky environmentalist" and love interest for Lisa Simpson in the episode "Lisa the Tree Hugger". He also was cast as "Beau" in the movie Gossip in 2000 with actors James Marsden, Kate Hudson and Norman Reedus.
Shortly after Dawson's Creek ended in 2003, Jackson played the lead role in films alongside Dennis Hopper (Americano), Harvey Keitel (Shadows in the Sun), and Donald Sutherland (Aurora Borealis). In 2005, Jackson moved to the UK and made his stage debut on the London West End with Patrick Stewart in David Mamet's two-man play, A Life in the Theatre. The play was a critical and popular success, and ran from February to April of that year. Jackson said that he would consider returning to the stage, to try his hand on Broadway. His next film role was in Bobby, directed by Emilio Estevez, Jackson's co-star from The Mighty Ducks. He played a lead role in Shutter, a U.S. remake of film of the same name. He starred and acted as executive producer in the Canadian independent film One Week, which opened on March 6, 2009.
From 2008 to 2013, Jackson played the lead role of Peter Bishop in the science-fiction series Fringe, created by JJ Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. The serieswas the second-highest rated new show of the 2008–2009 season after The Mentalist. BuddyTV ranked him #9 on its "TV's 100 Sexiest Men of 2010" list, #19 in 2011 and #14 in 2012.
Jackson was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for the film One Week. He won the award on April 12, 2010. He held and hosted the satirical Pacey-Con in 2010, directly across the street from the Comic-Con, sporting a bowling shirt and giving out fan fiction, written by Dawson's Creek fans, to those waiting in the Comic-Con entrance line. Footage of the event was recorded for a video, entitled 'Pacey-Con', which he was filming for Will Ferrell's Funny or Die celebrity humor website. In 2013, Jackson appeared in the IFC film Inescapable with Marisa Tomei and Alexander Siddig. Jackson wrote the first story from the comic book trilogy Beyond the Fringe, titled "Peter and the Machine". Jackson starred in the successful television show The Affair, where he played Cole Lockhart, the protagonist husband of the unfaithful Alison Lockhart.
In March 2018, Jackson made his theatrical debut on Broadway in Children of a Lesser God, where he played James Leeds, an unconventional teacher at a school for the deaf who gets in a conflicted professional and romantic relationship with a deaf former student, Sarah Norman (Lauren Ridloff). The play ran through May 2018.
In 2019, Jackson starred as defense attorney Mickey Joseph in the miniseries When They See Us.
In 2020, Jackson co-starred with Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington in the miniseries Little Fires Everywhere based on the novel by Celeste Ng.
Jackson has been cast as Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon who was convicted of intentionally maiming his patients, in Dr. Death, based on the podcast of the same name.
In 2022, Jackson was set to lead the series Fatal Attraction with Lizzy Caplan, inspired by the 1980s thriller film of the same name.
Jackson was in a relationship with Dawson's Creek co-star Katie Holmes during the first two seasons of the show's run. Holmes said that Jackson was her first love.
From 2006 to 2016, he was in a relationship with German actress Diane Kruger.
Jackson began a relationship with British actress Jodie Turner-Smith in 2018. They married on August 18, 2019 and have a daughter, Juno Rose Diana, born April 2020. In October 2023, it was revealed that Turner-Smith had filed for divorce from Jackson.
He owns his childhood home in Topanga, California. He previously lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, where Dawson's Creek was filmed; and in New York City, where Fringe filmed its first season. In 2009, he moved back to Vancouver to shoot four seasons of the show before the last episode was aired on January 18, 2013.
Jackson is a fan of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team.
In December 2023 Joshua and fellow actor Lupita Nyong'o confirmed they are dating. | [
{
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"text": "Joshua Carter Jackson (born June 11, 1978) is a Canadian actor. He is known for his portrayals of Pacey Witter on The WB's teen drama Dawson's Creek (1998–2003), Peter Bishop in the Fox science fiction series Fringe (2008–2013), Cole Lockhart on Showtime's The Affair (2014–2018), Dan Gallagher in the Paramount+ series Fatal Attraction, and Dr. Christopher Duntsch in the Peacock crime drama series Dr. Death (2021). For the latter, he was nominated for the 2022 Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Limited Series. His other credits include When They See Us (2019), and Little Fires Everywhere (2020).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Outside of television, Jackson came to prominence playing Charlie Conway in the Mighty Ducks film series (1992–1996). His other film appearances include Apt Pupil (1998), Urban Legend (1998), Cruel Intentions (1999), The Skulls (2000), Gossip (2000), The Safety of Objects (2001), The Laramie Project (2002), Cursed (2005), Bobby (2006), and Shutter (2008). For his performance in the Canadian independent drama One Week (2008), Jackson won the 2010 Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "Jackson was born on June 11, 1978, in Vancouver to parents John and Fiona. His mother is a casting director. Jackson's father is from Texas, and his mother is a native of Ballyfermot, Ireland, having immigrated to North America in the late 1960s. He has a younger sister, Aisleagh, and two older half brothers, Jonathan and Lyman. He was raised Catholic.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Jackson lived in California until the age of 8. He moved to Vancouver with his mother and younger sister. He attended Ideal Mini School and later switched to Kitsilano Secondary School. He attended high school with actor Ryan Reynolds. In an interview with The New York Times, Jackson said he was kicked out of high school once because of The Jon Stewart Show: \"[The show] played, at least where I grew up, at 1:30 in the morning, so I would stay up at night to watch Jon Stewart, but then I'd be too tired—or too lazy—to go to school in the morning. So I'd just take the first couple of classes off, 'cause I wanted to be fresh when I got there.\"",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Jackson started acting in a small role in the film Crooked Hearts in 1991. The next year, he played the role of Charlie in a musical version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. At this point, with the help of the play's casting director Laura Kennedy, he joined the William Morris Agency. Soon after, he landed the role of Charlie (#96) in The Mighty Ducks series, playing a young and aspiring hockey player.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Jackson went on to appear as Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek, which was created by Kevin Williamson and ran on the WB network from 1998 to 2003, and also starred James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams, and Katie Holmes. While the show was on hiatus, he appeared in several movies including Cruel Intentions (an adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses that also starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe), The Skulls, The Safety of Objects, The Laramie Project and a short cameo in the remake of Ocean's Eleven in which he appears as himself in a poker scene with Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Holly Marie Combs. In 2000, he also guest-starred in Season 12 of The Simpsons, voicing the character of Jesse Grass, a \"hunky environmentalist\" and love interest for Lisa Simpson in the episode \"Lisa the Tree Hugger\". He also was cast as \"Beau\" in the movie Gossip in 2000 with actors James Marsden, Kate Hudson and Norman Reedus.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Shortly after Dawson's Creek ended in 2003, Jackson played the lead role in films alongside Dennis Hopper (Americano), Harvey Keitel (Shadows in the Sun), and Donald Sutherland (Aurora Borealis). In 2005, Jackson moved to the UK and made his stage debut on the London West End with Patrick Stewart in David Mamet's two-man play, A Life in the Theatre. The play was a critical and popular success, and ran from February to April of that year. Jackson said that he would consider returning to the stage, to try his hand on Broadway. His next film role was in Bobby, directed by Emilio Estevez, Jackson's co-star from The Mighty Ducks. He played a lead role in Shutter, a U.S. remake of film of the same name. He starred and acted as executive producer in the Canadian independent film One Week, which opened on March 6, 2009.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "From 2008 to 2013, Jackson played the lead role of Peter Bishop in the science-fiction series Fringe, created by JJ Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. The serieswas the second-highest rated new show of the 2008–2009 season after The Mentalist. BuddyTV ranked him #9 on its \"TV's 100 Sexiest Men of 2010\" list, #19 in 2011 and #14 in 2012.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Jackson was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for the film One Week. He won the award on April 12, 2010. He held and hosted the satirical Pacey-Con in 2010, directly across the street from the Comic-Con, sporting a bowling shirt and giving out fan fiction, written by Dawson's Creek fans, to those waiting in the Comic-Con entrance line. Footage of the event was recorded for a video, entitled 'Pacey-Con', which he was filming for Will Ferrell's Funny or Die celebrity humor website. In 2013, Jackson appeared in the IFC film Inescapable with Marisa Tomei and Alexander Siddig. Jackson wrote the first story from the comic book trilogy Beyond the Fringe, titled \"Peter and the Machine\". Jackson starred in the successful television show The Affair, where he played Cole Lockhart, the protagonist husband of the unfaithful Alison Lockhart.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In March 2018, Jackson made his theatrical debut on Broadway in Children of a Lesser God, where he played James Leeds, an unconventional teacher at a school for the deaf who gets in a conflicted professional and romantic relationship with a deaf former student, Sarah Norman (Lauren Ridloff). The play ran through May 2018.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 2019, Jackson starred as defense attorney Mickey Joseph in the miniseries When They See Us.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 2020, Jackson co-starred with Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington in the miniseries Little Fires Everywhere based on the novel by Celeste Ng.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jackson has been cast as Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon who was convicted of intentionally maiming his patients, in Dr. Death, based on the podcast of the same name.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 2022, Jackson was set to lead the series Fatal Attraction with Lizzy Caplan, inspired by the 1980s thriller film of the same name.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Jackson was in a relationship with Dawson's Creek co-star Katie Holmes during the first two seasons of the show's run. Holmes said that Jackson was her first love.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "From 2006 to 2016, he was in a relationship with German actress Diane Kruger.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Jackson began a relationship with British actress Jodie Turner-Smith in 2018. They married on August 18, 2019 and have a daughter, Juno Rose Diana, born April 2020. In October 2023, it was revealed that Turner-Smith had filed for divorce from Jackson.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "He owns his childhood home in Topanga, California. He previously lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, where Dawson's Creek was filmed; and in New York City, where Fringe filmed its first season. In 2009, he moved back to Vancouver to shoot four seasons of the show before the last episode was aired on January 18, 2013.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Jackson is a fan of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In December 2023 Joshua and fellow actor Lupita Nyong'o confirmed they are dating.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Joshua Carter Jackson is a Canadian actor. He is known for his portrayals of Pacey Witter on The WB's teen drama Dawson's Creek (1998–2003), Peter Bishop in the Fox science fiction series Fringe (2008–2013), Cole Lockhart on Showtime's The Affair (2014–2018), Dan Gallagher in the Paramount+ series Fatal Attraction, and Dr. Christopher Duntsch in the Peacock crime drama series Dr. Death (2021). For the latter, he was nominated for the 2022 Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Limited Series. His other credits include When They See Us (2019), and Little Fires Everywhere (2020). Outside of television, Jackson came to prominence playing Charlie Conway in the Mighty Ducks film series (1992–1996). His other film appearances include Apt Pupil (1998), Urban Legend (1998), Cruel Intentions (1999), The Skulls (2000), Gossip (2000), The Safety of Objects (2001), The Laramie Project (2002), Cursed (2005), Bobby (2006), and Shutter (2008). For his performance in the Canadian independent drama One Week (2008), Jackson won the 2010 Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. | 2001-02-25T00:02:58Z | 2023-12-24T21:01:27Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Jackson |
15,588 | Jung (disambiguation) | Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was the founder of analytical psychology.
Jung may also refer to: | [
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"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was the founder of analytical psychology.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "Jung may also refer to:",
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| Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was the founder of analytical psychology. Jung may also refer to: Jung (surname)
Jung
JUNG, the Java Universal Network/Graph Framework
Jung, an Indian Hindi-language film
Jung, an Indian Hindi-language film
Jung, Victoria, Australia
JUNG (company), a German electrical wiring company | 2001-03-01T22:23:09Z | 2023-08-17T11:11:00Z | [
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:Disambiguation"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jung_(disambiguation) |
15,593 | JFK (disambiguation) | JFK, or in full form John F. Kennedy, (1917–1963) was the president of the United States from 1961 to 1963.
JFK may also refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "JFK, or in full form John F. Kennedy, (1917–1963) was the president of the United States from 1961 to 1963.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "JFK may also refer to:",
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| JFK, or in full form John F. Kennedy, (1917–1963) was the president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. JFK may also refer to: | 2023-07-20T21:44:30Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(disambiguation) |
|
15,596 | John Ray | John Ray FRS (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was a Christian English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him". He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified by repeated sub-division into groups according to a pre-conceived series of characteristics they have or have not, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. He was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of species, as "a group of morphologically similar organisms arising from a common ancestor". Another significant contribution to taxonomy was his division of plants into those with two seedling leaves (dicotyledons) or only one (monocotyledons), a division used in taxonomy today.
John Ray was born in the village of Black Notley in Essex. He is said to have been born in the smithy, his father having been the village blacksmith. After studying at Braintree school, he was sent at the age of sixteen to Cambridge University: studying at Trinity College. Initially at Catharine Hall, his tutor was Daniel Duckfield, and later transferred to Trinity where his tutor was James Duport, and his intimate friend and fellow-pupil the celebrated Isaac Barrow. Ray was chosen minor fellow of Trinity in 1649, and later major fellow. He held many college offices, becoming successively lecturer in Greek (1651), mathematics (1653), and humanity (1655), praelector (1657), frias (1657), and college steward (1659 and 1660); and according to the habit of the time, he was accustomed to preach in his college chapel and also at Great St Mary's, long before he took holy orders on 23 December 1660. Among these sermons were his discourses on The wisdom of God manifested in the works of the creation, and Deluge and Dissolution of the World. Ray was also highly regarded as a tutor and he communicated his own passion for natural history to several pupils. Ray's student, Isaac Barrow, helped Francis Willughby learn mathematics and Ray collaborated with Willughby later. It was at Trinity that he came under the influence of John Wilkins, when the latter was appointed master of the college in 1659.
After leaving Cambridge in 1663 he spent some time travelling both in Britain and the continent. In 1673, Ray married Margaret Oakley of Launton in Oxfordshire; in 1676 he went to Middleton Hall near Tamworth, and in 1677 to Falborne (or Faulkbourne) Hall in Essex. Finally, in 1679, he removed to his birthplace at Black Notley, where he afterwards remained. His life there was quiet and uneventful, although he had poor health, including chronic sores. Ray kept writing books and corresponded widely on scientific matters, collaborating with his doctor and contemporary Samuel Dale. He lived, in spite of his infirmities, to the age of seventy-seven, dying at Black Notley. He is buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul where there is a memorial to him. He is widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists.
At Cambridge, Ray spent much of his time in the study of natural history, a subject which would occupy him for most of his life, from 1660 to the beginning of the eighteenth century. When Ray found himself unable to subscribe as required by the ‘Bartholomew Act’ of 1662 he, along with 13 other college fellows, resigned his fellowship on 24 August 1662 rather than swear to the declaration that the Solemn League and Covenant was not binding on those who had taken it. Tobias Smollett quoted the reasoning given in the biography of Ray by William Derham:
"The reason of his refusal was not (says his biographer) as some have imagined, his having taken the solemn league and covenant; for that he never did, and often declared that he ever thought it an unlawful oath: but he said he could not say, for those that had taken the oath, that no obligation lay upon them, but feared there might."
His religious views were generally in accord with those imposed under the restoration of Charles II of England, and (though technically a nonconformist) he continued as a layman in the Established Church of England.
From this time onwards he seems to have depended chiefly on the bounty of his pupil Francis Willughby, who made Ray his constant companion while he lived. They travelled extensively, carrying out field observations and collecting specimens of botany, ornithology, ichthyology, mammals, reptiles and insects. Initially they agreed that Ray would take responsibility for the plants, and Willughby for birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. Willughby arranged that after his death, Ray would have 6 shillings a year for educating Willughby's two sons.
In the spring of 1663 Ray started together with Willughby and two other pupils (Philip Skippon and Nathaniel Bacon) on a tour through Europe, from which he returned in March 1666, parting from Willughby at Montpellier, whence the latter continued his journey into Spain. He had previously in three different journeys (1658, 1661, 1662) travelled through the greater part of Great Britain, and selections from his private notes of these journeys were edited by George Scott in 1760, under the title of Mr Ray's Itineraries. Ray himself published an account of his foreign travel in 1673, entitled Observations topographical, moral, and physiological, made on a Journey through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France. From this tour Ray and Willughby returned laden with collections, on which they meant to base complete systematic descriptions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
In 1667 Ray was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1669 he and Willughby published a paper on Experiments concerning the Motion of Sap in Trees. In 1671, he presented the research of Francis Jessop on formic acid to the Royal Society.
Following Willughby's death in 1672, Ray took on the responsibility of bringing both Willughby's work and his own to publication. Ray was left with an ornithology and ichthyology to edit as well as his own work dealing with mammals, reptiles and insects. Although he presented the Ornithologia (1676) as Willughby's, he made extensive contributions to the work. His task became more difficult after the death of Lady Cassandra, Willughby's mother, on July 25, 1675. Lady Cassandra had supported Ray's continued work, but the widow Willughby had no interest in her late husband's scientific interests or his scientific friends. Ray was no longer allowed to instruct the children, and Ray and his wife Margaret Oakley were forced to leave the Willughby household in Middleton. Critically, Ray lost access to the Willughby collections, notes and manuscripts at this time. The plants gathered on his British tours had already been described in his Catalogus plantarum Angliae (1670), which formed the basis for later English floras. He had likely already used the botanical collections to lay much of the groundwork of his Methodus plantarum nova (1682), His great Historia generalis plantarum appeared in 3 vols. in 1686, 1688, 1704.
In the 1690s, he published three volumes on religion—the most popular being The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), an essay describing evidence that all in nature and space is God's creation as in the Bible is affirmed. In this volume, he moved on from the naming and cataloguing of species like his successor Carl Linnaeus. Instead, Ray considered species' lives and how nature worked as a whole, giving facts that are arguments for God's will expressed in His creation of all 'visible and invisible' (Colossians 1:16). Ray gave an early description of dendrochronology, explaining how to find the ash tree's age from its tree-rings.
Ray's work on plant taxonomy spanned a wide range of thought, starting with an approach that was predominantly in the tradition of the herbalists and Aristotelian, but becoming increasingly theoretical and finally rejecting Aristotelianism. Despite his early adherence to Aristotelian tradition, his first botanical work, the Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium (1660), was almost entirely descriptive, being arranged alphabetically. His model was an account by Bauhin of the plants growing around Basel in 1622 and was the first English county flora, covering about 630 species. However at the end of the work he appended a brief taxonomy which he stated followed the usage of Bauhin and other herbalists.
Ray's system, starting with his Cambridge catalogue, began with the division between the imperfect or lower plants (Cryptogams), and perfect (planta perfecta) higher plants (Seed plants). The latter he divided by life forms, e.g. trees (arbores), shrubs (frutices), subshrubs (suffrutices) and herbaceous plants (herbae) and lastly grouping them by common characteristics. The trees he divided into 8 groups, e.g. Pomiferae (including apple and pear). The shrubs he placed in 2 groups, Spinosi (Berberis etc.) and Non Spinosi (Jasmine etc.). The subshrubs formed a single group and the herbs into 21 groups.
Division of Herbae;
As outlined in his Historia Plantarum (1685–1703):
Ray was the first person to produce a biological definition of species, in his 1686 History of Plants:
Ray published about 23 works, depending on how they are counted. The biological works were usually in Latin, the rest in English. His first publication, while at Cambridge, was the Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium (1660), followed by many works, botanical, zoological,theological and literary. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".
Including the various editions, there are 172 works of Ray, of which most are rare. The only libraries with substantial holdings are all in England. The list in order of holdings is:
Ray's biographer, Charles Raven, commented that "Ray sweeps away the litter of mythology and fable... and always insists upon accuracy of observation and description and the testing of every new discovery". Ray's works were directly influential on the development of taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus.
The Ray Society, named after John Ray, was founded in 1844. It is a scientific text publication society and registered charity, based at the Natural History Museum, London, which exists to publish books on natural history, with particular (but not exclusive) reference to the flora and fauna of the British Isles. As of 2017, the Society had published 179 volumes.
The John Ray Society (a separate organisation) is the Natural Sciences Society at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. It organises a programme of events of interest to science students in the college.
In 1986, to mark the 300th anniversary of the publication of Ray's Historia Plantarum, there was a celebration of Ray's legacy in Braintree, Essex. A "John Ray Gallery" was opened in the Braintree Museum.
The John Ray Initiative (JRI) is an educational charity that seeks to reconcile scientific and Christian understandings of the environment. It was formed in 1997 in response to the global environmental crisis and the challenges of sustainable development and environmental stewardship. John Ray's writings proclaimed God as creator whose wisdom is "manifest in the works of creation", and as redeemer of all things. JRI aims to teach appreciation of nature, increase awareness of the state of the global environment, and to promote a Christian understanding of environmental issues. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Ray FRS (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was a Christian English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after \"having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him\". He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified by repeated sub-division into groups according to a pre-conceived series of characteristics they have or have not, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. He was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of species, as \"a group of morphologically similar organisms arising from a common ancestor\". Another significant contribution to taxonomy was his division of plants into those with two seedling leaves (dicotyledons) or only one (monocotyledons), a division used in taxonomy today.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "John Ray was born in the village of Black Notley in Essex. He is said to have been born in the smithy, his father having been the village blacksmith. After studying at Braintree school, he was sent at the age of sixteen to Cambridge University: studying at Trinity College. Initially at Catharine Hall, his tutor was Daniel Duckfield, and later transferred to Trinity where his tutor was James Duport, and his intimate friend and fellow-pupil the celebrated Isaac Barrow. Ray was chosen minor fellow of Trinity in 1649, and later major fellow. He held many college offices, becoming successively lecturer in Greek (1651), mathematics (1653), and humanity (1655), praelector (1657), frias (1657), and college steward (1659 and 1660); and according to the habit of the time, he was accustomed to preach in his college chapel and also at Great St Mary's, long before he took holy orders on 23 December 1660. Among these sermons were his discourses on The wisdom of God manifested in the works of the creation, and Deluge and Dissolution of the World. Ray was also highly regarded as a tutor and he communicated his own passion for natural history to several pupils. Ray's student, Isaac Barrow, helped Francis Willughby learn mathematics and Ray collaborated with Willughby later. It was at Trinity that he came under the influence of John Wilkins, when the latter was appointed master of the college in 1659.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "After leaving Cambridge in 1663 he spent some time travelling both in Britain and the continent. In 1673, Ray married Margaret Oakley of Launton in Oxfordshire; in 1676 he went to Middleton Hall near Tamworth, and in 1677 to Falborne (or Faulkbourne) Hall in Essex. Finally, in 1679, he removed to his birthplace at Black Notley, where he afterwards remained. His life there was quiet and uneventful, although he had poor health, including chronic sores. Ray kept writing books and corresponded widely on scientific matters, collaborating with his doctor and contemporary Samuel Dale. He lived, in spite of his infirmities, to the age of seventy-seven, dying at Black Notley. He is buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul where there is a memorial to him. He is widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "At Cambridge, Ray spent much of his time in the study of natural history, a subject which would occupy him for most of his life, from 1660 to the beginning of the eighteenth century. When Ray found himself unable to subscribe as required by the ‘Bartholomew Act’ of 1662 he, along with 13 other college fellows, resigned his fellowship on 24 August 1662 rather than swear to the declaration that the Solemn League and Covenant was not binding on those who had taken it. Tobias Smollett quoted the reasoning given in the biography of Ray by William Derham:",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "\"The reason of his refusal was not (says his biographer) as some have imagined, his having taken the solemn league and covenant; for that he never did, and often declared that he ever thought it an unlawful oath: but he said he could not say, for those that had taken the oath, that no obligation lay upon them, but feared there might.\"",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "His religious views were generally in accord with those imposed under the restoration of Charles II of England, and (though technically a nonconformist) he continued as a layman in the Established Church of England.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "From this time onwards he seems to have depended chiefly on the bounty of his pupil Francis Willughby, who made Ray his constant companion while he lived. They travelled extensively, carrying out field observations and collecting specimens of botany, ornithology, ichthyology, mammals, reptiles and insects. Initially they agreed that Ray would take responsibility for the plants, and Willughby for birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. Willughby arranged that after his death, Ray would have 6 shillings a year for educating Willughby's two sons.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the spring of 1663 Ray started together with Willughby and two other pupils (Philip Skippon and Nathaniel Bacon) on a tour through Europe, from which he returned in March 1666, parting from Willughby at Montpellier, whence the latter continued his journey into Spain. He had previously in three different journeys (1658, 1661, 1662) travelled through the greater part of Great Britain, and selections from his private notes of these journeys were edited by George Scott in 1760, under the title of Mr Ray's Itineraries. Ray himself published an account of his foreign travel in 1673, entitled Observations topographical, moral, and physiological, made on a Journey through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France. From this tour Ray and Willughby returned laden with collections, on which they meant to base complete systematic descriptions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1667 Ray was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1669 he and Willughby published a paper on Experiments concerning the Motion of Sap in Trees. In 1671, he presented the research of Francis Jessop on formic acid to the Royal Society.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Following Willughby's death in 1672, Ray took on the responsibility of bringing both Willughby's work and his own to publication. Ray was left with an ornithology and ichthyology to edit as well as his own work dealing with mammals, reptiles and insects. Although he presented the Ornithologia (1676) as Willughby's, he made extensive contributions to the work. His task became more difficult after the death of Lady Cassandra, Willughby's mother, on July 25, 1675. Lady Cassandra had supported Ray's continued work, but the widow Willughby had no interest in her late husband's scientific interests or his scientific friends. Ray was no longer allowed to instruct the children, and Ray and his wife Margaret Oakley were forced to leave the Willughby household in Middleton. Critically, Ray lost access to the Willughby collections, notes and manuscripts at this time. The plants gathered on his British tours had already been described in his Catalogus plantarum Angliae (1670), which formed the basis for later English floras. He had likely already used the botanical collections to lay much of the groundwork of his Methodus plantarum nova (1682), His great Historia generalis plantarum appeared in 3 vols. in 1686, 1688, 1704.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the 1690s, he published three volumes on religion—the most popular being The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), an essay describing evidence that all in nature and space is God's creation as in the Bible is affirmed. In this volume, he moved on from the naming and cataloguing of species like his successor Carl Linnaeus. Instead, Ray considered species' lives and how nature worked as a whole, giving facts that are arguments for God's will expressed in His creation of all 'visible and invisible' (Colossians 1:16). Ray gave an early description of dendrochronology, explaining how to find the ash tree's age from its tree-rings.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Ray's work on plant taxonomy spanned a wide range of thought, starting with an approach that was predominantly in the tradition of the herbalists and Aristotelian, but becoming increasingly theoretical and finally rejecting Aristotelianism. Despite his early adherence to Aristotelian tradition, his first botanical work, the Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium (1660), was almost entirely descriptive, being arranged alphabetically. His model was an account by Bauhin of the plants growing around Basel in 1622 and was the first English county flora, covering about 630 species. However at the end of the work he appended a brief taxonomy which he stated followed the usage of Bauhin and other herbalists.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Ray's system, starting with his Cambridge catalogue, began with the division between the imperfect or lower plants (Cryptogams), and perfect (planta perfecta) higher plants (Seed plants). The latter he divided by life forms, e.g. trees (arbores), shrubs (frutices), subshrubs (suffrutices) and herbaceous plants (herbae) and lastly grouping them by common characteristics. The trees he divided into 8 groups, e.g. Pomiferae (including apple and pear). The shrubs he placed in 2 groups, Spinosi (Berberis etc.) and Non Spinosi (Jasmine etc.). The subshrubs formed a single group and the herbs into 21 groups.",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Division of Herbae;",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "As outlined in his Historia Plantarum (1685–1703):",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Ray was the first person to produce a biological definition of species, in his 1686 History of Plants:",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Ray published about 23 works, depending on how they are counted. The biological works were usually in Latin, the rest in English. His first publication, while at Cambridge, was the Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium (1660), followed by many works, botanical, zoological,theological and literary. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after \"having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him\".",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Including the various editions, there are 172 works of Ray, of which most are rare. The only libraries with substantial holdings are all in England. The list in order of holdings is:",
"title": "Work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Ray's biographer, Charles Raven, commented that \"Ray sweeps away the litter of mythology and fable... and always insists upon accuracy of observation and description and the testing of every new discovery\". Ray's works were directly influential on the development of taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Ray Society, named after John Ray, was founded in 1844. It is a scientific text publication society and registered charity, based at the Natural History Museum, London, which exists to publish books on natural history, with particular (but not exclusive) reference to the flora and fauna of the British Isles. As of 2017, the Society had published 179 volumes.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The John Ray Society (a separate organisation) is the Natural Sciences Society at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. It organises a programme of events of interest to science students in the college.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1986, to mark the 300th anniversary of the publication of Ray's Historia Plantarum, there was a celebration of Ray's legacy in Braintree, Essex. A \"John Ray Gallery\" was opened in the Braintree Museum.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The John Ray Initiative (JRI) is an educational charity that seeks to reconcile scientific and Christian understandings of the environment. It was formed in 1997 in response to the global environmental crisis and the challenges of sustainable development and environmental stewardship. John Ray's writings proclaimed God as creator whose wisdom is \"manifest in the works of creation\", and as redeemer of all things. JRI aims to teach appreciation of nature, increase awareness of the state of the global environment, and to promote a Christian understanding of environmental issues.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| John Ray FRS was a Christian English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him". He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified by repeated sub-division into groups according to a pre-conceived series of characteristics they have or have not, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. He was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of species, as "a group of morphologically similar organisms arising from a common ancestor". Another significant contribution to taxonomy was his division of plants into those with two seedling leaves (dicotyledons) or only one (monocotyledons), a division used in taxonomy today. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-14T20:30:25Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ray |
15,600 | James Joyce | James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.
Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers–run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit Belvedere College and graduated from University College Dublin in 1902. In 1904, he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and they moved to mainland Europe. He briefly worked in Pula and then moved to Trieste in Austria-Hungary, working as an English instructor. Except for an eight-month stay in Rome working as a correspondence clerk and three visits to Dublin, Joyce resided there until 1915. In Trieste, he published his book of poems Chamber Music and his short story collection Dubliners, and he began serially publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the English magazine The Egoist. During most of World War I, Joyce lived in Zürich, Switzerland, and worked on Ulysses. After the war, he briefly returned to Trieste and then moved to Paris in 1920, which became his primary residence until 1940.
Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, but its publication in the United Kingdom and the United States was prohibited because of its perceived obscenity. Copies were smuggled into both countries and pirated versions were printed until the mid-1930s, when publication finally became legal. Joyce started his next major work, Finnegans Wake, in 1923, publishing it sixteen years later in 1939. Between these years, Joyce travelled widely. He and Nora were married in a civil ceremony in London in 1931. He made a number of trips to Switzerland, frequently seeking treatment for his increasingly severe eye problems and psychological help for his daughter, Lucia. When France was occupied by Germany during World War II, Joyce moved back to Zürich in 1940. He died there in 1941 after surgery for a perforated ulcer, less than one month before his 59th birthday.
Ulysses frequently ranks high in lists of great books of literature, and the academic literature analysing his work is extensive and ongoing. Many writers, film-makers, and other artists have been influenced by his stylistic innovations, such as his meticulous attention to detail, use of interior monologue, wordplay, and the radical transformation of traditional plot and character development. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, his fictional universe centres on Dublin and is largely populated by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set in the streets and alleyways of the city. Joyce is quoted as saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland, to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane "May" (née Murray). He was the eldest of ten surviving siblings. He was baptised with the name James Augustine Joyce according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Rev. John O'Mulloy. His godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. John Stanislaus Joyce's family came from Fermoy in County Cork, where they owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's paternal grandfather, James Augustine, married Ellen O'Connell, daughter of John O'Connell, a Cork alderman who owned a drapery business and other properties in Cork City. Ellen's family claimed kinship with the political leader Daniel O'Connell, who had helped secure Catholic emancipation for the Irish in 1829.
Joyce's father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation in 1887. The family moved to the fashionable small town of Bray, 12 miles (19 km) from Dublin. Joyce was attacked by a dog around this time, leading to his lifelong fear of dogs. He later developed a fear of thunderstorms, which he acquired through a superstitious aunt who had described them as a sign of God's wrath.
In 1891, nine-year-old Joyce wrote the poem "Et Tu, Healy" on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell that his father printed and distributed to friends. The poem expressed the sentiments of the elder Joyce, who was angry at Parnell's apparent betrayal by the Irish Catholic Church, the Irish Parliamentary Party, and the British Liberal Party that resulted in a collaborative failure to secure Irish Home Rule in the British Parliament. This sense of betrayal, particularly by the church, left a lasting impression that Joyce expressed in his life and art.
That year, his family began to slide into poverty, worsened by his father's drinking and financial mismanagement. John Joyce's name was published in Stubbs' Gazette, a blacklist of debtors and bankrupts, in November 1891, and he was temporarily suspended from work. In January 1893, he was dismissed with a reduced pension.
Joyce began his education in 1888 at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, but had to leave in 1891 when his father could no longer pay the fees. He studied at home and briefly attended the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin. Joyce's father then had a chance meeting with the Jesuit priest John Conmee, who knew the family. Conmee arranged for Joyce and his brother Stanislaus to attend the Jesuits' Dublin school, Belvedere College, without fees starting in 1893. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected by his peers to join the Sodality of Our Lady. Joyce spent five years at Belvedere, his intellectual formation guided by the principles of Jesuit education laid down in the Ratio Studiorum (Plan of Studies). He displayed his writing talent by winning first place for English composition in his final two years before graduating in 1898.
Joyce enrolled at University College in 1898 to study English, French and Italian. While there, he was exposed to the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas, which had a strong influence on his thought for the rest of his life. He participated in many of Dublin's theatrical and literary circles. His closest colleagues included leading Irish figures of his generation, most notably, George Clancy, Tom Kettle and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. Many of the acquaintances he made at this time appeared in his work. His first publication— a laudatory review of Henrik Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken—was printed in The Fortnightly Review in 1900. Inspired by Ibsen's works, Joyce sent him a fan letter in Norwegian and wrote a play, A Brilliant Career, which he later destroyed.
In 1901 the National Census of Ireland listed Joyce as a 19-year-old Irish- and English-speaking unmarried student living with his parents, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace (now Inverness Road) in Clontarf, Dublin. During this year he became friends with Oliver St. John Gogarty, the model for Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. In November, Joyce wrote an article, The Day of the Rabblement, criticising the Irish Literary Theatre for its unwillingness to produce the works of playwrights like Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, and Gerhart Hauptmann. He protested against nostalgic Irish populism and argued for an outward-looking, cosmopolitan literature. Because he mentioned Gabriele D'Annunzio's novel, Il fuoco (The Flame), which was on the Roman Catholic list of prohibited books, his college magazine refused to print it. Joyce and Sheehy-Skeffington—who had also had an article rejected—had their essays jointly printed and distributed. Arthur Griffith decried the censorship of Joyce's work in his newspaper United Irishman.
Joyce graduated from the Royal University of Ireland in October 1902. He considered studying medicine and began attending lectures at the Catholic University Medical School in Dublin. When the medical school refused to provide a tutoring position to help finance his education, he left Dublin to study medicine in Paris, where he received permission to attend the course for a certificate in physics, chemistry, and biology at the École de Médecine. By the end of January 1903, he had given up plans to study medicine but he stayed in Paris, often reading late in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. He frequently wrote home claiming ill health due to the water, the cold weather, and his change of diet, appealing for money his family could ill-afford.
In April 1903, Joyce learned his mother was dying and immediately returned to Ireland. He would tend to her, reading aloud from drafts that would eventually be worked into his unfinished novel Stephen Hero. During her final days, she unsuccessfully tried to get him to make his confession and to take communion. She died on 13 August. Afterwards, Joyce and Stanislaus refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside. John Joyce's drinking and abusiveness increased in the months following her death, and the family began to fall apart. Joyce spent much of his time carousing with Gogarty and his medical school colleagues, and tried to scrape together a living by reviewing books.
Joyce's life began to change when he met Nora Barnacle on 10 June 1904. She was a twenty-year-old woman from Galway city, who was working in Dublin as a chambermaid. They had their first outing together on 16 June 1904, walking through the Dublin suburb of Ringsend, where Nora masturbated him. This event was commemorated as the date for the action of Ulysses, known in popular culture as "Bloomsday" in honour of the novel's main character Leopold Bloom. This began a relationship that continued for thirty-seven years until Joyce died. Soon after this outing, Joyce, who had been carousing with his colleagues, approached a young woman in St Stephen's Green and was beaten up by her companion. He was picked up and dusted off by an acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H. Hunter, who took him into his home to tend to his injuries. Hunter, who was rumoured to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, became one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses.
Joyce was a talented tenor and explored becoming a musical performer. On 8 May 1904, he was a contestant in the Feis Ceoil, an Irish music competition for promising composers, instrumentalists and singers. In the months before the contest, Joyce took singing lessons with two voice instructors, Benedetto Palmieri and Vincent O'Brien. He paid the entry fee by pawning some of his books. For the contest, Joyce had to sing three songs. He did well with the first two, but when he was told he had to sight read the third, he refused. Joyce won the third-place medal anyway. After the contest, Palmieri wrote Joyce that Luigi Denza, the composer of the popular song Funiculì, Funiculà who was the judge for the contest, spoke highly of his voice and would have given him first place but for the sight-reading and lack of sufficient training. Palmieri even offered to give Joyce free singing lessons afterwards. Joyce refused the lessons, but kept singing in Dublin concerts that year. His performance at a concert given on 27 August may have solidified Nora's devotion to him.
Throughout 1904, Joyce sought to develop his literary reputation. On 7 January he attempted to publish a prose work examining aesthetics called A Portrait of the Artist, but it was rejected by the intellectual journal Dana. He then reworked it into a fictional novel of his youth that he called Stephen Hero that he labored over for years but eventually abandoned. He wrote a satirical poem called "The Holy Office", which parodied W. B. Yeats's poem "To Ireland in the Coming Times" and once more mocked the Irish Literary Revival. It too was rejected for publication; this time for being "unholy". He wrote the collection of poems Chamber Music at this time; which was also rejected. He did publish three poems, one in Dana and two in The Speaker, and George William Russell published three of Joyce's short stories in the Irish Homestead. These stories—"The Sisters", "Eveline", and "After the Race"—were the beginnings of Dubliners.
In September 1904, Joyce was having difficulties finding a place to live and moved into a Martello tower near Dublin, which Gogarty was renting. Within a week, Joyce left when Gogarty and another roommate, Dermot Chenevix Trench, fired a pistol in the middle of the night at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed. With the help of funds from Lady Gregory and a few other acquaintances, Joyce and Nora left Ireland less than a month later.
In October 1904, Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile. They briefly stopped in London and Paris to secure funds before heading on to Zürich. Joyce had been informed through an agent in England that there was a vacancy at the Berlitz Language School, but when he arrived there was no position. The couple stayed in Zürich for a little over a week. The director of the school sent Joyce on to Trieste, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the First World War. There was no vacancy there either. The director of the school in Trieste, Almidano Artifoni, secured a position for him in Pola, then Austria-Hungary's major naval base, where he mainly taught English to naval officers. Less than one month after the couple had left Ireland, Nora had already become pregnant. Joyce soon became close friends with Alessandro Francini Bruni, the director of the school at Pola, and his wife Clothilde. By the beginning of 1905, both families were living together. Joyce kept writing when he could. He completed a short story for Dubliners, "Clay", and worked on his novel Stephen Hero. He disliked Pola, calling it a "back-of-God-speed place—a naval Siberia", and soon as a job became available, he went to Trieste.
When 23-year-old Joyce first moved to Trieste in March 1905, he immediately started teaching English at the Berlitz school. By June, Joyce felt financially secure enough to have his satirical poem "Holy Office" printed and asked Stanislaus to distribute copies to his former associates in Dublin. After Nora gave birth to their first child, Giorgio, on 27 July 1905, Joyce convinced Stanislaus to move to Trieste and got a position for him at the Berlitz school. Stanislaus moved in with Joyce as soon as he arrived in October, and most of his salary went directly to supporting Joyce's family. In February 1906, the Joyce household once more shared an apartment with the Francini Brunis.
Joyce kept writing despite all these changes. He completed 24 chapters of Stephen Hero and all but the final story of Dubliners. But he was unable to get Dubliners in press. Though the London publisher Grant Richards had contracted with Joyce to publish it, the printers were unwilling to print passages they found controversial because English law could hold them liable if they were brought to court for indecent language. Richards and Joyce went back and forth trying to find a solution where the book could avoid legal liability while preserving Joyce's sense of artistic integrity. As they continued to negotiate, Richards began to scrutinise the stories more carefully. He became concerned that the book might damage his publishing house's reputation and eventually backed down from his agreement.
Trieste was Joyce's main residence until 1920. Although he would temporarily leave the city—briefly staying in Rome, travelling to Dublin, and emigrating to Zürich during World War I— it became a second Dublin for him and played an important role in his development as a writer. He completed Dubliners, reworked Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, wrote his only published play Exiles, and decided to make Ulysses a full-length novel as he created his notes and jottings for the work. He worked out the characters of Leopold and Molly Bloom in Trieste. Many of the novel's details were taken from Joyce's observation of the city and its people, and some of its stylistic innovations appear to have been influenced by Futurism. There are even words of the Triestine dialect in Finnegans Wake. Joyce was introduced to the Greek Orthodox liturgy in Trieste. Under its influence, he rewrote his first short story and would later draw on it in creating the liturgical parodies in Ulysses.
In late May 1906, the head of the Berlitz school ran away after embezzling its funds. Artifoni took over the school but let Joyce know that he could only afford to keep one brother on. Tired of Trieste and discouraged that he could not get a publisher for Dubliners, Joyce found an advertisement for a correspondence clerk in a Roman bank that paid twice his current salary. He was hired for the position, and went to Rome at the end of July.
Joyce felt he accomplished very little during his brief stay in Rome, but it had a large impact on his writing. Though his new job took up most of his time, he revised Dubliners and worked on Stephen Hero. Rome was the birthplace of the idea for "The Dead", which would become the final story of Dubliners, and for Ulysses, which was originally conceived as a short story. His stay in the city was one of his inspirations for Exiles. While there, he read the socialist historian Guglielmo Ferrero in depth. Ferrero's anti-heroic interpretations of history, arguments against militarism, and conflicted attitudes toward Jews would find their way into Ulysses, particularly in the character of Leopold Bloom. In London, Elkin Mathews published Chamber Music on the recommendation of the British poet Arthur Symons. Nonetheless, Joyce was dissatisfied with his job, had exhausted his finances, and realised he would need additional support when he learned Nora was pregnant again. He left Rome after only seven months.
Joyce returned to Trieste in March 1907, but was unable to find full-time work. He went back to being an English instructor, working part time for Berlitz and giving private lessons. The author Ettore Schmitz, better known by pen name Italo Svevo, was one of his students. Svevo was a Catholic of Jewish origin who became one of the models for Leopold Bloom. Joyce learned much of what he knew about Judaism from him. The two became lasting friends and mutual critics. Svevo supported Joyce's identity as an author, helping him work through his writer's block with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Roberto Prezioso, editor of the Italian newspaper Piccolo della Sera, was another of Joyce's students. He helped Joyce financially by commissioning him to write for the newspaper. Joyce quickly produced three articles aimed toward the Italian irredentists in Trieste. He indirectly paralleled their desire for independence from Austria-Hungary with the struggle of the Irish from British rule. Joyce earned additional money by giving a series of lectures on Ireland and the arts at Trieste's Università Popolare. In May, Joyce was struck by an attack of rheumatic fever, which left him incapacitated for weeks. The illness exacerbated eye problems that plagued him for the rest of his life. While Joyce was still recovering from the attack, Lucia was born on 26 July 1907. During his convalescence, he was able to finish "The Dead", the last story of Dubliners.
Although a heavy drinker, Joyce gave up alcohol for a period in 1908. He reworked Stephen Hero as the more concise and interior A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He completed the third chapter by April and translated John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea into Italian with the help of Nicolò Vidacovich. He even took singing lessons again. Joyce had been looking for an English publisher for Dubliners but was unable to find one, so he submitted it to a Dublin publisher, Maunsel and Company, owned by George Roberts.
In July 1909, Joyce received a year's advance payment from one of his students and returned to Ireland to introduce Giorgio to both sides of the family (his own in Dublin and Nora's in Galway). He unsuccessfully applied for the position of Chair of Italian at his alma mater, which had become University College Dublin. He met with Roberts, who seemed positive about publishing the Dubliners. He returned to Trieste in September with his sister Eva, who helped Nora run the home. Joyce only stayed in Trieste for a month, as he almost immediately came upon the idea of starting a cinema in Dublin, which unlike Trieste had none. He quickly got the backing of some Triestine business men and returned to Dublin in October, launching Ireland's first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph. It was initially well-received, but fell apart after Joyce left. He returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen.
From 1910 to 1912, Joyce still lacked a reliable income. This brought his conflicts with Stanislaus, who was frustrated with lending him money, to their peak. In 1912, Prezioso arranged for him to lecture on Hamlet for the Minerva Society between November 1912 and February 1913. Joyce once more lectured at the Università Popolare on various topics in English literature and applied for a teaching diploma in English at the University of Padua. He performed very well on the qualification tests, but was denied because Italy did not recognise his degree from an Irish university. In 1912, Joyce and his family returned to Dublin briefly in the summer. While there, his three-year-long struggle with Roberts over the publication of Dubliners came to an end as Roberts refused to publish the book due to concerns of libel. Roberts had the printed sheets destroyed, though Joyce was able to obtain a copy of the proof sheets. When Joyce returned to Trieste, he wrote an invective against Roberts, "Gas from a Burner". He never went to Dublin again.
Joyce's fortunes changed for the better in 1913 when Richards agreed to publish Dubliners. It was issued on 15 June 1914, eight and a half years since Joyce had first submitted it to him. Around the same time, he found an unexpected advocate in Ezra Pound, who was living in London. On the advice of Yeats, Pound wrote to Joyce asking if he could include a poem from Chamber Music, "I Hear an Army Charging upon the Land" in the journal Des Imagistes. They struck up a correspondence that lasted until the late 1930s. Pound became Joyce's promoter, helping ensure that Joyce's works were both published and publicized.
After Pound persuaded Dora Marsden to serially publish A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the London literary magazine The Egoist, Joyce's pace of writing increased. He completed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by 1914; resumed Exiles, completing it in 1915; started the novelette Giacomo Joyce, which he eventually abandoned; and began drafting Ulysses.
In August 1914, World War I broke out. Although Joyce and Stanislaus were subjects of the United Kingdom, which was now at war with Austria-Hungary, they remained in Trieste. Even when Stanislaus, who had publicly expressed his sympathy for the Triestine irredentists, was interned at the beginning of January 1915, Joyce chose to stay. In May 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, and less than a month later Joyce took his family to Zürich in neutral Switzerland.
Joyce arrived in Zürich as a double exile: he was an Irishman with a British passport and a Triestine on parole from Austria-Hungary. To get to Switzerland, he had to promise the Austro-Hungarian officials that he would not help the Allies during the war, and he and his family had to leave almost all of their possessions in Trieste. During the war, he was kept under surveillance by both the British and Austro-Hungarian secret services.
Joyce's first concern was earning a living. One of Nora's relatives sent them a small sum to cover the first few months. Pound and Yeats worked with the British government to provide a stipend from the Royal Literary Fund in 1915 and a grant from the British civil list the following year. Eventually, Joyce received large regular sums from the editor Harriet Shaw Weaver, who operated The Egoist, and the psychotherapist Edith Rockefeller McCormick, who lived in Zürich studying under Carl Jung. Weaver financially supported Joyce throughout the entirety of his life and even paid for his funeral. Between 1917 and the beginning of 1919, Joyce was financially secure and lived quite well; the family sometimes stayed in Locarno in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. However, health problems remained a constant issue. During their time in Zürich, both Joyce and Nora suffered illnesses that were diagnosed as "nervous breakdowns" and he had to undergo many eye surgeries.
During the war, Zürich was the centre of a vibrant expatriate community. Joyce's regular evening hangout was the Cafe Pfauen, where he got to know a number of the artists living in the city at the time, including the sculptor August Suter and the painter Frank Budgen. He often used the time spent with them as material for Ulysses. He made the acquaintance of the writer Stefan Zweig, who organised the premiere of Exiles in Munich in August 1919. He became aware of Dada, which was coming into its own at the Cabaret Voltaire. He may have even met the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin at the Cafe Odeon, a place they both frequented.
Joyce kept up his interest in music. He met Ferruccio Busoni, staged music with Otto Luening, and learned music theory from Philipp Jarnach. Much of what Joyce learned about musical notation and counterpoint found its way into Ulysses, particularly the "Sirens" section.
Joyce avoided public discussion of the war's politics and maintained a strict neutrality. He made few comments about the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland; although he was sympathetic to the Irish independence movement, he disagreed with its violence. He stayed intently focused on Ulysses and the ongoing struggle to get his work published. Some of the serial instalments of "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in The Egoist had been censored by the printers, but the entire novel was published by B. W. Huebsch in 1916. In 1918, Pound got a commitment from Margaret Caroline Anderson, the owner and editor of the New York-based literary magazine The Little Review, to publish Ulysses serially.
Joyce co-founded an acting company, the English Players, and became its business manager. The company was pitched to the British government as a contribution to the war effort, and mainly staged works by Irish playwrights, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and John Millington Synge. For Synge's Riders to the Sea, Nora played a principal role and Joyce sang offstage, which he did again when Robert Browning's In a Balcony was staged. He hoped the company would eventually stage his play, Exiles, but his participation in the English Players declined in the wake of the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918, though the company continued until 1920.
Joyce's work with the English Players involved him in a lawsuit. Henry Wilfred Carr, a wounded war veteran and British consul, accused Joyce of underpaying him for his role in The Importance of Being Earnest. Carr sued for compensation; Joyce countersued for libel. The cases were resolved in 1919, with Joyce winning the compensation case but losing the one for libel. The incident ended up creating acrimony between the British consulate and Joyce for the rest of his time in Zürich.
By 1919, Joyce was in financial straits again. McCormick stopped paying her stipend, partly because he refused to submit to psychoanalysis from Jung, and Zürich had become expensive to live in after the war. Furthermore, he was becoming isolated as the city's emigres returned home. In October 1919, Joyce's family moved back to Trieste, but it had changed. The Austro-Hungarian empire had ceased to exist, and Trieste was now an Italian city in post-war recovery. Eight months after his return, Joyce went to Sirmione, Italy, to meet Pound, who made arrangements for him to move to Paris. Joyce and his family packed their belongings and headed for Paris in June 1920.
When Joyce and his family arrived in Paris in July 1920, their visit was intended to be a layover on their way to London. For the first four months, he stayed with Ludmila Savitzky [fr] and met Sylvia Beach, who ran the Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Beach quickly became an important person in Joyce's life, providing financial support, and becoming one of Joyce's publishers. Through Beach and Pound, Joyce quickly joined the intellectual circle of Paris and was integrated into the international modernist artist community. Joyce met Valery Larbaud, who championed Joyce's works to the French and supervised the French translation of Ulysses. Paris became the Joyces' regular residence for twenty years, though they never settled into a single location for long.
Joyce finished writing Ulysses near the end of 1921, but had difficulties getting it published. With financial backing from the lawyer John Quinn, Margaret Anderson and her co-editor Jane Heap had begun serially publishing it in The Little Review in March 1918 but in January and May 1919, two instalments were suppressed as obscene and potentially subversive. In September 1920, an unsolicited instalment of the "Nausicaa" episode was sent to the daughter of a New York attorney associated with the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, leading to an official complaint. The trial proceedings continued until February 1921, when both Anderson and Healy, defended by Quinn, were fined $50 each for publishing obscenity and ordered to cease publishing Ulysses. Huebsch, who had expressed interest in publishing the novel in the United States, decided against it after the trial. Weaver was unable to find an English printer, and the novel was banned for obscenity in the United Kingdom in 1922, where it was blacklisted until 1936.
Almost immediately after Anderson and Healy were ordered to stop printing Ulysses, Beach agreed to publish it through her bookshop. She had books mailed to people in Paris and the United States who had subscribed to get a copy; Weaver mailed books from Beach's plates to subscribers in England. Soon, the postal officials of both countries began confiscating the books. They were then smuggled into both countries. Because the work had no copyright in the United States at this time, "bootleg" versions appeared, including pirate versions from publisher Samuel Roth, who only ceased his actions in 1928 when a court enjoined publication. Ulysses was not legally published in the United States until 1934 after Judge John M. Woolsey ruled in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses that the book was not obscene.
In 1923, Joyce began his next work, an experimental novel that eventually became Finnegans Wake. It would take sixteen years to complete. At first, Joyce called it Work in Progress, which was the name Ford Madox Ford used in April 1924 when he published its "Mamalujo" episode in his magazine, The Transatlantic Review. In 1926, Eugene and Maria Jolas serialised the novel in their magazine, transition. When parts of the novel first came out, some of Joyce's supporters—like Stanislaus, Pound, and Weaver— wrote negatively about it, and it was criticised by writers like Seán Ó Faoláin, Wyndham Lewis, and Rebecca West. In response, Joyce and the Jolases organised the publication of a collection of positive essays titled Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, which included writings by Samuel Beckett and William Carlos Williams. An additional purpose of publishing these essays was to market Work in Progress to a larger audience. Joyce publicly revealed the novel's title as Finnegans Wake in 1939, the same year he completed it. It was published in London by Faber and Faber with the assistance of T. S. Eliot.
Joyce's health problems afflicted him throughout his Paris years. He had over a dozen eye operations, but his vision severely declined. By 1930, he was practically blind in the left eye and his right eye functioned poorly. He even had all of his teeth removed because of infection. At one point, Joyce became worried that he could not finish Finnegans Wake, asking the Irish author James Stephens to complete it if something should happen.
Joyce's financial problems continued. Although he was now earning a good income from his investments and royalties, his spending habits often left him without available money. Despite these issues, he published Pomes Penyeach in 1927, a collection of thirteen poems that he wrote in Trieste, Zürich and Paris.
In 1930, Joyce began thinking of establishing a residence in London once more, primarily to assure that Giorgio, who had just married Helen Fleischmann, would have his inheritance secured under British law. Joyce moved to London, obtained a long-term lease on a flat, registered on the electoral roll, and became liable for jury service. After living together for twenty-seven years, Joyce and Nora got married at the Register Office in Kensington on 4 July 1931. Joyce stayed in London for at least six months to establish his residency, but abandoned his flat and returned to Paris later in the year when Lucia showed signs of mental illness. He planned to return, but never did and later became disaffected with England.
In later years, Joyce lived in Paris but frequently travelled to Switzerland for eye surgery or for treatment for Lucia, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung, who had previously written that Ulysses was similar to schizophrenic writing. Jung suggested that she and her father were two people going into a river, except that Joyce was diving and Lucia was falling. In spite of Joyce's attempts to help Lucia, she remained permanently institutionalised after his death.
In the late 1930s, Joyce became increasingly concerned about the rise of fascism and antisemitism. As early as 1938, Joyce was involved in helping a number of Jews escape Nazi persecution. After the fall of France in 1940, Joyce and his family fled from Nazi occupation, returning to Zürich a final time.
On 11 January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. He fell into a coma the following day. He awoke at 2 am on 13 January 1941, and asked a nurse to call his wife and son. They were en route when he died 15 minutes later, less than a month before his 59th birthday.
His body was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zürich. Swiss tenor Max Meili sang "Addio terra, addio cielo" from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the burial service. Joyce had been a subject of the United Kingdom all of his life, and only the British consul attended the funeral. Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral. When Joseph Walshe, secretary at the Department of External Affairs in Dublin, was informed of Joyce's death by Frank Cremins, chargé d'affaires at Bern, Walshe responded, "Please wire details of Joyce's death. If possible find out did he die a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain inability to attend funeral." Buried originally in an ordinary grave, Joyce was moved in 1966 to a more prominent "honour grave", with a seated portrait statue by American artist Milton Hebald nearby. Nora, whom he had married in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.
After Joyce's death, the Irish government declined Nora's request to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains, despite being persistently lobbied by the American diplomat John J. Slocum. In October 2019, a motion was put to Dublin City Council to plan and budget for the costs of the exhumations and reburials of Joyce and his family somewhere in Dublin, subject to his family's wishes. The proposal immediately became controversial, with the Irish Times commenting: " ... it is hard not to suspect that there is a calculating, even mercantile, aspect to contemporary Ireland's relationship to its great writers, whom we are often more keen to 'celebrate', and if possible monetise, than read".
Throughout his life, Joyce stayed actively interested in Irish national politics and in its relationship to British colonialism. He studied socialism and anarchism. He attended socialist meetings and expressed an individualist view influenced by Benjamin Tucker's philosophy and Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". He described his opinions as "those of a socialist artist". Joyce's direct engagement in politics was strongest during his time in Trieste, when he submitted newspaper articles, gave lectures, and wrote letters advocating for Ireland's independence from British rule. After leaving Trieste, Joyce's direct involvement in politics waned, but his later works still reflect his commitment. He remained sympathetic to individualism and critical of coercive ideologies such as nationalism. His novels address socialist, anarchist and Irish nationalist issues. Ulysses has been read as a novel critiquing the effect of British colonialism on the Irish people. Finnegans Wake has been read as a work that investigates the divisive issues of Irish politics, the interrelationship between colonialism and race, and the coercive oppression of nationalism and fascism.
Joyce's politics is reflected in his attitude toward his British passport. He wrote about the negative effects of British occupation in Ireland and was sympathetic to the attempts of the Irish to free themselves from it. In 1907, he expressed his support for the early Sinn Féin movement before the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. However, throughout his life, Joyce refused to exchange his British passport for an Irish one. When he had a choice, he opted to renew his British passport in 1935 instead of obtaining one from the Irish Free State, and he chose to keep it in 1940 when accepting an Irish passport could have helped him to leave Vichy France more easily. His refusal to change his passport was partly due to the advantages that a British passport gave him internationally, his being out of sympathy with the violence of Irish politics, and his dismay over the Irish Free State's political relationship with the Catholic Church.
Joyce had a complex relationship with religion. Firsthand statements by him and Stanislaus, attest that he did not consider himself a Catholic, though his work is deeply influenced by Catholicism. In particular, his intellectual foundations were grounded in his early Jesuitical education. Even after he left Ireland, he sometimes went to church. When living in Trieste, he woke up early to attend Catholic Mass on Holy Thursday and Good Friday or occasionally attended Eastern Orthodox services, stating that he liked the ceremonies better.
Some critics have argued that Joyce firmly rejected the Catholic faith. He lapsed from the Church early in life and Nora refused to allow a Catholic service when he died. His works frequently critique, ridicule, and blaspheme Catholicism, and he appropriates Catholic rituals and concepts for his own artistic purposes. Nevertheless, Catholic critics have argued that Joyce never fully abandoned his faith, wrestling with it in his writings and becoming increasingly reconciled with it. They argue that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are expressions of a Catholic sensibility, insisting that the critical views of religion expressed by the characters in his novel do not represent the views of Joyce the author.
Other critics have suggested that Joyce's apparent apostasy was less a denial of faith than a transmutation, a criticism of the Church's adverse impact on spiritual life, politics, and personal development. Joyce's attitude toward Catholicism has been described as an enigma in which there are two Joyces: a modern one who resisted the power of Catholicism and another who maintained his allegiance to its traditions. He has been compared to the medieval episcopi vagantes (wandering bishops), who left their discipline but not their cultural heritage of thought.
Joyce's responses to questions about his faith were often ambiguous. For example, during an interview after the completion of Ulysses, Joyce was asked, "When did you leave the Catholic Church?" He answered, "That's for the Church to say."
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories first published in 1914, that form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around the city in the early 20th century. The tales were written when Irish nationalism and the search for national identity was at its peak. Joyce holds up a mirror to that identity as a first step in the spiritual liberation of Ireland. The stories centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment when a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories are narrated by child protagonists. Later stories deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This aligns with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence, and maturity.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916, is a shortened rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. It is a Künstlerroman, a kind of coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of the protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. It functions both as an autobiographical fiction of the author and a biography of the fictional protagonist. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings are evident throughout this novel.
Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband-and-wife relationship, the play looks back to "The Dead" (the final story in Dubliners) and forward to Ulysses, which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.
He published three books of poetry. The first full-length collection was Chamber Music (1907), which consisted of 36 short lyrics. It led to his inclusion in the Imagist Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound, a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime includes "Gas from a Burner" (1912), Pomes Penyeach (1927), and "Ecce Puer" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). These were published by the Black Sun Press in Collected Poems (1936).
The action of Ulysses starts on 16 June 1904 at 8 am and ends sometime after 2 am the following morning. Much of it occurs inside the minds of the characters, who are portrayed through techniques such as interior monologue, dialogue, and soliloquy. The novel consists of 18 episodes, each covering roughly one hour of the day using a unique literary style. Joyce structured each chapter to refer to an individual episode in Homer's Odyssey, as well as a specific colour, a particular art or science, and a bodily organ. Ulysses sets the characters and incidents of Homer's Odyssey in 1904 Dublin, representing Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope, and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus. It uses humor, including parody, satire and comedy, to contrast the novel's characters with their Homeric models. Joyce played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles so the work could be read independently of its Homeric structure.
Ulysses can be read as a study of Dublin in 1904, exploring various aspects of the city's life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe, it could be rebuilt using his work as a model. To achieve this sense of detail, he relied on his memory, what he heard other people remember, and his readings to create a sense of fastidious detail. Joyce regularly used the 1904 edition of Thom's Directory—a work that listed the owners and tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city—to ensure his descriptions were accurate. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing, reliance on a formal schema to structure the narrative, and an exquisite attention to detail represents one of the book's major contributions to the development of 20th-century modernist literature.
Finnegans Wake is an experimental novel that pushes stream of consciousness and literary allusions to their extremes. Although the work can be read from beginning to end, Joyce's writing transforms traditional ideas of plot and character development through his wordplay, allowing the book to be read nonlinearly. Much of the word play stems from the work being written in a peculiar and obscure English, based mainly on complex multilevel puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than, that used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky and draws on a wide range of languages. The associative nature of its language has led to it being interpreted as the story of a dream.
The metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola, who Joyce had read in his youth, plays an important role in Finnegans Wake, as it provides the framework for how the identities of the characters interplay and are transformed. Giambattista Vico's cyclical view of history (in which civilisation rises from chaos, passes through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapses back into chaos) structures the text's narrative, as evidenced by the opening and closing words of the book: Finnegans Wake opens with the words "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs" and ends "A way a lone a last a loved a long the". In other words, the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of the same sentence, turning the narrative into one great cycle.
Joyce's work still has a profound influence on contemporary culture. Ulysses is a model for fiction writers, particularly its explorations in the power of language. Its emphasis on the details of everyday life have opened up new possibilities of expression for authors, painters and film-makers. It retains its prestige among readers, often ranking high on 'Great Book' lists. Joyce's innovations extend beyond English literature: his writing has been an inspiration for Latin American writers, and Finnegans Wake has become one of the key texts for French post-structuralism. It also provided the name for the quark, one of the elementary particles proposed by physicist Murray Gell-Mann.
The open-ended form of Joyce's novels keep them open to constant reinterpretation. They inspire an increasingly global community of literary critics. Joyce studies—based on a relatively small canon of three novels, a small short story collection, one play, and two small books of poems—have generated over 15,000 articles, monographs, theses, translations, and editions.
In popular culture, the work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually on 16 June, known as Bloomsday, in Dublin and in an increasing number of cities worldwide.
The National Library of Ireland holds a large collection of Joycean material including manuscripts and notebooks, much of it available online. A joint venture between the library and University College Dublin, the Museum of Literature Ireland (branded MoLI in homage to Molly Bloom), the majority of whose exhibits are about Joyce and his work, has both a small permanent Joyce-related collection, and borrows from its parent institutions; its displays include "Copy No. 1" of Ulysses. Dedicated centres in Dublin include the James Joyce Centre in North Great George's Street, the James Joyce Tower and Museum in Sandycove (the Martello tower where Joyce once lived, and the setting for the opening scene in Ulysses), and the Dublin Writers Museum. University College London holds the only major research collection of Joyce's work in the United Kingdom, including first editions of all of Joyce's major works, most other early and later editions (including translations), as well as critical and background literature.
Citations
Hibbert, Jeffrey (2011). "Joyce's loss of faith". Journal of Modern Literature. 34 (2): 196–203. JSTOR 10.2979/jmodelite.34.2.196.
Joyce Papers, National Library of Ireland
Electronic editions
Resources | [
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"text": "James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers–run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit Belvedere College and graduated from University College Dublin in 1902. In 1904, he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and they moved to mainland Europe. He briefly worked in Pula and then moved to Trieste in Austria-Hungary, working as an English instructor. Except for an eight-month stay in Rome working as a correspondence clerk and three visits to Dublin, Joyce resided there until 1915. In Trieste, he published his book of poems Chamber Music and his short story collection Dubliners, and he began serially publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the English magazine The Egoist. During most of World War I, Joyce lived in Zürich, Switzerland, and worked on Ulysses. After the war, he briefly returned to Trieste and then moved to Paris in 1920, which became his primary residence until 1940.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, but its publication in the United Kingdom and the United States was prohibited because of its perceived obscenity. Copies were smuggled into both countries and pirated versions were printed until the mid-1930s, when publication finally became legal. Joyce started his next major work, Finnegans Wake, in 1923, publishing it sixteen years later in 1939. Between these years, Joyce travelled widely. He and Nora were married in a civil ceremony in London in 1931. He made a number of trips to Switzerland, frequently seeking treatment for his increasingly severe eye problems and psychological help for his daughter, Lucia. When France was occupied by Germany during World War II, Joyce moved back to Zürich in 1940. He died there in 1941 after surgery for a perforated ulcer, less than one month before his 59th birthday.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Ulysses frequently ranks high in lists of great books of literature, and the academic literature analysing his work is extensive and ongoing. Many writers, film-makers, and other artists have been influenced by his stylistic innovations, such as his meticulous attention to detail, use of interior monologue, wordplay, and the radical transformation of traditional plot and character development. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, his fictional universe centres on Dublin and is largely populated by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set in the streets and alleyways of the city. Joyce is quoted as saying, \"For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland, to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane \"May\" (née Murray). He was the eldest of ten surviving siblings. He was baptised with the name James Augustine Joyce according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Rev. John O'Mulloy. His godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. John Stanislaus Joyce's family came from Fermoy in County Cork, where they owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's paternal grandfather, James Augustine, married Ellen O'Connell, daughter of John O'Connell, a Cork alderman who owned a drapery business and other properties in Cork City. Ellen's family claimed kinship with the political leader Daniel O'Connell, who had helped secure Catholic emancipation for the Irish in 1829.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Joyce's father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation in 1887. The family moved to the fashionable small town of Bray, 12 miles (19 km) from Dublin. Joyce was attacked by a dog around this time, leading to his lifelong fear of dogs. He later developed a fear of thunderstorms, which he acquired through a superstitious aunt who had described them as a sign of God's wrath.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1891, nine-year-old Joyce wrote the poem \"Et Tu, Healy\" on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell that his father printed and distributed to friends. The poem expressed the sentiments of the elder Joyce, who was angry at Parnell's apparent betrayal by the Irish Catholic Church, the Irish Parliamentary Party, and the British Liberal Party that resulted in a collaborative failure to secure Irish Home Rule in the British Parliament. This sense of betrayal, particularly by the church, left a lasting impression that Joyce expressed in his life and art.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "That year, his family began to slide into poverty, worsened by his father's drinking and financial mismanagement. John Joyce's name was published in Stubbs' Gazette, a blacklist of debtors and bankrupts, in November 1891, and he was temporarily suspended from work. In January 1893, he was dismissed with a reduced pension.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Joyce began his education in 1888 at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, but had to leave in 1891 when his father could no longer pay the fees. He studied at home and briefly attended the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin. Joyce's father then had a chance meeting with the Jesuit priest John Conmee, who knew the family. Conmee arranged for Joyce and his brother Stanislaus to attend the Jesuits' Dublin school, Belvedere College, without fees starting in 1893. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected by his peers to join the Sodality of Our Lady. Joyce spent five years at Belvedere, his intellectual formation guided by the principles of Jesuit education laid down in the Ratio Studiorum (Plan of Studies). He displayed his writing talent by winning first place for English composition in his final two years before graduating in 1898.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Joyce enrolled at University College in 1898 to study English, French and Italian. While there, he was exposed to the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas, which had a strong influence on his thought for the rest of his life. He participated in many of Dublin's theatrical and literary circles. His closest colleagues included leading Irish figures of his generation, most notably, George Clancy, Tom Kettle and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. Many of the acquaintances he made at this time appeared in his work. His first publication— a laudatory review of Henrik Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken—was printed in The Fortnightly Review in 1900. Inspired by Ibsen's works, Joyce sent him a fan letter in Norwegian and wrote a play, A Brilliant Career, which he later destroyed.",
"title": "University years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1901 the National Census of Ireland listed Joyce as a 19-year-old Irish- and English-speaking unmarried student living with his parents, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace (now Inverness Road) in Clontarf, Dublin. During this year he became friends with Oliver St. John Gogarty, the model for Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. In November, Joyce wrote an article, The Day of the Rabblement, criticising the Irish Literary Theatre for its unwillingness to produce the works of playwrights like Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, and Gerhart Hauptmann. He protested against nostalgic Irish populism and argued for an outward-looking, cosmopolitan literature. Because he mentioned Gabriele D'Annunzio's novel, Il fuoco (The Flame), which was on the Roman Catholic list of prohibited books, his college magazine refused to print it. Joyce and Sheehy-Skeffington—who had also had an article rejected—had their essays jointly printed and distributed. Arthur Griffith decried the censorship of Joyce's work in his newspaper United Irishman.",
"title": "University years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Joyce graduated from the Royal University of Ireland in October 1902. He considered studying medicine and began attending lectures at the Catholic University Medical School in Dublin. When the medical school refused to provide a tutoring position to help finance his education, he left Dublin to study medicine in Paris, where he received permission to attend the course for a certificate in physics, chemistry, and biology at the École de Médecine. By the end of January 1903, he had given up plans to study medicine but he stayed in Paris, often reading late in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. He frequently wrote home claiming ill health due to the water, the cold weather, and his change of diet, appealing for money his family could ill-afford.",
"title": "University years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In April 1903, Joyce learned his mother was dying and immediately returned to Ireland. He would tend to her, reading aloud from drafts that would eventually be worked into his unfinished novel Stephen Hero. During her final days, she unsuccessfully tried to get him to make his confession and to take communion. She died on 13 August. Afterwards, Joyce and Stanislaus refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside. John Joyce's drinking and abusiveness increased in the months following her death, and the family began to fall apart. Joyce spent much of his time carousing with Gogarty and his medical school colleagues, and tried to scrape together a living by reviewing books.",
"title": "Post-university years in Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Joyce's life began to change when he met Nora Barnacle on 10 June 1904. She was a twenty-year-old woman from Galway city, who was working in Dublin as a chambermaid. They had their first outing together on 16 June 1904, walking through the Dublin suburb of Ringsend, where Nora masturbated him. This event was commemorated as the date for the action of Ulysses, known in popular culture as \"Bloomsday\" in honour of the novel's main character Leopold Bloom. This began a relationship that continued for thirty-seven years until Joyce died. Soon after this outing, Joyce, who had been carousing with his colleagues, approached a young woman in St Stephen's Green and was beaten up by her companion. He was picked up and dusted off by an acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H. Hunter, who took him into his home to tend to his injuries. Hunter, who was rumoured to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, became one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses.",
"title": "Post-university years in Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Joyce was a talented tenor and explored becoming a musical performer. On 8 May 1904, he was a contestant in the Feis Ceoil, an Irish music competition for promising composers, instrumentalists and singers. In the months before the contest, Joyce took singing lessons with two voice instructors, Benedetto Palmieri and Vincent O'Brien. He paid the entry fee by pawning some of his books. For the contest, Joyce had to sing three songs. He did well with the first two, but when he was told he had to sight read the third, he refused. Joyce won the third-place medal anyway. After the contest, Palmieri wrote Joyce that Luigi Denza, the composer of the popular song Funiculì, Funiculà who was the judge for the contest, spoke highly of his voice and would have given him first place but for the sight-reading and lack of sufficient training. Palmieri even offered to give Joyce free singing lessons afterwards. Joyce refused the lessons, but kept singing in Dublin concerts that year. His performance at a concert given on 27 August may have solidified Nora's devotion to him.",
"title": "Post-university years in Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Throughout 1904, Joyce sought to develop his literary reputation. On 7 January he attempted to publish a prose work examining aesthetics called A Portrait of the Artist, but it was rejected by the intellectual journal Dana. He then reworked it into a fictional novel of his youth that he called Stephen Hero that he labored over for years but eventually abandoned. He wrote a satirical poem called \"The Holy Office\", which parodied W. B. Yeats's poem \"To Ireland in the Coming Times\" and once more mocked the Irish Literary Revival. It too was rejected for publication; this time for being \"unholy\". He wrote the collection of poems Chamber Music at this time; which was also rejected. He did publish three poems, one in Dana and two in The Speaker, and George William Russell published three of Joyce's short stories in the Irish Homestead. These stories—\"The Sisters\", \"Eveline\", and \"After the Race\"—were the beginnings of Dubliners.",
"title": "Post-university years in Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In September 1904, Joyce was having difficulties finding a place to live and moved into a Martello tower near Dublin, which Gogarty was renting. Within a week, Joyce left when Gogarty and another roommate, Dermot Chenevix Trench, fired a pistol in the middle of the night at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed. With the help of funds from Lady Gregory and a few other acquaintances, Joyce and Nora left Ireland less than a month later.",
"title": "Post-university years in Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In October 1904, Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile. They briefly stopped in London and Paris to secure funds before heading on to Zürich. Joyce had been informed through an agent in England that there was a vacancy at the Berlitz Language School, but when he arrived there was no position. The couple stayed in Zürich for a little over a week. The director of the school sent Joyce on to Trieste, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the First World War. There was no vacancy there either. The director of the school in Trieste, Almidano Artifoni, secured a position for him in Pola, then Austria-Hungary's major naval base, where he mainly taught English to naval officers. Less than one month after the couple had left Ireland, Nora had already become pregnant. Joyce soon became close friends with Alessandro Francini Bruni, the director of the school at Pola, and his wife Clothilde. By the beginning of 1905, both families were living together. Joyce kept writing when he could. He completed a short story for Dubliners, \"Clay\", and worked on his novel Stephen Hero. He disliked Pola, calling it a \"back-of-God-speed place—a naval Siberia\", and soon as a job became available, he went to Trieste.",
"title": "1904–1906: Zürich, Pula and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "When 23-year-old Joyce first moved to Trieste in March 1905, he immediately started teaching English at the Berlitz school. By June, Joyce felt financially secure enough to have his satirical poem \"Holy Office\" printed and asked Stanislaus to distribute copies to his former associates in Dublin. After Nora gave birth to their first child, Giorgio, on 27 July 1905, Joyce convinced Stanislaus to move to Trieste and got a position for him at the Berlitz school. Stanislaus moved in with Joyce as soon as he arrived in October, and most of his salary went directly to supporting Joyce's family. In February 1906, the Joyce household once more shared an apartment with the Francini Brunis.",
"title": "1904–1906: Zürich, Pula and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Joyce kept writing despite all these changes. He completed 24 chapters of Stephen Hero and all but the final story of Dubliners. But he was unable to get Dubliners in press. Though the London publisher Grant Richards had contracted with Joyce to publish it, the printers were unwilling to print passages they found controversial because English law could hold them liable if they were brought to court for indecent language. Richards and Joyce went back and forth trying to find a solution where the book could avoid legal liability while preserving Joyce's sense of artistic integrity. As they continued to negotiate, Richards began to scrutinise the stories more carefully. He became concerned that the book might damage his publishing house's reputation and eventually backed down from his agreement.",
"title": "1904–1906: Zürich, Pula and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Trieste was Joyce's main residence until 1920. Although he would temporarily leave the city—briefly staying in Rome, travelling to Dublin, and emigrating to Zürich during World War I— it became a second Dublin for him and played an important role in his development as a writer. He completed Dubliners, reworked Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, wrote his only published play Exiles, and decided to make Ulysses a full-length novel as he created his notes and jottings for the work. He worked out the characters of Leopold and Molly Bloom in Trieste. Many of the novel's details were taken from Joyce's observation of the city and its people, and some of its stylistic innovations appear to have been influenced by Futurism. There are even words of the Triestine dialect in Finnegans Wake. Joyce was introduced to the Greek Orthodox liturgy in Trieste. Under its influence, he rewrote his first short story and would later draw on it in creating the liturgical parodies in Ulysses.",
"title": "1904–1906: Zürich, Pula and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In late May 1906, the head of the Berlitz school ran away after embezzling its funds. Artifoni took over the school but let Joyce know that he could only afford to keep one brother on. Tired of Trieste and discouraged that he could not get a publisher for Dubliners, Joyce found an advertisement for a correspondence clerk in a Roman bank that paid twice his current salary. He was hired for the position, and went to Rome at the end of July.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Joyce felt he accomplished very little during his brief stay in Rome, but it had a large impact on his writing. Though his new job took up most of his time, he revised Dubliners and worked on Stephen Hero. Rome was the birthplace of the idea for \"The Dead\", which would become the final story of Dubliners, and for Ulysses, which was originally conceived as a short story. His stay in the city was one of his inspirations for Exiles. While there, he read the socialist historian Guglielmo Ferrero in depth. Ferrero's anti-heroic interpretations of history, arguments against militarism, and conflicted attitudes toward Jews would find their way into Ulysses, particularly in the character of Leopold Bloom. In London, Elkin Mathews published Chamber Music on the recommendation of the British poet Arthur Symons. Nonetheless, Joyce was dissatisfied with his job, had exhausted his finances, and realised he would need additional support when he learned Nora was pregnant again. He left Rome after only seven months.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Joyce returned to Trieste in March 1907, but was unable to find full-time work. He went back to being an English instructor, working part time for Berlitz and giving private lessons. The author Ettore Schmitz, better known by pen name Italo Svevo, was one of his students. Svevo was a Catholic of Jewish origin who became one of the models for Leopold Bloom. Joyce learned much of what he knew about Judaism from him. The two became lasting friends and mutual critics. Svevo supported Joyce's identity as an author, helping him work through his writer's block with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Roberto Prezioso, editor of the Italian newspaper Piccolo della Sera, was another of Joyce's students. He helped Joyce financially by commissioning him to write for the newspaper. Joyce quickly produced three articles aimed toward the Italian irredentists in Trieste. He indirectly paralleled their desire for independence from Austria-Hungary with the struggle of the Irish from British rule. Joyce earned additional money by giving a series of lectures on Ireland and the arts at Trieste's Università Popolare. In May, Joyce was struck by an attack of rheumatic fever, which left him incapacitated for weeks. The illness exacerbated eye problems that plagued him for the rest of his life. While Joyce was still recovering from the attack, Lucia was born on 26 July 1907. During his convalescence, he was able to finish \"The Dead\", the last story of Dubliners.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Although a heavy drinker, Joyce gave up alcohol for a period in 1908. He reworked Stephen Hero as the more concise and interior A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He completed the third chapter by April and translated John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea into Italian with the help of Nicolò Vidacovich. He even took singing lessons again. Joyce had been looking for an English publisher for Dubliners but was unable to find one, so he submitted it to a Dublin publisher, Maunsel and Company, owned by George Roberts.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In July 1909, Joyce received a year's advance payment from one of his students and returned to Ireland to introduce Giorgio to both sides of the family (his own in Dublin and Nora's in Galway). He unsuccessfully applied for the position of Chair of Italian at his alma mater, which had become University College Dublin. He met with Roberts, who seemed positive about publishing the Dubliners. He returned to Trieste in September with his sister Eva, who helped Nora run the home. Joyce only stayed in Trieste for a month, as he almost immediately came upon the idea of starting a cinema in Dublin, which unlike Trieste had none. He quickly got the backing of some Triestine business men and returned to Dublin in October, launching Ireland's first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph. It was initially well-received, but fell apart after Joyce left. He returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "From 1910 to 1912, Joyce still lacked a reliable income. This brought his conflicts with Stanislaus, who was frustrated with lending him money, to their peak. In 1912, Prezioso arranged for him to lecture on Hamlet for the Minerva Society between November 1912 and February 1913. Joyce once more lectured at the Università Popolare on various topics in English literature and applied for a teaching diploma in English at the University of Padua. He performed very well on the qualification tests, but was denied because Italy did not recognise his degree from an Irish university. In 1912, Joyce and his family returned to Dublin briefly in the summer. While there, his three-year-long struggle with Roberts over the publication of Dubliners came to an end as Roberts refused to publish the book due to concerns of libel. Roberts had the printed sheets destroyed, though Joyce was able to obtain a copy of the proof sheets. When Joyce returned to Trieste, he wrote an invective against Roberts, \"Gas from a Burner\". He never went to Dublin again.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Joyce's fortunes changed for the better in 1913 when Richards agreed to publish Dubliners. It was issued on 15 June 1914, eight and a half years since Joyce had first submitted it to him. Around the same time, he found an unexpected advocate in Ezra Pound, who was living in London. On the advice of Yeats, Pound wrote to Joyce asking if he could include a poem from Chamber Music, \"I Hear an Army Charging upon the Land\" in the journal Des Imagistes. They struck up a correspondence that lasted until the late 1930s. Pound became Joyce's promoter, helping ensure that Joyce's works were both published and publicized.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "After Pound persuaded Dora Marsden to serially publish A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the London literary magazine The Egoist, Joyce's pace of writing increased. He completed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by 1914; resumed Exiles, completing it in 1915; started the novelette Giacomo Joyce, which he eventually abandoned; and began drafting Ulysses.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In August 1914, World War I broke out. Although Joyce and Stanislaus were subjects of the United Kingdom, which was now at war with Austria-Hungary, they remained in Trieste. Even when Stanislaus, who had publicly expressed his sympathy for the Triestine irredentists, was interned at the beginning of January 1915, Joyce chose to stay. In May 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, and less than a month later Joyce took his family to Zürich in neutral Switzerland.",
"title": "1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Joyce arrived in Zürich as a double exile: he was an Irishman with a British passport and a Triestine on parole from Austria-Hungary. To get to Switzerland, he had to promise the Austro-Hungarian officials that he would not help the Allies during the war, and he and his family had to leave almost all of their possessions in Trieste. During the war, he was kept under surveillance by both the British and Austro-Hungarian secret services.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Joyce's first concern was earning a living. One of Nora's relatives sent them a small sum to cover the first few months. Pound and Yeats worked with the British government to provide a stipend from the Royal Literary Fund in 1915 and a grant from the British civil list the following year. Eventually, Joyce received large regular sums from the editor Harriet Shaw Weaver, who operated The Egoist, and the psychotherapist Edith Rockefeller McCormick, who lived in Zürich studying under Carl Jung. Weaver financially supported Joyce throughout the entirety of his life and even paid for his funeral. Between 1917 and the beginning of 1919, Joyce was financially secure and lived quite well; the family sometimes stayed in Locarno in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. However, health problems remained a constant issue. During their time in Zürich, both Joyce and Nora suffered illnesses that were diagnosed as \"nervous breakdowns\" and he had to undergo many eye surgeries.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "During the war, Zürich was the centre of a vibrant expatriate community. Joyce's regular evening hangout was the Cafe Pfauen, where he got to know a number of the artists living in the city at the time, including the sculptor August Suter and the painter Frank Budgen. He often used the time spent with them as material for Ulysses. He made the acquaintance of the writer Stefan Zweig, who organised the premiere of Exiles in Munich in August 1919. He became aware of Dada, which was coming into its own at the Cabaret Voltaire. He may have even met the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin at the Cafe Odeon, a place they both frequented.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Joyce kept up his interest in music. He met Ferruccio Busoni, staged music with Otto Luening, and learned music theory from Philipp Jarnach. Much of what Joyce learned about musical notation and counterpoint found its way into Ulysses, particularly the \"Sirens\" section.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Joyce avoided public discussion of the war's politics and maintained a strict neutrality. He made few comments about the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland; although he was sympathetic to the Irish independence movement, he disagreed with its violence. He stayed intently focused on Ulysses and the ongoing struggle to get his work published. Some of the serial instalments of \"The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man\" in The Egoist had been censored by the printers, but the entire novel was published by B. W. Huebsch in 1916. In 1918, Pound got a commitment from Margaret Caroline Anderson, the owner and editor of the New York-based literary magazine The Little Review, to publish Ulysses serially.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Joyce co-founded an acting company, the English Players, and became its business manager. The company was pitched to the British government as a contribution to the war effort, and mainly staged works by Irish playwrights, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and John Millington Synge. For Synge's Riders to the Sea, Nora played a principal role and Joyce sang offstage, which he did again when Robert Browning's In a Balcony was staged. He hoped the company would eventually stage his play, Exiles, but his participation in the English Players declined in the wake of the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918, though the company continued until 1920.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Joyce's work with the English Players involved him in a lawsuit. Henry Wilfred Carr, a wounded war veteran and British consul, accused Joyce of underpaying him for his role in The Importance of Being Earnest. Carr sued for compensation; Joyce countersued for libel. The cases were resolved in 1919, with Joyce winning the compensation case but losing the one for libel. The incident ended up creating acrimony between the British consulate and Joyce for the rest of his time in Zürich.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "By 1919, Joyce was in financial straits again. McCormick stopped paying her stipend, partly because he refused to submit to psychoanalysis from Jung, and Zürich had become expensive to live in after the war. Furthermore, he was becoming isolated as the city's emigres returned home. In October 1919, Joyce's family moved back to Trieste, but it had changed. The Austro-Hungarian empire had ceased to exist, and Trieste was now an Italian city in post-war recovery. Eight months after his return, Joyce went to Sirmione, Italy, to meet Pound, who made arrangements for him to move to Paris. Joyce and his family packed their belongings and headed for Paris in June 1920.",
"title": "1915–1920: Zürich and Trieste"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "When Joyce and his family arrived in Paris in July 1920, their visit was intended to be a layover on their way to London. For the first four months, he stayed with Ludmila Savitzky [fr] and met Sylvia Beach, who ran the Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Beach quickly became an important person in Joyce's life, providing financial support, and becoming one of Joyce's publishers. Through Beach and Pound, Joyce quickly joined the intellectual circle of Paris and was integrated into the international modernist artist community. Joyce met Valery Larbaud, who championed Joyce's works to the French and supervised the French translation of Ulysses. Paris became the Joyces' regular residence for twenty years, though they never settled into a single location for long.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Joyce finished writing Ulysses near the end of 1921, but had difficulties getting it published. With financial backing from the lawyer John Quinn, Margaret Anderson and her co-editor Jane Heap had begun serially publishing it in The Little Review in March 1918 but in January and May 1919, two instalments were suppressed as obscene and potentially subversive. In September 1920, an unsolicited instalment of the \"Nausicaa\" episode was sent to the daughter of a New York attorney associated with the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, leading to an official complaint. The trial proceedings continued until February 1921, when both Anderson and Healy, defended by Quinn, were fined $50 each for publishing obscenity and ordered to cease publishing Ulysses. Huebsch, who had expressed interest in publishing the novel in the United States, decided against it after the trial. Weaver was unable to find an English printer, and the novel was banned for obscenity in the United Kingdom in 1922, where it was blacklisted until 1936.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Almost immediately after Anderson and Healy were ordered to stop printing Ulysses, Beach agreed to publish it through her bookshop. She had books mailed to people in Paris and the United States who had subscribed to get a copy; Weaver mailed books from Beach's plates to subscribers in England. Soon, the postal officials of both countries began confiscating the books. They were then smuggled into both countries. Because the work had no copyright in the United States at this time, \"bootleg\" versions appeared, including pirate versions from publisher Samuel Roth, who only ceased his actions in 1928 when a court enjoined publication. Ulysses was not legally published in the United States until 1934 after Judge John M. Woolsey ruled in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses that the book was not obscene.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 1923, Joyce began his next work, an experimental novel that eventually became Finnegans Wake. It would take sixteen years to complete. At first, Joyce called it Work in Progress, which was the name Ford Madox Ford used in April 1924 when he published its \"Mamalujo\" episode in his magazine, The Transatlantic Review. In 1926, Eugene and Maria Jolas serialised the novel in their magazine, transition. When parts of the novel first came out, some of Joyce's supporters—like Stanislaus, Pound, and Weaver— wrote negatively about it, and it was criticised by writers like Seán Ó Faoláin, Wyndham Lewis, and Rebecca West. In response, Joyce and the Jolases organised the publication of a collection of positive essays titled Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, which included writings by Samuel Beckett and William Carlos Williams. An additional purpose of publishing these essays was to market Work in Progress to a larger audience. Joyce publicly revealed the novel's title as Finnegans Wake in 1939, the same year he completed it. It was published in London by Faber and Faber with the assistance of T. S. Eliot.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Joyce's health problems afflicted him throughout his Paris years. He had over a dozen eye operations, but his vision severely declined. By 1930, he was practically blind in the left eye and his right eye functioned poorly. He even had all of his teeth removed because of infection. At one point, Joyce became worried that he could not finish Finnegans Wake, asking the Irish author James Stephens to complete it if something should happen.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Joyce's financial problems continued. Although he was now earning a good income from his investments and royalties, his spending habits often left him without available money. Despite these issues, he published Pomes Penyeach in 1927, a collection of thirteen poems that he wrote in Trieste, Zürich and Paris.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 1930, Joyce began thinking of establishing a residence in London once more, primarily to assure that Giorgio, who had just married Helen Fleischmann, would have his inheritance secured under British law. Joyce moved to London, obtained a long-term lease on a flat, registered on the electoral roll, and became liable for jury service. After living together for twenty-seven years, Joyce and Nora got married at the Register Office in Kensington on 4 July 1931. Joyce stayed in London for at least six months to establish his residency, but abandoned his flat and returned to Paris later in the year when Lucia showed signs of mental illness. He planned to return, but never did and later became disaffected with England.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In later years, Joyce lived in Paris but frequently travelled to Switzerland for eye surgery or for treatment for Lucia, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung, who had previously written that Ulysses was similar to schizophrenic writing. Jung suggested that she and her father were two people going into a river, except that Joyce was diving and Lucia was falling. In spite of Joyce's attempts to help Lucia, she remained permanently institutionalised after his death.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In the late 1930s, Joyce became increasingly concerned about the rise of fascism and antisemitism. As early as 1938, Joyce was involved in helping a number of Jews escape Nazi persecution. After the fall of France in 1940, Joyce and his family fled from Nazi occupation, returning to Zürich a final time.",
"title": "1920–1941: Paris and Zürich"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On 11 January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. He fell into a coma the following day. He awoke at 2 am on 13 January 1941, and asked a nurse to call his wife and son. They were en route when he died 15 minutes later, less than a month before his 59th birthday.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "His body was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zürich. Swiss tenor Max Meili sang \"Addio terra, addio cielo\" from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the burial service. Joyce had been a subject of the United Kingdom all of his life, and only the British consul attended the funeral. Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral. When Joseph Walshe, secretary at the Department of External Affairs in Dublin, was informed of Joyce's death by Frank Cremins, chargé d'affaires at Bern, Walshe responded, \"Please wire details of Joyce's death. If possible find out did he die a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain inability to attend funeral.\" Buried originally in an ordinary grave, Joyce was moved in 1966 to a more prominent \"honour grave\", with a seated portrait statue by American artist Milton Hebald nearby. Nora, whom he had married in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "After Joyce's death, the Irish government declined Nora's request to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains, despite being persistently lobbied by the American diplomat John J. Slocum. In October 2019, a motion was put to Dublin City Council to plan and budget for the costs of the exhumations and reburials of Joyce and his family somewhere in Dublin, subject to his family's wishes. The proposal immediately became controversial, with the Irish Times commenting: \" ... it is hard not to suspect that there is a calculating, even mercantile, aspect to contemporary Ireland's relationship to its great writers, whom we are often more keen to 'celebrate', and if possible monetise, than read\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Throughout his life, Joyce stayed actively interested in Irish national politics and in its relationship to British colonialism. He studied socialism and anarchism. He attended socialist meetings and expressed an individualist view influenced by Benjamin Tucker's philosophy and Oscar Wilde's essay \"The Soul of Man Under Socialism\". He described his opinions as \"those of a socialist artist\". Joyce's direct engagement in politics was strongest during his time in Trieste, when he submitted newspaper articles, gave lectures, and wrote letters advocating for Ireland's independence from British rule. After leaving Trieste, Joyce's direct involvement in politics waned, but his later works still reflect his commitment. He remained sympathetic to individualism and critical of coercive ideologies such as nationalism. His novels address socialist, anarchist and Irish nationalist issues. Ulysses has been read as a novel critiquing the effect of British colonialism on the Irish people. Finnegans Wake has been read as a work that investigates the divisive issues of Irish politics, the interrelationship between colonialism and race, and the coercive oppression of nationalism and fascism.",
"title": "Political views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Joyce's politics is reflected in his attitude toward his British passport. He wrote about the negative effects of British occupation in Ireland and was sympathetic to the attempts of the Irish to free themselves from it. In 1907, he expressed his support for the early Sinn Féin movement before the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. However, throughout his life, Joyce refused to exchange his British passport for an Irish one. When he had a choice, he opted to renew his British passport in 1935 instead of obtaining one from the Irish Free State, and he chose to keep it in 1940 when accepting an Irish passport could have helped him to leave Vichy France more easily. His refusal to change his passport was partly due to the advantages that a British passport gave him internationally, his being out of sympathy with the violence of Irish politics, and his dismay over the Irish Free State's political relationship with the Catholic Church.",
"title": "Political views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Joyce had a complex relationship with religion. Firsthand statements by him and Stanislaus, attest that he did not consider himself a Catholic, though his work is deeply influenced by Catholicism. In particular, his intellectual foundations were grounded in his early Jesuitical education. Even after he left Ireland, he sometimes went to church. When living in Trieste, he woke up early to attend Catholic Mass on Holy Thursday and Good Friday or occasionally attended Eastern Orthodox services, stating that he liked the ceremonies better.",
"title": "Religious views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Some critics have argued that Joyce firmly rejected the Catholic faith. He lapsed from the Church early in life and Nora refused to allow a Catholic service when he died. His works frequently critique, ridicule, and blaspheme Catholicism, and he appropriates Catholic rituals and concepts for his own artistic purposes. Nevertheless, Catholic critics have argued that Joyce never fully abandoned his faith, wrestling with it in his writings and becoming increasingly reconciled with it. They argue that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are expressions of a Catholic sensibility, insisting that the critical views of religion expressed by the characters in his novel do not represent the views of Joyce the author.",
"title": "Religious views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Other critics have suggested that Joyce's apparent apostasy was less a denial of faith than a transmutation, a criticism of the Church's adverse impact on spiritual life, politics, and personal development. Joyce's attitude toward Catholicism has been described as an enigma in which there are two Joyces: a modern one who resisted the power of Catholicism and another who maintained his allegiance to its traditions. He has been compared to the medieval episcopi vagantes (wandering bishops), who left their discipline but not their cultural heritage of thought.",
"title": "Religious views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Joyce's responses to questions about his faith were often ambiguous. For example, during an interview after the completion of Ulysses, Joyce was asked, \"When did you leave the Catholic Church?\" He answered, \"That's for the Church to say.\"",
"title": "Religious views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories first published in 1914, that form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around the city in the early 20th century. The tales were written when Irish nationalism and the search for national identity was at its peak. Joyce holds up a mirror to that identity as a first step in the spiritual liberation of Ireland. The stories centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment when a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories are narrated by child protagonists. Later stories deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This aligns with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence, and maturity.",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916, is a shortened rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. It is a Künstlerroman, a kind of coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of the protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. It functions both as an autobiographical fiction of the author and a biography of the fictional protagonist. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings are evident throughout this novel.",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband-and-wife relationship, the play looks back to \"The Dead\" (the final story in Dubliners) and forward to Ulysses, which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "He published three books of poetry. The first full-length collection was Chamber Music (1907), which consisted of 36 short lyrics. It led to his inclusion in the Imagist Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound, a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime includes \"Gas from a Burner\" (1912), Pomes Penyeach (1927), and \"Ecce Puer\" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). These were published by the Black Sun Press in Collected Poems (1936).",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The action of Ulysses starts on 16 June 1904 at 8 am and ends sometime after 2 am the following morning. Much of it occurs inside the minds of the characters, who are portrayed through techniques such as interior monologue, dialogue, and soliloquy. The novel consists of 18 episodes, each covering roughly one hour of the day using a unique literary style. Joyce structured each chapter to refer to an individual episode in Homer's Odyssey, as well as a specific colour, a particular art or science, and a bodily organ. Ulysses sets the characters and incidents of Homer's Odyssey in 1904 Dublin, representing Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope, and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus. It uses humor, including parody, satire and comedy, to contrast the novel's characters with their Homeric models. Joyce played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles so the work could be read independently of its Homeric structure.",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Ulysses can be read as a study of Dublin in 1904, exploring various aspects of the city's life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe, it could be rebuilt using his work as a model. To achieve this sense of detail, he relied on his memory, what he heard other people remember, and his readings to create a sense of fastidious detail. Joyce regularly used the 1904 edition of Thom's Directory—a work that listed the owners and tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city—to ensure his descriptions were accurate. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing, reliance on a formal schema to structure the narrative, and an exquisite attention to detail represents one of the book's major contributions to the development of 20th-century modernist literature.",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Finnegans Wake is an experimental novel that pushes stream of consciousness and literary allusions to their extremes. Although the work can be read from beginning to end, Joyce's writing transforms traditional ideas of plot and character development through his wordplay, allowing the book to be read nonlinearly. Much of the word play stems from the work being written in a peculiar and obscure English, based mainly on complex multilevel puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than, that used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky and draws on a wide range of languages. The associative nature of its language has led to it being interpreted as the story of a dream.",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola, who Joyce had read in his youth, plays an important role in Finnegans Wake, as it provides the framework for how the identities of the characters interplay and are transformed. Giambattista Vico's cyclical view of history (in which civilisation rises from chaos, passes through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapses back into chaos) structures the text's narrative, as evidenced by the opening and closing words of the book: Finnegans Wake opens with the words \"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs\" and ends \"A way a lone a last a loved a long the\". In other words, the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of the same sentence, turning the narrative into one great cycle.",
"title": "Major works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Joyce's work still has a profound influence on contemporary culture. Ulysses is a model for fiction writers, particularly its explorations in the power of language. Its emphasis on the details of everyday life have opened up new possibilities of expression for authors, painters and film-makers. It retains its prestige among readers, often ranking high on 'Great Book' lists. Joyce's innovations extend beyond English literature: his writing has been an inspiration for Latin American writers, and Finnegans Wake has become one of the key texts for French post-structuralism. It also provided the name for the quark, one of the elementary particles proposed by physicist Murray Gell-Mann.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The open-ended form of Joyce's novels keep them open to constant reinterpretation. They inspire an increasingly global community of literary critics. Joyce studies—based on a relatively small canon of three novels, a small short story collection, one play, and two small books of poems—have generated over 15,000 articles, monographs, theses, translations, and editions.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In popular culture, the work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually on 16 June, known as Bloomsday, in Dublin and in an increasing number of cities worldwide.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The National Library of Ireland holds a large collection of Joycean material including manuscripts and notebooks, much of it available online. A joint venture between the library and University College Dublin, the Museum of Literature Ireland (branded MoLI in homage to Molly Bloom), the majority of whose exhibits are about Joyce and his work, has both a small permanent Joyce-related collection, and borrows from its parent institutions; its displays include \"Copy No. 1\" of Ulysses. Dedicated centres in Dublin include the James Joyce Centre in North Great George's Street, the James Joyce Tower and Museum in Sandycove (the Martello tower where Joyce once lived, and the setting for the opening scene in Ulysses), and the Dublin Writers Museum. University College London holds the only major research collection of Joyce's work in the United Kingdom, including first editions of all of Joyce's major works, most other early and later editions (including translations), as well as critical and background literature.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Citations",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Hibbert, Jeffrey (2011). \"Joyce's loss of faith\". Journal of Modern Literature. 34 (2): 196–203. JSTOR 10.2979/jmodelite.34.2.196.",
"title": "Sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Joyce Papers, National Library of Ireland",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Electronic editions",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Resources",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism. Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers–run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit Belvedere College and graduated from University College Dublin in 1902. In 1904, he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and they moved to mainland Europe. He briefly worked in Pula and then moved to Trieste in Austria-Hungary, working as an English instructor. Except for an eight-month stay in Rome working as a correspondence clerk and three visits to Dublin, Joyce resided there until 1915. In Trieste, he published his book of poems Chamber Music and his short story collection Dubliners, and he began serially publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the English magazine The Egoist. During most of World War I, Joyce lived in Zürich, Switzerland, and worked on Ulysses. After the war, he briefly returned to Trieste and then moved to Paris in 1920, which became his primary residence until 1940. Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, but its publication in the United Kingdom and the United States was prohibited because of its perceived obscenity. Copies were smuggled into both countries and pirated versions were printed until the mid-1930s, when publication finally became legal. Joyce started his next major work, Finnegans Wake, in 1923, publishing it sixteen years later in 1939. Between these years, Joyce travelled widely. He and Nora were married in a civil ceremony in London in 1931. He made a number of trips to Switzerland, frequently seeking treatment for his increasingly severe eye problems and psychological help for his daughter, Lucia. When France was occupied by Germany during World War II, Joyce moved back to Zürich in 1940. He died there in 1941 after surgery for a perforated ulcer, less than one month before his 59th birthday. Ulysses frequently ranks high in lists of great books of literature, and the academic literature analysing his work is extensive and ongoing. Many writers, film-makers, and other artists have been influenced by his stylistic innovations, such as his meticulous attention to detail, use of interior monologue, wordplay, and the radical transformation of traditional plot and character development. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, his fictional universe centres on Dublin and is largely populated by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set in the streets and alleyways of the city. Joyce is quoted as saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." | 2001-06-26T06:10:29Z | 2023-12-26T15:23:54Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce |
15,601 | Judo | Judo (Japanese: 柔道, Hepburn: Jūdō, lit. 'gentle way') is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally. Judo was created in 1882 by Kanō Jigorō (嘉納 治五郎) as an eclectic martial art, distinguishing itself from its predecessors (primarily Tenjin Shinyo-ryu jujutsu and Kitō-ryū jujutsu) due to an emphasis on "randori" (乱取り, lit. 'free sparring') instead of "kata" (pre-arranged forms) alongside its removal of striking and weapon training elements. Judo rose to prominence for its dominance over established jujutsu schools in tournaments hosted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (警視庁武術大会, Keishicho Bujutsu Taikai), resulting in its adoption as the department's primary martial art. A judo practitioner is called a "judoka" (柔道家, jūdōka, lit. 'judo performer'), and the judo uniform is called "judogi" (柔道着, jūdōgi, lit. 'judo attire').
The objective of competitive judo is to throw an opponent, immobilize them with a pin, or force an opponent to submit with a joint lock or a choke. While strikes and use of weapons are included in some pre-arranged forms (kata), they are not frequently trained and are illegal in judo competition or free practice. Judo's international governing body is the International Judo Federation, and competitors compete in the international IJF professional circuit.
Judo's philosophy revolves around two primary principles: "Seiryoku-Zenyo" (精力善用, lit. 'good use of energy') and "Jita-Kyoei" (自他共栄, lit. 'mutual welfare and benefit'). The philosophy and subsequent pedagogy developed for judo became the model for other modern Japanese martial arts that developed from koryū (古流, traditional schools). Judo also spawned a number of derivative martial arts around the world, such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Krav Maga, sambo, and ARB. Judo also influenced other combat styles such as close-quarters combat (CQC), mixed martial arts (MMA), shoot wrestling and submission wrestling.
The early history of judo is inseparable from its founder, Japanese polymath and educator Kanō Jigorō (嘉納 治五郎, Jigoro Kano, 1860–1938), born Shinnosuke Jigorō (新之助 治五郎, Jigorō Shinnosuke). Kano was born into a relatively affluent family. His father, Jirosaku, was the second son of the head priest of the Shinto Hiyoshi shrine in Shiga Prefecture. He married Sadako Kano, daughter of the owner of Kiku-Masamune sake brewing company and was adopted by the family, changing his name to Kano. He ultimately became an official in the Shogunate government.
Jigoro Kano had an academic upbringing and, from the age of seven, he studied English, shodō (書道, Japanese calligraphy) and the Four Confucian Texts (四書, Shisho) under a number of tutors. When he was fourteen, Kano began boarding at an English-medium school, Ikuei-Gijuku in Shiba, Tokyo. The culture of bullying endemic at this school was the catalyst that caused Kano to seek out a Jūjutsu (柔術, Jujutsu) dōjō (道場, dōjō, training place) at which to train.
Early attempts to find a jujutsu teacher who was willing to take him on met with little success. Jujutsu had become unfashionable in an increasingly westernized Japan. Many of those who had once taught the art had been forced out of teaching or become so disillusioned with it that they had simply given up. Nakai Umenari, an acquaintance of Kanō's father and a former soldier, agreed to show him kata, but not to teach him. The caretaker of Jirosaku's second house, Katagiri Ryuji, also knew jujutsu, but would not teach it as he believed it was no longer of practical use. Another frequent visitor, Imai Genshiro of Kyūshin-ryū (扱心流) school of jujutsu, also refused. Several years passed before he finally found a willing teacher.
In 1877, as a student at the Tokyo-Kaisei school (soon to become part of the newly founded Tokyo Imperial University), Kano learned that many jujutsu teachers had been forced to pursue alternative careers, frequently opening Seikotsu-in (整骨院, traditional osteopathy practices). After inquiring at a number of these, Kano was referred to Fukuda Hachinosuke (c. 1828–1880), a teacher of the Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū (天神真楊流) of jujutsu, who had a small nine mat dōjō where he taught five students. Fukuda is said to have emphasized technique over formal exercise, sowing the seeds of Kano's emphasis on randori (乱取り, randori, free practice) in judo.
On Fukuda's death in 1880, Kano, who had become his keenest and most able student in both randori and kata (形, kata, pre-arranged forms), was given the densho (伝書, scrolls) of the Fukuda dōjō. Kano chose to continue his studies at another Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū school, that of Iso Masatomo (c. 1820–1881). Iso placed more emphasis on the practice of "kata", and entrusted randori instruction to assistants, increasingly to Kano. Iso died in June 1881 and Kano went on to study at the dōjō of Iikubo Tsunetoshi (1835–1889) of Kitō-ryū (起倒流). Like Fukuda, Iikubo placed much emphasis on randori, with Kitō-ryū having a greater focus on nage-waza (投げ技, throwing techniques).
In February 1882, Kano founded a school and dōjō at the Eisho-ji (永昌寺), a Buddhist temple in what was then the Shitaya ward of Tokyo (now the Higashi Ueno district of Taitō ward). Iikubo, Kano's Kitō-ryū instructor, attended the dōjō three days a week to help teach and, although two years would pass before the temple would be called by the name Kōdōkan (講道館, Kodokan, "place for expounding the way"), and Kano had not yet received his Menkyo (免許, certificate of mastery) in Kitō-ryū, this is now regarded as the Kodokan founding.
The Eisho-ji dōjō was originally shoin. It was a relatively small affair, consisting of a 12 jo (214 sq ft) training area. Kano took in resident and non-resident students, the first two being Tomita Tsunejirō and Shiro Saigo. In August, the following year, the pair were granted shodan (初段, first rank) grades, the first that had been awarded in any martial art.
Central to Kano's vision for judo were the principles of seiryoku zen'yō (精力善用, maximum efficiency, minimum effort) and jita kyōei (自他共栄, mutual welfare and benefit). He illustrated the application of seiryoku zen'yō with the concept of jū yoku gō o seisu (柔能く剛を制す - 柔能剛制, softness controls hardness):
In short, resisting a more powerful opponent will result in your defeat, whilst adjusting to and evading your opponent's attack will cause him to lose his balance, his power will be reduced, and you will defeat him. This can apply whatever the relative values of power, thus making it possible for weaker opponents to beat significantly stronger ones. This is the theory of ju yoku go o seisu.
Kano realised that seiryoku zen'yō, initially conceived as a jujutsu concept, had a wider philosophical application. Coupled with the Confucianist-influenced jita kyōei, the wider application shaped the development of judo from a bujutsu (武術, martial art) to a budō (武道, martial way). Kano rejected techniques that did not conform to these principles and emphasised the importance of efficiency in the execution of techniques. He was convinced that practice of jujutsu while conforming to these ideals was a route to self-improvement and the betterment of society in general. He was, however, acutely conscious of the Japanese public's negative perception of jujutsu:
At the time a few bujitsu (martial arts) experts still existed but bujitsu was almost abandoned by the nation at large. Even if I wanted to teach jujitsu most people had now stopped thinking about it. So I thought it better to teach under a different name principally because my objectives were much wider than jujitsu.
Kano believed that "jūjutsu" was insufficient to describe his art: although jutsu (術) means "art" or "means", it implies a method consisting of a collection of physical techniques. Accordingly, he changed the second character to dō (道), meaning "way", "road" or "path", which implies a more philosophical context than jutsu and has a common origin with the Chinese concept of tao. Thus Kano renamed it Jūdō (柔道, judo).
There are three basic categories of waza (技, techniques) in judo: nage-waza (投げ技, throwing techniques), katame-waza (固技, grappling techniques) and atemi-waza (当て身技, striking techniques). Judo is mostly known for nage-waza and katame-waza.
Judo practitioners typically devote a portion of each practice session to ukemi (受け身, break-falls), in order that nage-waza can be practiced without significant risk of injury. Several distinct types of ukemi exist, including ushiro ukemi (後ろ受身, rear breakfalls); yoko ukemi (横受け身, side breakfalls); mae ukemi (前受け身, front breakfalls); and zenpo kaiten ukemi (前方回転受身, rolling breakfalls)
The person who performs a Waza is known as tori (取り, literally "taker") and the person to whom it is performed is known as uke (受け, "receiver").
Nage-waza include all techniques in which tori attempts to throw or trip uke, usually with the aim of placing uke on their back. Each technique has three distinct stages:
Nage-waza are typically drilled by the use of uchi-komi (内込), repeated turning-in, taking the throw up to the point of kake.
Traditionally, nage-waza are further categorised into tachi-waza (立ち技, standing techniques), throws that are performed with tori maintaining an upright position, and sutemi-waza (捨身技, sacrifice techniques), throws in which tori sacrifices his upright position in order to throw uke.
Tachi-waza are further subdivided into te-waza (手技, hand techniques), in which tori predominantly uses their arms to throw uke; koshi-waza (腰技, hip techniques) throws that predominantly use a lifting motion from the hips; and ashi-waza (足技, foot and leg techniques), throws in which tori predominantly utilises their legs.
Katame-waza is further categorised into osaekomi-waza (抑込技, holding techniques), in which tori traps and pins uke on their back on the floor; shime-waza (絞技, strangulation techniques), in which tori attempts to force a submission by choking or strangling uke; and kansetsu-waza (関節技, joint techniques), in which tori attempts to submit uke by painful manipulation of their joints.
A related concept is that of ne-waza (寝技, prone techniques), in which waza are applied from a non-standing position.
In competitive judo, Kansetsu-waza is currently limited to elbow joint manipulation. Manipulation and locking of other joints can be found in various kata, such as Katame-no-kata and Kodokan goshin jutsu.
Atemi-waza are techniques in which tori disables uke with a strike to a vital point. Atemi-waza are not permitted outside of kata.
Judo pedagogy emphasizes randori (乱取り, literally "taking chaos", but meaning "free practice"). This term covers a variety of forms of practice, and the intensity at which it is carried out varies depending on intent and the level of expertise of the participants. At one extreme, is a compliant style of randori, known as Yakusoku geiko (約束稽古, prearranged practice), in which neither participant offers resistance to their partner's attempts to throw. A related concept is that of Sute geiko (捨稽古, throw-away practice), in which an experienced judoka allows himself to be thrown by his less-experienced partner. At the opposite extreme from yakusoku geiko is the hard style of randori that seeks to emulate the style of judo seen in competition. While hard randori is the cornerstone of judo, over-emphasis of the competitive aspect is seen as undesirable by traditionalists if the intent of the randori is to "win" rather than to learn.
Kata (形, kata, forms) are pre-arranged patterns of techniques and in judo, with the exception of elements of the Seiryoku-Zen'yō Kokumin-Taiiku, they are all practised with a partner. Their purposes include illustrating the basic principles of judo, demonstrating the correct execution of a technique, teaching the philosophical tenets upon which judo is based, allowing for the practice of techniques that are not allowed in randori, and to preserve ancient techniques that are historically important but are no longer used in contemporary judo.
There are ten kata that are recognized by the Kodokan today:
In addition, there are a number of commonly practiced kata that are not recognised by the Kodokan. Some of the more common kata include:
Contest (試合, shiai) is a vitally important aspect of judo. In 1899, Kano was asked to chair a committee of the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai to draw up the first formal set of contest rules for jujutsu. These rules were intended to cover contests between different various traditional schools of jujutsu as well as practitioners of Kodokan judo. Contests were 15 minutes long and were judged on the basis of nage waza and katame waza, excluding atemi waza. Wins were by two ippons, awarded in every four-main different path of winning alternatives, by "Throwing", where the opponent's back strikes flat onto the mat with sufficient force, by "Pinning" them on their back for a "sufficient" amount of time, or by "Submission", which could be achieved via Shime-waza or Kansetsu-waza, in which the opponent was forced to give himself or herself up or summon a referee's or corner-judge's stoppage. Finger, toe and ankle locks were prohibited. In 1900, these rules were adopted by the Kodokan with amendments made to prohibit all joint locks for kyu grades and added wrist locks to the prohibited kansetsu-waza for dan grades. It was also stated that the ratio of tachi-waza to ne-waza should be between 70% and 80% for kyu grades and between 60% and 70% for dan grades.
In 1916, additional rulings were brought in to further limit kansetsu waza with the prohibition of ashi garami and neck locks, as well as do jime. These were further added to in 1925.
Jigoro Kano for a long time wished to see judo as an Olympic discipline. The first time judo was seen in the Olympic Games was in an informal demonstration hosted by Kano at the 1932 Games. However, Kano was ambivalent about judo's potential inclusion as an Olympic sport:
I have been asked by people of various sections as to the wisdom and possibility of judo being introduced with other games and sports at the Olympic Games. My view on the matter, at present, is rather passive. If it be the desire of other member countries, I have no objection. But I do not feel inclined to take any initiative. For one thing, judo in reality is not a mere sport or game. I regard it as a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural attainment. Only one of the forms of judo training, so-called randori or free practice can be classed as a form of sport. Certainly, to some extent, the same may be said of boxing and fencing, but today they are practiced and conducted as sports. Then the Olympic Games are so strongly flavored with nationalism that it is possible to be influenced by it and to develop "Contest Judo", a retrograde form as ju-jitsu was before the Kodokan was founded. Judo should be free as art and science from any external influences, political, national, racial, and financial or any other organized interest. And all things connected with it should be directed to its ultimate object, the "Benefit of Humanity". Human sacrifice is a matter of ancient history.
At the 57th general session of the International Olympic Committee, held in Rome on 22 August 1960, the IOC members formally decided to include Judo among the events to be contested at the Olympic Games. The proposal, which was placed before the session by the Japanese delegation, was welcomed by all participants. The few who opposed had nothing against Judo itself but against increasing the number of Olympic events as a whole. There were only two dissenting votes in the final poll. For the first time in history a traditional Japanese sport has been included in the Olympic competition.
Finally, judo was first contested as an Olympic sport for men in the 1964 Games in Tokyo. The Olympic Committee initially dropped judo for the 1968 Olympics, meeting protests. Dutchman Anton Geesink won the first Olympic gold medal in the open division of judo by defeating Akio Kaminaga of Japan. The women's event was introduced at the Olympics in 1988 as a demonstration event, and an official medal event in 1992.
Judo was introduced as a Paralympic sport at the 1988 Summer Paralympics in Seoul, with women's events contested for the first time at 2004 Summer Paralympics.
Judo was an optional sport included in the three editions of the Commonwealth Games: 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. From 2022, judo will become a core sport in the 22nd edition of the Commonwealth Games, in Birmingham.
Penalties may be given for: passivity or preventing progress in the match; for safety infringements for example by using prohibited techniques, or for behavior that is deemed to be against the spirit of judo. Fighting must be stopped if a participant is outside the designated area on the mat.
There are currently seven weight divisions, subject to change by governing bodies, and may be modified based on the age of the competitors:
A throw that places the opponent on their back with impetus and control scores an ippon (一本), winning the contest. A lesser throw, where the opponent is thrown onto his back, but with insufficient force to merit an ippon, scores a waza-ari (技あり). Two scores of waza-ari equal an ippon waza-ari awasete ippon (技あり合わせて一本, ). This rule was cancelled in 2017, but it was resumed in 2018. Formerly, a throw that places the opponent onto his side scores a yuko (有効).
In 2017, the International Judo Federation announced changes in evaluation of points. There will only be ippon and waza-ari scores given during a match with yuko scores now included within waza-ari.
Ippon is scored in ne-waza for pinning an opponent on his back with a recognised osaekomi-waza for 20 seconds or by forcing a submission through shime-waza or kansetsu-waza. A submission is signalled by tapping the mat or the opponent at least twice with the hand or foot, or by saying maitta (まいった, I surrender). A pin lasting for less than 20 seconds, but more than 10 seconds scores waza-ari (formerly waza-ari was awarded for holds of longer than 15 seconds and yuko for holds of longer than 10 seconds).
Formerly, there was an additional score that was lesser to yuko, that of Koka (効果). This has since been removed.
If the scores are identical at the end of the match, the contest is resolved by the Golden Score rule. Golden Score is a sudden death situation where the clock is reset to match-time, and the first contestant to achieve any score wins. If there is no score during this period, then the winner is decided by Hantei (判定), the majority opinion of the referee and the two corner judges.
There have been changes to the scoring. In January 2013, the Hantei was removed and the "Golden Score" no longer has a time limit. The match would continue until a judoka scored through a technique or if the opponent is penalised (Hansoku-make).
Two types of penalties may be awarded. A shido (指導 – literally "guidance") is awarded for minor rule infringements. A shido can also be awarded for a prolonged period of non-aggression. Recent rule changes allow for the first shidos to result in only warnings. If there is a tie, then and only then, will the number of shidos (if less than three) be used to determine the winner. After three shidos are given, the victory is given to the opponent, constituting an indirect hansoku-make (反則負け – literally "foul-play defeat"), but does not result in expulsion from the tournament. Note: Prior to 2017, the 4th shido was hansoku-make. If hansoku-make is awarded for a major rule infringement, it results not just in loss of the match, but in the expulsion from the tournament of the penalized player.
A number of judo practitioners have made an impact in mixed martial arts. Notable judo-trained MMA fighters include Olympic medalists Hidehiko Yoshida (Gold, 1992), Naoya Ogawa (Silver, 1992), Paweł Nastula (Gold, 1996), Makoto Takimoto (Gold, 2000), Satoshi Ishii (Gold, 2008), Ronda Rousey (Bronze, 2008), and Kayla Harrison (Gold, 2012 and 2016), former Russian national judo championship bronze medalist Fedor Emelianenko, Yoshihiro Akiyama, Don Frye, Rick Hawn, Daniel Kelly, Hector Lombard, Karo Parisyan, Ayaka Hamasaki, Antônio Silva, Oleg Taktarov, Rhadi Ferguson, Dong-Sik Yoon, and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Kano Jigoro's Kodokan judo is the most popular and well-known style of judo, but is not the only one. The terms judo and jujutsu were quite interchangeable in the early years, so some of these forms of judo are still known as jujutsu or jiu-jitsu either for that reason, or simply to differentiate them from mainstream judo. From Kano's original style of judo, several related forms have evolved—some now widely considered to be distinct arts:
Commonly described as a separate style of Judo, Kosen judo is a competition rules set of Kodokan judo that was popularized in the early 20th century for use in Japanese Special High Schools Championships held at Kyoto Imperial University. The word "Kosen" is an acronym of Koto Senmon Gakko (高等専門学校, literally "Higher Professional School"). Currently, competitions are organized between Japan's seven former Imperial Universities and referred to as Nanatei Judo (ja:七帝柔道, literally "Seven Emperors Judo"). Kosen judo's focus on newaza has drawn comparisons with Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Georgian Judo is influenced by Chidaoba (Georgian cultural jacket wrestling). Chidaoba’s major influence on the Georgian style of judo is in its unorthodox grips as well as its throws and takedowns. Georgian Judo is also known for its countering techniques through the use of power moves such as bear hugs and double underhooks into throws and takedowns. It is represented by various olympic winners and World Champions, such as Lasha Bekauri, Lukhumi Chkhvimiani, Shota Chochishvili, Tato Grigalashvili, Zaza Kedelashvili, David Khakhaleishvili, Luka Maisuradze,Lasha Shavdatuashvili and others.
Sambo is a influenced by judo combined with wrestling techniques, and striking in case of combat sambo. Vasili Oshchepkov was one of the first European judo black belts under Kano. Oshchepkov went on to contribute his knowledge of judo as one of the three founders of Sambo, which also integrated various international and Soviet bloc wrestling styles and other combative techniques. Oshchepkov was executed during the political purges of 1937 and judo was banned for decades until its inclusion in the 1964 Olympics, where sambists won 4 bronze medals. In their History of Sambo, Brett Jacques and Scott Anderson wrote that in Russia "judo and SOMBO were considered to be the same thing"—albeit with a different uniform and some differences in the rules.
An adoption of Kano jiu jitsu (a common name for judo at the time) in Brazil attributed to Mitsuya Maeda's students, most notably the Gracie family. 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu and other wrestling-influenced systems without the gi have also become popular.
Freestyle Judo is a form of competitive judo practiced primarily in the United States that retains techniques that have been removed from mainstream IJF rules. Freestyle Judo is currently backed by the International Freestyle Judo Alliance (IFJA). The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) officially sanctions Freestyle Judo in the United States of America.
Unlike other Far East styles of Judo, Mongolian Judo focuses much more on power rather than technique. The influence of Bokh on Mongolian Judo can be seen in its grips and body positioning. Judo grips such as the over under, double underhooks and the heavy use of grips on the belt. It is represented by various world champions, such as Khaliuny Boldbaatar, Tsendiin Damdin, Boldyn Gankhaich, Naidangiin Tüvshinbayar, Mönkhbatyn Urantsetseg, Ganbatyn Boldbaatar.
Judo also influenced other combat styles such as close-quarters combat (CQC), mixed martial arts (MMA), shoot wrestling and submission wrestling.
Kano's vision for judo was one of a martial way that could be practiced realistically. Randori (free practice) was a central part of judo pedagogy and shiai (competition) a crucial test of a judoka's understanding of judo. Safety necessitated some basic innovations that shaped judo's development. Atemi waza (striking techniques) were entirely limited to kata (prearranged forms) early in judo's history. Kansetsu waza (joint manipulation techniques) were limited to techniques that focused on the elbow joint. Various throwing techniques that were judged to be too dangerous to practice safely at full force, such as all joint-locking throws from Jujutsu, were also prohibited in shiai. To maximise safety in nage waza (throwing techniques), judoka trained in ukemi (break falls) and practiced on tatami (rice straw mats).
The application of joint manipulation and strangulation/choking techniques is generally safe under controlled conditions typical of judo dōjō and in competition. It is usual for there to be age restrictions on the practice and application of these types of techniques, but the exact nature of these restrictions will vary from country to country and from organization to organization.
Safety in the practice of throwing techniques depends on the skill level of both tori and uke. Inexpertly applied throws have the potential to injure both tori and uke, for instance when tori compensates for poor technique by powering through the throw. Similarly, poor ukemi can result in injury, particularly from more powerful throws that uke lacks the skill to breakfall from. For these reasons, throws are normally taught in order of difficulty for both tori and uke. This is exemplified in the Gokyo (五教, literally "five teachings"), a traditional grouping of throws arranged in order of difficulty of ukemi. Those grouped in Dai ikkyo (第一教, literally "first teaching") are relatively simple to breakfall from whereas those grouped in dai gokyo (第五教, literally "fifth teaching") are difficult to breakfall from.
Mental training is an emerging modality of training in judo that aims to improve the performance of high-performance athletes in training and competition and also to promote health and well-being in the daily life of athletes and their entourage through the learning and application of psychological skills. The first publication of a judo-specific practical mental training approach based on sports training principles was in 2005 with the work of Boris Blumenstein, Ronnie Lidor and Gershon Tenenbaum. In 2022, Caio Gabriel published the first article on mental training that appeared in the scientific journal of the International Judo Federation, "The Arts and Sciences of Judo".
A practitioner of judo is known as a judoka (柔道家). The modern meaning of "judoka" in English is a judo practitioner of any level of expertise, but traditionally those below the rank of 4th dan were called kenkyu-sei (研究生, trainees); and only those of 4th dan or higher were called "judoka". (The suffix -ka (家), when added to a noun, means a person with expertise or special knowledge on that subject).
A judo teacher is called sensei (先生). The word sensei comes from sen or saki (before) and sei (life) – i.e. one who has preceded you. In Western dōjō, it is common to call an instructor of any dan grade sensei. Traditionally, that title was reserved for instructors of 4th dan and above.
Judo practitioners traditionally wear white uniforms called 稽古着 (keikogi, keikogi) practice clothing or jūdōgi (柔道着, judogi, judo clothing) sometimes abbreviated in the west as "gi". It comprises a heavy cotton kimono-like jacket called an uwagi (上衣, jacket), similar to traditional hanten (半纏, workers' jackets) fastened by an obi (帯, obi, belt), coloured to indicate rank, and cotton draw-string zubon (ズボン, trousers). Early examples of keikogi had short sleeves and trouser legs and the modern long-sleeved judogi was adopted in 1906.
The modern use of the blue judogi for high level competition was first suggested by Anton Geesink at the 1986 Maastricht IJF DC Meeting. For competition, a blue judogi is worn by one of the two competitors for ease of distinction by judges, referees, and spectators. In Japan, both judoka use a white judogi and the traditional red obi (based on the colors of the Japanese flag) is affixed to the belt of one competitor. Outside Japan, a colored obi may also be used for convenience in minor competitions, the blue judogi only being mandatory at the regional or higher levels, depending on organization. Japanese practitioners and traditionalists tend to look down on the use of blue because judo is considered a pure sport, and replacing the pure white judogi with the impure blue is an offense.
For events organized under the auspices of the International judo Federation (IJF), judogi have to bear the IJF Official Logo Mark Label. This label demonstrates that the judogi has passed a number of quality control tests to ensure it conforms to construction regulations ensuring it is not too stiff, flexible, rigid or slippery to allow the opponent to grip or to perform techniques.
The international governing body for judo is the International Judo Federation (IJF), founded in 1951. Members of the IJF include the African Judo Union (AJU), the Pan-American Judo Confederation (PJC), the Judo Union of Asia (JUA), the European Judo Union (EJU) and the Oceania Judo Union (OJU), each comprising a number of national judo associations. The IJF is responsible for organising international competition and hosts the World Judo Championships and is involved in running the Olympic Judo events.
Judo is a hierarchical art, where seniority of judoka is designated by what is known as the kyū (級, kyū) -dan (段, dan) ranking system. This system was developed by Jigoro Kano and was based on the ranking system in the board game Go.
Beginning students progress through kyu grades towards dan grades.
A judoka's position within the kyu-dan ranking system is displayed by the color of their belt. Beginning students typically wear a white belt, progressing through descending kyu ranks until they are deemed to have achieved a level of competence sufficient to be a dan grade, at which point they wear the kuro obi (黒帯, black belt). The kyu-dan ranking system has since been widely adopted by modern martial arts.
The highest black belt ranks have no formal requirements and are decided by the president of the Kodokan. Kano Jigoro's grandson Kano Yukimitsu served as the fourth president from 1980 until 2009. As an educator by profession, Kanō believed that there should be no end to an individual's learning, and therefore no limit to the number of dan ranks. As of 2011, fifteen Japanese men have been promoted to the tenth degree black belt judan by the Kodokan; the IJF and Western and Asian national federations have promoted another eleven who are not recognized at that level of rank by the Kodokan. On 28 July 2011, the promotion board of USA Judo awarded Keiko Fukuda the rank of 10th dan, who was the first woman to be promoted to judo's highest level, albeit not a Kodokan-recognized rank.
Although dan ranks tend to be consistent between national organizations there is more variation in the kyū grades, with some countries having more kyū grades. Although initially kyū grade belt colours were uniformly white, today a variety of colours are used. The first black belts to denote a dan rank in the 1880s, initially the wide obi was used; as practitioners trained in kimono, only white and black obi were used. It was not until the early 1900s, after the introduction of the judogi, that an expanded colored belt system of awarding rank was created. Written accounts from the archives of London's Budokwai judo club, founded in 1918, record the use of coloured judo belts at the 1926 9th annual Budokwai Display, and a list of ranked colored judokas appears in the Budokwai Committee Minutes of June 1927. Kawaishi visited London and the Budokwai in 1928, and was probably inspired to bring the coloured belt system to France.
On October 28 of every year, the judo community celebrates the World Judo Day in the honor of the birth of Judo's founder, Jigoro Kano. The theme of the World Judo Day changes from year to year, but the goal is always to highlight the moral values of Judo. The first celebration was held in 2011. Past themes for the celebration have included: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Judo (Japanese: 柔道, Hepburn: Jūdō, lit. 'gentle way') is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally. Judo was created in 1882 by Kanō Jigorō (嘉納 治五郎) as an eclectic martial art, distinguishing itself from its predecessors (primarily Tenjin Shinyo-ryu jujutsu and Kitō-ryū jujutsu) due to an emphasis on \"randori\" (乱取り, lit. 'free sparring') instead of \"kata\" (pre-arranged forms) alongside its removal of striking and weapon training elements. Judo rose to prominence for its dominance over established jujutsu schools in tournaments hosted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (警視庁武術大会, Keishicho Bujutsu Taikai), resulting in its adoption as the department's primary martial art. A judo practitioner is called a \"judoka\" (柔道家, jūdōka, lit. 'judo performer'), and the judo uniform is called \"judogi\" (柔道着, jūdōgi, lit. 'judo attire').",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The objective of competitive judo is to throw an opponent, immobilize them with a pin, or force an opponent to submit with a joint lock or a choke. While strikes and use of weapons are included in some pre-arranged forms (kata), they are not frequently trained and are illegal in judo competition or free practice. Judo's international governing body is the International Judo Federation, and competitors compete in the international IJF professional circuit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Judo's philosophy revolves around two primary principles: \"Seiryoku-Zenyo\" (精力善用, lit. 'good use of energy') and \"Jita-Kyoei\" (自他共栄, lit. 'mutual welfare and benefit'). The philosophy and subsequent pedagogy developed for judo became the model for other modern Japanese martial arts that developed from koryū (古流, traditional schools). Judo also spawned a number of derivative martial arts around the world, such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Krav Maga, sambo, and ARB. Judo also influenced other combat styles such as close-quarters combat (CQC), mixed martial arts (MMA), shoot wrestling and submission wrestling.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The early history of judo is inseparable from its founder, Japanese polymath and educator Kanō Jigorō (嘉納 治五郎, Jigoro Kano, 1860–1938), born Shinnosuke Jigorō (新之助 治五郎, Jigorō Shinnosuke). Kano was born into a relatively affluent family. His father, Jirosaku, was the second son of the head priest of the Shinto Hiyoshi shrine in Shiga Prefecture. He married Sadako Kano, daughter of the owner of Kiku-Masamune sake brewing company and was adopted by the family, changing his name to Kano. He ultimately became an official in the Shogunate government.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Jigoro Kano had an academic upbringing and, from the age of seven, he studied English, shodō (書道, Japanese calligraphy) and the Four Confucian Texts (四書, Shisho) under a number of tutors. When he was fourteen, Kano began boarding at an English-medium school, Ikuei-Gijuku in Shiba, Tokyo. The culture of bullying endemic at this school was the catalyst that caused Kano to seek out a Jūjutsu (柔術, Jujutsu) dōjō (道場, dōjō, training place) at which to train.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Early attempts to find a jujutsu teacher who was willing to take him on met with little success. Jujutsu had become unfashionable in an increasingly westernized Japan. Many of those who had once taught the art had been forced out of teaching or become so disillusioned with it that they had simply given up. Nakai Umenari, an acquaintance of Kanō's father and a former soldier, agreed to show him kata, but not to teach him. The caretaker of Jirosaku's second house, Katagiri Ryuji, also knew jujutsu, but would not teach it as he believed it was no longer of practical use. Another frequent visitor, Imai Genshiro of Kyūshin-ryū (扱心流) school of jujutsu, also refused. Several years passed before he finally found a willing teacher.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1877, as a student at the Tokyo-Kaisei school (soon to become part of the newly founded Tokyo Imperial University), Kano learned that many jujutsu teachers had been forced to pursue alternative careers, frequently opening Seikotsu-in (整骨院, traditional osteopathy practices). After inquiring at a number of these, Kano was referred to Fukuda Hachinosuke (c. 1828–1880), a teacher of the Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū (天神真楊流) of jujutsu, who had a small nine mat dōjō where he taught five students. Fukuda is said to have emphasized technique over formal exercise, sowing the seeds of Kano's emphasis on randori (乱取り, randori, free practice) in judo.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "On Fukuda's death in 1880, Kano, who had become his keenest and most able student in both randori and kata (形, kata, pre-arranged forms), was given the densho (伝書, scrolls) of the Fukuda dōjō. Kano chose to continue his studies at another Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū school, that of Iso Masatomo (c. 1820–1881). Iso placed more emphasis on the practice of \"kata\", and entrusted randori instruction to assistants, increasingly to Kano. Iso died in June 1881 and Kano went on to study at the dōjō of Iikubo Tsunetoshi (1835–1889) of Kitō-ryū (起倒流). Like Fukuda, Iikubo placed much emphasis on randori, with Kitō-ryū having a greater focus on nage-waza (投げ技, throwing techniques).",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In February 1882, Kano founded a school and dōjō at the Eisho-ji (永昌寺), a Buddhist temple in what was then the Shitaya ward of Tokyo (now the Higashi Ueno district of Taitō ward). Iikubo, Kano's Kitō-ryū instructor, attended the dōjō three days a week to help teach and, although two years would pass before the temple would be called by the name Kōdōkan (講道館, Kodokan, \"place for expounding the way\"), and Kano had not yet received his Menkyo (免許, certificate of mastery) in Kitō-ryū, this is now regarded as the Kodokan founding.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Eisho-ji dōjō was originally shoin. It was a relatively small affair, consisting of a 12 jo (214 sq ft) training area. Kano took in resident and non-resident students, the first two being Tomita Tsunejirō and Shiro Saigo. In August, the following year, the pair were granted shodan (初段, first rank) grades, the first that had been awarded in any martial art.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Central to Kano's vision for judo were the principles of seiryoku zen'yō (精力善用, maximum efficiency, minimum effort) and jita kyōei (自他共栄, mutual welfare and benefit). He illustrated the application of seiryoku zen'yō with the concept of jū yoku gō o seisu (柔能く剛を制す - 柔能剛制, softness controls hardness):",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In short, resisting a more powerful opponent will result in your defeat, whilst adjusting to and evading your opponent's attack will cause him to lose his balance, his power will be reduced, and you will defeat him. This can apply whatever the relative values of power, thus making it possible for weaker opponents to beat significantly stronger ones. This is the theory of ju yoku go o seisu.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kano realised that seiryoku zen'yō, initially conceived as a jujutsu concept, had a wider philosophical application. Coupled with the Confucianist-influenced jita kyōei, the wider application shaped the development of judo from a bujutsu (武術, martial art) to a budō (武道, martial way). Kano rejected techniques that did not conform to these principles and emphasised the importance of efficiency in the execution of techniques. He was convinced that practice of jujutsu while conforming to these ideals was a route to self-improvement and the betterment of society in general. He was, however, acutely conscious of the Japanese public's negative perception of jujutsu:",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "At the time a few bujitsu (martial arts) experts still existed but bujitsu was almost abandoned by the nation at large. Even if I wanted to teach jujitsu most people had now stopped thinking about it. So I thought it better to teach under a different name principally because my objectives were much wider than jujitsu.",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Kano believed that \"jūjutsu\" was insufficient to describe his art: although jutsu (術) means \"art\" or \"means\", it implies a method consisting of a collection of physical techniques. Accordingly, he changed the second character to dō (道), meaning \"way\", \"road\" or \"path\", which implies a more philosophical context than jutsu and has a common origin with the Chinese concept of tao. Thus Kano renamed it Jūdō (柔道, judo).",
"title": "History and philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "There are three basic categories of waza (技, techniques) in judo: nage-waza (投げ技, throwing techniques), katame-waza (固技, grappling techniques) and atemi-waza (当て身技, striking techniques). Judo is mostly known for nage-waza and katame-waza.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Judo practitioners typically devote a portion of each practice session to ukemi (受け身, break-falls), in order that nage-waza can be practiced without significant risk of injury. Several distinct types of ukemi exist, including ushiro ukemi (後ろ受身, rear breakfalls); yoko ukemi (横受け身, side breakfalls); mae ukemi (前受け身, front breakfalls); and zenpo kaiten ukemi (前方回転受身, rolling breakfalls)",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The person who performs a Waza is known as tori (取り, literally \"taker\") and the person to whom it is performed is known as uke (受け, \"receiver\").",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Nage-waza include all techniques in which tori attempts to throw or trip uke, usually with the aim of placing uke on their back. Each technique has three distinct stages:",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Nage-waza are typically drilled by the use of uchi-komi (内込), repeated turning-in, taking the throw up to the point of kake.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Traditionally, nage-waza are further categorised into tachi-waza (立ち技, standing techniques), throws that are performed with tori maintaining an upright position, and sutemi-waza (捨身技, sacrifice techniques), throws in which tori sacrifices his upright position in order to throw uke.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Tachi-waza are further subdivided into te-waza (手技, hand techniques), in which tori predominantly uses their arms to throw uke; koshi-waza (腰技, hip techniques) throws that predominantly use a lifting motion from the hips; and ashi-waza (足技, foot and leg techniques), throws in which tori predominantly utilises their legs.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Katame-waza is further categorised into osaekomi-waza (抑込技, holding techniques), in which tori traps and pins uke on their back on the floor; shime-waza (絞技, strangulation techniques), in which tori attempts to force a submission by choking or strangling uke; and kansetsu-waza (関節技, joint techniques), in which tori attempts to submit uke by painful manipulation of their joints.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A related concept is that of ne-waza (寝技, prone techniques), in which waza are applied from a non-standing position.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In competitive judo, Kansetsu-waza is currently limited to elbow joint manipulation. Manipulation and locking of other joints can be found in various kata, such as Katame-no-kata and Kodokan goshin jutsu.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Atemi-waza are techniques in which tori disables uke with a strike to a vital point. Atemi-waza are not permitted outside of kata.",
"title": "Judo waza (techniques)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Judo pedagogy emphasizes randori (乱取り, literally \"taking chaos\", but meaning \"free practice\"). This term covers a variety of forms of practice, and the intensity at which it is carried out varies depending on intent and the level of expertise of the participants. At one extreme, is a compliant style of randori, known as Yakusoku geiko (約束稽古, prearranged practice), in which neither participant offers resistance to their partner's attempts to throw. A related concept is that of Sute geiko (捨稽古, throw-away practice), in which an experienced judoka allows himself to be thrown by his less-experienced partner. At the opposite extreme from yakusoku geiko is the hard style of randori that seeks to emulate the style of judo seen in competition. While hard randori is the cornerstone of judo, over-emphasis of the competitive aspect is seen as undesirable by traditionalists if the intent of the randori is to \"win\" rather than to learn.",
"title": "Pedagogy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kata (形, kata, forms) are pre-arranged patterns of techniques and in judo, with the exception of elements of the Seiryoku-Zen'yō Kokumin-Taiiku, they are all practised with a partner. Their purposes include illustrating the basic principles of judo, demonstrating the correct execution of a technique, teaching the philosophical tenets upon which judo is based, allowing for the practice of techniques that are not allowed in randori, and to preserve ancient techniques that are historically important but are no longer used in contemporary judo.",
"title": "Pedagogy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "There are ten kata that are recognized by the Kodokan today:",
"title": "Pedagogy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In addition, there are a number of commonly practiced kata that are not recognised by the Kodokan. Some of the more common kata include:",
"title": "Pedagogy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Contest (試合, shiai) is a vitally important aspect of judo. In 1899, Kano was asked to chair a committee of the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai to draw up the first formal set of contest rules for jujutsu. These rules were intended to cover contests between different various traditional schools of jujutsu as well as practitioners of Kodokan judo. Contests were 15 minutes long and were judged on the basis of nage waza and katame waza, excluding atemi waza. Wins were by two ippons, awarded in every four-main different path of winning alternatives, by \"Throwing\", where the opponent's back strikes flat onto the mat with sufficient force, by \"Pinning\" them on their back for a \"sufficient\" amount of time, or by \"Submission\", which could be achieved via Shime-waza or Kansetsu-waza, in which the opponent was forced to give himself or herself up or summon a referee's or corner-judge's stoppage. Finger, toe and ankle locks were prohibited. In 1900, these rules were adopted by the Kodokan with amendments made to prohibit all joint locks for kyu grades and added wrist locks to the prohibited kansetsu-waza for dan grades. It was also stated that the ratio of tachi-waza to ne-waza should be between 70% and 80% for kyu grades and between 60% and 70% for dan grades.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 1916, additional rulings were brought in to further limit kansetsu waza with the prohibition of ashi garami and neck locks, as well as do jime. These were further added to in 1925.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Jigoro Kano for a long time wished to see judo as an Olympic discipline. The first time judo was seen in the Olympic Games was in an informal demonstration hosted by Kano at the 1932 Games. However, Kano was ambivalent about judo's potential inclusion as an Olympic sport:",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "I have been asked by people of various sections as to the wisdom and possibility of judo being introduced with other games and sports at the Olympic Games. My view on the matter, at present, is rather passive. If it be the desire of other member countries, I have no objection. But I do not feel inclined to take any initiative. For one thing, judo in reality is not a mere sport or game. I regard it as a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural attainment. Only one of the forms of judo training, so-called randori or free practice can be classed as a form of sport. Certainly, to some extent, the same may be said of boxing and fencing, but today they are practiced and conducted as sports. Then the Olympic Games are so strongly flavored with nationalism that it is possible to be influenced by it and to develop \"Contest Judo\", a retrograde form as ju-jitsu was before the Kodokan was founded. Judo should be free as art and science from any external influences, political, national, racial, and financial or any other organized interest. And all things connected with it should be directed to its ultimate object, the \"Benefit of Humanity\". Human sacrifice is a matter of ancient history.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "At the 57th general session of the International Olympic Committee, held in Rome on 22 August 1960, the IOC members formally decided to include Judo among the events to be contested at the Olympic Games. The proposal, which was placed before the session by the Japanese delegation, was welcomed by all participants. The few who opposed had nothing against Judo itself but against increasing the number of Olympic events as a whole. There were only two dissenting votes in the final poll. For the first time in history a traditional Japanese sport has been included in the Olympic competition.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Finally, judo was first contested as an Olympic sport for men in the 1964 Games in Tokyo. The Olympic Committee initially dropped judo for the 1968 Olympics, meeting protests. Dutchman Anton Geesink won the first Olympic gold medal in the open division of judo by defeating Akio Kaminaga of Japan. The women's event was introduced at the Olympics in 1988 as a demonstration event, and an official medal event in 1992.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Judo was introduced as a Paralympic sport at the 1988 Summer Paralympics in Seoul, with women's events contested for the first time at 2004 Summer Paralympics.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Judo was an optional sport included in the three editions of the Commonwealth Games: 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. From 2022, judo will become a core sport in the 22nd edition of the Commonwealth Games, in Birmingham.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Penalties may be given for: passivity or preventing progress in the match; for safety infringements for example by using prohibited techniques, or for behavior that is deemed to be against the spirit of judo. Fighting must be stopped if a participant is outside the designated area on the mat.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "There are currently seven weight divisions, subject to change by governing bodies, and may be modified based on the age of the competitors:",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "A throw that places the opponent on their back with impetus and control scores an ippon (一本), winning the contest. A lesser throw, where the opponent is thrown onto his back, but with insufficient force to merit an ippon, scores a waza-ari (技あり). Two scores of waza-ari equal an ippon waza-ari awasete ippon (技あり合わせて一本, ). This rule was cancelled in 2017, but it was resumed in 2018. Formerly, a throw that places the opponent onto his side scores a yuko (有効).",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 2017, the International Judo Federation announced changes in evaluation of points. There will only be ippon and waza-ari scores given during a match with yuko scores now included within waza-ari.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Ippon is scored in ne-waza for pinning an opponent on his back with a recognised osaekomi-waza for 20 seconds or by forcing a submission through shime-waza or kansetsu-waza. A submission is signalled by tapping the mat or the opponent at least twice with the hand or foot, or by saying maitta (まいった, I surrender). A pin lasting for less than 20 seconds, but more than 10 seconds scores waza-ari (formerly waza-ari was awarded for holds of longer than 15 seconds and yuko for holds of longer than 10 seconds).",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Formerly, there was an additional score that was lesser to yuko, that of Koka (効果). This has since been removed.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "If the scores are identical at the end of the match, the contest is resolved by the Golden Score rule. Golden Score is a sudden death situation where the clock is reset to match-time, and the first contestant to achieve any score wins. If there is no score during this period, then the winner is decided by Hantei (判定), the majority opinion of the referee and the two corner judges.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "There have been changes to the scoring. In January 2013, the Hantei was removed and the \"Golden Score\" no longer has a time limit. The match would continue until a judoka scored through a technique or if the opponent is penalised (Hansoku-make).",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Two types of penalties may be awarded. A shido (指導 – literally \"guidance\") is awarded for minor rule infringements. A shido can also be awarded for a prolonged period of non-aggression. Recent rule changes allow for the first shidos to result in only warnings. If there is a tie, then and only then, will the number of shidos (if less than three) be used to determine the winner. After three shidos are given, the victory is given to the opponent, constituting an indirect hansoku-make (反則負け – literally \"foul-play defeat\"), but does not result in expulsion from the tournament. Note: Prior to 2017, the 4th shido was hansoku-make. If hansoku-make is awarded for a major rule infringement, it results not just in loss of the match, but in the expulsion from the tournament of the penalized player.",
"title": "Competitive judo"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "A number of judo practitioners have made an impact in mixed martial arts. Notable judo-trained MMA fighters include Olympic medalists Hidehiko Yoshida (Gold, 1992), Naoya Ogawa (Silver, 1992), Paweł Nastula (Gold, 1996), Makoto Takimoto (Gold, 2000), Satoshi Ishii (Gold, 2008), Ronda Rousey (Bronze, 2008), and Kayla Harrison (Gold, 2012 and 2016), former Russian national judo championship bronze medalist Fedor Emelianenko, Yoshihiro Akiyama, Don Frye, Rick Hawn, Daniel Kelly, Hector Lombard, Karo Parisyan, Ayaka Hamasaki, Antônio Silva, Oleg Taktarov, Rhadi Ferguson, Dong-Sik Yoon, and Khabib Nurmagomedov.",
"title": "In mixed martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Kano Jigoro's Kodokan judo is the most popular and well-known style of judo, but is not the only one. The terms judo and jujutsu were quite interchangeable in the early years, so some of these forms of judo are still known as jujutsu or jiu-jitsu either for that reason, or simply to differentiate them from mainstream judo. From Kano's original style of judo, several related forms have evolved—some now widely considered to be distinct arts:",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Commonly described as a separate style of Judo, Kosen judo is a competition rules set of Kodokan judo that was popularized in the early 20th century for use in Japanese Special High Schools Championships held at Kyoto Imperial University. The word \"Kosen\" is an acronym of Koto Senmon Gakko (高等専門学校, literally \"Higher Professional School\"). Currently, competitions are organized between Japan's seven former Imperial Universities and referred to as Nanatei Judo (ja:七帝柔道, literally \"Seven Emperors Judo\"). Kosen judo's focus on newaza has drawn comparisons with Brazilian jiu-jitsu.",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Georgian Judo is influenced by Chidaoba (Georgian cultural jacket wrestling). Chidaoba’s major influence on the Georgian style of judo is in its unorthodox grips as well as its throws and takedowns. Georgian Judo is also known for its countering techniques through the use of power moves such as bear hugs and double underhooks into throws and takedowns. It is represented by various olympic winners and World Champions, such as Lasha Bekauri, Lukhumi Chkhvimiani, Shota Chochishvili, Tato Grigalashvili, Zaza Kedelashvili, David Khakhaleishvili, Luka Maisuradze,Lasha Shavdatuashvili and others.",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Sambo is a influenced by judo combined with wrestling techniques, and striking in case of combat sambo. Vasili Oshchepkov was one of the first European judo black belts under Kano. Oshchepkov went on to contribute his knowledge of judo as one of the three founders of Sambo, which also integrated various international and Soviet bloc wrestling styles and other combative techniques. Oshchepkov was executed during the political purges of 1937 and judo was banned for decades until its inclusion in the 1964 Olympics, where sambists won 4 bronze medals. In their History of Sambo, Brett Jacques and Scott Anderson wrote that in Russia \"judo and SOMBO were considered to be the same thing\"—albeit with a different uniform and some differences in the rules.",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "An adoption of Kano jiu jitsu (a common name for judo at the time) in Brazil attributed to Mitsuya Maeda's students, most notably the Gracie family. 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu and other wrestling-influenced systems without the gi have also become popular.",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Freestyle Judo is a form of competitive judo practiced primarily in the United States that retains techniques that have been removed from mainstream IJF rules. Freestyle Judo is currently backed by the International Freestyle Judo Alliance (IFJA). The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) officially sanctions Freestyle Judo in the United States of America.",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Unlike other Far East styles of Judo, Mongolian Judo focuses much more on power rather than technique. The influence of Bokh on Mongolian Judo can be seen in its grips and body positioning. Judo grips such as the over under, double underhooks and the heavy use of grips on the belt. It is represented by various world champions, such as Khaliuny Boldbaatar, Tsendiin Damdin, Boldyn Gankhaich, Naidangiin Tüvshinbayar, Mönkhbatyn Urantsetseg, Ganbatyn Boldbaatar.",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Judo also influenced other combat styles such as close-quarters combat (CQC), mixed martial arts (MMA), shoot wrestling and submission wrestling.",
"title": "Alternative styles and derivative martial arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Kano's vision for judo was one of a martial way that could be practiced realistically. Randori (free practice) was a central part of judo pedagogy and shiai (competition) a crucial test of a judoka's understanding of judo. Safety necessitated some basic innovations that shaped judo's development. Atemi waza (striking techniques) were entirely limited to kata (prearranged forms) early in judo's history. Kansetsu waza (joint manipulation techniques) were limited to techniques that focused on the elbow joint. Various throwing techniques that were judged to be too dangerous to practice safely at full force, such as all joint-locking throws from Jujutsu, were also prohibited in shiai. To maximise safety in nage waza (throwing techniques), judoka trained in ukemi (break falls) and practiced on tatami (rice straw mats).",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The application of joint manipulation and strangulation/choking techniques is generally safe under controlled conditions typical of judo dōjō and in competition. It is usual for there to be age restrictions on the practice and application of these types of techniques, but the exact nature of these restrictions will vary from country to country and from organization to organization.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Safety in the practice of throwing techniques depends on the skill level of both tori and uke. Inexpertly applied throws have the potential to injure both tori and uke, for instance when tori compensates for poor technique by powering through the throw. Similarly, poor ukemi can result in injury, particularly from more powerful throws that uke lacks the skill to breakfall from. For these reasons, throws are normally taught in order of difficulty for both tori and uke. This is exemplified in the Gokyo (五教, literally \"five teachings\"), a traditional grouping of throws arranged in order of difficulty of ukemi. Those grouped in Dai ikkyo (第一教, literally \"first teaching\") are relatively simple to breakfall from whereas those grouped in dai gokyo (第五教, literally \"fifth teaching\") are difficult to breakfall from.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Mental training is an emerging modality of training in judo that aims to improve the performance of high-performance athletes in training and competition and also to promote health and well-being in the daily life of athletes and their entourage through the learning and application of psychological skills. The first publication of a judo-specific practical mental training approach based on sports training principles was in 2005 with the work of Boris Blumenstein, Ronnie Lidor and Gershon Tenenbaum. In 2022, Caio Gabriel published the first article on mental training that appeared in the scientific journal of the International Judo Federation, \"The Arts and Sciences of Judo\".",
"title": "Mental training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "A practitioner of judo is known as a judoka (柔道家). The modern meaning of \"judoka\" in English is a judo practitioner of any level of expertise, but traditionally those below the rank of 4th dan were called kenkyu-sei (研究生, trainees); and only those of 4th dan or higher were called \"judoka\". (The suffix -ka (家), when added to a noun, means a person with expertise or special knowledge on that subject).",
"title": "Judoka (practitioner)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "A judo teacher is called sensei (先生). The word sensei comes from sen or saki (before) and sei (life) – i.e. one who has preceded you. In Western dōjō, it is common to call an instructor of any dan grade sensei. Traditionally, that title was reserved for instructors of 4th dan and above.",
"title": "Judoka (practitioner)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Judo practitioners traditionally wear white uniforms called 稽古着 (keikogi, keikogi) practice clothing or jūdōgi (柔道着, judogi, judo clothing) sometimes abbreviated in the west as \"gi\". It comprises a heavy cotton kimono-like jacket called an uwagi (上衣, jacket), similar to traditional hanten (半纏, workers' jackets) fastened by an obi (帯, obi, belt), coloured to indicate rank, and cotton draw-string zubon (ズボン, trousers). Early examples of keikogi had short sleeves and trouser legs and the modern long-sleeved judogi was adopted in 1906.",
"title": "Judogi (uniform)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The modern use of the blue judogi for high level competition was first suggested by Anton Geesink at the 1986 Maastricht IJF DC Meeting. For competition, a blue judogi is worn by one of the two competitors for ease of distinction by judges, referees, and spectators. In Japan, both judoka use a white judogi and the traditional red obi (based on the colors of the Japanese flag) is affixed to the belt of one competitor. Outside Japan, a colored obi may also be used for convenience in minor competitions, the blue judogi only being mandatory at the regional or higher levels, depending on organization. Japanese practitioners and traditionalists tend to look down on the use of blue because judo is considered a pure sport, and replacing the pure white judogi with the impure blue is an offense.",
"title": "Judogi (uniform)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "For events organized under the auspices of the International judo Federation (IJF), judogi have to bear the IJF Official Logo Mark Label. This label demonstrates that the judogi has passed a number of quality control tests to ensure it conforms to construction regulations ensuring it is not too stiff, flexible, rigid or slippery to allow the opponent to grip or to perform techniques.",
"title": "Judogi (uniform)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "",
"title": "Organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The international governing body for judo is the International Judo Federation (IJF), founded in 1951. Members of the IJF include the African Judo Union (AJU), the Pan-American Judo Confederation (PJC), the Judo Union of Asia (JUA), the European Judo Union (EJU) and the Oceania Judo Union (OJU), each comprising a number of national judo associations. The IJF is responsible for organising international competition and hosts the World Judo Championships and is involved in running the Olympic Judo events.",
"title": "Organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Judo is a hierarchical art, where seniority of judoka is designated by what is known as the kyū (級, kyū) -dan (段, dan) ranking system. This system was developed by Jigoro Kano and was based on the ranking system in the board game Go.",
"title": "Rank and grading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Beginning students progress through kyu grades towards dan grades.",
"title": "Rank and grading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "A judoka's position within the kyu-dan ranking system is displayed by the color of their belt. Beginning students typically wear a white belt, progressing through descending kyu ranks until they are deemed to have achieved a level of competence sufficient to be a dan grade, at which point they wear the kuro obi (黒帯, black belt). The kyu-dan ranking system has since been widely adopted by modern martial arts.",
"title": "Rank and grading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The highest black belt ranks have no formal requirements and are decided by the president of the Kodokan. Kano Jigoro's grandson Kano Yukimitsu served as the fourth president from 1980 until 2009. As an educator by profession, Kanō believed that there should be no end to an individual's learning, and therefore no limit to the number of dan ranks. As of 2011, fifteen Japanese men have been promoted to the tenth degree black belt judan by the Kodokan; the IJF and Western and Asian national federations have promoted another eleven who are not recognized at that level of rank by the Kodokan. On 28 July 2011, the promotion board of USA Judo awarded Keiko Fukuda the rank of 10th dan, who was the first woman to be promoted to judo's highest level, albeit not a Kodokan-recognized rank.",
"title": "Rank and grading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Although dan ranks tend to be consistent between national organizations there is more variation in the kyū grades, with some countries having more kyū grades. Although initially kyū grade belt colours were uniformly white, today a variety of colours are used. The first black belts to denote a dan rank in the 1880s, initially the wide obi was used; as practitioners trained in kimono, only white and black obi were used. It was not until the early 1900s, after the introduction of the judogi, that an expanded colored belt system of awarding rank was created. Written accounts from the archives of London's Budokwai judo club, founded in 1918, record the use of coloured judo belts at the 1926 9th annual Budokwai Display, and a list of ranked colored judokas appears in the Budokwai Committee Minutes of June 1927. Kawaishi visited London and the Budokwai in 1928, and was probably inspired to bring the coloured belt system to France.",
"title": "Rank and grading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "On October 28 of every year, the judo community celebrates the World Judo Day in the honor of the birth of Judo's founder, Jigoro Kano. The theme of the World Judo Day changes from year to year, but the goal is always to highlight the moral values of Judo. The first celebration was held in 2011. Past themes for the celebration have included:",
"title": "World Judo Day"
}
]
| Judo is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport, and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally. Judo was created in 1882 by Kanō Jigorō as an eclectic martial art, distinguishing itself from its predecessors due to an emphasis on "randori" instead of "kata" alongside its removal of striking and weapon training elements. Judo rose to prominence for its dominance over established jujutsu schools in tournaments hosted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, resulting in its adoption as the department's primary martial art. A judo practitioner is called a "judoka", and the judo uniform is called "judogi". The objective of competitive judo is to throw an opponent, immobilize them with a pin, or force an opponent to submit with a joint lock or a choke. While strikes and use of weapons are included in some pre-arranged forms (kata), they are not frequently trained and are illegal in judo competition or free practice. Judo's international governing body is the International Judo Federation, and competitors compete in the international IJF professional circuit. Judo's philosophy revolves around two primary principles: "Seiryoku-Zenyo" and "Jita-Kyoei". The philosophy and subsequent pedagogy developed for judo became the model for other modern Japanese martial arts that developed from koryū. Judo also spawned a number of derivative martial arts around the world, such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Krav Maga, sambo, and ARB. Judo also influenced other combat styles such as close-quarters combat (CQC), mixed martial arts (MMA), shoot wrestling and submission wrestling. | 2001-10-20T02:15:19Z | 2023-12-18T14:50:17Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo |
15,604 | James Bond | The James Bond series focuses on the titular character, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.
The character—also known by the code number 007 (pronounced "double-oh-seven")—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2021, there have been twenty-five films in the Eon Productions series. The most recent Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), stars Daniel Craig in his fifth portrayal of Bond; he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent Bond film productions: Casino Royale (a 1967 spoof starring David Niven) and Never Say Never Again (a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, 1965's Thunderball, both starring Connery). In 2015, the series was estimated to be worth $19.9 billion in total (based on box-office grosses, DVD sales and merchandise tie-ins), making James Bond one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. Casino Royale has also been adapted for television, as a one-hour show in 1954 as part of the CBS series Climax!.
The Bond films are renowned for a number of features, including their soundtracks, with the theme songs having received Academy Award nominations on several occasions, and three wins. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns, and the gadgets with which he is supplied by Q Branch. The films are also noted for Bond's relationships with various women, who are popularly referred to as "Bond girls".
Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond as the central figure for his works. Bond is an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander. Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division and 30 Assault Unit during the Second World War, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war". Among those types were his brother, Peter, who had been involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war. Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job, Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale and Duško Popov.
The name James Bond came from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies. Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist's wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born". He further explained that:
When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard.
On another occasion, Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers'. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department."
Fleming decided that Bond should resemble both American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself and in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking ... Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold."
Fleming endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs, and using the same brand of toiletries. Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming's own as was his behaviour, with Bond's love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his career in espionage and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.
It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas, and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, henceforth giving Bond both a dry sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories. In a fictional obituary, purportedly published in The Times, Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, gives Bond a birth date on 11 November 1920, while a study by John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.
Whilst serving in the Naval Intelligence Division, Fleming had planned to become an author and had told a friend, "I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories." On 17 February 1952, he began writing his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, where he wrote all his Bond novels during the months of January and February each year. He started the story shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, in order to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials.
After completing the manuscript for Casino Royale, Fleming showed it to his friend (and later editor) William Plomer to read. Plomer liked it and submitted it to the publishers, Jonathan Cape, who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established travel writer. Between 1953 and 1966, two years after his death, twelve novels and two short-story collections were published, with the last two books—The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights—published posthumously. All the books were published in the UK through Jonathan Cape.
After Fleming's death, a continuation novel, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham) and published in 1968. Amis had already written a literary study of Fleming's Bond novels in his 1965 work The James Bond Dossier. Although novelisations of two of the Eon Productions Bond films appeared in print, James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker, both written by screenwriter Christopher Wood, the series of novels did not continue until the 1980s. In 1981, the thriller writer John Gardner picked up the series with Licence Renewed. Gardner went on to write sixteen Bond books in total; two of the books he wrote were novelisations of Eon Productions films of the same name: Licence to Kill and GoldenEye. Gardner moved the Bond series into the 1980s, although he retained the ages of the characters as they were when Fleming had left them. In 1996, Gardner retired from writing James Bond books due to ill health.
In 1996, the American author Raymond Benson became the author of the Bond novels. Benson had previously been the author of The James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984. By the time he moved on to other, non-Bond related projects in 2002, Benson had written six Bond novels, three novelisations and three short stories.
After a gap of six years, Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth. The book—titled Devil May Care—was published in the UK by Penguin Books and by Doubleday in the US. American writer Jeffery Deaver was then commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to produce Carte Blanche, which was published on 26 May 2011. The book turned Bond into a post-9/11 agent, independent of MI5 or MI6. On 26 September 2013, Solo by William Boyd, set in 1969, was published. In October 2014, it was announced that Anthony Horowitz was to write a Bond continuation novel. Set in the 1950s two weeks after the events of Goldfinger, it contains material written, but previously unreleased, by Fleming. Trigger Mortis was released on 8 September 2015. Horowitz's second Bond novel, Forever and a Day, tells the origin story of Bond as a 00 agent prior to the events of Casino Royale. The novel, also based on unpublished material from Fleming, was released on 31 May 2018. Horowitz's third Bond novel, With a Mind to Kill, was published on 26 May 2022. Charlie Higson's first adult Bond novel, On His Majesty's Secret Service, was published on 4 May 2023 to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III and support the National Literacy Trust.
The Young Bond series of novels was started by Charlie Higson and, between 2005 and 2009, five novels and one short story were published. The first Young Bond novel, SilverFin was also adapted and released as a graphic novel on 2 October 2008 by Puffin Books. In October 2013 Ian Fleming Publications announced that Stephen Cole would continue the series, with the first edition scheduled to be released in Autumn 2014.
The Moneypenny Diaries are a trilogy of novels chronicling the life of Miss Moneypenny, M's personal secretary. The novels are written by Samantha Weinberg under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook, who is depicted as the book's "editor". The first instalment of the trilogy, subtitled Guardian Angel, was released on 10 October 2005 in the UK. A second volume, subtitled Secret Servant was released on 2 November 2006 in the UK, published by John Murray. A third volume, subtitled Final Fling was released on 1 May 2008.
In 1954, CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 ($10,897 in 2022 dollars) to adapt his novel Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure, "Casino Royale", as part of its Climax! series. The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as "Card Sense" James Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as an American agent working for "Combined Intelligence", while the character Felix Leiter—American in the novel—became British onscreen and was renamed "Clarence Leiter".
In 1973, a BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero featured Christopher Cazenove playing a number of such title characters (e.g. Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond). The documentary included James Bond in dramatised scenes from Goldfinger—notably featuring 007 being threatened with the novel's circular saw, rather than the film's laser beam—and Diamonds Are Forever. In 1991, a spin-off animated series, James Bond Jr., was produced with Corey Burton in the role of Bond's nephew, James Bond Jr.
In 1958, the novel Moonraker was adapted for broadcast on South African radio, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond. According to The Independent, "listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".
The BBC have adapted five of the Fleming novels for broadcast: in 1990 You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90-minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond. The production was repeated a number of times between 2008 and 2011. On 24 May 2008 BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of Dr. No. The actor Toby Stephens, who played Bond villain Gustav Graves in the Eon Productions version of Die Another Day, played Bond, while Dr. No was played by David Suchet. Following its success, a second story was adapted and on 3 April 2010 BBC Radio 4 broadcast Goldfinger with Stephens again playing Bond. Sir Ian McKellen was Goldfinger and Stephens' Die Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike played Pussy Galore. The play was adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by Martin Jarvis. In 2012, the novel From Russia, with Love was dramatised for Radio 4; it featured a full cast again starring Stephens as Bond. In May 2014 Stephens again played Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Alfred Molina as Blofeld, and Joanna Lumley (who appeared in the 1969 film adaptation) as Irma Bunt.
In 1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of takings from syndication. After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed. To aid the Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look. The first strip, Casino Royale was published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958 and was written by Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.
Most of the Bond novels and short stories have since been adapted for illustration, as well as Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun; the works were written by Henry Gammidge or Jim Lawrence (except for the adaptation of Dr. No which was written by future Modesty Blaise creator Peter O'Donnell) with Yaroslav Horak replacing McClusky as artist in 1966. After the Fleming and Amis material had been adapted, original stories were produced, continuing in the Daily Express and Sunday Express until May 1977.
Several comic book adaptations of the James Bond films have been published through the years: at the time of Dr. No's release in October 1962, a comic book adaptation of the screenplay, written by Norman J. Nodel, was published in Britain as part of the Classics Illustrated anthology series. It was later reprinted in the United States by DC Comics as part of its Showcase anthology series, in January 1963. This was the first American comic book appearance of James Bond and is noteworthy for being a relatively rare example of a British comic being reprinted in a fairly high-profile American comic. It was also one of the earliest comics to be censored on racial grounds (some skin tones and dialogue were changed for the American market).
With the release of the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, Marvel Comics published a two-issue comic book adaptation of the film. When Octopussy was released in the cinemas in 1983, Marvel published an accompanying comic; Eclipse also produced a one-off comic for Licence to Kill, although Timothy Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be used. New Bond stories were also drawn up and published from 1989 onwards through Marvel, Eclipse Comics, Dark Horse Comics and Dynamite Entertainment.
Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, released the first cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No (1962), based on the eponymous 1958 novel and featuring Sean Connery as 007. Connery starred in a further four films before leaving the role after You Only Live Twice (1967), which was taken up by George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Lazenby left the role after just one appearance and Connery was brought back for his last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.
Roger Moore was appointed to the role of 007 for Live and Let Die (1973). He played Bond a further six times over twelve years, before being replaced by Timothy Dalton for two films. After a six-year hiatus, during which a legal wrangle threatened Eon's productions of the Bond films, Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond in GoldenEye (1995); he remained in the role for a total of four films through 2002. In 2006, Daniel Craig was given the role for Casino Royale (2006), which rebooted the series. Craig appeared for a total of five films. The series has grossed well over $7 billion to date, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series.
In 1967, Casino Royale was adapted into a parody Bond film starring David Niven as Sir James Bond and Ursula Andress as Vesper Lynd. Niven had been Fleming's preference for the role of Bond. The result of a court case in the High Court in London in 1963 allowed Kevin McClory to produce a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again in 1983. The film, produced by Jack Schwartzman's Taliafilm production company and starring Sean Connery as Bond, was not part of the Eon series of Bond films. In 1997, the Sony Corporation acquired all or some of McClory's rights in an undisclosed deal, which were then subsequently acquired by MGM, whilst on 4 December 1997, MGM announced that the company had purchased the rights to Never Say Never Again from Taliafilm. As of 2015, Eon holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels.
" cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable."
—David Arnold
The "James Bond Theme" was written by Monty Norman and was first orchestrated by the John Barry Orchestra for 1962's Dr. No, although the actual authorship of the music has been a matter of controversy for many years. In 2001, Norman won £30,000 in libel damages from The Sunday Times newspaper, which suggested that Barry was entirely responsible for the composition. The theme, as written by Norman and arranged by Barry, was described by another Bond film composer, David Arnold, as "bebop-swing vibe coupled with that vicious, dark, distorted electric guitar, definitely an instrument of rock 'n' roll ... it represented everything about the character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two minutes." Barry composed the scores for eleven Bond films and had an uncredited contribution to Dr. No with his arrangement of the Bond Theme.
A Bond film staple are the theme songs heard during their title sequences sung by well-known popular singers. Shirley Bassey performed three Bond theme songs, with her 1964 song "Goldfinger" inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. Several of the songs produced for the films have been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die", Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better", Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only", Adele's "Skyfall", Sam Smith's "Writing's on the Wall", and Billie Eilish's "No Time to Die". Adele won the award at the 85th Academy Awards, Smith won at the 88th Academy Awards, and Eilish won at the 94th Academy Awards. For the non-Eon produced Casino Royale, Burt Bacharach's score included "The Look of Love" (sung by Dusty Springfield), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
In 1983, the first Bond video game, developed and published by Parker Brothers, was released for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, and ColecoVision. Since then, there have been numerous video games either based on the films or using original storylines. In 1997, the first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007 was developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64, based on GoldenEye. The game received highly positive reviews, won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for UK Developer of the Year in 1998, and sold over eight million copies worldwide, grossing $250 million, making it the third-best-selling Nintendo 64 game. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time.
In 1999, Electronic Arts acquired the licence and released Tomorrow Never Dies on 16 December 1999. In October 2000, they released The World Is Not Enough for the Nintendo 64 followed by 007 Racing for the PlayStation on 21 November 2000. In 2003, the company released James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, which included the likenesses and voices of Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, Judi Dench and John Cleese, amongst others. In November 2005, Electronic Arts released a video game adaptation of 007: From Russia with Love, which involved Sean Connery's image and voice-over for Bond. In 2006, Electronic Arts announced a game based on then-upcoming film Casino Royale: the game was cancelled because it would not be ready by the film's release in November of that year. With MGM losing revenue from lost licensing fees, the franchise was removed from EA to Activision. Activision subsequently released the 007: Quantum of Solace game on 31 October 2008, based on the film of the same name.
A new version of GoldenEye 007 featuring Daniel Craig was released for the Wii and a handheld version for the Nintendo DS in November 2010. A year later a new version was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 under the title GoldenEye 007: Reloaded. In October 2012 007 Legends was released, which featured one mission from each of the Bond actors of the Eon Productions' series. In November 2020, IO Interactive announced Project 007, an original James Bond video game, working closely with licensors MGM and Eon Productions.
From 1983 to 1987, a licensed tabletop role-playing game, James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service, was published by Victory Games (a branch of Avalon Hill) and designed by Gerard Christopher Klug. It was the most popular espionage role-playing game for its time. In addition to providing materials for players to create original scenarios, the game also offered players the opportunity to have adventures modelled after many of the Eon Productions film adaptations, albeit with modifications to provide challenges by preventing players from slavishly imitating Bond's actions in the stories.
For the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418 until he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of firearm for Bond, calling it "a lady's gun—and not a very nice lady at that!" Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap his Beretta for a 7.65mm Walther PPK and this exchange of arms made it to Dr. No. Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains. In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, introduces him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world". Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage Model 99 in "For Your Eyes Only" and a Winchester .308 target rifle in "The Living Daylights". Other handguns used by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.
The first Bond film, Dr. No, saw M ordering Bond to leave his Beretta behind and take up the Walther PPK, which Bond used in eighteen films. In Tomorrow Never Dies and the two subsequent films, Bond's main weapon was the Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.
In the early Bond stories Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey Bentley 4+1⁄2 Litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger. After Bond's car was written off by Hugo Drax in Moonraker, Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series. During Goldfinger, Bond was issued an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels.
The Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, during the 1980s, the V12 Vanquish and DBS during the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit; the BMW Z3, BMW 750iL and the BMW Z8. He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus, amongst others.
Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger; it later featured in Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale, Skyfall and Spectre. The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an auction in the US for $2.1 million to an unnamed European collector. In 2010, another DB5 used in Goldfinger was sold at auction for $4.6m million (£2.6 million).
Fleming's novels and early screen adaptations presented minimal equipment such as the booby-trapped attaché case in From Russia, with Love, although this situation changed dramatically with the films. However, the effects of the two Eon-produced Bond films Dr. No and From Russia with Love had an effect on the novel The Man with the Golden Gun, through the increased number of devices used in Fleming's final story.
For the film adaptations of Bond, the pre-mission briefing by Q Branch became one of the motifs that ran through the series. Dr. No provided no spy-related gadgets, but a Geiger counter was used; industrial designer Andy Davey observed that the first ever onscreen spy-gadget was the attaché case shown in From Russia with Love, which he described as "a classic 007 product". The gadgets assumed a higher profile in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The film's success encouraged further espionage equipment from Q Branch to be supplied to Bond, although the increased use of technology led to an accusation that Bond was over-reliant on equipment, particularly in the later films.
"If it hadn't been for Q Branch, you'd have been dead long ago!"
—Q, to Bond, Licence to Kill
Davey noted that "Bond's gizmos follow the zeitgeist more closely than any other ... nuance in the films" as they moved from the potential representations of the future in the early films, through to the brand-name obsessions of the later films. It is also noticeable that, although Bond uses a number of pieces of equipment from Q Branch, including the Little Nellie autogyro, a jet pack and the exploding attaché case, the villains are also well-equipped with custom-made devices, including Scaramanga's golden gun, Rosa Klebb's poison-tipped shoes, Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler hat and Blofeld's communication devices in his agents' vanity case.
Cinematically, Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the release of Dr. No in 1962, with 22 secret agent films released in 1966 alone attempting to capitalise on the Bond franchise's popularity and success. The first parody was the 1964 film Carry On Spying, which shows the villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind (Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor). One of the films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer series, whose first film, The Ipcress File, starring Michael Caine, was released in 1965. The eponymous hero is a rough-edged, petty crook turned spy, and was what academic Jeremy Packer called an "anti-Bond", or what Christoph Lindner calls "the thinking man's Bond". The Palmer series were produced by Harry Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond series, including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John Barry. The four "Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin (released between 1966 and 1969), the "Flint" series starring James Coburn (comprising two films, one each in 1966 and 1969), while The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular culture. More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer and comedian Mike Myers, and other parodies such as the Johnny English trilogy of films, have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.
Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the line "Bond ... James Bond", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture: writers Cork and Scivally said of the introduction in Dr. No that the "signature introduction would become the most famous and loved film line ever". In 2001, it was voted as the "best-loved one-liner in cinema" by British cinema goers, and in 2005, it was honoured as the 22nd greatest quotation in cinema history by the American Film Institute as part of their 100 Years Series. The 2005 American Film Institute's '100 Years' series recognised the character of James Bond himself as the third greatest film hero. He was also placed at number 11 on a similar list by Empire and as the fifth greatest movie character of all time by Premiere. In 1965, Time magazine observed "James Bond has developed into the biggest mass-cult hero of the decade".
The 25 James Bond films produced by Eon are the longest continually running film series of all time, and including the two non Eon produced films, the 27 Bond films have grossed over $7.04 billion in total, making it the sixth-highest-grossing franchise to date. It is estimated that since Dr. No, a quarter of the world's population have seen at least one Bond film. The UK Film Distributors' Association have stated that the importance of the Bond series of films to the British film industry cannot be overstated, as they "form the backbone of the industry".
Television also saw the effect of Bond films, with the NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which was described as the "first network television imitation" of Bond, largely because Fleming provided advice and ideas on the development of the series, even giving the main character the name Napoleon Solo. Other 1960s television series inspired by Bond include I Spy, and Get Smart.
Considered a British cultural icon, James Bond had become such a symbol of the United Kingdom that the character, played by Craig, appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics as Queen Elizabeth II's escort. From 1968 to 2003, and since 2016, the Cadbury chocolate box Milk Tray has been advertised by the 'Milk Tray Man', a tough James Bond–style figure who undertakes daunting 'raids' to surreptitiously deliver a box of Milk Tray chocolates to a lady. Bond has been commemorated numerous times on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail, most recently in their March 2020 series to mark the 25th Bond film release.
Throughout the life of the film series, a number of tie-in products have been released. "Bondmania", a term deriving from the adjacent "Beatlemania" and initiated in 1964 following the enormous success of Goldfinger, described the clamour for Bond films and their related products, from soundtrack LPs to children's toys, board games, alarm clocks playing the Bond theme, and 007-branded shirts. In 2018, a James Bond museum opened atop the Austrian Alps. The futuristic museum is constructed on the summit of Gaislachkogl Mountain in Sölden at 10,000 ft (3,048 m) above sea level.
The real MI6 has an ambiguous relationship with Bond. The films may attract job applicants who may be unsuited for espionage, while dissuading more-qualified candidates. While serving as Chief of SIS, Alex Younger said that were Bond to apply for a MI6 job "he would have to change his ways". Younger said, however, that the franchise had "created a powerful brand for MI6 ... Many of our counterparts envy the sheer global recognition of our acronym", and that being depicted to global audiences as a "ubiquitous intelligence presence" was "quite a force multiplier". The Russian Federal Security Service so envied Bond that it created an annual award for fictional depictions of Russian spies.
The James Bond franchise enjoys widespread popularity across the world. In 2014, it was estimated that approximately 20% of the world's population has watched at least one Bond film.
In 2012, the polling organisation YouGov conducted a survey of American Bond fans, categorizing responses by age, sex, and political affiliation. All groups selected Sean Connery as their favourite Bond actor. A 2018 poll found that 47% of American adults had seen at least one Bond film, with 27% having seen every film.
Queen Elizabeth II met the first of her six James Bond's, Sean Connery, at the world premiere of You Only Live Twice in 1967, and according to royal biographer Gyles Brandreth: "She really did love all the early James Bond films", preferring the earlier films, "before they got so loud." Several prominent politicians have also been fans of the franchise, including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Kim Jong Il.
The James Bond character and related media have received a number of criticisms and reactions across the political spectrum, and are still highly debated in popular culture studies. Some observers accuse the Bond novels and films of misogyny and sexism. In September 2021, No Time to Die director Cary Fukunaga described Sean Connery's version of Bond as 'basically a rapist'. The franchise has on occasion also been a target of religious criticism. In 1962, Vatican City's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemned the film Dr. No, referring to it as "a dangerous mixture of violence, vulgarity, sadism and sex". However, in 2012, the newspaper went on to give positive reviews to the film Skyfall.
Geographers have considered the role of exotic locations in the movies in the dynamics of the Cold War, with power struggles among blocs playing out in the peripheral areas. Other critics claim that the Bond films reflect imperial nostalgia.
Several James Bond novels, films, and video games have been banned, censored, or altered in several countries.
In February 2023, Ian Fleming Publications (which administers all Fleming's literary works), edited the Bond series as part of a sensitivity review. The April 2023 re-releases of the series are planned to tie into the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel. The new editions remove a number of references to race, including some slurs, along with some disparagements of women and homosexuality. They include a disclaimer added at the beginning of each book, reading:
"This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set."
The decision was generally met with strong criticism. Numerous Bond fans, news and media outlets, and public commentators condemned the changes as literary censorship. The View host Whoopi Goldberg expressed her opposition, arguing that offensive historical literature should be left unaltered; while National Review contributors Charles C. W. Cooke and Douglas Murray attacked the changes as excessive political correctness. Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett also opposed the changes, writing that "what an author commits to paper is sacrosanct and shouldn't be altered...The only changes to the text should come from the author." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The James Bond series focuses on the titular character, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The character—also known by the code number 007 (pronounced \"double-oh-seven\")—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2021, there have been twenty-five films in the Eon Productions series. The most recent Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), stars Daniel Craig in his fifth portrayal of Bond; he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent Bond film productions: Casino Royale (a 1967 spoof starring David Niven) and Never Say Never Again (a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, 1965's Thunderball, both starring Connery). In 2015, the series was estimated to be worth $19.9 billion in total (based on box-office grosses, DVD sales and merchandise tie-ins), making James Bond one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. Casino Royale has also been adapted for television, as a one-hour show in 1954 as part of the CBS series Climax!.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Bond films are renowned for a number of features, including their soundtracks, with the theme songs having received Academy Award nominations on several occasions, and three wins. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns, and the gadgets with which he is supplied by Q Branch. The films are also noted for Bond's relationships with various women, who are popularly referred to as \"Bond girls\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond as the central figure for his works. Bond is an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander. Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division and 30 Assault Unit during the Second World War, admitting that Bond \"was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war\". Among those types were his brother, Peter, who had been involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war. Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job, Bill \"Biffy\" Dunderdale and Duško Popov.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The name James Bond came from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies. Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist's wife that \"It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born\". He further explained that:",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On another occasion, Fleming said: \"I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers'. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.\"",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Fleming decided that Bond should resemble both American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself and in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, \"Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless.\" Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is \"certainly good-looking ... Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold.\"",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Fleming endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs, and using the same brand of toiletries. Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming's own as was his behaviour, with Bond's love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his career in espionage and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas, and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, henceforth giving Bond both a dry sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories. In a fictional obituary, purportedly published in The Times, Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, gives Bond a birth date on 11 November 1920, while a study by John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Whilst serving in the Naval Intelligence Division, Fleming had planned to become an author and had told a friend, \"I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories.\" On 17 February 1952, he began writing his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, where he wrote all his Bond novels during the months of January and February each year. He started the story shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, in order to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After completing the manuscript for Casino Royale, Fleming showed it to his friend (and later editor) William Plomer to read. Plomer liked it and submitted it to the publishers, Jonathan Cape, who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established travel writer. Between 1953 and 1966, two years after his death, twelve novels and two short-story collections were published, with the last two books—The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights—published posthumously. All the books were published in the UK through Jonathan Cape.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "After Fleming's death, a continuation novel, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham) and published in 1968. Amis had already written a literary study of Fleming's Bond novels in his 1965 work The James Bond Dossier. Although novelisations of two of the Eon Productions Bond films appeared in print, James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker, both written by screenwriter Christopher Wood, the series of novels did not continue until the 1980s. In 1981, the thriller writer John Gardner picked up the series with Licence Renewed. Gardner went on to write sixteen Bond books in total; two of the books he wrote were novelisations of Eon Productions films of the same name: Licence to Kill and GoldenEye. Gardner moved the Bond series into the 1980s, although he retained the ages of the characters as they were when Fleming had left them. In 1996, Gardner retired from writing James Bond books due to ill health.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1996, the American author Raymond Benson became the author of the Bond novels. Benson had previously been the author of The James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984. By the time he moved on to other, non-Bond related projects in 2002, Benson had written six Bond novels, three novelisations and three short stories.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "After a gap of six years, Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth. The book—titled Devil May Care—was published in the UK by Penguin Books and by Doubleday in the US. American writer Jeffery Deaver was then commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to produce Carte Blanche, which was published on 26 May 2011. The book turned Bond into a post-9/11 agent, independent of MI5 or MI6. On 26 September 2013, Solo by William Boyd, set in 1969, was published. In October 2014, it was announced that Anthony Horowitz was to write a Bond continuation novel. Set in the 1950s two weeks after the events of Goldfinger, it contains material written, but previously unreleased, by Fleming. Trigger Mortis was released on 8 September 2015. Horowitz's second Bond novel, Forever and a Day, tells the origin story of Bond as a 00 agent prior to the events of Casino Royale. The novel, also based on unpublished material from Fleming, was released on 31 May 2018. Horowitz's third Bond novel, With a Mind to Kill, was published on 26 May 2022. Charlie Higson's first adult Bond novel, On His Majesty's Secret Service, was published on 4 May 2023 to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III and support the National Literacy Trust.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Young Bond series of novels was started by Charlie Higson and, between 2005 and 2009, five novels and one short story were published. The first Young Bond novel, SilverFin was also adapted and released as a graphic novel on 2 October 2008 by Puffin Books. In October 2013 Ian Fleming Publications announced that Stephen Cole would continue the series, with the first edition scheduled to be released in Autumn 2014.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Moneypenny Diaries are a trilogy of novels chronicling the life of Miss Moneypenny, M's personal secretary. The novels are written by Samantha Weinberg under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook, who is depicted as the book's \"editor\". The first instalment of the trilogy, subtitled Guardian Angel, was released on 10 October 2005 in the UK. A second volume, subtitled Secret Servant was released on 2 November 2006 in the UK, published by John Murray. A third volume, subtitled Final Fling was released on 1 May 2008.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1954, CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 ($10,897 in 2022 dollars) to adapt his novel Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure, \"Casino Royale\", as part of its Climax! series. The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as \"Card Sense\" James Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as an American agent working for \"Combined Intelligence\", while the character Felix Leiter—American in the novel—became British onscreen and was renamed \"Clarence Leiter\".",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1973, a BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero featured Christopher Cazenove playing a number of such title characters (e.g. Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond). The documentary included James Bond in dramatised scenes from Goldfinger—notably featuring 007 being threatened with the novel's circular saw, rather than the film's laser beam—and Diamonds Are Forever. In 1991, a spin-off animated series, James Bond Jr., was produced with Corey Burton in the role of Bond's nephew, James Bond Jr.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1958, the novel Moonraker was adapted for broadcast on South African radio, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond. According to The Independent, \"listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination\".",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The BBC have adapted five of the Fleming novels for broadcast: in 1990 You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90-minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond. The production was repeated a number of times between 2008 and 2011. On 24 May 2008 BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of Dr. No. The actor Toby Stephens, who played Bond villain Gustav Graves in the Eon Productions version of Die Another Day, played Bond, while Dr. No was played by David Suchet. Following its success, a second story was adapted and on 3 April 2010 BBC Radio 4 broadcast Goldfinger with Stephens again playing Bond. Sir Ian McKellen was Goldfinger and Stephens' Die Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike played Pussy Galore. The play was adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by Martin Jarvis. In 2012, the novel From Russia, with Love was dramatised for Radio 4; it featured a full cast again starring Stephens as Bond. In May 2014 Stephens again played Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Alfred Molina as Blofeld, and Joanna Lumley (who appeared in the 1969 film adaptation) as Irma Bunt.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of takings from syndication. After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed. To aid the Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked too \"outdated\" and \"pre-war\" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look. The first strip, Casino Royale was published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958 and was written by Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Most of the Bond novels and short stories have since been adapted for illustration, as well as Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun; the works were written by Henry Gammidge or Jim Lawrence (except for the adaptation of Dr. No which was written by future Modesty Blaise creator Peter O'Donnell) with Yaroslav Horak replacing McClusky as artist in 1966. After the Fleming and Amis material had been adapted, original stories were produced, continuing in the Daily Express and Sunday Express until May 1977.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Several comic book adaptations of the James Bond films have been published through the years: at the time of Dr. No's release in October 1962, a comic book adaptation of the screenplay, written by Norman J. Nodel, was published in Britain as part of the Classics Illustrated anthology series. It was later reprinted in the United States by DC Comics as part of its Showcase anthology series, in January 1963. This was the first American comic book appearance of James Bond and is noteworthy for being a relatively rare example of a British comic being reprinted in a fairly high-profile American comic. It was also one of the earliest comics to be censored on racial grounds (some skin tones and dialogue were changed for the American market).",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "With the release of the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, Marvel Comics published a two-issue comic book adaptation of the film. When Octopussy was released in the cinemas in 1983, Marvel published an accompanying comic; Eclipse also produced a one-off comic for Licence to Kill, although Timothy Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be used. New Bond stories were also drawn up and published from 1989 onwards through Marvel, Eclipse Comics, Dark Horse Comics and Dynamite Entertainment.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and American Albert R. \"Cubby\" Broccoli, released the first cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No (1962), based on the eponymous 1958 novel and featuring Sean Connery as 007. Connery starred in a further four films before leaving the role after You Only Live Twice (1967), which was taken up by George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Lazenby left the role after just one appearance and Connery was brought back for his last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Roger Moore was appointed to the role of 007 for Live and Let Die (1973). He played Bond a further six times over twelve years, before being replaced by Timothy Dalton for two films. After a six-year hiatus, during which a legal wrangle threatened Eon's productions of the Bond films, Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond in GoldenEye (1995); he remained in the role for a total of four films through 2002. In 2006, Daniel Craig was given the role for Casino Royale (2006), which rebooted the series. Craig appeared for a total of five films. The series has grossed well over $7 billion to date, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 1967, Casino Royale was adapted into a parody Bond film starring David Niven as Sir James Bond and Ursula Andress as Vesper Lynd. Niven had been Fleming's preference for the role of Bond. The result of a court case in the High Court in London in 1963 allowed Kevin McClory to produce a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again in 1983. The film, produced by Jack Schwartzman's Taliafilm production company and starring Sean Connery as Bond, was not part of the Eon series of Bond films. In 1997, the Sony Corporation acquired all or some of McClory's rights in an undisclosed deal, which were then subsequently acquired by MGM, whilst on 4 December 1997, MGM announced that the company had purchased the rights to Never Say Never Again from Taliafilm. As of 2015, Eon holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "\" cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable.\"",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "—David Arnold",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The \"James Bond Theme\" was written by Monty Norman and was first orchestrated by the John Barry Orchestra for 1962's Dr. No, although the actual authorship of the music has been a matter of controversy for many years. In 2001, Norman won £30,000 in libel damages from The Sunday Times newspaper, which suggested that Barry was entirely responsible for the composition. The theme, as written by Norman and arranged by Barry, was described by another Bond film composer, David Arnold, as \"bebop-swing vibe coupled with that vicious, dark, distorted electric guitar, definitely an instrument of rock 'n' roll ... it represented everything about the character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two minutes.\" Barry composed the scores for eleven Bond films and had an uncredited contribution to Dr. No with his arrangement of the Bond Theme.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A Bond film staple are the theme songs heard during their title sequences sung by well-known popular singers. Shirley Bassey performed three Bond theme songs, with her 1964 song \"Goldfinger\" inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. Several of the songs produced for the films have been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul McCartney's \"Live and Let Die\", Carly Simon's \"Nobody Does It Better\", Sheena Easton's \"For Your Eyes Only\", Adele's \"Skyfall\", Sam Smith's \"Writing's on the Wall\", and Billie Eilish's \"No Time to Die\". Adele won the award at the 85th Academy Awards, Smith won at the 88th Academy Awards, and Eilish won at the 94th Academy Awards. For the non-Eon produced Casino Royale, Burt Bacharach's score included \"The Look of Love\" (sung by Dusty Springfield), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1983, the first Bond video game, developed and published by Parker Brothers, was released for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, and ColecoVision. Since then, there have been numerous video games either based on the films or using original storylines. In 1997, the first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007 was developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64, based on GoldenEye. The game received highly positive reviews, won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for UK Developer of the Year in 1998, and sold over eight million copies worldwide, grossing $250 million, making it the third-best-selling Nintendo 64 game. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 1999, Electronic Arts acquired the licence and released Tomorrow Never Dies on 16 December 1999. In October 2000, they released The World Is Not Enough for the Nintendo 64 followed by 007 Racing for the PlayStation on 21 November 2000. In 2003, the company released James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, which included the likenesses and voices of Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, Judi Dench and John Cleese, amongst others. In November 2005, Electronic Arts released a video game adaptation of 007: From Russia with Love, which involved Sean Connery's image and voice-over for Bond. In 2006, Electronic Arts announced a game based on then-upcoming film Casino Royale: the game was cancelled because it would not be ready by the film's release in November of that year. With MGM losing revenue from lost licensing fees, the franchise was removed from EA to Activision. Activision subsequently released the 007: Quantum of Solace game on 31 October 2008, based on the film of the same name.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A new version of GoldenEye 007 featuring Daniel Craig was released for the Wii and a handheld version for the Nintendo DS in November 2010. A year later a new version was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 under the title GoldenEye 007: Reloaded. In October 2012 007 Legends was released, which featured one mission from each of the Bond actors of the Eon Productions' series. In November 2020, IO Interactive announced Project 007, an original James Bond video game, working closely with licensors MGM and Eon Productions.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "From 1983 to 1987, a licensed tabletop role-playing game, James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service, was published by Victory Games (a branch of Avalon Hill) and designed by Gerard Christopher Klug. It was the most popular espionage role-playing game for its time. In addition to providing materials for players to create original scenarios, the game also offered players the opportunity to have adventures modelled after many of the Eon Productions film adaptations, albeit with modifications to provide challenges by preventing players from slavishly imitating Bond's actions in the stories.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "For the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418 until he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of firearm for Bond, calling it \"a lady's gun—and not a very nice lady at that!\" Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap his Beretta for a 7.65mm Walther PPK and this exchange of arms made it to Dr. No. Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains. In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, introduces him to Bond as \"the greatest small-arms expert in the world\". Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage Model 99 in \"For Your Eyes Only\" and a Winchester .308 target rifle in \"The Living Daylights\". Other handguns used by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The first Bond film, Dr. No, saw M ordering Bond to leave his Beretta behind and take up the Walther PPK, which Bond used in eighteen films. In Tomorrow Never Dies and the two subsequent films, Bond's main weapon was the Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In the early Bond stories Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey Bentley 4+1⁄2 Litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger. After Bond's car was written off by Hugo Drax in Moonraker, Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series. During Goldfinger, Bond was issued an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels.",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, during the 1980s, the V12 Vanquish and DBS during the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit; the BMW Z3, BMW 750iL and the BMW Z8. He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus, amongst others.",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger; it later featured in Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale, Skyfall and Spectre. The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an auction in the US for $2.1 million to an unnamed European collector. In 2010, another DB5 used in Goldfinger was sold at auction for $4.6m million (£2.6 million).",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Fleming's novels and early screen adaptations presented minimal equipment such as the booby-trapped attaché case in From Russia, with Love, although this situation changed dramatically with the films. However, the effects of the two Eon-produced Bond films Dr. No and From Russia with Love had an effect on the novel The Man with the Golden Gun, through the increased number of devices used in Fleming's final story.",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "For the film adaptations of Bond, the pre-mission briefing by Q Branch became one of the motifs that ran through the series. Dr. No provided no spy-related gadgets, but a Geiger counter was used; industrial designer Andy Davey observed that the first ever onscreen spy-gadget was the attaché case shown in From Russia with Love, which he described as \"a classic 007 product\". The gadgets assumed a higher profile in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The film's success encouraged further espionage equipment from Q Branch to be supplied to Bond, although the increased use of technology led to an accusation that Bond was over-reliant on equipment, particularly in the later films.",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "\"If it hadn't been for Q Branch, you'd have been dead long ago!\"",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "—Q, to Bond, Licence to Kill",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Davey noted that \"Bond's gizmos follow the zeitgeist more closely than any other ... nuance in the films\" as they moved from the potential representations of the future in the early films, through to the brand-name obsessions of the later films. It is also noticeable that, although Bond uses a number of pieces of equipment from Q Branch, including the Little Nellie autogyro, a jet pack and the exploding attaché case, the villains are also well-equipped with custom-made devices, including Scaramanga's golden gun, Rosa Klebb's poison-tipped shoes, Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler hat and Blofeld's communication devices in his agents' vanity case.",
"title": "Guns, vehicles and gadgets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Cinematically, Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the release of Dr. No in 1962, with 22 secret agent films released in 1966 alone attempting to capitalise on the Bond franchise's popularity and success. The first parody was the 1964 film Carry On Spying, which shows the villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind (Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor). One of the films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer series, whose first film, The Ipcress File, starring Michael Caine, was released in 1965. The eponymous hero is a rough-edged, petty crook turned spy, and was what academic Jeremy Packer called an \"anti-Bond\", or what Christoph Lindner calls \"the thinking man's Bond\". The Palmer series were produced by Harry Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond series, including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John Barry. The four \"Matt Helm\" films starring Dean Martin (released between 1966 and 1969), the \"Flint\" series starring James Coburn (comprising two films, one each in 1966 and 1969), while The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular culture. More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer and comedian Mike Myers, and other parodies such as the Johnny English trilogy of films, have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.",
"title": "Cultural impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the line \"Bond ... James Bond\", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture: writers Cork and Scivally said of the introduction in Dr. No that the \"signature introduction would become the most famous and loved film line ever\". In 2001, it was voted as the \"best-loved one-liner in cinema\" by British cinema goers, and in 2005, it was honoured as the 22nd greatest quotation in cinema history by the American Film Institute as part of their 100 Years Series. The 2005 American Film Institute's '100 Years' series recognised the character of James Bond himself as the third greatest film hero. He was also placed at number 11 on a similar list by Empire and as the fifth greatest movie character of all time by Premiere. In 1965, Time magazine observed \"James Bond has developed into the biggest mass-cult hero of the decade\".",
"title": "Cultural impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The 25 James Bond films produced by Eon are the longest continually running film series of all time, and including the two non Eon produced films, the 27 Bond films have grossed over $7.04 billion in total, making it the sixth-highest-grossing franchise to date. It is estimated that since Dr. No, a quarter of the world's population have seen at least one Bond film. The UK Film Distributors' Association have stated that the importance of the Bond series of films to the British film industry cannot be overstated, as they \"form the backbone of the industry\".",
"title": "Cultural impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Television also saw the effect of Bond films, with the NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which was described as the \"first network television imitation\" of Bond, largely because Fleming provided advice and ideas on the development of the series, even giving the main character the name Napoleon Solo. Other 1960s television series inspired by Bond include I Spy, and Get Smart.",
"title": "Cultural impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Considered a British cultural icon, James Bond had become such a symbol of the United Kingdom that the character, played by Craig, appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics as Queen Elizabeth II's escort. From 1968 to 2003, and since 2016, the Cadbury chocolate box Milk Tray has been advertised by the 'Milk Tray Man', a tough James Bond–style figure who undertakes daunting 'raids' to surreptitiously deliver a box of Milk Tray chocolates to a lady. Bond has been commemorated numerous times on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail, most recently in their March 2020 series to mark the 25th Bond film release.",
"title": "Cultural impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Throughout the life of the film series, a number of tie-in products have been released. \"Bondmania\", a term deriving from the adjacent \"Beatlemania\" and initiated in 1964 following the enormous success of Goldfinger, described the clamour for Bond films and their related products, from soundtrack LPs to children's toys, board games, alarm clocks playing the Bond theme, and 007-branded shirts. In 2018, a James Bond museum opened atop the Austrian Alps. The futuristic museum is constructed on the summit of Gaislachkogl Mountain in Sölden at 10,000 ft (3,048 m) above sea level.",
"title": "Cultural impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The real MI6 has an ambiguous relationship with Bond. The films may attract job applicants who may be unsuited for espionage, while dissuading more-qualified candidates. While serving as Chief of SIS, Alex Younger said that were Bond to apply for a MI6 job \"he would have to change his ways\". Younger said, however, that the franchise had \"created a powerful brand for MI6 ... Many of our counterparts envy the sheer global recognition of our acronym\", and that being depicted to global audiences as a \"ubiquitous intelligence presence\" was \"quite a force multiplier\". The Russian Federal Security Service so envied Bond that it created an annual award for fictional depictions of Russian spies.",
"title": "Cultural impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The James Bond franchise enjoys widespread popularity across the world. In 2014, it was estimated that approximately 20% of the world's population has watched at least one Bond film.",
"title": "Public reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 2012, the polling organisation YouGov conducted a survey of American Bond fans, categorizing responses by age, sex, and political affiliation. All groups selected Sean Connery as their favourite Bond actor. A 2018 poll found that 47% of American adults had seen at least one Bond film, with 27% having seen every film.",
"title": "Public reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Queen Elizabeth II met the first of her six James Bond's, Sean Connery, at the world premiere of You Only Live Twice in 1967, and according to royal biographer Gyles Brandreth: \"She really did love all the early James Bond films\", preferring the earlier films, \"before they got so loud.\" Several prominent politicians have also been fans of the franchise, including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Kim Jong Il.",
"title": "Public reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The James Bond character and related media have received a number of criticisms and reactions across the political spectrum, and are still highly debated in popular culture studies. Some observers accuse the Bond novels and films of misogyny and sexism. In September 2021, No Time to Die director Cary Fukunaga described Sean Connery's version of Bond as 'basically a rapist'. The franchise has on occasion also been a target of religious criticism. In 1962, Vatican City's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemned the film Dr. No, referring to it as \"a dangerous mixture of violence, vulgarity, sadism and sex\". However, in 2012, the newspaper went on to give positive reviews to the film Skyfall.",
"title": "Public reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Geographers have considered the role of exotic locations in the movies in the dynamics of the Cold War, with power struggles among blocs playing out in the peripheral areas. Other critics claim that the Bond films reflect imperial nostalgia.",
"title": "Public reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Several James Bond novels, films, and video games have been banned, censored, or altered in several countries.",
"title": "Censorship and alterations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In February 2023, Ian Fleming Publications (which administers all Fleming's literary works), edited the Bond series as part of a sensitivity review. The April 2023 re-releases of the series are planned to tie into the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel. The new editions remove a number of references to race, including some slurs, along with some disparagements of women and homosexuality. They include a disclaimer added at the beginning of each book, reading:",
"title": "Censorship and alterations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "\"This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.\"",
"title": "Censorship and alterations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The decision was generally met with strong criticism. Numerous Bond fans, news and media outlets, and public commentators condemned the changes as literary censorship. The View host Whoopi Goldberg expressed her opposition, arguing that offensive historical literature should be left unaltered; while National Review contributors Charles C. W. Cooke and Douglas Murray attacked the changes as excessive political correctness. Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett also opposed the changes, writing that \"what an author commits to paper is sacrosanct and shouldn't be altered...The only changes to the text should come from the author.\"",
"title": "Censorship and alterations"
}
]
| The James Bond series focuses on the titular character, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny. The character—also known by the code number 007—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2021, there have been twenty-five films in the Eon Productions series. The most recent Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), stars Daniel Craig in his fifth portrayal of Bond; he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent Bond film productions: Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again. In 2015, the series was estimated to be worth $19.9 billion in total, making James Bond one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. Casino Royale has also been adapted for television, as a one-hour show in 1954 as part of the CBS series Climax!. The Bond films are renowned for a number of features, including their soundtracks, with the theme songs having received Academy Award nominations on several occasions, and three wins. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns, and the gadgets with which he is supplied by Q Branch. The films are also noted for Bond's relationships with various women, who are popularly referred to as "Bond girls". | 2001-10-20T20:31:34Z | 2023-12-19T16:42:01Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond |
15,606 | Japanese language | Japanese (日本語, Nihongo, [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 128 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide.
The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance.
Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated.
Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with relatively simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics, with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.
The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters, known as kanji (漢字, 'Han characters'), with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana (ひらがな or 平仮名, 'simple characters') and katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名, 'partial characters'). Latin script (rōmaji ローマ字) is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals, but also traditional Chinese numerals.
Proto-Japonic, the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages, is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period), replacing the languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language. Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese, or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects.
The Chinese writing system was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese, although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun, and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period, the Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana, which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values.
Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct syllables. Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the syllables now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo1 and mo2 apparently was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of syllables shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese, though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/, which merges with /e/ before the end of the period.
Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no) is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix -yu(ru) (kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese)); and the genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech.
Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period, from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese, which remained in common use until the early 20th century.
During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords. These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels, palatal consonants (e.g. kya) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa), and closed syllables. This had the effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language.
Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period, respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/, in contrast with /oː/; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/. Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending -te begins to reduce onto the verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite), the -k- in the final syllable of adjectives drops out (shiroi for earlier shiroki); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ, where modern Japanese just has hayaku, though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku).
Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese.
Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese, the de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect, especially that of Kyoto. However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to the large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti], and [dʑi] and [di], with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords.
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II, through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea, as well as partial occupation of China, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese.
Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil, with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than the 1.2 million of the United States) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver, where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry), the United States (notably in Hawaii, where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna).
Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard: hyōjungo (標準語), meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo (共通語), "common language". The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration (明治維新, meiji ishin, 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Formerly, standard Japanese in writing (文語, bungo, "literary language") was different from colloquial language (口語, kōgo). The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo, although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.
The 1982 state constitution of Angaur, Palau, names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of the state. However, the results of the 2005 census show that in April 2005 there were no usual or legal residents of Angaur aged 5 or older who spoke Japanese at home at all.
Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is less common.
In terms of mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture). The survey was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes, which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region.
There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island, whose dialects are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese. Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers.
The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (politically part of Kagoshima), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese, a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period, but began decline during the late Meiji period. The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand the languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands.
Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and an increase of mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration.
Japanese is a member of the Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is often called a language isolate.
According to Martine Irma Robbeets, Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in the world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu, Korean, Chinese, Tibeto-Burman, Uralic, Altaic (or Ural-Altaic), Mon–Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian. At the fringe, some linguists have suggested a link to Indo-European languages, including Greek, and to Lepcha. Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or the proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages, especially Austronesian. None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support.
Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as a distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighbouring languages.
Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron) in rōmaji, a repeated vowel character in hiragana, or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana. /u/ (listen) is compressed rather than protruded, or simply unrounded.
Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi], approximately chi (listen); however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status".
The "r" of the Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ŋ], in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects.
The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant, a glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant (っ/ッ, represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda (ん/ン, represented as N).
The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃]. Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant.
Japanese also includes a pitch accent, which is not represented in syllabic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし (hashi), and are only differentiated by the tone contour.
Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb. Unlike many Indo-European languages, the only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions.
The basic sentence structure is topic–comment. For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu (こちらは田中さんです). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa. The verb desu is a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai (象は鼻が長い) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose".
Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! (やった!) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! (羨ましい!) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!".
While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta (教えてもらった) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta (教えてあげた) (literally, "explaining gave" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action.
Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English:
The amazed he ran down the street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun)
But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:
驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct)
This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" (君 "lord"), anata "you" (あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" (僕 "servant"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced, "your [(flattering majestic) plural] grace") or Portuguese o senhor. Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom.
The choice of words used as pronouns is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi (私, literally "private") or watakushi (also 私, hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore (俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku. Similarly, different words such as anata, kimi, and omae (お前, more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations.
Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use sensei (先生, "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata. This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status.
Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon (本) may refer to a single book or several books; hito (人) can mean "person" or "people", and ki (木) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人, hitobito, usually written with an iteration mark as 人々). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi, but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form.
Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect, similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating".
Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu (いいです) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka (いいですか。) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no (の) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? (お名前は？) "(What's your) name?".
Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu (パンを食べる。) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai (パンを食べない。) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i-adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta (パンを食べなかった。) "I did not eat bread".
The so-called -te verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence (Asagohan o tabete sugu dekakeru "I'll eat breakfast and leave at once"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions (Dekakete-mo ii? "May I go out?"), etc.
The word da (plain), desu (polite) is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles, including a marker for tense, when the verb is conjugated into its past form datta (plain), deshita (polite). This comes into use because only i-adjectives and verbs can carry tense in Japanese. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence ("there is") or, in some contexts, property: aru (negative nai) and iru (negative inai), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, Neko ga iru "There's a cat", Ii kangae-ga nai "[I] haven't got a good idea".
The verb "to do" (suru, polite form shimasu) is often used to make verbs from nouns (ryōri suru "to cook", benkyō suru "to study", etc.) and has been productive in creating modern slang words. Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and an adverbial particle (e.g. tobidasu "to fly out, to flee", from tobu "to fly, to jump" + dasu "to put out, to emit").
There are three types of adjectives (see Japanese adjectives):
Both keiyōshi and keiyōdōshi may predicate sentences. For example,
ご飯が熱い。 Gohan ga atsui. "The rice is hot." 彼は変だ。 Kare wa hen da. "He's strange."
Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs. The rentaishi in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include ookina "big", kono "this", iwayuru "so-called" and taishita "amazing".
Both keiyōdōshi and keiyōshi form adverbs, by following with ni in the case of keiyōdōshi:
変になる hen ni naru "become strange",
and by changing i to ku in the case of keiyōshi:
熱くなる atsuku naru "become hot".
The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example:
It is also used for the lative case, indicating a motion to a location.
Note: The subtle difference between wa and ga in Japanese cannot be derived from the English language as such, because the distinction between sentence topic and subject is not made there. While wa indicates the topic, which the rest of the sentence describes or acts upon, it carries the implication that the subject indicated by wa is not unique, or may be part of a larger group.
Ikeda-san wa yonjū-ni sai da. "As for Mx Ikeda, they are forty-two years old." Others in the group may also be of that age.
Absence of wa often means the subject is the focus of the sentence.
Ikeda-san ga yonjū-ni sai da. "It is Mx Ikeda who is forty-two years old." This is a reply to an implicit or explicit question, such as "who in this group is forty-two years old?"
Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality. This reflects the hierarchical nature of Japanese society.
The Japanese language can express differing levels of social status. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other person might use a plainer form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto.
Whereas teineigo (丁寧語) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, sonkeigo (尊敬語) (respectful language) and kenjōgo (謙譲語) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: iku "go" becomes ikimasu in polite form, but is replaced by irassharu in honorific speech and ukagau or mairu in humble speech.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and their group. For example, the -san suffix ("Mr", "Mrs", "Miss", or "Mx") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's in-group. When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and their speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of their in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents.
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of o- or go- as a prefix. o- is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas go- is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as gohan 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word tomodachi 'friend,' would become o-tomodachi when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a polite speaker may sometimes refer to mizu 'water' as o-mizu to show politeness.
There are three main sources of words in the Japanese language, the yamato kotoba (大和言葉) or wago (和語), kango (漢語), and gairaigo (外来語).
The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called yamato kotoba (大和言葉 or infrequently 大和詞, i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as wago (和語 or rarely 倭語, i.e. the "Wa language"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as kango (漢語), entered the language from the 5th century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. According to the Shinsen Kokugo Jiten (新選国語辞典) Japanese dictionary, kango comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, wago make up 33.8%, other foreign words or gairaigo (外来語) account for 8.8%, and the remaining 8.3% constitute hybridized words or konshugo (混種語) that draw elements from more than one language.
There are also a great number of words of mimetic origin in Japanese, with Japanese having a rich collection of sound symbolism, both onomatopoeia for physical sounds, and more abstract words. A small number of words have come into Japanese from the Ainu language. Tonakai (reindeer), rakko (sea otter) and shishamo (smelt, a type of fish) are well-known examples of words of Ainu origin.
Words of different origins occupy different registers in Japanese. Like Latin-derived words in English, kango words are typically perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas an Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.
Incorporating vocabulary from European languages, gairaigo, began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by words from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji Restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French, and English. Today most borrowings are from English.
In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate European concepts; these are known as wasei kango (Japanese-made Chinese words). Many of these were then imported into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, seiji (政治, "politics"), and kagaku (化学, "chemistry") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way many Greek- and Latin-derived words – both inherited or borrowed into European languages, or modern coinages from Greek or Latin roots – are shared among modern European languages – see classical compound.
In the past few decades, wasei-eigo ("made-in-Japan English") has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as wanpatān ワンパターン (< one + pattern, "to be in a rut", "to have a one-track mind") and sukinshippu スキンシップ (< skin + -ship, "physical contact"), although coined by compounding English roots, are nonsensical in most non-Japanese contexts; exceptions exist in nearby languages such as Korean however, which often use words such as skinship and rimokon (remote control) in the same way as in Japanese.
The popularity of many Japanese cultural exports has made some native Japanese words familiar in English, including emoji, futon, haiku, judo, kamikaze, karaoke, karate, ninja, origami, rickshaw (from 人力車 jinrikisha), samurai, sayonara, Sudoku, sumo, sushi, tofu, tsunami, tycoon. See list of English words of Japanese origin for more.
Literacy was introduced to Japan in the form of the Chinese writing system, by way of Baekje before the 5th century. Using this language, the Japanese king Bu presented a petition to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in AD 478. After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars (続守言/薩弘恪/袁晋卿) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the 7th century AD, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose, but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already very distinct from the Ryukyuan languages.
An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki, which was written in AD 712. Japanese writers then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as man'yōgana, a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their sounds in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable.
Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana which were developed based on Manyogana. Some scholars claim that Manyogana originated from Baekje, but this hypothesis is denied by mainstream Japanese scholars.
Hiragana and katakana were first simplified from kanji, and hiragana, emerging somewhere around the 9th century, was mainly used by women. Hiragana was seen as an informal language, whereas katakana and kanji were considered more formal and was typically used by men and in official settings. However, because of hiragana's accessibility, more and more people began using it. Eventually, by the 10th century, hiragana was used by everyone.
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin script (or romaji in Japanese) is used to a certain extent, such as for imported acronyms and to transcribe Japanese names and in other instances where non-Japanese speakers need to know how to pronounce a word (such as "ramen" at a restaurant). Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as 統一 tōitsu ("unification").
Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of rōmaji were considered. The jōyō kanji ("common use kanji", originally called tōyō kanji [kanji for general use]) scheme arose as a compromise solution.
Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of kyōiku kanji ("education kanji", a subset of jōyō kanji), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 1,130 characters in junior high school, covering in total 2,136 jōyō kanji. The official list of jōyō kanji was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged.
As for kanji for personal names, the circumstances are somewhat complicated. Jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji (an appendix of additional characters for names) are approved for registering personal names. Names containing unapproved characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of jōyō kanji, criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of jinmeiyō kanji was substantially extended from 92 in 1951 (the year it was first decreed) to 983 in 2004. Furthermore, families whose names are not on these lists were permitted to continue using the older forms.
Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji, for replacement of rare kanji that may be unfamiliar to intended readers, and also following kanji to show conjugational endings. Because of the way verbs (and adjectives) in Japanese are conjugated, kanji alone cannot fully convey Japanese tense and mood, as kanji cannot be subject to variation when written without losing their meaning. For this reason, hiragana are appended to kanji to show verb and adjective conjugations. Hiragana used in this way are called okurigana. Hiragana can also be written in a superscript called furigana above or beside a kanji to show the proper reading. This is done to facilitate learning, as well as to clarify particularly old or obscure (or sometimes invented) readings.
Katakana, like hiragana, constitute a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words, plant and animal names, and for emphasis. For example, "Australia" has been adapted as Ōsutoraria (オーストラリア), and "supermarket" has been adapted and shortened into sūpā (スーパー).
Depending on the speakers’ gender, different linguistic features might be used. The typical lect used by females is called joseigo (女性語) and the one used by males is called danseigo (男性語). Josiego and danseigo are different in various ways, including first-person pronouns (such as watashi or atashi 私 for women and boku (僕) for men) and sentence-final particles (such as wa (わ), na no (なの), or kashira (かしら) for joseigo, or zo (ぞ), da (だ), or yo (よ) for danseigo). In addition to these specific differences, expressions and pitch can also be different. For example, joseigo is more gentle, polite, refined, indirect, modest, and exclamatory, and often accompanied by raised pitch.
In the 1990s, the traditional feminine speech patterns and stereotyped behaviors were challenged, and a popular culture of “naughty” teenage girls emerged, called kogyaru (コギャル), sometimes referenced in English-language materials as “kogal”. Their rebellious behaviors, deviant language usage, the particular make-up called ganguro (ガングロ), and the fashion became objects of focus in the mainstream media. Although kogal slang was not appreciated by older generations, the kogyaru continued to create terms and expressions. Kogal culture also changed Japanese norms of gender and the Japanese language.
Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. This is a significant increase from before World War II; in 1940, only 65 Americans not of Japanese descent were able to read, write and understand the language.
International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 19th century but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese popular culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. As of 2015, more than 3.6 million people studied the language worldwide, primarily in East and Southeast Asia. Nearly one million Chinese, 745,000 Indonesians, 556,000 South Koreans and 357,000 Australians studied Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions. Between 2012 and 2015, considerable growth of learners originated in Australia (20.5%), Thailand (34.1%), Vietnam (38.7%) and the Philippines (54.4%).
The Japanese government provides standardized tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features five levels of exams. The JLPT is offered twice a year.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Japanese:
すべて
Subete
の
no
人間
ningen
は、
wa,
生まれながら
umarenagara
に
ni
して
shite
自由
jiyū
で
de
あり、
ari,
かつ、
katsu,
尊厳
songen
と
to
権利
kenri
と
to
に
ni
ついて
tsuite
平等
byōdō
で
de
ある。
aru.
人間
Ningen
は、
wa,
理性
risei
と
to
良心
ryōshin
と
to
を
o
授けられて
sazukerarete
おり、
ori,
互い
tagai
に
ni
同胞
dōhō
の
no
精神
seishin
を
o
もって
motte
行動
kōdō
しなければ
shinakereba
ならない。
naranai.
すべて の 人間 は、 生まれながら に して 自由 で あり、 かつ、 尊厳 と 権利 と に ついて 平等 で ある。 人間 は、 理性 と 良心 と を 授けられて おり、 互い に 同胞 の 精神 を もって 行動 しなければ ならない。
Subete no ningen wa, umarenagara ni shite jiyū de ari, katsu, songen to kenri to ni tsuite byōdō de aru. Ningen wa, risei to ryōshin to o sazukerarete ori, tagai ni dōhō no seishin o motte kōdō shinakereba naranai.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Japanese (日本語, Nihongo, [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 128 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with relatively simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics, with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters, known as kanji (漢字, 'Han characters'), with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana (ひらがな or 平仮名, 'simple characters') and katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名, 'partial characters'). Latin script (rōmaji ローマ字) is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals, but also traditional Chinese numerals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Proto-Japonic, the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages, is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period), replacing the languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language. Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese, or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Chinese writing system was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese, although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun, and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period, the Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana, which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct syllables. Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the syllables now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo1 and mo2 apparently was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of syllables shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese, though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/, which merges with /e/ before the end of the period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no) is preserved in words such as matsuge (\"eyelash\", lit. \"hair of the eye\"); modern mieru (\"to be visible\") and kikoeru (\"to be audible\") retain a mediopassive suffix -yu(ru) (kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese)); and the genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period, from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese, which remained in common use until the early 20th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords. These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels, palatal consonants (e.g. kya) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa), and closed syllables. This had the effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period, respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/, in contrast with /oː/; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/. Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending -te begins to reduce onto the verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite), the -k- in the final syllable of adjectives drops out (shiroi for earlier shiroki); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ, where modern Japanese just has hayaku, though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu \"good morning\"; this ending is also seen in o-medetō \"congratulations\", from medetaku).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan (\"bread\") and tabako (\"tobacco\", now \"cigarette\"), both from Portuguese.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese, the de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect, especially that of Kyoto. However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for \"personal computer\"), intānetto (\"internet\"), and kamera (\"camera\"). Due to the large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti], and [dʑi] and [di], with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II, through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea, as well as partial occupation of China, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil, with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than the 1.2 million of the United States) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver, where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry), the United States (notably in Hawaii, where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna).",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard: hyōjungo (標準語), meaning \"standard Japanese\", or kyōtsūgo (共通語), \"common language\". The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration (明治維新, meiji ishin, 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Formerly, standard Japanese in writing (文語, bungo, \"literary language\") was different from colloquial language (口語, kōgo). The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo, although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The 1982 state constitution of Angaur, Palau, names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of the state. However, the results of the 2005 census show that in April 2005 there were no usual or legal residents of Angaur aged 5 or older who spoke Japanese at home at all.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is less common.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In terms of mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture). The survey was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes, which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island, whose dialects are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese. Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (politically part of Kagoshima), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese, a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period, but began decline during the late Meiji period. The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand the languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and an increase of mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Japanese is a member of the Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is often called a language isolate.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "According to Martine Irma Robbeets, Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in the world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu, Korean, Chinese, Tibeto-Burman, Uralic, Altaic (or Ural-Altaic), Mon–Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian. At the fringe, some linguists have suggested a link to Indo-European languages, including Greek, and to Lepcha. Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or the proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages, especially Austronesian. None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as a distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighbouring languages.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron) in rōmaji, a repeated vowel character in hiragana, or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana. /u/ (listen) is compressed rather than protruded, or simply unrounded.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi], approximately chi (listen); however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] \"Western-style tea\" and chii [tɕii] \"social status\".",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The \"r\" of the Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant. The \"g\" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ŋ], in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant, a glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant (っ/ッ, represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda (ん/ン, represented as N).",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃]. Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Japanese also includes a pitch accent, which is not represented in syllabic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] (\"chopsticks\") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] (\"bridge\") are both spelled はし (hashi), and are only differentiated by the tone contour.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb. Unlike many Indo-European languages, the only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The basic sentence structure is topic–comment. For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu (こちらは田中さんです). kochira (\"this\") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa. The verb desu is a copula, commonly translated as \"to be\" or \"it is\" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as \"to be\"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to \"As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka.\" Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai (象は鼻が長い) literally means, \"As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long\". The topic is zō \"elephant\", and the subject is hana \"nose\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean \"[their] noses are long\", while nagai by itself would mean \"[they] are long.\" A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! (やった!) \"[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!\". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! (羨ましい!) \"[I'm] jealous [about it]!\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: \"down\" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and \"up\" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta (教えてもらった) (literally, \"explaining got\" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means \"[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]\". Similarly, oshiete ageta (教えてあげた) (literally, \"explaining gave\" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means \"[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]\". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Japanese \"pronouns\" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English:",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The amazed he ran down the street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun)",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct)",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi \"you\" (君 \"lord\"), anata \"you\" (あなた \"that side, yonder\"), and boku \"I\" (僕 \"servant\"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese \"pronouns\" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced, \"your [(flattering majestic) plural] grace\") or Portuguese o senhor. Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The choice of words used as pronouns is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi (私, literally \"private\") or watakushi (also 私, hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore (俺 \"oneself\", \"myself\") or boku. Similarly, different words such as anata, kimi, and omae (お前, more formally 御前 \"the one before me\") may refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use sensei (先生, \"teacher\"), but inappropriate to use anata. This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon (本) may refer to a single book or several books; hito (人) can mean \"person\" or \"people\", and ki (木) can be \"tree\" or \"trees\". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人, hitobito, usually written with an iteration mark as 人々). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi, but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase \"and company\". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito \"people\" and wareware \"we/us\", while the word tomodachi \"friend\" is considered singular, although plural in form.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect, similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means \"They have come (and are still here)\", but tabete iru means \"They are eating\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu (いいです) \"It is OK\" becomes ii desu-ka (いいですか。) \"Is it OK?\". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no (の) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? \"Why aren't (you) coming?\". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? \"(What about) this?\"; O-namae wa? (お名前は？) \"(What's your) name?\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu (パンを食べる。) \"I will eat bread\" or \"I eat bread\" becomes Pan o tabenai (パンを食べない。) \"I will not eat bread\" or \"I do not eat bread\". Plain negative forms are i-adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta (パンを食べなかった。) \"I did not eat bread\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The so-called -te verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence (Asagohan o tabete sugu dekakeru \"I'll eat breakfast and leave at once\"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions (Dekakete-mo ii? \"May I go out?\"), etc.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The word da (plain), desu (polite) is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles, including a marker for tense, when the verb is conjugated into its past form datta (plain), deshita (polite). This comes into use because only i-adjectives and verbs can carry tense in Japanese. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence (\"there is\") or, in some contexts, property: aru (negative nai) and iru (negative inai), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, Neko ga iru \"There's a cat\", Ii kangae-ga nai \"[I] haven't got a good idea\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The verb \"to do\" (suru, polite form shimasu) is often used to make verbs from nouns (ryōri suru \"to cook\", benkyō suru \"to study\", etc.) and has been productive in creating modern slang words. Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and an adverbial particle (e.g. tobidasu \"to fly out, to flee\", from tobu \"to fly, to jump\" + dasu \"to put out, to emit\").",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "There are three types of adjectives (see Japanese adjectives):",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Both keiyōshi and keiyōdōshi may predicate sentences. For example,",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "ご飯が熱い。 Gohan ga atsui. \"The rice is hot.\" 彼は変だ。 Kare wa hen da. \"He's strange.\"",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs. The rentaishi in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include ookina \"big\", kono \"this\", iwayuru \"so-called\" and taishita \"amazing\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Both keiyōdōshi and keiyōshi form adverbs, by following with ni in the case of keiyōdōshi:",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "変になる hen ni naru \"become strange\",",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "and by changing i to ku in the case of keiyōshi:",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "熱くなる atsuku naru \"become hot\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example:",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "It is also used for the lative case, indicating a motion to a location.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Note: The subtle difference between wa and ga in Japanese cannot be derived from the English language as such, because the distinction between sentence topic and subject is not made there. While wa indicates the topic, which the rest of the sentence describes or acts upon, it carries the implication that the subject indicated by wa is not unique, or may be part of a larger group.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Ikeda-san wa yonjū-ni sai da. \"As for Mx Ikeda, they are forty-two years old.\" Others in the group may also be of that age.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Absence of wa often means the subject is the focus of the sentence.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Ikeda-san ga yonjū-ni sai da. \"It is Mx Ikeda who is forty-two years old.\" This is a reply to an implicit or explicit question, such as \"who in this group is forty-two years old?\"",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality. This reflects the hierarchical nature of Japanese society.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The Japanese language can express differing levels of social status. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other person might use a plainer form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Whereas teineigo (丁寧語) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, sonkeigo (尊敬語) (respectful language) and kenjōgo (謙譲語) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: iku \"go\" becomes ikimasu in polite form, but is replaced by irassharu in honorific speech and ukagau or mairu in humble speech.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and their group. For example, the -san suffix (\"Mr\", \"Mrs\", \"Miss\", or \"Mx\") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's in-group. When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and their speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of their in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of o- or go- as a prefix. o- is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas go- is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as gohan 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word tomodachi 'friend,' would become o-tomodachi when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a polite speaker may sometimes refer to mizu 'water' as o-mizu to show politeness.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "There are three main sources of words in the Japanese language, the yamato kotoba (大和言葉) or wago (和語), kango (漢語), and gairaigo (外来語).",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called yamato kotoba (大和言葉 or infrequently 大和詞, i.e. \"Yamato words\"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as wago (和語 or rarely 倭語, i.e. the \"Wa language\"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as kango (漢語), entered the language from the 5th century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. According to the Shinsen Kokugo Jiten (新選国語辞典) Japanese dictionary, kango comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, wago make up 33.8%, other foreign words or gairaigo (外来語) account for 8.8%, and the remaining 8.3% constitute hybridized words or konshugo (混種語) that draw elements from more than one language.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "There are also a great number of words of mimetic origin in Japanese, with Japanese having a rich collection of sound symbolism, both onomatopoeia for physical sounds, and more abstract words. A small number of words have come into Japanese from the Ainu language. Tonakai (reindeer), rakko (sea otter) and shishamo (smelt, a type of fish) are well-known examples of words of Ainu origin.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Words of different origins occupy different registers in Japanese. Like Latin-derived words in English, kango words are typically perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas an Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Incorporating vocabulary from European languages, gairaigo, began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by words from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji Restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French, and English. Today most borrowings are from English.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate European concepts; these are known as wasei kango (Japanese-made Chinese words). Many of these were then imported into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, seiji (政治, \"politics\"), and kagaku (化学, \"chemistry\") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way many Greek- and Latin-derived words – both inherited or borrowed into European languages, or modern coinages from Greek or Latin roots – are shared among modern European languages – see classical compound.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In the past few decades, wasei-eigo (\"made-in-Japan English\") has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as wanpatān ワンパターン (< one + pattern, \"to be in a rut\", \"to have a one-track mind\") and sukinshippu スキンシップ (< skin + -ship, \"physical contact\"), although coined by compounding English roots, are nonsensical in most non-Japanese contexts; exceptions exist in nearby languages such as Korean however, which often use words such as skinship and rimokon (remote control) in the same way as in Japanese.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The popularity of many Japanese cultural exports has made some native Japanese words familiar in English, including emoji, futon, haiku, judo, kamikaze, karaoke, karate, ninja, origami, rickshaw (from 人力車 jinrikisha), samurai, sayonara, Sudoku, sumo, sushi, tofu, tsunami, tycoon. See list of English words of Japanese origin for more.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Literacy was introduced to Japan in the form of the Chinese writing system, by way of Baekje before the 5th century. Using this language, the Japanese king Bu presented a petition to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in AD 478. After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars (続守言/薩弘恪/袁晋卿) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the 7th century AD, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose, but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already very distinct from the Ryukyuan languages.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki, which was written in AD 712. Japanese writers then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as man'yōgana, a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their sounds in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana which were developed based on Manyogana. Some scholars claim that Manyogana originated from Baekje, but this hypothesis is denied by mainstream Japanese scholars.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Hiragana and katakana were first simplified from kanji, and hiragana, emerging somewhere around the 9th century, was mainly used by women. Hiragana was seen as an informal language, whereas katakana and kanji were considered more formal and was typically used by men and in official settings. However, because of hiragana's accessibility, more and more people began using it. Eventually, by the 10th century, hiragana was used by everyone.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin script (or romaji in Japanese) is used to a certain extent, such as for imported acronyms and to transcribe Japanese names and in other instances where non-Japanese speakers need to know how to pronounce a word (such as \"ramen\" at a restaurant). Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as 統一 tōitsu (\"unification\").",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of rōmaji were considered. The jōyō kanji (\"common use kanji\", originally called tōyō kanji [kanji for general use]) scheme arose as a compromise solution.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of kyōiku kanji (\"education kanji\", a subset of jōyō kanji), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 1,130 characters in junior high school, covering in total 2,136 jōyō kanji. The official list of jōyō kanji was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "As for kanji for personal names, the circumstances are somewhat complicated. Jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji (an appendix of additional characters for names) are approved for registering personal names. Names containing unapproved characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of jōyō kanji, criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of jinmeiyō kanji was substantially extended from 92 in 1951 (the year it was first decreed) to 983 in 2004. Furthermore, families whose names are not on these lists were permitted to continue using the older forms.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji, for replacement of rare kanji that may be unfamiliar to intended readers, and also following kanji to show conjugational endings. Because of the way verbs (and adjectives) in Japanese are conjugated, kanji alone cannot fully convey Japanese tense and mood, as kanji cannot be subject to variation when written without losing their meaning. For this reason, hiragana are appended to kanji to show verb and adjective conjugations. Hiragana used in this way are called okurigana. Hiragana can also be written in a superscript called furigana above or beside a kanji to show the proper reading. This is done to facilitate learning, as well as to clarify particularly old or obscure (or sometimes invented) readings.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Katakana, like hiragana, constitute a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words, plant and animal names, and for emphasis. For example, \"Australia\" has been adapted as Ōsutoraria (オーストラリア), and \"supermarket\" has been adapted and shortened into sūpā (スーパー).",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Depending on the speakers’ gender, different linguistic features might be used. The typical lect used by females is called joseigo (女性語) and the one used by males is called danseigo (男性語). Josiego and danseigo are different in various ways, including first-person pronouns (such as watashi or atashi 私 for women and boku (僕) for men) and sentence-final particles (such as wa (わ), na no (なの), or kashira (かしら) for joseigo, or zo (ぞ), da (だ), or yo (よ) for danseigo). In addition to these specific differences, expressions and pitch can also be different. For example, joseigo is more gentle, polite, refined, indirect, modest, and exclamatory, and often accompanied by raised pitch.",
"title": "Gender in the Japanese language"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In the 1990s, the traditional feminine speech patterns and stereotyped behaviors were challenged, and a popular culture of “naughty” teenage girls emerged, called kogyaru (コギャル), sometimes referenced in English-language materials as “kogal”. Their rebellious behaviors, deviant language usage, the particular make-up called ganguro (ガングロ), and the fashion became objects of focus in the mainstream media. Although kogal slang was not appreciated by older generations, the kogyaru continued to create terms and expressions. Kogal culture also changed Japanese norms of gender and the Japanese language.",
"title": "Gender in the Japanese language"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. This is a significant increase from before World War II; in 1940, only 65 Americans not of Japanese descent were able to read, write and understand the language.",
"title": "Non-native study"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 19th century but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese popular culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. As of 2015, more than 3.6 million people studied the language worldwide, primarily in East and Southeast Asia. Nearly one million Chinese, 745,000 Indonesians, 556,000 South Koreans and 357,000 Australians studied Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions. Between 2012 and 2015, considerable growth of learners originated in Australia (20.5%), Thailand (34.1%), Vietnam (38.7%) and the Philippines (54.4%).",
"title": "Non-native study"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The Japanese government provides standardized tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features five levels of exams. The JLPT is offered twice a year.",
"title": "Non-native study"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Japanese:",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "すべて",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Subete",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "の",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "no",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "人間",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "ningen",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "は、",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "wa,",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "生まれながら",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "umarenagara",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "に",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "ni",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "して",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "shite",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "自由",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "jiyū",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "で",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "de",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "あり、",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "ari,",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "かつ、",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "katsu,",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "尊厳",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "songen",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "と",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "to",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "権利",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "kenri",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "と",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "to",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "に",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "ni",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "ついて",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "tsuite",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "平等",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "byōdō",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "で",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "de",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "ある。",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "aru.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "人間",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Ningen",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "は、",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "wa,",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "理性",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "risei",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "と",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "to",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "良心",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "ryōshin",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "と",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "to",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "を",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "o",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "授けられて",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "sazukerarete",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "おり、",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "ori,",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "互い",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "tagai",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "に",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "ni",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "同胞",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "dōhō",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "の",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "no",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "精神",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "seishin",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "を",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "o",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 165,
"text": "もって",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 166,
"text": "motte",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 167,
"text": "行動",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 168,
"text": "kōdō",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 169,
"text": "しなければ",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 170,
"text": "shinakereba",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 171,
"text": "ならない。",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 172,
"text": "naranai.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 173,
"text": "",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 174,
"text": "",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 175,
"text": "すべて の 人間 は、 生まれながら に して 自由 で あり、 かつ、 尊厳 と 権利 と に ついて 平等 で ある。 人間 は、 理性 と 良心 と を 授けられて おり、 互い に 同胞 の 精神 を もって 行動 しなければ ならない。",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 176,
"text": "Subete no ningen wa, umarenagara ni shite jiyū de ari, katsu, songen to kenri to ni tsuite byōdō de aru. Ningen wa, risei to ryōshin to o sazukerarete ori, tagai ni dōhō no seishin o motte kōdō shinakereba naranai.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 177,
"text": "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.",
"title": "Example text"
}
]
| is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 128 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region in the Early Modern Japanese period. Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with relatively simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics, with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters, known as kanji, with two unique syllabaries derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana and katakana. Latin script is also used in a limited fashion in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals, but also traditional Chinese numerals. | 2001-09-26T10:23:45Z | 2023-12-27T03:13:42Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language |
15,608 | Johnny Got His Gun | Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939 by J. B. Lippincott. The novel won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1939. A 1971 film adaptation was written and directed by Trumbo.
Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, nose, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body.
Joe attempts suicide by suffocation, but finds that he has had a tracheotomy that he can neither remove nor control. He then decides that he wants to be placed in a glass coffin and toured around the country in order to demonstrate to others the true horrors of war. Joe eventually successfully communicates this with military officials after several months of banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. However, he realizes that the military will not grant his wish, nor will they put him out of his misery by euthanizing him, as it is "against regulations". It is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in his condition.
As Joe drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war.
Joe Bonham is the main character. "The novel mainly consists of his reminiscences of childhood and his current struggle to remain sane and finally to communicate."
"As a caretaker, capable of great humanistic love, the regular day nurse stands apart from the terse medical establishment, represented by the Morse code man, yet is not capable of the perceptive sympathy of the new day nurse."
Joe's father, Bill Bonham, courted Joe's mother and raised a family with her in Colorado. "His character comes to stand for Joe's nostalgia for an older way of life." It is also said that Bill passes away (chapter 1) leaving his mother and his younger sisters alone (one aged 13 years, the other aged about 9 years).
Joe's mother, Marcia Bonham, was close to Joe and Bill. She is referenced regularly in the book singing, cooking/baking and playing the piano.
Kareen (who was aged 19 years at the time of Joe's departure) is mentioned throughout the book as Joe floats between reality and fantasy. She and Joe sleep together for the first time (chapter 3) the night before he leaves, with her father's reluctant approval.
Diane is only mentioned in chapter 4. In that chapter it is mentioned that she cheated on Joe with a boy named Glen Hogan. She also cheats on Joe with his best friend, Bill Harper (who told him that she cheated with Hogan).
Bill Harper warns Joe that Diane has cheated on him with Glen Hogan. Joe, who doesn't believe the news, hits Bill. Joe later finds out Bill was truthful and decides that he wants to renew their friendship. However, he finds Bill and Diane making out at her home and is hurt by both. The end of chapter 4 references how Bill was killed at Belleau Wood.
Joe meets Howie (chapter 9) after his troubles with Diane and Glen Hogan. It seems that Howie was never able to keep a girl in his life, and his girlfriend Onie also cheated on him with Glen Hogan. Joe and Howie decide not only to forget about their girlfriends but also about Glen Hogan. Joe and Howie join a group of Mexicans working on a railroad. However, once Howie receives an apologetic telegram from Onie, the boys decide to return home.
José worked at a bakery with Joe. He was given the job at the bakery through the local homeless shelter. José has many stories that set him apart from the other homeless workers, including the fact that he refused marriage to a wealthy woman. José wanted to work in Hollywood. When the opportunity presented itself to work for a picture company, José purposely gets fired because he feels his own personal honor will not allow him to quit on the boss that gave him his original opportunity.
The new day nurse was the first person to successfully communicate with Joe after his injuries. She moved her finger on his bare chest in the shape of the letter M until Joe signaled that he understood "M". She then spelled out "MERRY CHRISTMAS" and Joe signaled that he understood. The new day nurse then deduced that Joe's head-banging was in Morse Code and fetched someone who knew Morse Code.
The title is a play on the phrase "Johnny get your gun", a rallying call that was commonly used to encourage young American men to enlist in the military in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That phrase was popularized in the George M. Cohan song "Over There", which was widely recorded in the first year of American involvement in World War I. Johnny Get Your Gun is also the name of a 1919 film directed by Donald Crisp.
Many of protagonist Joe Bonham's early memories are based on Dalton Trumbo's early life in Colorado and Los Angeles. The novel is inspired by articles about two men with severe injuries that Trumbo read about: the tearful hospital visit of Edward, Prince of Wales to Curley Christian, considered to be the first and only Canadian soldier in WWI who was a quadruple amputee, and a British major whose body was damaged so horrifically that he was reported as MIA to his family. The family discovered the truth years after his death in the hospital. "Though the novel was a pacifist piece published in wartime, it was well reviewed and won an American Booksellers Award in 1940." (It was published two days after the declaration of war in Europe, more than two years before the United States joined World War II.)
Serialized in the Daily Worker in March 1940, published by the Communist Party USA to which Trumbo belonged, the book became "a rally point for the political left" which had opposed involvement in World War II during the period of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939-1941) when the USSR maintained a non aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Shortly after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trumbo and his publishers decided to suspend reprinting the book until the end of the war, due to the Communist Party USA's support for the war so long as the US was allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.
In his introduction to a 1959 reprinting, Trumbo describes receiving letters from right-wing isolationists requesting copies of the book when it was out of print. Trumbo contacted the FBI and turned these letters over to them. Trumbo regretted this decision, which he later called "foolish," after two FBI agents showed up at his home and it became clear that "their interest lay not in the letters but in me." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939 by J. B. Lippincott. The novel won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1939. A 1971 film adaptation was written and directed by Trumbo.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, nose, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Joe attempts suicide by suffocation, but finds that he has had a tracheotomy that he can neither remove nor control. He then decides that he wants to be placed in a glass coffin and toured around the country in order to demonstrate to others the true horrors of war. Joe eventually successfully communicates this with military officials after several months of banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. However, he realizes that the military will not grant his wish, nor will they put him out of his misery by euthanizing him, as it is \"against regulations\". It is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in his condition.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "As Joe drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Joe Bonham is the main character. \"The novel mainly consists of his reminiscences of childhood and his current struggle to remain sane and finally to communicate.\"",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "\"As a caretaker, capable of great humanistic love, the regular day nurse stands apart from the terse medical establishment, represented by the Morse code man, yet is not capable of the perceptive sympathy of the new day nurse.\"",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Joe's father, Bill Bonham, courted Joe's mother and raised a family with her in Colorado. \"His character comes to stand for Joe's nostalgia for an older way of life.\" It is also said that Bill passes away (chapter 1) leaving his mother and his younger sisters alone (one aged 13 years, the other aged about 9 years).",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Joe's mother, Marcia Bonham, was close to Joe and Bill. She is referenced regularly in the book singing, cooking/baking and playing the piano.",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kareen (who was aged 19 years at the time of Joe's departure) is mentioned throughout the book as Joe floats between reality and fantasy. She and Joe sleep together for the first time (chapter 3) the night before he leaves, with her father's reluctant approval.",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Diane is only mentioned in chapter 4. In that chapter it is mentioned that she cheated on Joe with a boy named Glen Hogan. She also cheats on Joe with his best friend, Bill Harper (who told him that she cheated with Hogan).",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Bill Harper warns Joe that Diane has cheated on him with Glen Hogan. Joe, who doesn't believe the news, hits Bill. Joe later finds out Bill was truthful and decides that he wants to renew their friendship. However, he finds Bill and Diane making out at her home and is hurt by both. The end of chapter 4 references how Bill was killed at Belleau Wood.",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Joe meets Howie (chapter 9) after his troubles with Diane and Glen Hogan. It seems that Howie was never able to keep a girl in his life, and his girlfriend Onie also cheated on him with Glen Hogan. Joe and Howie decide not only to forget about their girlfriends but also about Glen Hogan. Joe and Howie join a group of Mexicans working on a railroad. However, once Howie receives an apologetic telegram from Onie, the boys decide to return home.",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "José worked at a bakery with Joe. He was given the job at the bakery through the local homeless shelter. José has many stories that set him apart from the other homeless workers, including the fact that he refused marriage to a wealthy woman. José wanted to work in Hollywood. When the opportunity presented itself to work for a picture company, José purposely gets fired because he feels his own personal honor will not allow him to quit on the boss that gave him his original opportunity.",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The new day nurse was the first person to successfully communicate with Joe after his injuries. She moved her finger on his bare chest in the shape of the letter M until Joe signaled that he understood \"M\". She then spelled out \"MERRY CHRISTMAS\" and Joe signaled that he understood. The new day nurse then deduced that Joe's head-banging was in Morse Code and fetched someone who knew Morse Code.",
"title": "Characters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The title is a play on the phrase \"Johnny get your gun\", a rallying call that was commonly used to encourage young American men to enlist in the military in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That phrase was popularized in the George M. Cohan song \"Over There\", which was widely recorded in the first year of American involvement in World War I. Johnny Get Your Gun is also the name of a 1919 film directed by Donald Crisp.",
"title": "Title and context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Many of protagonist Joe Bonham's early memories are based on Dalton Trumbo's early life in Colorado and Los Angeles. The novel is inspired by articles about two men with severe injuries that Trumbo read about: the tearful hospital visit of Edward, Prince of Wales to Curley Christian, considered to be the first and only Canadian soldier in WWI who was a quadruple amputee, and a British major whose body was damaged so horrifically that he was reported as MIA to his family. The family discovered the truth years after his death in the hospital. \"Though the novel was a pacifist piece published in wartime, it was well reviewed and won an American Booksellers Award in 1940.\" (It was published two days after the declaration of war in Europe, more than two years before the United States joined World War II.)",
"title": "Title and context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Serialized in the Daily Worker in March 1940, published by the Communist Party USA to which Trumbo belonged, the book became \"a rally point for the political left\" which had opposed involvement in World War II during the period of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939-1941) when the USSR maintained a non aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Shortly after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trumbo and his publishers decided to suspend reprinting the book until the end of the war, due to the Communist Party USA's support for the war so long as the US was allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.",
"title": "Publication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In his introduction to a 1959 reprinting, Trumbo describes receiving letters from right-wing isolationists requesting copies of the book when it was out of print. Trumbo contacted the FBI and turned these letters over to them. Trumbo regretted this decision, which he later called \"foolish,\" after two FBI agents showed up at his home and it became clear that \"their interest lay not in the letters but in me.\"",
"title": "Publication"
}
]
| Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939 by J. B. Lippincott. The novel won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1939. A 1971 film adaptation was written and directed by Trumbo. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-25T13:36:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun |
15,611 | Simon–Ehrlich wager | The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich's published claim that "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000" Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, "to stake US$10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run."
Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.
In 1968, Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon was highly skeptical of such claims, so proposed a wager, telling Ehrlich to select any raw material he wanted and select "any date more than a year away," and Simon would bet that the commodity's price on that date would be lower than what it was at the time of the wager.
Ehrlich and his colleagues picked five metals that they thought would undergo big price increases: chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Then, on paper, they bought $200 worth of each, for a total bet of $1,000, using the prices on September 29, 1980, as an index. They designated September 29, 1990, 10 years hence, as the payoff date. If the inflation-adjusted prices of the various metals rose in the interim, Simon would pay Ehrlich the combined difference. If the prices fell, Ehrlich et al. would pay Simon.
Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.88 a decade later.
As a result, in October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for $576.07 to settle the wager in Simon's favor.
Julian Simon won because the price of three of the five metals went down in nominal terms and all five of the metals fell in price in inflation-adjusted terms, with both tin and tungsten falling by more than half. In his book Betrayal of Science and Reason, Ehrlich wrote that Simon "[asserted] that humanity would never run out of anything". Ehrlich added that he and fellow scientists viewed renewable resources as more important indicators of the state of planet Earth, but that he decided to go along with the bet anyway. Afterward, Simon offered to raise the wager to $20,000 and to use any resources at any time that Ehrlich preferred. Ehrlich countered with a challenge to bet that temperatures would increase in the future. The two were unable to reach an agreement on the terms of a second wager before Simon died.
Ehrlich could have won if the bet had been for a different ten-year period. Ehrlich wrote that the five metals in question had increased in price between the years 1950 and 1975. Asset manager Jeremy Grantham wrote that if the Simon–Ehrlich wager had been for a longer period (from 1980 to 2011), then Simon would have lost on four of the five metals. He also noted that if the wager had been expanded to "all of the most important commodities," instead of just five metals, over that longer period of 1980 to 2011, then Simon would have lost "by a lot."
Economist Mark J. Perry noted that for an even longer period of time, from 1934 to 2013, the inflation-adjusted price of the Dow Jones-AIG Commodities Index showed "an overall significant downward trend" and concluded that Simon was "more right than lucky".
Understanding that Simon wanted to bet again, Ehrlich and climatologist Stephen Schneider counter-offered, challenging Simon to bet on 15 current trends, betting $1000 that each will get worse (as in the previous wager) over a ten-year future period.
The bets were:
Simon declined Ehrlich and Schneider's offer to bet, and used the following analogy to explain why he did so:
Let me characterize their offer as follows. I predict, and this is for real, that the average performances in the next Olympics will be better than those in the last Olympics. On average, the performances have gotten better, Olympics to Olympics, for a variety of reasons. What Ehrlich and others says [sic] is that they don't want to bet on athletic performances, they want to bet on the conditions of the track, or the weather, or the officials, or any other such indirect measure.
In his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, Simon noted that not all decreases in resources or increases in unwanted effects correspond to overall decreases in human wellbeing. Hence there can be an "optimal level of pollution" which accepts some increases in certain kinds of pollution in a way that increases overall wellbeing, while acknowledging that any increase in pollution is nevertheless a cost which must be considered in any such calculation (p. 143). Some of the trends listed above are actually predicted by Simon's theory of resource development, and do not in themselves even count as costs (as pollution does). E.g., he pointed out that due to increased efficiency, the amount of cropland required and actually used to grow food for each person has decreased over time and is likely to continue to do so (p. 5). The same might potentially be true of decreased reliance on firewood in developing countries, and per capita use of specific food sources like rice, wheat, and fish, if economic development makes a diverse range of alternative foods available. Some have also proven false, e.g., the amount of ozone in the lower atmosphere has decreased from 1994 to 2004.
In 1996, Simon bet $1000 with David South, professor of the Auburn University School of Forestry, that the inflation-adjusted price of timber would decrease in the following five years. Simon paid out early on the bet in 1997 (before his death in 1998) based on his expectation that prices would remain above 1996 levels (which they did).
In 1999, when The Economist headlined an article entitled, "$5 a barrel oil soon?" and with oil trading in the $12/barrel range, David South offered $1000 to any economist who would bet with him that the price of oil would be greater than $12/barrel in 2010. No economist took him up on the offer. However, in October 2000, Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi, an economist with The University of the West Indies, bet $1000 with David South that the inflation-adjusted price of oil would decrease to an inflation-adjusted price of $25 by 2010 (down from what was then $30/barrel). Madjd-Sadjadi paid South an inflation-adjusted $1,242 in January 2010. The price of oil at the time was $81/barrel. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich's published claim that \"If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000\" Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, \"to stake US$10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1968, Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon was highly skeptical of such claims, so proposed a wager, telling Ehrlich to select any raw material he wanted and select \"any date more than a year away,\" and Simon would bet that the commodity's price on that date would be lower than what it was at the time of the wager.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Ehrlich and his colleagues picked five metals that they thought would undergo big price increases: chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Then, on paper, they bought $200 worth of each, for a total bet of $1,000, using the prices on September 29, 1980, as an index. They designated September 29, 1990, 10 years hence, as the payoff date. If the inflation-adjusted prices of the various metals rose in the interim, Simon would pay Ehrlich the combined difference. If the prices fell, Ehrlich et al. would pay Simon.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.88 a decade later.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "As a result, in October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for $576.07 to settle the wager in Simon's favor.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Julian Simon won because the price of three of the five metals went down in nominal terms and all five of the metals fell in price in inflation-adjusted terms, with both tin and tungsten falling by more than half. In his book Betrayal of Science and Reason, Ehrlich wrote that Simon \"[asserted] that humanity would never run out of anything\". Ehrlich added that he and fellow scientists viewed renewable resources as more important indicators of the state of planet Earth, but that he decided to go along with the bet anyway. Afterward, Simon offered to raise the wager to $20,000 and to use any resources at any time that Ehrlich preferred. Ehrlich countered with a challenge to bet that temperatures would increase in the future. The two were unable to reach an agreement on the terms of a second wager before Simon died.",
"title": "Analysis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Ehrlich could have won if the bet had been for a different ten-year period. Ehrlich wrote that the five metals in question had increased in price between the years 1950 and 1975. Asset manager Jeremy Grantham wrote that if the Simon–Ehrlich wager had been for a longer period (from 1980 to 2011), then Simon would have lost on four of the five metals. He also noted that if the wager had been expanded to \"all of the most important commodities,\" instead of just five metals, over that longer period of 1980 to 2011, then Simon would have lost \"by a lot.\"",
"title": "Analysis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Economist Mark J. Perry noted that for an even longer period of time, from 1934 to 2013, the inflation-adjusted price of the Dow Jones-AIG Commodities Index showed \"an overall significant downward trend\" and concluded that Simon was \"more right than lucky\".",
"title": "Analysis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Understanding that Simon wanted to bet again, Ehrlich and climatologist Stephen Schneider counter-offered, challenging Simon to bet on 15 current trends, betting $1000 that each will get worse (as in the previous wager) over a ten-year future period.",
"title": "The proposed second wager"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The bets were:",
"title": "The proposed second wager"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Simon declined Ehrlich and Schneider's offer to bet, and used the following analogy to explain why he did so:",
"title": "The proposed second wager"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Let me characterize their offer as follows. I predict, and this is for real, that the average performances in the next Olympics will be better than those in the last Olympics. On average, the performances have gotten better, Olympics to Olympics, for a variety of reasons. What Ehrlich and others says [sic] is that they don't want to bet on athletic performances, they want to bet on the conditions of the track, or the weather, or the officials, or any other such indirect measure.",
"title": "The proposed second wager"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, Simon noted that not all decreases in resources or increases in unwanted effects correspond to overall decreases in human wellbeing. Hence there can be an \"optimal level of pollution\" which accepts some increases in certain kinds of pollution in a way that increases overall wellbeing, while acknowledging that any increase in pollution is nevertheless a cost which must be considered in any such calculation (p. 143). Some of the trends listed above are actually predicted by Simon's theory of resource development, and do not in themselves even count as costs (as pollution does). E.g., he pointed out that due to increased efficiency, the amount of cropland required and actually used to grow food for each person has decreased over time and is likely to continue to do so (p. 5). The same might potentially be true of decreased reliance on firewood in developing countries, and per capita use of specific food sources like rice, wheat, and fish, if economic development makes a diverse range of alternative foods available. Some have also proven false, e.g., the amount of ozone in the lower atmosphere has decreased from 1994 to 2004.",
"title": "The proposed second wager"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1996, Simon bet $1000 with David South, professor of the Auburn University School of Forestry, that the inflation-adjusted price of timber would decrease in the following five years. Simon paid out early on the bet in 1997 (before his death in 1998) based on his expectation that prices would remain above 1996 levels (which they did).",
"title": "Other wagers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1999, when The Economist headlined an article entitled, \"$5 a barrel oil soon?\" and with oil trading in the $12/barrel range, David South offered $1000 to any economist who would bet with him that the price of oil would be greater than $12/barrel in 2010. No economist took him up on the offer. However, in October 2000, Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi, an economist with The University of the West Indies, bet $1000 with David South that the inflation-adjusted price of oil would decrease to an inflation-adjusted price of $25 by 2010 (down from what was then $30/barrel). Madjd-Sadjadi paid South an inflation-adjusted $1,242 in January 2010. The price of oil at the time was $81/barrel.",
"title": "Other wagers"
}
]
| The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich's published claim that "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000" Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, "to stake US$10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials will not rise in the long run." Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period. | 2001-02-05T02:52:54Z | 2023-09-25T21:57:01Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager |
15,612 | John Tenniel | Sir John Tenniel (/ˈtɛniəl/; 28 February 1820 – 25 February 1914) was an English illustrator, graphic humourist and political cartoonist prominent in the second half of the 19th century. An alumnus of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, he was knighted for artistic achievements in 1893, the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist.
Tenniel is remembered mainly as the principal political cartoonist for Punch magazine for over 50 years and for his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Tenniel's detailed black-and-white drawings remain the definitive depiction of the Alice characters, with comic book illustrator and writer Bryan Talbot stating, "Carroll never describes the Mad Hatter: our image of him is pure Tenniel."
Tenniel was born in Bayswater, West London, to John Baptist Tenniel, a fencing and dancing master of Huguenot descent, and Eliza Maria Tenniel. Tenniel had five siblings; two brothers and three sisters. One sister, Mary, was later to marry Thomas Goodwin Green, owner of the pottery that produced Cornishware. Tenniel was a quiet and introverted person, both as a boy and as an adult. He was content to remain firmly out of the limelight and seemed unaffected by competition or change. His biographer Rodney Engen wrote that Tenniel's "life and career was that of the supreme gentlemanly outside, living on the edge of respectability."
In 1840, Tenniel, while practising fencing, received a serious eye wound from his father's foil, which had accidentally lost its protective tip. Over the years, Tenniel gradually lost sight in his right eye; he never told his father of the severity of the wound, as he did not wish to upset him further.
In spite of a tendency towards high art, Tenniel was already known and appreciated as a humourist. His early companionship with Charles Keene fostered his talent for scholarly caricature.
Tenniel became a student of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1842 by probation; he was admitted because he had made enough copies of classical sculptures to fill the necessary admission portfolio. So it was here that Tenniel returned to his earlier independent education.
While Tenniel's more formal training at the Royal Academy and other institutions was beneficial in nurturing his artistic ambitions, he disagreed with the school's teaching methods, and so he set about educating himself. He studied classical sculptures through painting. However, he was frustrated in this because he lacked instruction in drawing. Tenniel would draw the classical statues at London's Townley Gallery, copy illustrations from books of costumes and armour in the British Museum, and draw animals from the zoo in Regent's Park, as well as actors from London theatres, which he drew from the pits. These studies taught Tenniel to love detail, yet he became impatient in his work and was happiest when he could draw from memory. Though he had a photographic memory, it undermined his early formal training and restricted his artistic ambitions.
Another "formal" means of training was Tenniel's participation in an artists' group, free from the rules of the academy that were stifling him. In the mid-1840s he joined the Artist's Society or Clipstone Street Life Academy, and it could be said that Tenniel first emerged there as a satirical draughtsman.
Tenniel's first book illustration was for Samuel Carter Hall's The Book of British Ballads, in 1842. While engaged with his first book illustrations, various contests were taking place in London, as a way in which the government could combat the growing Germanic Nazarenes style and promote a truly national English school of art. Tenniel planned to enter the 1845 House of Lords competition amongst artists to win the opportunity to design the mural decoration of the new Palace of Westminster. Despite missing the deadline, he submitted a 16-foot (4.9 m) cartoon, An Allegory of Justice, to a competition for designs for the mural decoration of the new Palace of Westminster. For this he received a £200 premium and a commission to paint a fresco in the Upper Waiting Hall (or Hall of Poets) in the House of Lords.
As the influential result of his position as the chief cartoon artist for Punch, Tenniel remained a witness to Britain's sweeping changes. He furthered political and social reform through satirical, often radical, and at times vitriolic images of the world. At Christmas 1850 he was invited by Mark Lemon to fill the position of joint cartoonist (with John Leech) on Punch, having been selected on the strength of recent illustrations to Aesop's Fables. He contributed his first drawing in the initial letter appearing on p. 224, vol. xix. This was entitled "Lord Jack the Giant Killer" and showed Lord John Russell assailing Cardinal Wiseman.
Tenniel's first characteristic lion appeared in 1852, as did his first obituary cartoon. Gradually he took over altogether the weekly drawing of the political "big cut," which Leech was happy to cede to Tenniel in order to restrict himself to his pictures of life and character.
In 1861, Tenniel was offered Leech's position at Punch, as political cartoonist, but Tenniel still maintained a sense of decorum and restraint in the heated social and political issues of the day. When Leech died in 1864, Tenniel continued their work alone, rarely missing a single week.
His task was to follow the wilful choices of his Punch editors, who probably took their cue from The Times and would have felt the suggestions of political tensions from Parliament as well. Tenniel's work could be scathing in effect. The restlessness in the issues of working-class radicalism, labour, war, economy, and other national themes were the targets of Punch, which in turn settled the nature of Tenniel's subjects. His cartoons of the 1860s popularised a portrait of the Irishman as a sub-human being, wanton in his appetites and resembling an orangutan in facial features and posture. Many of Tenniel's political cartoons expressed strong hostility to Irish Nationalism, with Fenians and Land leagues depicted as monstrous, ape-like brutes, while "Hibernia" – the personification of Ireland – was depicted as a beautiful, helpless girl threatened by such "monsters" and turning for protection to an "elder sister" in the shape of a powerful, armoured Britannia.
"An Unequal Match", his drawing published in Punch on 8 October 1881, depicted a police officer fighting a criminal with only a baton for protection, trying to put a point across to the public that policing methods needed to be changed.
When examined separately from the book illustrations he did over time, Tenniel's work at Punch alone, expressing decades of editorial viewpoints, often controversial and socially sensitive, was created to echo the voices of the British public. Tenniel drew 2,165 cartoons for Punch, a liberal and politically active publication that mirrored the Victorian public's mood for liberal social changes; thus Tenniel, in his cartoons, represented for years the conscience of the British majority.
Tenniel contributed around 2,300 cartoons, innumerable minor drawings, many double-page cartoons for Punch's Almanac and other specials, and 250 designs for Punch's Pocket-books. By 1866 he could "command ten to fifteen guineas for the reworking of a single Punch cartoon as a pencil sketch," alongside his "comfortable" Punch salary "of about £800 a year".
Despite the thousands of political cartoons and hundreds of illustrative works attributed to him, much of Tenniel's fame stems from his illustrations for Alice. Tenniel drew 92 drawings for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (London: Macmillan, 1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (London: Macmillan, 1871).
Lewis Carroll originally illustrated Wonderland himself, but his artistic abilities were limited. Engraver Orlando Jewitt, who had worked for Carroll in 1859 and reviewed Carroll's drawings for Wonderland, suggested that he employ a professional. Carroll was a regular reader of Punch and therefore familiar with Tenniel, who in 1865 had long talks with Carroll before illustrating the first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The first print run of 2,000 was sold in the United States, rather than England, because Tenniel objected to the print quality. A new edition was released in December 1865, carrying an 1866 date, and became an instant best-seller, increasing Tenniel's fame. His drawings for both books have become some of the most famous literary illustrations. After 1872, when the Carroll projects were finished, Tenniel largely abandoned literary illustration. Carroll did later approach Tenniel to undertake another project for him. To this Tenniel replied:
It is a curious fact that with Looking-Glass the faculty of making drawings for book illustrations departed from me, and... I have done nothing in that direction since.
Tenniel's Alice illustrations were engraved onto blocks of deal wood by the Brothers Dalziel. These then served as masters for the electrotype copies for the actual printing of the books. The original wood blocks are held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. They are not usually on public display, but were exhibited in 2003.
The bronze Alice in Wonderland sculpture (1959) in Central Park in Manhattan, New York City, is patterned on his illustrations.
The style associated with the Nazarene movement of the 19th century influenced many later artists, including Tenniel. It can be characterised as "shaded outlines", where the lines on the side of figures or objects are given extra thickness or drawn double to suggest shading or volume. Furthermore, this style is extremely precise, with the artist making a hard clear outline for its figures, dignifying them and the compositions, while giving restraint in expression and paleness of tone. Though Tenniel's early illustrations in the Nazarene style were not well received, his encounter with the style pointed him in a good direction.
After the 1850s, Tenniel's style was modernised to incorporate more detail in backgrounds and in figures. The inclusion of background details corrected the previously weak Germanic staging of his illustrations. Tenniel's more precisely-designed illustrations depicted specific moments of time, locale and individual character instead of just generalised scenes.
In addition to a change in specificity of background, Tenniel developed a new interest in human types, expressions, and individualised representation, something that would carry over into his illustrations of Wonderland. Referred to by many as theatricality, this hallmark of Tenniel's style probably stemmed from his earlier interest in caricature. In Tenniel's first years on Punch he developed this caricaturist's interest in the uniqueness of persons and things, almost giving a human like personality to the objects in the environment. For example, a comparison of one of John Everett Millais's illustrations of a girl in a chair with Tenniel's illustration of Alice in a chair shows clearly that Millais's chair is just a prop, whereas Tenniel's chair possesses a menacing and towering presence.
Another change in style was his shaded lines. These transformed from mechanical horizontal lines to vigorously hand-drawn hatching that greatly intensified darker areas.
Tenniel's "grotesque" was one reason why Lewis Carroll wanted Tenniel as his illustrator for the Alice books, in the sense of imparting a disturbing sense that the real world may have ceased to be reliable. Tenniel's style was characteristically grotesque through his dark, atmospheric compositions of exaggerated fantasy creatures carefully drawn in outline. Often the mechanism was to use animal heads on recognisable human bodies or vice versa, as Grandville had done in the Parisian satirical journal Charivari. In Tenniel's illustrations, the grotesque is found also in mergers of beings and things, deformities in and violence to the human body (e. g. when Alice drinks the potion and grows huge), and a proclivity to deal with ordinary things of this world while presenting such phenomena. The most noticeably grotesque is Tenniel's famous Jabberwock drawing in Alice.
The Alice illustrations combine fantasy and reality. Scholars such as Morris trace Tenniel's stylistic change to the late 1850s trend towards realism. For the grotesque to operate, "it is our world which has to be transformed and not some fantasy realm." The illustrations constantly but subtly remind us of the real world, as do some of Tenniel's scenes derived from a medieval town, the portico of a Georgian town, or the checked jacket on the White Rabbit. Additionally, Tenniel closely follows Carroll's text, so that the reader sees the similitude between the written text and the illustrations. These touches of realism help to convince readers that all these seemingly grotesque inhabitants of Wonderland are simply themselves, simply real, not just performing.
One unusual aspect of the Alice books is the placing of Tenniel's illustrations on the pages. This physical relation of illustrations to text meshes them together. Carroll and Tenniel expressed this in various ways. One was bracketing: two relevant sentences would bracket an image as a way of imparting the moment that Tenniel was trying to illustrate. This bracketing of Tenniel's pictures with text adds to their "dramatic immediacy." However, other, less frequent illustrations work with the texts as captions.
Another link between illustration and text is the use of broader and narrower illustrations. Broader ones are meant to be centred on the page, narrower to be "let in" or run flush to the margin, alongside a narrow column of continuing text. Still, words run in parallel with the depiction of those things. For example, when Alice says, "Oh, my poor little feet!", it not only occurs at the foot of the page but is right next to her feet in the illustration. Some of these narrower illustrations are "L"-shaped, and of great importance as some of his most memorable work. The top or base of these illustrations runs the full width of the page, but the other end leaves room on one side for text.
A selected list:
Entirely by Tenniel
Tenniel's different collaborations:
An ultimate tribute came to an elderly Tenniel as he was knighted for public service in 1893 by Queen Victoria. It was the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist. His fellows saw his knighthood as gratitude for "raising what had been a fairly lowly profession to an unprecedented level of respectability." With his knighthood, Tenniel elevated the social status of the black-and-white illustrator, and sparked a new sense of recognition of his profession. When he retired in January 1901, Tenniel was honoured with a farewell banquet (on 12 June), at which AJ Balfour, then Leader of the House of Commons, presided, and described Tenniel as "a great artist and a great gentleman".
Tenniel died of natural causes on 25 February 1914, three days shy of his 94th birthday. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
The Punch historian M. H. Spielmann, who knew Tenniel, wrote that the political clout contained in his Punch cartoons was capable of "swaying parties and people, too". Two days after his death, The Daily Graphic recalled how Tenniel "had an influence on the political feeling of this time which is hardly measurable.... While Tenniel was drawing them (his subjects), we always looked to the Punch cartoon to crystallize the national and international situation, and the popular feeling about it—and never looked in vain." This social influence resulted from the weekly publishing of his political cartoons over 50 years, whereby Tenniel's fame allowed for a want and need for his particular illustrative work, away from the newspaper. Tenniel became not only one of Victorian Britain's most published illustrators, but as a Punch cartoonist one of the "supreme social observers" of British society and an integral component of a powerful journalistic force. The New-York Tribune journalist George W. Smalley referred to John Tenniel in 1914 as "one of the greatest intellectual forces of his time, (who) understood social laws and political energies."
Public exhibitions of Sir John Tenniel's work were held in 1895 and 1900. Tenniel was also the author of one of the mosaics, Leonardo da Vinci, in the South Court in the Victoria and Albert Museum. His stippled watercolour drawings appeared from time to time in the exhibitions of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, to which he had been elected in 1874.
Tenniel Close, a Bayswater street near his former studio, is named after him. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Sir John Tenniel (/ˈtɛniəl/; 28 February 1820 – 25 February 1914) was an English illustrator, graphic humourist and political cartoonist prominent in the second half of the 19th century. An alumnus of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, he was knighted for artistic achievements in 1893, the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Tenniel is remembered mainly as the principal political cartoonist for Punch magazine for over 50 years and for his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Tenniel's detailed black-and-white drawings remain the definitive depiction of the Alice characters, with comic book illustrator and writer Bryan Talbot stating, \"Carroll never describes the Mad Hatter: our image of him is pure Tenniel.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Tenniel was born in Bayswater, West London, to John Baptist Tenniel, a fencing and dancing master of Huguenot descent, and Eliza Maria Tenniel. Tenniel had five siblings; two brothers and three sisters. One sister, Mary, was later to marry Thomas Goodwin Green, owner of the pottery that produced Cornishware. Tenniel was a quiet and introverted person, both as a boy and as an adult. He was content to remain firmly out of the limelight and seemed unaffected by competition or change. His biographer Rodney Engen wrote that Tenniel's \"life and career was that of the supreme gentlemanly outside, living on the edge of respectability.\"",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1840, Tenniel, while practising fencing, received a serious eye wound from his father's foil, which had accidentally lost its protective tip. Over the years, Tenniel gradually lost sight in his right eye; he never told his father of the severity of the wound, as he did not wish to upset him further.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In spite of a tendency towards high art, Tenniel was already known and appreciated as a humourist. His early companionship with Charles Keene fostered his talent for scholarly caricature.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Tenniel became a student of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1842 by probation; he was admitted because he had made enough copies of classical sculptures to fill the necessary admission portfolio. So it was here that Tenniel returned to his earlier independent education.",
"title": "Training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "While Tenniel's more formal training at the Royal Academy and other institutions was beneficial in nurturing his artistic ambitions, he disagreed with the school's teaching methods, and so he set about educating himself. He studied classical sculptures through painting. However, he was frustrated in this because he lacked instruction in drawing. Tenniel would draw the classical statues at London's Townley Gallery, copy illustrations from books of costumes and armour in the British Museum, and draw animals from the zoo in Regent's Park, as well as actors from London theatres, which he drew from the pits. These studies taught Tenniel to love detail, yet he became impatient in his work and was happiest when he could draw from memory. Though he had a photographic memory, it undermined his early formal training and restricted his artistic ambitions.",
"title": "Training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Another \"formal\" means of training was Tenniel's participation in an artists' group, free from the rules of the academy that were stifling him. In the mid-1840s he joined the Artist's Society or Clipstone Street Life Academy, and it could be said that Tenniel first emerged there as a satirical draughtsman.",
"title": "Training"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Tenniel's first book illustration was for Samuel Carter Hall's The Book of British Ballads, in 1842. While engaged with his first book illustrations, various contests were taking place in London, as a way in which the government could combat the growing Germanic Nazarenes style and promote a truly national English school of art. Tenniel planned to enter the 1845 House of Lords competition amongst artists to win the opportunity to design the mural decoration of the new Palace of Westminster. Despite missing the deadline, he submitted a 16-foot (4.9 m) cartoon, An Allegory of Justice, to a competition for designs for the mural decoration of the new Palace of Westminster. For this he received a £200 premium and a commission to paint a fresco in the Upper Waiting Hall (or Hall of Poets) in the House of Lords.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "As the influential result of his position as the chief cartoon artist for Punch, Tenniel remained a witness to Britain's sweeping changes. He furthered political and social reform through satirical, often radical, and at times vitriolic images of the world. At Christmas 1850 he was invited by Mark Lemon to fill the position of joint cartoonist (with John Leech) on Punch, having been selected on the strength of recent illustrations to Aesop's Fables. He contributed his first drawing in the initial letter appearing on p. 224, vol. xix. This was entitled \"Lord Jack the Giant Killer\" and showed Lord John Russell assailing Cardinal Wiseman.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Tenniel's first characteristic lion appeared in 1852, as did his first obituary cartoon. Gradually he took over altogether the weekly drawing of the political \"big cut,\" which Leech was happy to cede to Tenniel in order to restrict himself to his pictures of life and character.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1861, Tenniel was offered Leech's position at Punch, as political cartoonist, but Tenniel still maintained a sense of decorum and restraint in the heated social and political issues of the day. When Leech died in 1864, Tenniel continued their work alone, rarely missing a single week.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "His task was to follow the wilful choices of his Punch editors, who probably took their cue from The Times and would have felt the suggestions of political tensions from Parliament as well. Tenniel's work could be scathing in effect. The restlessness in the issues of working-class radicalism, labour, war, economy, and other national themes were the targets of Punch, which in turn settled the nature of Tenniel's subjects. His cartoons of the 1860s popularised a portrait of the Irishman as a sub-human being, wanton in his appetites and resembling an orangutan in facial features and posture. Many of Tenniel's political cartoons expressed strong hostility to Irish Nationalism, with Fenians and Land leagues depicted as monstrous, ape-like brutes, while \"Hibernia\" – the personification of Ireland – was depicted as a beautiful, helpless girl threatened by such \"monsters\" and turning for protection to an \"elder sister\" in the shape of a powerful, armoured Britannia.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "\"An Unequal Match\", his drawing published in Punch on 8 October 1881, depicted a police officer fighting a criminal with only a baton for protection, trying to put a point across to the public that policing methods needed to be changed.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "When examined separately from the book illustrations he did over time, Tenniel's work at Punch alone, expressing decades of editorial viewpoints, often controversial and socially sensitive, was created to echo the voices of the British public. Tenniel drew 2,165 cartoons for Punch, a liberal and politically active publication that mirrored the Victorian public's mood for liberal social changes; thus Tenniel, in his cartoons, represented for years the conscience of the British majority.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Tenniel contributed around 2,300 cartoons, innumerable minor drawings, many double-page cartoons for Punch's Almanac and other specials, and 250 designs for Punch's Pocket-books. By 1866 he could \"command ten to fifteen guineas for the reworking of a single Punch cartoon as a pencil sketch,\" alongside his \"comfortable\" Punch salary \"of about £800 a year\".",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Despite the thousands of political cartoons and hundreds of illustrative works attributed to him, much of Tenniel's fame stems from his illustrations for Alice. Tenniel drew 92 drawings for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (London: Macmillan, 1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (London: Macmillan, 1871).",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Lewis Carroll originally illustrated Wonderland himself, but his artistic abilities were limited. Engraver Orlando Jewitt, who had worked for Carroll in 1859 and reviewed Carroll's drawings for Wonderland, suggested that he employ a professional. Carroll was a regular reader of Punch and therefore familiar with Tenniel, who in 1865 had long talks with Carroll before illustrating the first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The first print run of 2,000 was sold in the United States, rather than England, because Tenniel objected to the print quality. A new edition was released in December 1865, carrying an 1866 date, and became an instant best-seller, increasing Tenniel's fame. His drawings for both books have become some of the most famous literary illustrations. After 1872, when the Carroll projects were finished, Tenniel largely abandoned literary illustration. Carroll did later approach Tenniel to undertake another project for him. To this Tenniel replied:",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "It is a curious fact that with Looking-Glass the faculty of making drawings for book illustrations departed from me, and... I have done nothing in that direction since.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Tenniel's Alice illustrations were engraved onto blocks of deal wood by the Brothers Dalziel. These then served as masters for the electrotype copies for the actual printing of the books. The original wood blocks are held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. They are not usually on public display, but were exhibited in 2003.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The bronze Alice in Wonderland sculpture (1959) in Central Park in Manhattan, New York City, is patterned on his illustrations.",
"title": "Early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The style associated with the Nazarene movement of the 19th century influenced many later artists, including Tenniel. It can be characterised as \"shaded outlines\", where the lines on the side of figures or objects are given extra thickness or drawn double to suggest shading or volume. Furthermore, this style is extremely precise, with the artist making a hard clear outline for its figures, dignifying them and the compositions, while giving restraint in expression and paleness of tone. Though Tenniel's early illustrations in the Nazarene style were not well received, his encounter with the style pointed him in a good direction.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "After the 1850s, Tenniel's style was modernised to incorporate more detail in backgrounds and in figures. The inclusion of background details corrected the previously weak Germanic staging of his illustrations. Tenniel's more precisely-designed illustrations depicted specific moments of time, locale and individual character instead of just generalised scenes.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In addition to a change in specificity of background, Tenniel developed a new interest in human types, expressions, and individualised representation, something that would carry over into his illustrations of Wonderland. Referred to by many as theatricality, this hallmark of Tenniel's style probably stemmed from his earlier interest in caricature. In Tenniel's first years on Punch he developed this caricaturist's interest in the uniqueness of persons and things, almost giving a human like personality to the objects in the environment. For example, a comparison of one of John Everett Millais's illustrations of a girl in a chair with Tenniel's illustration of Alice in a chair shows clearly that Millais's chair is just a prop, whereas Tenniel's chair possesses a menacing and towering presence.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Another change in style was his shaded lines. These transformed from mechanical horizontal lines to vigorously hand-drawn hatching that greatly intensified darker areas.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Tenniel's \"grotesque\" was one reason why Lewis Carroll wanted Tenniel as his illustrator for the Alice books, in the sense of imparting a disturbing sense that the real world may have ceased to be reliable. Tenniel's style was characteristically grotesque through his dark, atmospheric compositions of exaggerated fantasy creatures carefully drawn in outline. Often the mechanism was to use animal heads on recognisable human bodies or vice versa, as Grandville had done in the Parisian satirical journal Charivari. In Tenniel's illustrations, the grotesque is found also in mergers of beings and things, deformities in and violence to the human body (e. g. when Alice drinks the potion and grows huge), and a proclivity to deal with ordinary things of this world while presenting such phenomena. The most noticeably grotesque is Tenniel's famous Jabberwock drawing in Alice.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Alice illustrations combine fantasy and reality. Scholars such as Morris trace Tenniel's stylistic change to the late 1850s trend towards realism. For the grotesque to operate, \"it is our world which has to be transformed and not some fantasy realm.\" The illustrations constantly but subtly remind us of the real world, as do some of Tenniel's scenes derived from a medieval town, the portico of a Georgian town, or the checked jacket on the White Rabbit. Additionally, Tenniel closely follows Carroll's text, so that the reader sees the similitude between the written text and the illustrations. These touches of realism help to convince readers that all these seemingly grotesque inhabitants of Wonderland are simply themselves, simply real, not just performing.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "One unusual aspect of the Alice books is the placing of Tenniel's illustrations on the pages. This physical relation of illustrations to text meshes them together. Carroll and Tenniel expressed this in various ways. One was bracketing: two relevant sentences would bracket an image as a way of imparting the moment that Tenniel was trying to illustrate. This bracketing of Tenniel's pictures with text adds to their \"dramatic immediacy.\" However, other, less frequent illustrations work with the texts as captions.",
"title": "Image and text in Alice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Another link between illustration and text is the use of broader and narrower illustrations. Broader ones are meant to be centred on the page, narrower to be \"let in\" or run flush to the margin, alongside a narrow column of continuing text. Still, words run in parallel with the depiction of those things. For example, when Alice says, \"Oh, my poor little feet!\", it not only occurs at the foot of the page but is right next to her feet in the illustration. Some of these narrower illustrations are \"L\"-shaped, and of great importance as some of his most memorable work. The top or base of these illustrations runs the full width of the page, but the other end leaves room on one side for text.",
"title": "Image and text in Alice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "A selected list:",
"title": "Book illustrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Entirely by Tenniel",
"title": "Book illustrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Tenniel's different collaborations:",
"title": "Book illustrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "An ultimate tribute came to an elderly Tenniel as he was knighted for public service in 1893 by Queen Victoria. It was the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist. His fellows saw his knighthood as gratitude for \"raising what had been a fairly lowly profession to an unprecedented level of respectability.\" With his knighthood, Tenniel elevated the social status of the black-and-white illustrator, and sparked a new sense of recognition of his profession. When he retired in January 1901, Tenniel was honoured with a farewell banquet (on 12 June), at which AJ Balfour, then Leader of the House of Commons, presided, and described Tenniel as \"a great artist and a great gentleman\".",
"title": "Retirement and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Tenniel died of natural causes on 25 February 1914, three days shy of his 94th birthday. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.",
"title": "Retirement and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Punch historian M. H. Spielmann, who knew Tenniel, wrote that the political clout contained in his Punch cartoons was capable of \"swaying parties and people, too\". Two days after his death, The Daily Graphic recalled how Tenniel \"had an influence on the political feeling of this time which is hardly measurable.... While Tenniel was drawing them (his subjects), we always looked to the Punch cartoon to crystallize the national and international situation, and the popular feeling about it—and never looked in vain.\" This social influence resulted from the weekly publishing of his political cartoons over 50 years, whereby Tenniel's fame allowed for a want and need for his particular illustrative work, away from the newspaper. Tenniel became not only one of Victorian Britain's most published illustrators, but as a Punch cartoonist one of the \"supreme social observers\" of British society and an integral component of a powerful journalistic force. The New-York Tribune journalist George W. Smalley referred to John Tenniel in 1914 as \"one of the greatest intellectual forces of his time, (who) understood social laws and political energies.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Public exhibitions of Sir John Tenniel's work were held in 1895 and 1900. Tenniel was also the author of one of the mosaics, Leonardo da Vinci, in the South Court in the Victoria and Albert Museum. His stippled watercolour drawings appeared from time to time in the exhibitions of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, to which he had been elected in 1874.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Tenniel Close, a Bayswater street near his former studio, is named after him.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Sir John Tenniel was an English illustrator, graphic humourist and political cartoonist prominent in the second half of the 19th century. An alumnus of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, he was knighted for artistic achievements in 1893, the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist. Tenniel is remembered mainly as the principal political cartoonist for Punch magazine for over 50 years and for his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Tenniel's detailed black-and-white drawings remain the definitive depiction of the Alice characters, with comic book illustrator and writer Bryan Talbot stating, "Carroll never describes the Mad Hatter: our image of him is pure Tenniel." | 2001-03-14T11:30:59Z | 2023-11-19T12:41:49Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tenniel |
15,613 | Jazz | Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz.
The origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning "pep, energy". The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a 'jazz ball' "because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it".
The use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with National Public Radio, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying: "When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies." The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century.
Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to rock-infused fusion. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music. But critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has a "special relationship to time defined as 'swing'". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician".
A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition". Duke Ellington, one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music."
Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues, a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score, with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on the contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members, the performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures.
In early Dixieland, a.k.a. New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies. In the swing era of the 1920s–'40s, big bands relied more on arrangements which were written or learned by ear and memorized. Soloists improvised within these arrangements. In the bebop era of the 1940s, big bands gave way to small groups and minimal arrangements in which the melody was stated briefly at the beginning and most of the piece was improvised. Modal jazz abandoned chord progressions to allow musicians to improvise even more. In many forms of jazz, a soloist is supported by a rhythm section of one or more chordal instruments (piano, guitar), double bass, and drums. The rhythm section plays chords and rhythms that outline the composition structure and complement the soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz, the separation of soloist and band is reduced, and there is license, or even a requirement, for the abandoning of chords, scales, and meters.
Since the emergence of bebop, forms of jazz that are commercially oriented or influenced by popular music have been criticized. According to Bruce Johnson, there has always been a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form". Regarding the Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s, Black musicians rejected it as being shallow nostalgia entertainment for white audiences. On the other hand, traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as forms of debasement and betrayal. An alternative view is that jazz can absorb and transform diverse musical styles. By avoiding the creation of norms, jazz allows avant-garde styles to emerge.
For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to culture and history. For others, jazz is a reminder of "an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions". Amiri Baraka argues that there is a "white jazz" genre that expresses whiteness. White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and in other areas throughout the U.S. Papa Jack Laine, who ran the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called "the father of white jazz". The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, whose members were white, were the first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent jazz soloists of the 1920s. The Chicago Style was developed by white musicians such as Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, and Dave Tough. Others from Chicago such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa became leading members of swing during the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians. These musicians helped change attitudes toward race in the U.S.
Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Adelaide Hall, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Abbey Lincoln, Anita O'Day, Dinah Washington, and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, trumpeter Valaida Snow, and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields. Women began playing instruments in jazz in the early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano.
When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO, touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson. Beginning in the 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from the late 1950s into the 1990s.
Jewish Americans played a significant role in jazz. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate.
Jewish Americans were able to thrive in Jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African Americans.
The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of Jazz. Goodman was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history".
Shep Fields also helped to popularize "Sweet" Jazz music through his appearances and Big band remote broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House, Broadway's Paramount Theater and the Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He entertained audiences with a light elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s.
Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century. It developed out of many forms of music, including blues, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, ragtime, and dance music. It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and the influences of West African culture. Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre.
By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as Congo Square, famous for its African dances.
By 1866, the Atlantic slave trade had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America. The slaves came largely from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin and brought strong musical traditions with them. The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, and the rhythms have a counter-metric structure and reflect African speech patterns.
An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and a drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel.
Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843. There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. Robert Palmer said of percussive slave music:
Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when the year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered "gumbo box", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from the period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War.
Another influence came from the harmonic style of hymns of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as spirituals. The origins of the blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, whereas the spirituals are homophonic, rural blues and early jazz "was largely based on concepts of heterophony".
During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized the music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures.
The Black Codes outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through "body rhythms" such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing.
In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman, what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was "Afro-Latin music", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example "Souvenirs From Havana" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the music of the African Diaspora.
Tresillo is heard prominently in New Orleans second line music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present. "By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions," jazz historian Gunther Schuller observed. "Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed."
In the post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures. This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. "The snare and bass drummers played syncopated cross-rhythms," observed the writer Robert Palmer, speculating that "this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured."
African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the habanera (Cuban contradanza) gained international popularity. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take the twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera "reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published." For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk, ragtime, and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music.
Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were the first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803). From the perspective of African-American music, the "habanera rhythm" (also known as "congo"), "tango-congo", or tango. can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat. The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired the use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music.
New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk's piano piece "Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand. In Gottschalk's symphonic work "A Night in the Tropics" (1859), the tresillo variant cinquillo appears extensively. The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers.
Comparing the music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans "clavé", a Spanish word meaning "code" or "key", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery. Although the pattern is only half a clave, Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music. Jelly Roll Morton called the rhythmic figure the Spanish tinge and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz.
The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for the education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows, and in vaudeville, during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed.
Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as the entertainer Ernest Hogan, whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo known as "Rag Time Medley". Also in 1897, the white composer William Krell published his "Mississippi Rag" as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his "Harlem Rag", the first rag published by an African-American.
Classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his "Original Rags" in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with "Maple Leaf Rag", a multi-strain ragtime march with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious seventh chords. Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the syncopations in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time. The last four measures of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) are shown below.
African-based rhythmic patterns such as tresillo and its variants, the habanera rhythm and cinquillo, are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's "Solace" (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre: both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a march rhythm. Ned Sublette postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm "found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk," whilst Roberts suggests that "the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass".
In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson's development of stride piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline.
In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by the Black middle-class.
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre, which originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants and rhymed simple narrative ballads.
The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to the development of blue notes in blues and jazz. As Kubik explains:
Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are stylistically an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt:
W. C. Handy became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within a limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another "voice". Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in a popular music form.
Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues:
The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well.
The publication of his "Memphis Blues" sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although Gunther Schuller argues that it is not really a blues, but "more like a cakewalk"). This composition, as well as his later "St. Louis Blues" and others, included the habanera rhythm, and would become jazz standards. Handy's music career began in the pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music.
The music of New Orleans, Louisiana had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums. Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called Storyville. In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called jazz funerals). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became the instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, Louisiana Creole and African-American musicians played in vaudeville shows which carried jazz to cities in the northern and western parts of the U.S. Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist Freddie Keppard performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg, Canada.
In New Orleans, a white bandleader named Papa Jack Laine integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as "the father of white jazz" because of the many top players he employed, such as George Brunies, Sharkey Bonano, and future members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band. During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and mulatto communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans. Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in addition to those from other communities, such as Lorenzo Tio and Alcide Nunez. Louis Armstrong started his career in Storyville and found success in Chicago. Storyville was shut down by the U.S. government in 1917.
Cornetist Buddy Bolden played in New Orleans from 1895 to 1906. No recordings by him exist. His band is credited with creating the big four: the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march. As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm.
Afro-Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton began his career in Storyville. Beginning in 1904, he toured with vaudeville shows to southern cities, Chicago, and New York City. In 1905, he composed "Jelly Roll Blues", which became the first jazz arrangement in print when it was published in 1915. It introduced more musicians to the New Orleans style.
Morton considered the tresillo/habanera, which he called the Spanish tinge, an essential ingredient of jazz. "Now in one of my earliest tunes, "New Orleans Blues," you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz."
An excerpt of "New Orleans Blues" is shown below. In the excerpt, the left hand plays the tresillo rhythm, while the right hand plays variations on cinquillo.
Morton was a crucial innovator in the evolution from the early jazz form known as ragtime to jazz piano, and could perform pieces in either style; in 1938, Morton made a series of recordings for the Library of Congress in which he demonstrated the difference between the two styles. Morton's solos, however, were still close to ragtime, and were not merely improvisations over chord changes as in later jazz, but his use of the blues was of equal importance.
Morton loosened ragtime's rigid rhythmic feeling, decreasing its embellishments and employing a swing feeling. Swing is the most important and enduring African-based rhythmic technique used in jazz. An oft quoted definition of swing by Louis Armstrong is: "if you don't feel it, you'll never know it." The New Harvard Dictionary of Music states that swing is: "An intangible rhythmic momentum in jazz...Swing defies analysis; claims to its presence may inspire arguments." The dictionary does nonetheless provide the useful description of triple subdivisions of the beat contrasted with duple subdivisions: swing superimposes six subdivisions of the beat over a basic pulse structure or four subdivisions. This aspect of swing is far more prevalent in African-American music than in Afro-Caribbean music. One aspect of swing, which is heard in more rhythmically complex Diaspora musics, places strokes in-between the triple and duple-pulse "grids".
New Orleans brass bands are a lasting influence, contributing horn players to the world of professional jazz with the distinct sound of the city whilst helping black children escape poverty. The leader of New Orleans' Camelia Brass Band, D'Jalma Ganier, taught Louis Armstrong to play trumpet; Armstrong would then popularize the New Orleans style of trumpet playing, and then expand it. Like Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong is also credited with the abandonment of ragtime's stiffness in favor of swung notes. Armstrong, perhaps more than any other musician, codified the rhythmic technique of swing in jazz and broadened the jazz solo vocabulary.
The Original Dixieland Jass Band made the music's first recordings early in 1917, and their "Livery Stable Blues" became the earliest released jazz record. That year, numerous other bands made recordings featuring "jazz" in the title or band name, but most were ragtime or novelty records rather than jazz. In February 1918 during World War I, James Reese Europe's "Hellfighters" infantry band took ragtime to Europe, then on their return recorded Dixieland standards including "Darktown Strutters' Ball".
From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition in the United States banned the sale of alcoholic drinks, resulting in illicit speakeasies which became lively venues of the "Jazz Age", hosting popular music, dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes. Jazz began to get a reputation as immoral, and many members of the older generations saw it as a threat to the old cultural values by promoting the decadent values of the Roaring 20s. Henry van Dyke of Princeton University wrote, "... it is not music at all. It's merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion." The New York Times reported that Siberian villagers used jazz to scare away bears, but the villagers had used pots and pans; another story claimed that the fatal heart attack of a celebrated conductor was caused by jazz.
In 1919, Kid Ory's Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans began playing in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings. During the same year, Bessie Smith made her first recordings. Chicago was developing "Hot Jazz", and King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924.
Despite its Southern black origins, there was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white orchestras. In 1918, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra became a hit in San Francisco. He signed a contract with Victor and became the top bandleader of the 1920s, giving hot jazz a white component, hiring white musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Frankie Trumbauer, and Joe Venuti. In 1924, Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was premiered by his orchestra. Jazz began to be recognized as a notable musical form. Olin Downes, reviewing the concert in The New York Times, wrote, "This composition shows extraordinary talent, as it shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk, struggling with a form of which he is far from being master. ... In spite of all this, he has expressed himself in a significant and, on the whole, highly original form. ... His first theme ... is no mere dance-tune ... it is an idea, or several ideas, correlated and combined in varying and contrasting rhythms that immediately intrigue the listener."
After Whiteman's band successfully toured Europe, huge hot jazz orchestras in theater pits caught on with other whites, including Fred Waring, Jean Goldkette, and Nathaniel Shilkret. According to Mario Dunkel, Whiteman's success was based on a "rhetoric of domestication" according to which he had elevated and rendered valuable (read "white") a previously inchoate (read "black") kind of music.
Whiteman's success caused black artists to follow suit, including Earl Hines (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe in Chicago in 1928), Duke Ellington (who opened at the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1927), Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Claude Hopkins, and Don Redman, with Henderson and Redman developing the "talking to one another" formula for "hot" swing music.
In 1924, Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band for a year, as featured soloist. The original New Orleans style was polyphonic, with theme variation and simultaneous collective improvisation. Armstrong was a master of his hometown style, but by the time he joined Henderson's band, he was already a trailblazer in a new phase of jazz, with its emphasis on arrangements and soloists. Armstrong's solos went well beyond the theme-improvisation concept and extemporized on chords, rather than melodies. According to Schuller, by comparison, the solos by Armstrong's bandmates (including a young Coleman Hawkins), sounded "stiff, stodgy", with "jerky rhythms and a grey undistinguished tone quality". The following example shows a short excerpt of the straight melody of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" by George W. Meyer and Arthur Johnston (top), compared with Armstrong's solo improvisations (below) (recorded 1924). Armstrong's solos were a significant factor in making jazz a true 20th-century language. After leaving Henderson's group, Armstrong formed his Hot Five band, where he popularized scat singing.
The 1930s belonged to popular swing big bands, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Harry James, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to "solo" and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be complex "important" music.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians and black bandleaders white ones. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. In the 1930s, Kansas City Jazz as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, uptempo music and blues chord progressions, drawing on boogie-woogie from the 1930s.
While swing was reaching the height of its popularity, Duke Ellington spent the late 1920s and 1930s developing an innovative musical idiom for his orchestra. Abandoning the conventions of swing, he experimented with orchestral sounds, harmony, and musical form with complex compositions that still translated well for popular audiences; some of his tunes became hits, and his own popularity spanned from the United States to Europe.
Ellington called his music American Music, rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as "beyond category". These included many musicians from his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most popular jazz orchestras in the history of jazz. He often composed for the style and skills of these individuals, such as "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Concerto for Cootie" for Cootie Williams (which later became "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" with Bob Russell's lyrics), and "The Mooche" for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded compositions written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan" and "Perdido", which brought the "Spanish Tinge" to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained with him for several decades. The band reached a creative peak in the early 1940s, when Ellington and a small hand-picked group of his composers and arrangers wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity.
As only a limited number of American jazz records were released in Europe, European jazz traces many of its roots to American artists such as James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and Lonnie Johnson, who visited Europe during and after World War I. It was their live performances which inspired European audiences' interest in jazz, as well as the interest in all things American (and therefore exotic) which accompanied the economic and political woes of Europe during this time. The beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz began to emerge in this interwar period.
British jazz began with a tour by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919. In 1926, Fred Elizalde and His Cambridge Undergraduates began broadcasting on the BBC. Thereafter jazz became an important element in many leading dance orchestras, and jazz instrumentalists became numerous.
This style entered full swing in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which began in 1934. Much of this French jazz was a combination of African-American jazz and the symphonic styles in which French musicians were well-trained; in this, it is easy to see the inspiration taken from Paul Whiteman since his style was also a fusion of the two. Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt popularized gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall "musette", and Eastern European folk with a languid, seductive feel; the main instruments were steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos pass from one player to another as guitar and bass form the rhythm section. Some researchers believe Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti pioneered the guitar-violin partnership characteristic of the genre, which was brought to France after they had been heard live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s.
The outbreak of World War II marked a turning point for jazz. The swing-era jazz of the previous decade had challenged other popular music as being representative of the nation's culture, with big bands reaching the height of the style's success by the early 1940s; swing acts and big bands traveled with U.S. military overseas to Europe, where it also became popular. Stateside, however, the war presented difficulties for the big-band format: conscription shortened the number of musicians available; the military's need for shellac (commonly used for pressing gramophone records) limited record production; a shortage of rubber (also due to the war effort) discouraged bands from touring via road travel; and a demand by the musicians' union for a commercial recording ban limited music distribution between 1942 and 1944.
Many of the big bands who were deprived of experienced musicians because of the war effort began to enlist young players who were below the age for conscription, as was the case with saxophonist Stan Getz's entry in a band as a teenager. This coincided with a nationwide resurgence in the Dixieland style of pre-swing jazz; performers such as clarinetist George Lewis, cornetist Bill Davison, and trombonist Turk Murphy were hailed by conservative jazz critics as more authentic than the big bands. Elsewhere, with the limitations on recording, small groups of young musicians developed a more uptempo, improvisational style of jazz, collaborating and experimenting with new ideas for melodic development, rhythmic language, and harmonic substitution, during informal, late-night jam sessions hosted in small clubs and apartments. Key figures in this development were largely based in New York and included pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clarke, saxophonist Charlie Parker, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. This musical development became known as bebop.
Bebop and subsequent post-war jazz developments featured a wider set of notes, played in more complex patterns and at faster tempos than previous jazz. According to Clive James, bebop was "the post-war musical development which tried to ensure that jazz would no longer be the spontaneous sound of joy ... Students of race relations in America are generally agreed that the exponents of post-war jazz were determined, with good reason, to present themselves as challenging artists rather than tame entertainers." The end of the war marked "a revival of the spirit of experimentation and musical pluralism under which it had been conceived", along with "the beginning of a decline in the popularity of jazz music in America", according to American academic Michael H. Burchett.
With the rise of bebop and the end of the swing era after the war, jazz lost its cachet as pop music. Vocalists of the famous big bands moved on to being marketed and performing as solo pop singers; these included Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Dick Haymes, and Doris Day. Older musicians who still performed their pre-war jazz, such as Armstrong and Ellington, were gradually viewed in the mainstream as passé. Other younger performers, such as singer Big Joe Turner and saxophonist Louis Jordan, who were discouraged by bebop's increasing complexity, pursued more lucrative endeavors in rhythm and blues, jump blues, and eventually rock and roll. Some, including Gillespie, composed intricate yet danceable pieces for bebop musicians in an effort to make them more accessible, but bebop largely remained on the fringes of American audiences' purview. "The new direction of postwar jazz drew a wealth of critical acclaim, but it steadily declined in popularity as it developed a reputation as an academic genre that was largely inaccessible to mainstream audiences", Burchett said. "The quest to make jazz more relevant to popular audiences, while retaining its artistic integrity, is a constant and prevalent theme in the history of postwar jazz." During its swing period, jazz had been an uncomplicated musical scene; according to Paul Trynka, this changed in the post-war years:
Suddenly jazz was no longer straightforward. There was bebop and its variants, there was the last gasp of swing, there were strange new brews like the progressive jazz of Stan Kenton, and there was a completely new phenomenon called revivalism – the rediscovery of jazz from the past, either on old records or performed live by aging players brought out of retirement. From now on it was no good saying that you liked jazz, you had to specify what kind of jazz. And that is the way it has been ever since, only more so. Today, the word 'jazz' is virtually meaningless without further definition.
In the early 1940s, bebop-style performers began to shift jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music". The most influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, and drummer Max Roach. Divorcing itself from dance music, bebop established itself more as an art form, thus lessening its potential popular and commercial appeal.
Composer Gunther Schuller wrote: "In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Dizzy Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings."
Dizzy Gillespie wrote: "People talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here...naturally each age has got its own shit."
Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it could use faster tempos. Drumming shifted to a more elusive and explosive style, in which the ride cymbal was used to keep time while the snare and bass drum were used for accents. This led to a highly syncopated music with a linear rhythmic complexity.
Bebop musicians employed several harmonic devices which were not previously typical in jazz, engaging in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation. Bebop scales are traditional scales with an added chromatic passing note; bebop also uses "passing" chords, substitute chords, and altered chords. New forms of chromaticism and dissonance were introduced into jazz, and the dissonant tritone (or "flatted fifth") interval became the "most important interval of bebop" Chord progressions for bebop tunes were often taken directly from popular swing-era tunes and reused with a new and more complex melody or reharmonized with more complex chord progressions to form new compositions, a practice which was already well-established in earlier jazz, but came to be central to the bebop style. Bebop made use of several relatively common chord progressions, such as blues (at base, I–IV–V, but often infused with ii–V motion) and "rhythm changes" (I–VI–ii–V) – the chords to the 1930s pop standard "I Got Rhythm". Late bop also moved towards extended forms that represented a departure from pop and show tunes.
The harmonic development in bebop is often traced back to a moment experienced by Charlie Parker while performing "Cherokee" at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, New York, in early 1942. "I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used...and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes. I couldn't play it...I was working over 'Cherokee,' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. It came alive." Gerhard Kubik postulates that harmonic development in bebop sprang from blues and African-related tonal sensibilities rather than 20th-century Western classical music. "Auditory inclinations were the African legacy in [Parker's] life, reconfirmed by the experience of the blues tonal system, a sound world at odds with the Western diatonic chord categories. Bebop musicians eliminated Western-style functional harmony in their music while retaining the strong central tonality of the blues as a basis for drawing upon various African matrices."
Samuel Floyd states that blues was both the bedrock and propelling force of bebop, bringing about a new harmonic conception using extended chord structures that led to unprecedented harmonic and melodic variety, a developed and even more highly syncopated, linear rhythmic complexity and a melodic angularity in which the blue note of the fifth degree was established as an important melodic-harmonic device; and reestablishment of the blues as the primary organizing and functional principle. Kubik wrote:
While for an outside observer, the harmonic innovations in bebop would appear to be inspired by experiences in Western "serious" music, from Claude Debussy to Arnold Schoenberg, such a scheme cannot be sustained by the evidence from a cognitive approach. Claude Debussy did have some influence on jazz, for example, on Bix Beiderbecke's piano playing. And it is also true that Duke Ellington adopted and reinterpreted some harmonic devices in European contemporary music. West Coast jazz would run into such debts as would several forms of cool jazz, but bebop has hardly any such debts in the sense of direct borrowings. On the contrary, ideologically, bebop was a strong statement of rejection of any kind of eclecticism, propelled by a desire to activate something deeply buried in self. Bebop then revived tonal-harmonic ideas transmitted through the blues and reconstructed and expanded others in a basically non-Western harmonic approach. The ultimate significance of all this is that the experiments in jazz during the 1940s brought back to African-American music several structural principles and techniques rooted in African traditions.
These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time met a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and musicians, especially swing players who bristled at the new harmonic sounds. To hostile critics, bebop seemed filled with "racing, nervous phrases". But despite the friction, by the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary.
The general consensus among musicians and musicologists is that the first original jazz piece to be overtly based in clave was "Tanga" (1943), composed by Cuban-born Mario Bauza and recorded by Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. "Tanga" began as a spontaneous descarga (Cuban jam session), with jazz solos superimposed on top.
This was the birth of Afro-Cuban jazz. The use of clave brought the African timeline, or key pattern, into jazz. Music organized around key patterns convey a two-celled (binary) structure, which is a complex level of African cross-rhythm. Within the context of jazz, however, harmony is the primary referent, not rhythm. The harmonic progression can begin on either side of clave, and the harmonic "one" is always understood to be "one". If the progression begins on the "three-side" of clave, it is said to be in 3–2 clave (shown below). If the progression begins on the "two-side", it is in 2–3 clave.
Mario Bauzá introduced bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie to Cuban conga drummer and composer Chano Pozo. Gillespie and Pozo's brief collaboration produced some of the most enduring Afro-Cuban jazz standards. "Manteca" (1947) is the first jazz standard to be rhythmically based on clave. According to Gillespie, Pozo composed the layered, contrapuntal guajeos (Afro-Cuban ostinatos) of the A section and the introduction, while Gillespie wrote the bridge. Gillespie recounted: "If I'd let it go like [Chano] wanted it, it would have been strictly Afro-Cuban all the way. There wouldn't have been a bridge. I thought I was writing an eight-bar bridge, but ... I had to keep going and ended up writing a sixteen-bar bridge." The bridge gave "Manteca" a typical jazz harmonic structure, setting the piece apart from Bauza's modal "Tanga" of a few years earlier.
Gillespie's collaboration with Pozo brought specific African-based rhythms into bebop. While pushing the boundaries of harmonic improvisation, cu-bop also drew from African rhythm. Jazz arrangements with a Latin A section and a swung B section, with all choruses swung during solos, became common practice with many Latin tunes of the jazz standard repertoire. This approach can be heard on pre-1980 recordings of "Manteca", "A Night in Tunisia", "Tin Tin Deo", and "On Green Dolphin Street".
Another jazz composition critical to the development of Afro-Cuban jazz was Bud Powell's "Un Poco Loco," recorded with Curley Russell on bass and Max Roach on drums. Noted for its "frenetic energy" and "clanging cowbell and polyrhythmic accompaniment," the composition combined Afro-Cuban rhythm with polytonality and preceded further use of modality and avant-garde harmony in Latin jazz.
Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria first recorded his composition "Afro Blue" in 1959. "Afro Blue" was the first jazz standard built upon a typical African three-against-two (3:2) cross-rhythm, or hemiola. The piece begins with the bass repeatedly playing 6 cross-beats per each measure of 8, or 6 cross-beats per 4 main beats—6:4 (two cells of 3:2).
The following example shows the original ostinato "Afro Blue" bass line. The cross noteheads indicate the main beats (not bass notes).
When John Coltrane covered "Afro Blue" in 1963, he inverted the metric hierarchy, interpreting the tune as a 4 jazz waltz with duple cross-beats superimposed (2:3). Originally a B♭ pentatonic blues, Coltrane expanded the harmonic structure of "Afro Blue".
Perhaps the most respected Afro-cuban jazz combo of the late 1950s was vibraphonist Cal Tjader's band. Tjader had Mongo Santamaria, Armando Peraza, and Willie Bobo on his early recording dates.
In the late 1940s, there was a revival of Dixieland, harking back to the contrapuntal New Orleans style. This was driven in large part by record company reissues of jazz classics by the Oliver, Morton, and Armstrong bands of the 1930s. There were two types of musicians involved in the revival: the first group was made up of those who had begun their careers playing in the traditional style and were returning to it (or continuing what they had been playing all along), such as Bob Crosby's Bobcats, Max Kaminsky, Eddie Condon, and Wild Bill Davison. Most of these players were originally Midwesterners, although there were a small number of New Orleans musicians involved. The second group of revivalists consisted of younger musicians, such as those in the Lu Watters band, Conrad Janis, and Ward Kimball and his Firehouse Five Plus Two Jazz Band. By the late 1940s, Louis Armstrong's Allstars band became a leading ensemble. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Dixieland was one of the most commercially popular jazz styles in the US, Europe, and Japan, although critics paid little attention to it.
Hard bop is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music that incorporates influences from blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel, especially in saxophone and piano playing. Hard bop was developed in the mid-1950s, coalescing in 1953 and 1954; it developed partly in response to the vogue for cool jazz in the early 1950s and paralleled the rise of rhythm and blues. It has been described as "funky" and can be considered a relative of soul jazz. Some elements of the genre were simplified from their bebop roots.
Miles Davis' 1954 performance of "Walkin'" at the first Newport Jazz Festival introduced the style to the jazz world. Further leaders of hard bop's development included the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, the Horace Silver Quintet, and trumpeters Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. The late 1950s to early 1960s saw hard boppers form their own bands as a new generation of blues- and bebop-influenced musicians entered the jazz world, from pianists Wynton Kelly and Tommy Flanagan to saxophonists Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley. Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Mobley, and Morgan all participated on the album A Blowin' Session (1957), considered by Al Campbell to have been one of the high points of the hard bop era.
Hard bop was prevalent within jazz for about a decade spanning from 1955 to 1965, but has remained highly influential on mainstream or "straight-ahead" jazz. It went into decline in the late 1960s through the 1970s due to the emergence of other styles such as jazz fusion, but again became influential following the Young Lions Movement and the emergence of neo-bop.
Modal jazz is a development which began in the later 1950s which takes the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Previously, a solo was meant to fit into a given chord progression, but with modal jazz, the soloist creates a melody using one (or a small number of) modes. The emphasis is thus shifted from harmony to melody: "Historically, this caused a seismic shift among jazz musicians, away from thinking vertically (the chord), and towards a more horizontal approach (the scale)", explained pianist Mark Levine.
The modal theory stems from a work by George Russell. Miles Davis introduced the concept to the greater jazz world with Kind of Blue (1959), an exploration of the possibilities of modal jazz which would become the best selling jazz album of all time. In contrast to Davis' earlier work with hard bop and its complex chord progression and improvisation, Kind of Blue was composed as a series of modal sketches in which the musicians were given scales that defined the parameters of their improvisation and style.
"I didn't write out the music for Kind of Blue, but brought in sketches for what everybody was supposed to play because I wanted a lot of spontaneity," recalled Davis. The track "So What" has only two chords: D-7 and E♭-7.
Other innovators in this style include Jackie McLean, and two of the musicians who had also played on Kind of Blue: John Coltrane and Bill Evans.
Free jazz, and the related form of avant-garde jazz, broke through into an open space of "free tonality" in which meter, beat, and formal symmetry all disappeared, and a range of world music from India, Africa, and Arabia were melded into an intense, even religiously ecstatic or orgiastic style of playing. While loosely inspired by bebop, free jazz tunes gave players much more latitude; the loose harmony and tempo was deemed controversial when this approach was first developed. The bassist Charles Mingus is also frequently associated with the avant-garde in jazz, although his compositions draw from myriad styles and genres.
The first major stirrings came in the 1950s with the early work of Ornette Coleman (whose 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation coined the term) and Cecil Taylor. In the 1960s, exponents included Albert Ayler, Gato Barbieri, Carla Bley, Don Cherry, Larry Coryell, John Coltrane, Bill Dixon, Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Lacy, Michael Mantler, Sun Ra, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, and John Tchicai. In developing his late style, Coltrane was especially influenced by the dissonance of Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, a rhythm section honed with Cecil Taylor as leader. In November 1961, Coltrane played a gig at the Village Vanguard, which resulted in the classic Chasin' the 'Trane, which DownBeat magazine panned as "anti-jazz". On his 1961 tour of France, he was booed, but persevered, signing with the new Impulse! Records in 1960 and turning it into "the house that Trane built", while championing many younger free jazz musicians, notably Archie Shepp, who often played with trumpeter Bill Dixon, who organized the 4-day "October Revolution in Jazz" in Manhattan in 1964, the first free jazz festival.
A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of 1965 show Coltrane's playing becoming increasingly abstract, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, utilization of overtones, and playing in the altissimo register, as well as a mutated return to Coltrane's sheets of sound. In the studio, he all but abandoned his soprano to concentrate on the tenor saxophone. In addition, the quartet responded to the leader by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the recordings The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, Living Space and Transition (both June 1965), New Thing at Newport (July 1965), Sun Ship (August 1965), and First Meditations (September 1965).
In June 1965, Coltrane and 10 other musicians recorded Ascension, a 40-minute-long piece without breaks that included adventurous solos by young avant-garde musicians as well as Coltrane, and was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos. Dave Liebman later called it "the torch that lit the free jazz thing". After recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Pharoah Sanders to join the band in September 1965. While Coltrane used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, Sanders would opt to overblow his entire solo, resulting in a constant screaming and screeching in the altissimo range of the instrument.
Free jazz was played in Europe in part because musicians such as Ayler, Taylor, Steve Lacy, and Eric Dolphy spent extended periods of time there, and European musicians such as Michael Mantler and John Tchicai traveled to the U.S. to experience American music firsthand. European contemporary jazz was shaped by Peter Brötzmann, John Surman, Krzysztof Komeda, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Tomasz Stanko, Lars Gullin, Joe Harriott, Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler, Graham Collier, Michael Garrick and Mike Westbrook. They were eager to develop approaches to music that reflected their heritage.
Since the 1960s, creative centers of jazz in Europe have developed, such as the creative jazz scene in Amsterdam. Following the work of drummer Han Bennink and pianist Misha Mengelberg, musicians started to explore by improvising collectively until a form (melody, rhythm, a famous song) is found Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead documented the free jazz scene in Amsterdam and some of its main exponents such as the ICP (Instant Composers Pool) orchestra in his book New Dutch Swing. Since the 1990s Keith Jarrett has defended free jazz from criticism. British writer Stuart Nicholson has argued European contemporary jazz has an identity different from American jazz and follows a different trajectory.
Latin jazz is jazz that employs Latin American rhythms and is generally understood to have a more specific meaning than simply jazz from Latin America. A more precise term might be Afro-Latin jazz, as the jazz subgenre typically employs rhythms that either have a direct analog in Africa or exhibit an African rhythmic influence beyond what is ordinarily heard in other jazz. The two main categories of Latin jazz are Afro-Cuban jazz and Brazilian jazz.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many jazz musicians had only a basic understanding of Cuban and Brazilian music, and jazz compositions which used Cuban or Brazilian elements were often referred to as "Latin tunes", with no distinction between a Cuban son montuno and a Brazilian bossa nova. Even as late as 2000, in Mark Gridley's Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, a bossa nova bass line is referred to as a "Latin bass figure". It was not uncommon during the 1960s and 1970s to hear a conga playing a Cuban tumbao while the drumset and bass played a Brazilian bossa nova pattern. Many jazz standards such as "Manteca", "On Green Dolphin Street" and "Song for My Father" have a "Latin" A section and a swung B section. Typically, the band would only play an even-eighth "Latin" feel in the A section of the head and swing throughout all of the solos. Latin jazz specialists like Cal Tjader tended to be the exception. For example, on a 1959 live Tjader recording of "A Night in Tunisia", pianist Vince Guaraldi soloed through the entire form over an authentic mambo.
For most of its history, Afro-Cuban jazz had been a matter of superimposing jazz phrasing over Cuban rhythms. But by the end of the 1970s, a new generation of New York City musicians had emerged who were fluent in both salsa dance music and jazz, leading to a new level of integration of jazz and Cuban rhythms. This era of creativity and vitality is best represented by the Gonzalez brothers Jerry (congas and trumpet) and Andy (bass). During 1974–1976, they were members of one of Eddie Palmieri's most experimental salsa groups: salsa was the medium, but Palmieri was stretching the form in new ways. He incorporated parallel fourths, with McCoy Tyner-type vamps. The innovations of Palmieri, the Gonzalez brothers and others led to an Afro-Cuban jazz renaissance in New York City.
This occurred in parallel with developments in Cuba The first Cuban band of this new wave was Irakere. Their "Chékere-son" (1976) introduced a style of "Cubanized" bebop-flavored horn lines that departed from the more angular guajeo-based lines which were typical of Cuban popular music and Latin jazz up until that time. It was based on Charlie Parker's composition "Billie's Bounce", jumbled together in a way that fused clave and bebop horn lines. In spite of the ambivalence of some band members towards Irakere's Afro-Cuban folkloric / jazz fusion, their experiments forever changed Cuban jazz: their innovations are still heard in the high level of harmonic and rhythmic complexity in Cuban jazz and in the jazzy and complex contemporary form of popular dance music known as timba.
Brazilian jazz, such as bossa nova, is derived from samba, with influences from jazz and other 20th-century classical and popular music styles. Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English, whilst the related jazz-samba is an adaptation of street samba into jazz.
The bossa nova style was pioneered by Brazilians João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim and was made popular by Elizete Cardoso's recording of "Chega de Saudade" on the Canção do Amor Demais LP. Gilberto's initial releases, and the 1959 film Black Orpheus, achieved significant popularity in Latin America; this spread to North America via visiting American jazz musicians. The resulting recordings by Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz cemented bossa nova's popularity and led to a worldwide boom, with 1963's Getz/Gilberto, numerous recordings by famous jazz performers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and the eventual entrenchment of the bossa nova style as a lasting influence in world music.
Brazilian percussionists such as Airto Moreira and Naná Vasconcelos also influenced jazz internationally by introducing Afro-Brazilian folkloric instruments and rhythms into a wide variety of jazz styles, thus attracting a greater audience to them.
While bossa nova has been labeled as jazz by music critics, namely those from outside of Brazil, it has been rejected by many prominent bossa nova musicians such as Jobim, who once said "Bossa nova is not Brazilian jazz."
The first jazz standard composed by a non-Latino to use an overt African 8 cross-rhythm was Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" (1967). On the version recorded on Miles Smiles by Miles Davis, the bass switches to a 4 tresillo figure at 2:20. "Footprints" is not, however, a Latin jazz tune: African rhythmic structures are accessed directly by Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums) via the rhythmic sensibilities of swing. Throughout the piece, the four beats, whether sounded or not, are maintained as the temporal referent. The following example shows the 8 and 4 forms of the bass line. The slashed noteheads indicate the main beats (not bass notes), where one ordinarily taps their foot to "keep time".
The use of pentatonic scales was another trend associated with Africa. The use of pentatonic scales in Africa probably goes back thousands of years.
McCoy Tyner perfected the use of the pentatonic scale in his solos, and also used parallel fifths and fourths, which are common harmonies in West Africa.
The minor pentatonic scale is often used in blues improvisation, and like a blues scale, a minor pentatonic scale can be played over all of the chords in a blues. The following pentatonic lick was played over blues changes by Joe Henderson on Horace Silver's "African Queen" (1965).
Jazz pianist, theorist, and educator Mark Levine refers to the scale generated by beginning on the fifth step of a pentatonic scale as the V pentatonic scale.
Levine points out that the V pentatonic scale works for all three chords of the standard II–V–I jazz progression. This is a very common progression, used in pieces such as Miles Davis' "Tune Up". The following example shows the V pentatonic scale over a II–V–I progression.
Accordingly, John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" (1960), with its 26 chords per 16 bars, can be played using only three pentatonic scales. Coltrane studied Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, which contains material that is virtually identical to portions of "Giant Steps". The harmonic complexity of "Giant Steps" is on the level of the most advanced 20th-century art music. Superimposing the pentatonic scale over "Giant Steps" is not merely a matter of harmonic simplification, but also a sort of "Africanizing" of the piece, which provides an alternate approach for soloing. Mark Levine observes that when mixed in with more conventional "playing the changes", pentatonic scales provide "structure and a feeling of increased space".
As noted above, jazz has incorporated from its inception aspects of African-American sacred music including spirituals and hymns. Secular jazz musicians often performed renditions of spirituals and hymns as part of their repertoire or isolated compositions such as "Come Sunday", part of "Black and Beige Suite" by Duke Ellington. Later many other jazz artists borrowed from black gospel music. However, it was only after World War II that a few jazz musicians began to compose and perform extended works intended for religious settings or as religious expression. Since the 1950s, sacred and liturgical music has been performed and recorded by many prominent jazz composers and musicians. The "Abyssinian Mass" by Wynton Marsalis (Blueengine Records, 2016) is a recent example.
Relatively little has been written about sacred and liturgical jazz. In a 2013 doctoral dissertation, Angelo Versace examined the development of sacred jazz in the 1950s using disciplines of musicology and history. He noted that the traditions of black gospel music and jazz were combined in the 1950s to produce a new genre, "sacred jazz". Versace maintained that the religious intent separates sacred from secular jazz. Most prominent in initiating the sacred jazz movement were pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, known for her jazz masses in the 1950s and Duke Ellington. Prior to his death in 1974 in response to contacts from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Duke Ellington wrote three Sacred Concerts: 1965 – A Concert of Sacred Music; 1968 – Second Sacred Concert; 1973 – Third Sacred Concert.
The most prominent form of sacred and liturgical jazz is the jazz mass. Although most often performed in a concert setting rather than church worship setting, this form has many examples. An eminent example of composers of the jazz mass was Mary Lou Williams. Williams converted to Catholicism in 1957, and proceeded to compose three masses in the jazz idiom. One was composed in 1968 to honor the recently assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. and the third was commissioned by a pontifical commission. It was performed once in 1975 in St Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. However the Catholic Church has not embraced jazz as appropriate for worship. In 1966 Joe Masters recorded "Jazz Mass" for Columbia Records. A jazz ensemble was joined by soloists and choir using the English text of the Roman Catholic Mass. Other examples include "Jazz Mass in Concert" by Lalo Schiffrin (Aleph Records, 1998, UPC 0651702632725) and "Jazz Mass" by Vince Guaraldi (Fantasy Records, 1965). In England, classical composer Will Todd recorded his "Jazz Missa Brevis" with a jazz ensemble, soloists and the St Martin's Voices on a 2018 Signum Records release, "Passion Music/Jazz Missa Brevis" also released as "Mass in Blue", and jazz organist James Taylor composed "The Rochester Mass" (Cherry Red Records, 2015). In 2013, Versace put forth bassist Ike Sturm and New York composer Deanna Witkowski as contemporary exemplars of sacred and liturgical jazz.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion was developed by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. Jazz fusion often uses mixed meters, odd time signatures, syncopation, complex chords, and harmonies.
According to AllMusic:
... until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate. [However, ...] as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces.
In 1969, Davis fully embraced the electric instrument approach to jazz with In a Silent Way, which can be considered his first fusion album. Composed of two side-long suites edited heavily by producer Teo Macero, this quiet, static album would be equally influential to the development of ambient music.
As Davis recalls:
The music I was really listening to in 1968 was James Brown, the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix, and a new group who had just come out with a hit record, "Dance to the Music", Sly and the Family Stone ... I wanted to make it more like rock. When we recorded In a Silent Way I just threw out all the chord sheets and told everyone to play off of that.
Two contributors to In a Silent Way also joined organist Larry Young to create one of the early acclaimed fusion albums: Emergency! (1969) by The Tony Williams Lifetime.
Weather Report's self-titled electronic and psychedelic Weather Report debut album caused a sensation in the jazz world on its arrival in 1971, thanks to the pedigree of the group's members (including percussionist Airto Moreira), and their unorthodox approach to music. The album featured a softer sound than would be the case in later years (predominantly using acoustic bass with Shorter exclusively playing soprano saxophone, and with no synthesizers involved), but is still considered a classic of early fusion. It built on the avant-garde experiments which Joe Zawinul and Shorter had pioneered with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew, including an avoidance of head-and-chorus composition in favor of continuous rhythm and movement – but took the music further. To emphasize the group's rejection of standard methodology, the album opened with the inscrutable avant-garde atmospheric piece "Milky Way", which featured by Shorter's extremely muted saxophone inducing vibrations in Zawinul's piano strings while the latter pedaled the instrument. DownBeat described the album as "music beyond category", and awarded it Album of the Year in the magazine's polls that year.
Weather Report's subsequent releases were creative funk-jazz works.
Although some jazz purists protested against the blend of jazz and rock, many jazz innovators crossed over from the contemporary hard bop scene into fusion. As well as the electric instruments of rock (such as electric guitar, electric bass, electric piano and synthesizer keyboards), fusion also used the powerful amplification, "fuzz" pedals, wah-wah pedals and other effects that were used by 1970s-era rock bands. Notable performers of jazz fusion included Miles Davis, Eddie Harris, keyboardists Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock, vibraphonist Gary Burton, drummer Tony Williams, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, guitarists Larry Coryell, Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Ryo Kawasaki, and Frank Zappa, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and bassists Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke. Jazz fusion was also popular in Japan, where the band Casiopea released more than thirty fusion albums.
According to jazz writer Stuart Nicholson, "just as free jazz appeared on the verge of creating a whole new musical language in the 1960s ... jazz-rock briefly suggested the promise of doing the same" with albums such as Williams' Emergency! (1970) and Davis' Agharta (1975), which Nicholson said "suggested the potential of evolving into something that might eventually define itself as a wholly independent genre quite apart from the sound and conventions of anything that had gone before." This development was stifled by commercialism, Nicholson said, as the genre "mutated into a peculiar species of jazz-inflected pop music that eventually took up residence on FM radio" at the end of the 1970s.
Although jazz-rock fusion reached the height of its popularity in the 1970s, the use of electronic instruments and rock-derived musical elements in jazz continued in the 1990s and 2000s. Musicians using this approach include Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, John Scofield and the Swedish group e.s.t. Since the beginning of the 1990s, electronic music had significant technical improvements that popularized and created new possibilities for the genre. Jazz elements such as improvisation, rhythmic complexities and harmonic textures were introduced to the genre and consequently had a big impact in new listeners and in some ways kept the versatility of jazz relatable to a newer generation that did not necessarily relate to what the traditionalists call real jazz (bebop, cool and modal jazz). Artists such as Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus and sub genres like IDM, drum 'n' bass, jungle and techno ended up incorporating a lot of these elements. Squarepusher being cited as one big influence for jazz performers drummer Mark Guiliana and pianist Brad Mehldau, showing the correlations between jazz and electronic music are a two-way street.
By the mid-1970s, the sound known as jazz-funk had developed, characterized by a strong back beat (groove), electrified sounds and, often, the presence of electronic analog synthesizers. Jazz-funk also draws influences from traditional African music, Afro-Cuban rhythms and Jamaican reggae, notably Kingston bandleader Sonny Bradshaw. Another feature is the shift of emphasis from improvisation to composition: arrangements, melody and overall writing became important. The integration of funk, soul, and R&B music into jazz resulted in the creation of a genre whose spectrum is wide and ranges from strong jazz improvisation to soul, funk or disco with jazz arrangements, jazz riffs and jazz solos, and sometimes soul vocals.
Early examples are Herbie Hancock's Headhunters band and Miles Davis' On the Corner album, which, in 1972, began Davis' foray into jazz-funk and was, he claimed, an attempt at reconnecting with the young black audience which had largely forsaken jazz for rock and funk. While there is a discernible rock and funk influence in the timbres of the instruments employed, other tonal and rhythmic textures, such as the Indian tambora and tablas and Cuban congas and bongos, create a multi-layered soundscape. The album was a culmination of sorts of the musique concrète approach that Davis and producer Teo Macero had begun to explore in the late 1960s.
The 1980s saw something of a reaction against the fusion and free jazz that had dominated the 1970s. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis emerged early in the decade, and strove to create music within what he believed was the tradition, rejecting both fusion and free jazz and creating extensions of the small and large forms initially pioneered by artists such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, as well as the hard bop of the 1950s. It is debatable whether Marsalis' critical and commercial success was a cause or a symptom of the reaction against Fusion and Free Jazz and the resurgence of interest in the kind of jazz pioneered in the 1960s (particularly modal jazz and post-bop); nonetheless there were many other manifestations of a resurgence of traditionalism, even if fusion and free jazz were by no means abandoned and continued to develop and evolve.
For example, several musicians who had been prominent in the fusion genre during the 1970s began to record acoustic jazz once more, including Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Other musicians who had experimented with electronic instruments in the previous decade had abandoned them by the 1980s; for example, Bill Evans, Joe Henderson, and Stan Getz. Even the 1980s music of Miles Davis, although certainly still fusion, adopted a far more accessible and recognizably jazz-oriented approach than his abstract work of the mid-1970s, such as a return to a theme-and-solos approach.
A similar reaction took place against free jazz. According to Ted Gioia:
the very leaders of the avant garde started to signal a retreat from the core principles of free jazz. Anthony Braxton began recording standards over familiar chord changes. Cecil Taylor played duets in concert with Mary Lou Williams, and let her set out structured harmonies and familiar jazz vocabulary under his blistering keyboard attack. And the next generation of progressive players would be even more accommodating, moving inside and outside the changes without thinking twice. Musicians such as David Murray or Don Pullen may have felt the call of free-form jazz, but they never forgot all the other ways one could play African-American music for fun and profit.
Pianist Keith Jarrett—whose bands of the 1970s had played only original compositions with prominent free jazz elements—established his so-called 'Standards Trio' in 1983, which, although also occasionally exploring collective improvisation, has primarily performed and recorded jazz standards. Chick Corea similarly began exploring jazz standards in the 1980s, having neglected them for the 1970s.
In 1987, the United States House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill proposed by Democratic Representative John Conyers Jr. to define jazz as a unique form of American music, stating "jazz is hereby designated as a rare and valuable national American treasure to which we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated." It passed in the House on September 23, 1987, and in the Senate on November 4, 1987.
In 2001, Ken Burns's documentary Jazz premiered on PBS, featuring Wynton Marsalis and other experts reviewing the entire history of American jazz to that time. It received some criticism, however, for its failure to reflect the many distinctive non-American traditions and styles in jazz that had developed, and its limited representation of US developments in the last quarter of the 20th century.
The emergence of young jazz talent beginning to perform in older, established musicians' groups further impacted the resurgence of traditionalism in the jazz community. In the 1970s, the groups of Betty Carter and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers retained their conservative jazz approaches in the midst of fusion and jazz-rock, and in addition to difficulty booking their acts, struggled to find younger generations of personnel to authentically play traditional styles such as hard bop and bebop. In the late 1970s, however, a resurgence of younger jazz players in Blakey's band began to occur. This movement included musicians such as Valery Ponomarev and Bobby Watson, Dennis Irwin and James Williams. In the 1980s, in addition to Wynton and Branford Marsalis, the emergence of pianists in the Jazz Messengers such as Donald Brown, Mulgrew Miller, and later, Benny Green, bassists such as Charles Fambrough, Lonnie Plaxico (and later, Peter Washington and Essiet Essiet) horn players such as Bill Pierce, Donald Harrison and later Javon Jackson and Terence Blanchard emerged as talented jazz musicians, all of whom made significant contributions in the 1990s and 2000s.
The young Jazz Messengers' contemporaries, including Roy Hargrove, Marcus Roberts, Wallace Roney and Mark Whitfield were also influenced by Wynton Marsalis's emphasis toward jazz tradition. These younger rising stars rejected avant-garde approaches and instead championed the acoustic jazz sound of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and early recordings of the first Miles Davis quintet. This group of "Young Lions" sought to reaffirm jazz as a high art tradition comparable to the discipline of classical music.
In addition, Betty Carter's rotation of young musicians in her group foreshadowed many of New York's preeminent traditional jazz players later in their careers. Among these musicians were Jazz Messenger alumni Benny Green, Branford Marsalis and Ralph Peterson Jr., as well as Kenny Washington, Lewis Nash, Curtis Lundy, Cyrus Chestnut, Mark Shim, Craig Handy, Greg Hutchinson and Marc Cary, Taurus Mateen and Geri Allen. O.T.B. ensemble included a rotation of young jazz musicians such as Kenny Garrett, Steve Wilson, Kenny Davis, Renee Rosnes, Ralph Peterson Jr., Billy Drummond, and Robert Hurst.
Starting in the 1990s, a number of players from largely straight-ahead or post-bop backgrounds emerged as a result of the rise of neo-traditionalist jazz, including pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Chris Potter and Joshua Redman, clarinetist Ken Peplowski and bassist Christian McBride.
In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called "pop fusion" or "smooth jazz" became successful, garnering significant radio airplay in "quiet storm" time slots at radio stations in urban markets across the U.S. This helped to establish or bolster the careers of vocalists including Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, and Sade, as well as saxophonists including Grover Washington Jr., Kenny G, Kirk Whalum, Boney James, and David Sanborn. In general, smooth jazz is downtempo (the most widely played tracks are of 90–105 beats per minute), and has a lead melody-playing instrument (saxophone, especially soprano and tenor, and legato electric guitar are popular).
In his Newsweek article "The Problem With Jazz Criticism", Stanley Crouch considers Miles Davis' playing of fusion to be a turning point that led to smooth jazz. Critic Aaron J. West has countered the often negative perceptions of smooth jazz, stating:
I challenge the prevalent marginalization and malignment of smooth jazz in the standard jazz narrative. Furthermore, I question the assumption that smooth jazz is an unfortunate and unwelcomed evolutionary outcome of the jazz-fusion era. Instead, I argue that smooth jazz is a long-lived musical style that merits multi-disciplinary analyses of its origins, critical dialogues, performance practice, and reception.
Acid jazz developed in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, influenced by jazz-funk and electronic dance music. Acid jazz often contains various types of electronic composition (sometimes including sampling or live DJ cutting and scratching), but it is just as likely to be played live by musicians, who often showcase jazz interpretation as part of their performance. Richard S. Ginell of AllMusic considers Roy Ayers "one of the prophets of acid jazz".
Nu jazz is influenced by jazz harmony and melodies, and there are usually no improvisational aspects. It can be very experimental in nature and can vary widely in sound and concept. It ranges from the combination of live instrumentation with the beats of jazz house (as exemplified by St Germain, Jazzanova, and Fila Brazillia) to more band-based improvised jazz with electronic elements (for example, The Cinematic Orchestra, Kobol and the Norwegian "future jazz" style pioneered by Bugge Wesseltoft, Jaga Jazzist, and Nils Petter Molvær).
Jazz rap developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s and incorporates jazz influences into hip hop. In 1988, Gang Starr released the debut single "Words I Manifest", which sampled Dizzy Gillespie's 1962 "Night in Tunisia", and Stetsasonic released "Talkin' All That Jazz", which sampled Lonnie Liston Smith. Gang Starr's debut LP No More Mr. Nice Guy (1989) and their 1990 track "Jazz Thing" sampled Charlie Parker and Ramsey Lewis. The groups which made up the Native Tongues Posse tended toward jazzy releases: these include the Jungle Brothers' debut Straight Out the Jungle (1988), and A Tribe Called Quest's People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990) and The Low End Theory (1991). Rap duo Pete Rock & CL Smooth incorporated jazz influences on their 1992 debut Mecca and the Soul Brother. Rapper Guru's Jazzmatazz series began in 1993 using jazz musicians during the studio recordings.
Although jazz rap had achieved little mainstream success, Miles Davis' final album Doo-Bop (released posthumously in 1992) was based on hip hop beats and collaborations with producer Easy Mo Bee. Davis' ex-bandmate Herbie Hancock also absorbed hip-hop influences in the mid-1990s, releasing the album Dis Is Da Drum in 1994.
The mid-2010s saw an increased influence of R&B, hip-hop, and pop music on jazz. In 2015, Kendrick Lamar released his third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly. The album heavily featured prominent contemporary jazz artists such as Thundercat and redefined jazz rap with a larger focus on improvisation and live soloing rather than simply sampling. In that same year, saxophonist Kamasi Washington released his nearly three-hour long debut, The Epic. Its hip-hop inspired beats and R&B vocal interludes was not only acclaimed by critics for being innovative in keeping jazz relevant, but also sparked a small resurgence in jazz on the internet.
The relaxation of orthodoxy which was concurrent with post-punk in London and New York City led to a new appreciation of jazz. In London, the Pop Group began to mix free jazz and dub reggae into their brand of punk rock. In New York, No Wave took direct inspiration from both free jazz and punk. Examples of this style include Lydia Lunch's Queen of Siam, Gray, the work of James Chance and the Contortions (who mixed Soul with free jazz and punk) and the Lounge Lizards (the first group to call themselves "punk jazz").
John Zorn took note of the emphasis on speed and dissonance that was becoming prevalent in punk rock, and incorporated this into free jazz with the release of the Spy vs. Spy album in 1986, a collection of Ornette Coleman tunes done in the contemporary thrashcore style. In the same year, Sonny Sharrock, Peter Brötzmann, Bill Laswell, and Ronald Shannon Jackson recorded the first album under the name Last Exit, a similarly aggressive blend of thrash and free jazz. These developments are the origins of jazzcore, the fusion of free jazz with hardcore punk.
The M-Base movement started in the 1980s, when a loose collective of young African-American musicians in New York which included Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, and Gary Thomas developed a complex but grooving sound.
In the 1990s, most M-Base participants turned to more conventional music, but Coleman, the most active participant, continued developing his music in accordance with the M-Base concept.
Coleman's audience decreased, but his music and concepts influenced many musicians, according to pianist Vijay Iver and critic Ben Ratlifff of The New York Times.
M-Base changed from a movement of a loose collective of young musicians to a kind of informal Coleman "school", with a much advanced but already originally implied concept. Steve Coleman's music and M-Base concept gained recognition as "next logical step" after Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman.
Since the 1990s, jazz has been characterized by a pluralism in which no one style dominates, but rather a wide range of styles and genres are popular. Individual performers often play in a variety of styles, sometimes in the same performance. Pianist Brad Mehldau and The Bad Plus have explored contemporary rock music within the context of the traditional jazz acoustic piano trio, recording instrumental jazz versions of songs by rock musicians. The Bad Plus have also incorporated elements of free jazz into their music. A firm avant-garde or free jazz stance has been maintained by some players, such as saxophonists Greg Osby and Charles Gayle, while others, such as James Carter, have incorporated free jazz elements into a more traditional framework.
Harry Connick Jr. began his career playing stride piano and the Dixieland jazz of his home, New Orleans, beginning with his first recording when he was 10 years old. Some of his earliest lessons were at the home of pianist Ellis Marsalis. Connick had success on the pop charts after recording the soundtrack to the movie When Harry Met Sally, which sold over two million copies. Crossover success has also been achieved by Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Cassandra Wilson, Kurt Elling, and Jamie Cullum.
Additionally, the era saw the release of recordings and videos from the previous century, such as a Just Jazz tape broadcast by a band led by Gene Ammons and studio archives such as Just Coolin' by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
An internet-aided trend of 2010's jazz was that of extreme reharmonization, inspired by both virtuosic players known for their speed and rhythm such as Art Tatum, as well as players known for their ambitious voicings and chords such as Bill Evans. Supergroup Snarky Puppy adopted this trend, allowing players like Cory Henry to shape the grooves and harmonies of modern jazz soloing. YouTube phenomenon Jacob Collier also gained recognition for his ability to play an incredibly large number of instruments and his ability to use microtones, advanced polyrhythms, and blend a spectrum of genres in his largely homemade production process.
Other jazz musicians gained popularity through social media during the 2010s and 2020s. These included Joan Chamorro, a bassist and bandleader based in Barcelona whose big band and jazz combo videos have received tens of millions of views on YouTube, and Emmet Cohen, who broadcast a series of performances live from New York starting in March 2020. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging \"musician's music\" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning \"pep, energy\". The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a 'jazz ball' \"because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it\".",
"title": " Etymology and definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about \"jas bands\". In an interview with National Public Radio, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying: \"When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies.\" The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century.",
"title": " Etymology and definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to rock-infused fusion. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music. But critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a \"form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music\" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has a \"special relationship to time defined as 'swing'\". Jazz involves \"a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role\" and contains a \"sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician\".",
"title": " Etymology and definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: \"it is music that includes qualities such as swing, improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being open to different musical possibilities\". Krin Gibbard argued that \"jazz is a construct\" which designates \"a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition\". Duke Ellington, one of jazz's most famous figures, said, \"It's all music.\"",
"title": " Etymology and definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues, a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score, with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on the contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members, the performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures.",
"title": "Elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In early Dixieland, a.k.a. New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies. In the swing era of the 1920s–'40s, big bands relied more on arrangements which were written or learned by ear and memorized. Soloists improvised within these arrangements. In the bebop era of the 1940s, big bands gave way to small groups and minimal arrangements in which the melody was stated briefly at the beginning and most of the piece was improvised. Modal jazz abandoned chord progressions to allow musicians to improvise even more. In many forms of jazz, a soloist is supported by a rhythm section of one or more chordal instruments (piano, guitar), double bass, and drums. The rhythm section plays chords and rhythms that outline the composition structure and complement the soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz, the separation of soloist and band is reduced, and there is license, or even a requirement, for the abandoning of chords, scales, and meters.",
"title": "Elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Since the emergence of bebop, forms of jazz that are commercially oriented or influenced by popular music have been criticized. According to Bruce Johnson, there has always been a \"tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form\". Regarding the Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s, Black musicians rejected it as being shallow nostalgia entertainment for white audiences. On the other hand, traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as forms of debasement and betrayal. An alternative view is that jazz can absorb and transform diverse musical styles. By avoiding the creation of norms, jazz allows avant-garde styles to emerge.",
"title": "Elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to culture and history. For others, jazz is a reminder of \"an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions\". Amiri Baraka argues that there is a \"white jazz\" genre that expresses whiteness. White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and in other areas throughout the U.S. Papa Jack Laine, who ran the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called \"the father of white jazz\". The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, whose members were white, were the first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent jazz soloists of the 1920s. The Chicago Style was developed by white musicians such as Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, and Dave Tough. Others from Chicago such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa became leading members of swing during the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians. These musicians helped change attitudes toward race in the U.S.",
"title": "Diversity in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Adelaide Hall, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Abbey Lincoln, Anita O'Day, Dinah Washington, and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, trumpeter Valaida Snow, and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields. Women began playing instruments in jazz in the early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano.",
"title": "Diversity in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO, touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson. Beginning in the 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from the late 1950s into the 1990s.",
"title": "Diversity in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Jewish Americans played a significant role in jazz. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate.",
"title": "Diversity in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Jewish Americans were able to thrive in Jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African Americans.",
"title": "Diversity in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of Jazz. Goodman was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as \"the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history\".",
"title": "Diversity in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Shep Fields also helped to popularize \"Sweet\" Jazz music through his appearances and Big band remote broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House, Broadway's Paramount Theater and the Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He entertained audiences with a light elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s.",
"title": "Diversity in jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century. It developed out of many forms of music, including blues, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, ragtime, and dance music. It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and the influences of West African culture. Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as Congo Square, famous for its African dances.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "By 1866, the Atlantic slave trade had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America. The slaves came largely from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin and brought strong musical traditions with them. The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, and the rhythms have a counter-metric structure and reflect African speech patterns.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and a drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843. There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. Robert Palmer said of percussive slave music:",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when the year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered \"gumbo box\", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from the period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Another influence came from the harmonic style of hymns of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as spirituals. The origins of the blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, whereas the spirituals are homophonic, rural blues and early jazz \"was largely based on concepts of heterophony\".",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized the music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Black Codes outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through \"body rhythms\" such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman, what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was \"Afro-Latin music\", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example \"Souvenirs From Havana\" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the music of the African Diaspora.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Tresillo is heard prominently in New Orleans second line music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present. \"By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions,\" jazz historian Gunther Schuller observed. \"Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed.\"",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In the post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures. This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. \"The snare and bass drummers played syncopated cross-rhythms,\" observed the writer Robert Palmer, speculating that \"this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured.\"",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the habanera (Cuban contradanza) gained international popularity. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take the twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera \"reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published.\" For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk, ragtime, and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were the first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803). From the perspective of African-American music, the \"habanera rhythm\" (also known as \"congo\"), \"tango-congo\", or tango. can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat. The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired the use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk's piano piece \"Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)\" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand. In Gottschalk's symphonic work \"A Night in the Tropics\" (1859), the tresillo variant cinquillo appears extensively. The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Comparing the music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans \"clavé\", a Spanish word meaning \"code\" or \"key\", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery. Although the pattern is only half a clave, Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music. Jelly Roll Morton called the rhythmic figure the Spanish tinge and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for the education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows, and in vaudeville, during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as the entertainer Ernest Hogan, whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo known as \"Rag Time Medley\". Also in 1897, the white composer William Krell published his \"Mississippi Rag\" as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his \"Harlem Rag\", the first rag published by an African-American.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his \"Original Rags\" in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with \"Maple Leaf Rag\", a multi-strain ragtime march with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious seventh chords. Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the syncopations in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time. The last four measures of Scott Joplin's \"Maple Leaf Rag\" (1899) are shown below.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "African-based rhythmic patterns such as tresillo and its variants, the habanera rhythm and cinquillo, are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's \"Solace\" (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre: both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a march rhythm. Ned Sublette postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm \"found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk,\" whilst Roberts suggests that \"the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass\".",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the northeastern United States, a \"hot\" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson's development of stride piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by the Black middle-class.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre, which originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants and rhymed simple narrative ballads.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to the development of blue notes in blues and jazz. As Kubik explains:",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are stylistically an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt:",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "W. C. Handy became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within a limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another \"voice\". Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in a popular music form.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues:",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The publication of his \"Memphis Blues\" sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although Gunther Schuller argues that it is not really a blues, but \"more like a cakewalk\"). This composition, as well as his later \"St. Louis Blues\" and others, included the habanera rhythm, and would become jazz standards. Handy's music career began in the pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The music of New Orleans, Louisiana had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums. Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called Storyville. In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called jazz funerals). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became the instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, Louisiana Creole and African-American musicians played in vaudeville shows which carried jazz to cities in the northern and western parts of the U.S. Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist Freddie Keppard performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg, Canada.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In New Orleans, a white bandleader named Papa Jack Laine integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as \"the father of white jazz\" because of the many top players he employed, such as George Brunies, Sharkey Bonano, and future members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band. During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and mulatto communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans. Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in addition to those from other communities, such as Lorenzo Tio and Alcide Nunez. Louis Armstrong started his career in Storyville and found success in Chicago. Storyville was shut down by the U.S. government in 1917.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Cornetist Buddy Bolden played in New Orleans from 1895 to 1906. No recordings by him exist. His band is credited with creating the big four: the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march. As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Afro-Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton began his career in Storyville. Beginning in 1904, he toured with vaudeville shows to southern cities, Chicago, and New York City. In 1905, he composed \"Jelly Roll Blues\", which became the first jazz arrangement in print when it was published in 1915. It introduced more musicians to the New Orleans style.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Morton considered the tresillo/habanera, which he called the Spanish tinge, an essential ingredient of jazz. \"Now in one of my earliest tunes, \"New Orleans Blues,\" you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.\"",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "An excerpt of \"New Orleans Blues\" is shown below. In the excerpt, the left hand plays the tresillo rhythm, while the right hand plays variations on cinquillo.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Morton was a crucial innovator in the evolution from the early jazz form known as ragtime to jazz piano, and could perform pieces in either style; in 1938, Morton made a series of recordings for the Library of Congress in which he demonstrated the difference between the two styles. Morton's solos, however, were still close to ragtime, and were not merely improvisations over chord changes as in later jazz, but his use of the blues was of equal importance.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Morton loosened ragtime's rigid rhythmic feeling, decreasing its embellishments and employing a swing feeling. Swing is the most important and enduring African-based rhythmic technique used in jazz. An oft quoted definition of swing by Louis Armstrong is: \"if you don't feel it, you'll never know it.\" The New Harvard Dictionary of Music states that swing is: \"An intangible rhythmic momentum in jazz...Swing defies analysis; claims to its presence may inspire arguments.\" The dictionary does nonetheless provide the useful description of triple subdivisions of the beat contrasted with duple subdivisions: swing superimposes six subdivisions of the beat over a basic pulse structure or four subdivisions. This aspect of swing is far more prevalent in African-American music than in Afro-Caribbean music. One aspect of swing, which is heard in more rhythmically complex Diaspora musics, places strokes in-between the triple and duple-pulse \"grids\".",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "New Orleans brass bands are a lasting influence, contributing horn players to the world of professional jazz with the distinct sound of the city whilst helping black children escape poverty. The leader of New Orleans' Camelia Brass Band, D'Jalma Ganier, taught Louis Armstrong to play trumpet; Armstrong would then popularize the New Orleans style of trumpet playing, and then expand it. Like Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong is also credited with the abandonment of ragtime's stiffness in favor of swung notes. Armstrong, perhaps more than any other musician, codified the rhythmic technique of swing in jazz and broadened the jazz solo vocabulary.",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The Original Dixieland Jass Band made the music's first recordings early in 1917, and their \"Livery Stable Blues\" became the earliest released jazz record. That year, numerous other bands made recordings featuring \"jazz\" in the title or band name, but most were ragtime or novelty records rather than jazz. In February 1918 during World War I, James Reese Europe's \"Hellfighters\" infantry band took ragtime to Europe, then on their return recorded Dixieland standards including \"Darktown Strutters' Ball\".",
"title": "Early development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition in the United States banned the sale of alcoholic drinks, resulting in illicit speakeasies which became lively venues of the \"Jazz Age\", hosting popular music, dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes. Jazz began to get a reputation as immoral, and many members of the older generations saw it as a threat to the old cultural values by promoting the decadent values of the Roaring 20s. Henry van Dyke of Princeton University wrote, \"... it is not music at all. It's merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion.\" The New York Times reported that Siberian villagers used jazz to scare away bears, but the villagers had used pots and pans; another story claimed that the fatal heart attack of a celebrated conductor was caused by jazz.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1919, Kid Ory's Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans began playing in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings. During the same year, Bessie Smith made her first recordings. Chicago was developing \"Hot Jazz\", and King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Despite its Southern black origins, there was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white orchestras. In 1918, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra became a hit in San Francisco. He signed a contract with Victor and became the top bandleader of the 1920s, giving hot jazz a white component, hiring white musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Frankie Trumbauer, and Joe Venuti. In 1924, Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was premiered by his orchestra. Jazz began to be recognized as a notable musical form. Olin Downes, reviewing the concert in The New York Times, wrote, \"This composition shows extraordinary talent, as it shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk, struggling with a form of which he is far from being master. ... In spite of all this, he has expressed himself in a significant and, on the whole, highly original form. ... His first theme ... is no mere dance-tune ... it is an idea, or several ideas, correlated and combined in varying and contrasting rhythms that immediately intrigue the listener.\"",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "After Whiteman's band successfully toured Europe, huge hot jazz orchestras in theater pits caught on with other whites, including Fred Waring, Jean Goldkette, and Nathaniel Shilkret. According to Mario Dunkel, Whiteman's success was based on a \"rhetoric of domestication\" according to which he had elevated and rendered valuable (read \"white\") a previously inchoate (read \"black\") kind of music.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Whiteman's success caused black artists to follow suit, including Earl Hines (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe in Chicago in 1928), Duke Ellington (who opened at the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1927), Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Claude Hopkins, and Don Redman, with Henderson and Redman developing the \"talking to one another\" formula for \"hot\" swing music.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In 1924, Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band for a year, as featured soloist. The original New Orleans style was polyphonic, with theme variation and simultaneous collective improvisation. Armstrong was a master of his hometown style, but by the time he joined Henderson's band, he was already a trailblazer in a new phase of jazz, with its emphasis on arrangements and soloists. Armstrong's solos went well beyond the theme-improvisation concept and extemporized on chords, rather than melodies. According to Schuller, by comparison, the solos by Armstrong's bandmates (including a young Coleman Hawkins), sounded \"stiff, stodgy\", with \"jerky rhythms and a grey undistinguished tone quality\". The following example shows a short excerpt of the straight melody of \"Mandy, Make Up Your Mind\" by George W. Meyer and Arthur Johnston (top), compared with Armstrong's solo improvisations (below) (recorded 1924). Armstrong's solos were a significant factor in making jazz a true 20th-century language. After leaving Henderson's group, Armstrong formed his Hot Five band, where he popularized scat singing.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The 1930s belonged to popular swing big bands, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the \"big\" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Harry James, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to \"solo\" and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be complex \"important\" music.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians and black bandleaders white ones. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. In the 1930s, Kansas City Jazz as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. An early 1940s style known as \"jumping the blues\" or jump blues used small combos, uptempo music and blues chord progressions, drawing on boogie-woogie from the 1930s.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "While swing was reaching the height of its popularity, Duke Ellington spent the late 1920s and 1930s developing an innovative musical idiom for his orchestra. Abandoning the conventions of swing, he experimented with orchestral sounds, harmony, and musical form with complex compositions that still translated well for popular audiences; some of his tunes became hits, and his own popularity spanned from the United States to Europe.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Ellington called his music American Music, rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as \"beyond category\". These included many musicians from his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most popular jazz orchestras in the history of jazz. He often composed for the style and skills of these individuals, such as \"Jeep's Blues\" for Johnny Hodges, \"Concerto for Cootie\" for Cootie Williams (which later became \"Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me\" with Bob Russell's lyrics), and \"The Mooche\" for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded compositions written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's \"Caravan\" and \"Perdido\", which brought the \"Spanish Tinge\" to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained with him for several decades. The band reached a creative peak in the early 1940s, when Ellington and a small hand-picked group of his composers and arrangers wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "As only a limited number of American jazz records were released in Europe, European jazz traces many of its roots to American artists such as James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and Lonnie Johnson, who visited Europe during and after World War I. It was their live performances which inspired European audiences' interest in jazz, as well as the interest in all things American (and therefore exotic) which accompanied the economic and political woes of Europe during this time. The beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz began to emerge in this interwar period.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "British jazz began with a tour by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919. In 1926, Fred Elizalde and His Cambridge Undergraduates began broadcasting on the BBC. Thereafter jazz became an important element in many leading dance orchestras, and jazz instrumentalists became numerous.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "This style entered full swing in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which began in 1934. Much of this French jazz was a combination of African-American jazz and the symphonic styles in which French musicians were well-trained; in this, it is easy to see the inspiration taken from Paul Whiteman since his style was also a fusion of the two. Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt popularized gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall \"musette\", and Eastern European folk with a languid, seductive feel; the main instruments were steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos pass from one player to another as guitar and bass form the rhythm section. Some researchers believe Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti pioneered the guitar-violin partnership characteristic of the genre, which was brought to France after they had been heard live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s.",
"title": "The Jazz Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The outbreak of World War II marked a turning point for jazz. The swing-era jazz of the previous decade had challenged other popular music as being representative of the nation's culture, with big bands reaching the height of the style's success by the early 1940s; swing acts and big bands traveled with U.S. military overseas to Europe, where it also became popular. Stateside, however, the war presented difficulties for the big-band format: conscription shortened the number of musicians available; the military's need for shellac (commonly used for pressing gramophone records) limited record production; a shortage of rubber (also due to the war effort) discouraged bands from touring via road travel; and a demand by the musicians' union for a commercial recording ban limited music distribution between 1942 and 1944.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Many of the big bands who were deprived of experienced musicians because of the war effort began to enlist young players who were below the age for conscription, as was the case with saxophonist Stan Getz's entry in a band as a teenager. This coincided with a nationwide resurgence in the Dixieland style of pre-swing jazz; performers such as clarinetist George Lewis, cornetist Bill Davison, and trombonist Turk Murphy were hailed by conservative jazz critics as more authentic than the big bands. Elsewhere, with the limitations on recording, small groups of young musicians developed a more uptempo, improvisational style of jazz, collaborating and experimenting with new ideas for melodic development, rhythmic language, and harmonic substitution, during informal, late-night jam sessions hosted in small clubs and apartments. Key figures in this development were largely based in New York and included pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clarke, saxophonist Charlie Parker, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. This musical development became known as bebop.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Bebop and subsequent post-war jazz developments featured a wider set of notes, played in more complex patterns and at faster tempos than previous jazz. According to Clive James, bebop was \"the post-war musical development which tried to ensure that jazz would no longer be the spontaneous sound of joy ... Students of race relations in America are generally agreed that the exponents of post-war jazz were determined, with good reason, to present themselves as challenging artists rather than tame entertainers.\" The end of the war marked \"a revival of the spirit of experimentation and musical pluralism under which it had been conceived\", along with \"the beginning of a decline in the popularity of jazz music in America\", according to American academic Michael H. Burchett.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "With the rise of bebop and the end of the swing era after the war, jazz lost its cachet as pop music. Vocalists of the famous big bands moved on to being marketed and performing as solo pop singers; these included Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Dick Haymes, and Doris Day. Older musicians who still performed their pre-war jazz, such as Armstrong and Ellington, were gradually viewed in the mainstream as passé. Other younger performers, such as singer Big Joe Turner and saxophonist Louis Jordan, who were discouraged by bebop's increasing complexity, pursued more lucrative endeavors in rhythm and blues, jump blues, and eventually rock and roll. Some, including Gillespie, composed intricate yet danceable pieces for bebop musicians in an effort to make them more accessible, but bebop largely remained on the fringes of American audiences' purview. \"The new direction of postwar jazz drew a wealth of critical acclaim, but it steadily declined in popularity as it developed a reputation as an academic genre that was largely inaccessible to mainstream audiences\", Burchett said. \"The quest to make jazz more relevant to popular audiences, while retaining its artistic integrity, is a constant and prevalent theme in the history of postwar jazz.\" During its swing period, jazz had been an uncomplicated musical scene; according to Paul Trynka, this changed in the post-war years:",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Suddenly jazz was no longer straightforward. There was bebop and its variants, there was the last gasp of swing, there were strange new brews like the progressive jazz of Stan Kenton, and there was a completely new phenomenon called revivalism – the rediscovery of jazz from the past, either on old records or performed live by aging players brought out of retirement. From now on it was no good saying that you liked jazz, you had to specify what kind of jazz. And that is the way it has been ever since, only more so. Today, the word 'jazz' is virtually meaningless without further definition.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In the early 1940s, bebop-style performers began to shift jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging \"musician's music\". The most influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, and drummer Max Roach. Divorcing itself from dance music, bebop established itself more as an art form, thus lessening its potential popular and commercial appeal.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Composer Gunther Schuller wrote: \"In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Dizzy Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings.\"",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Dizzy Gillespie wrote: \"People talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here...naturally each age has got its own shit.\"",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it could use faster tempos. Drumming shifted to a more elusive and explosive style, in which the ride cymbal was used to keep time while the snare and bass drum were used for accents. This led to a highly syncopated music with a linear rhythmic complexity.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Bebop musicians employed several harmonic devices which were not previously typical in jazz, engaging in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation. Bebop scales are traditional scales with an added chromatic passing note; bebop also uses \"passing\" chords, substitute chords, and altered chords. New forms of chromaticism and dissonance were introduced into jazz, and the dissonant tritone (or \"flatted fifth\") interval became the \"most important interval of bebop\" Chord progressions for bebop tunes were often taken directly from popular swing-era tunes and reused with a new and more complex melody or reharmonized with more complex chord progressions to form new compositions, a practice which was already well-established in earlier jazz, but came to be central to the bebop style. Bebop made use of several relatively common chord progressions, such as blues (at base, I–IV–V, but often infused with ii–V motion) and \"rhythm changes\" (I–VI–ii–V) – the chords to the 1930s pop standard \"I Got Rhythm\". Late bop also moved towards extended forms that represented a departure from pop and show tunes.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The harmonic development in bebop is often traced back to a moment experienced by Charlie Parker while performing \"Cherokee\" at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, New York, in early 1942. \"I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used...and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes. I couldn't play it...I was working over 'Cherokee,' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. It came alive.\" Gerhard Kubik postulates that harmonic development in bebop sprang from blues and African-related tonal sensibilities rather than 20th-century Western classical music. \"Auditory inclinations were the African legacy in [Parker's] life, reconfirmed by the experience of the blues tonal system, a sound world at odds with the Western diatonic chord categories. Bebop musicians eliminated Western-style functional harmony in their music while retaining the strong central tonality of the blues as a basis for drawing upon various African matrices.\"",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Samuel Floyd states that blues was both the bedrock and propelling force of bebop, bringing about a new harmonic conception using extended chord structures that led to unprecedented harmonic and melodic variety, a developed and even more highly syncopated, linear rhythmic complexity and a melodic angularity in which the blue note of the fifth degree was established as an important melodic-harmonic device; and reestablishment of the blues as the primary organizing and functional principle. Kubik wrote:",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "While for an outside observer, the harmonic innovations in bebop would appear to be inspired by experiences in Western \"serious\" music, from Claude Debussy to Arnold Schoenberg, such a scheme cannot be sustained by the evidence from a cognitive approach. Claude Debussy did have some influence on jazz, for example, on Bix Beiderbecke's piano playing. And it is also true that Duke Ellington adopted and reinterpreted some harmonic devices in European contemporary music. West Coast jazz would run into such debts as would several forms of cool jazz, but bebop has hardly any such debts in the sense of direct borrowings. On the contrary, ideologically, bebop was a strong statement of rejection of any kind of eclecticism, propelled by a desire to activate something deeply buried in self. Bebop then revived tonal-harmonic ideas transmitted through the blues and reconstructed and expanded others in a basically non-Western harmonic approach. The ultimate significance of all this is that the experiments in jazz during the 1940s brought back to African-American music several structural principles and techniques rooted in African traditions.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time met a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and musicians, especially swing players who bristled at the new harmonic sounds. To hostile critics, bebop seemed filled with \"racing, nervous phrases\". But despite the friction, by the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The general consensus among musicians and musicologists is that the first original jazz piece to be overtly based in clave was \"Tanga\" (1943), composed by Cuban-born Mario Bauza and recorded by Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. \"Tanga\" began as a spontaneous descarga (Cuban jam session), with jazz solos superimposed on top.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "This was the birth of Afro-Cuban jazz. The use of clave brought the African timeline, or key pattern, into jazz. Music organized around key patterns convey a two-celled (binary) structure, which is a complex level of African cross-rhythm. Within the context of jazz, however, harmony is the primary referent, not rhythm. The harmonic progression can begin on either side of clave, and the harmonic \"one\" is always understood to be \"one\". If the progression begins on the \"three-side\" of clave, it is said to be in 3–2 clave (shown below). If the progression begins on the \"two-side\", it is in 2–3 clave.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Mario Bauzá introduced bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie to Cuban conga drummer and composer Chano Pozo. Gillespie and Pozo's brief collaboration produced some of the most enduring Afro-Cuban jazz standards. \"Manteca\" (1947) is the first jazz standard to be rhythmically based on clave. According to Gillespie, Pozo composed the layered, contrapuntal guajeos (Afro-Cuban ostinatos) of the A section and the introduction, while Gillespie wrote the bridge. Gillespie recounted: \"If I'd let it go like [Chano] wanted it, it would have been strictly Afro-Cuban all the way. There wouldn't have been a bridge. I thought I was writing an eight-bar bridge, but ... I had to keep going and ended up writing a sixteen-bar bridge.\" The bridge gave \"Manteca\" a typical jazz harmonic structure, setting the piece apart from Bauza's modal \"Tanga\" of a few years earlier.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Gillespie's collaboration with Pozo brought specific African-based rhythms into bebop. While pushing the boundaries of harmonic improvisation, cu-bop also drew from African rhythm. Jazz arrangements with a Latin A section and a swung B section, with all choruses swung during solos, became common practice with many Latin tunes of the jazz standard repertoire. This approach can be heard on pre-1980 recordings of \"Manteca\", \"A Night in Tunisia\", \"Tin Tin Deo\", and \"On Green Dolphin Street\".",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Another jazz composition critical to the development of Afro-Cuban jazz was Bud Powell's \"Un Poco Loco,\" recorded with Curley Russell on bass and Max Roach on drums. Noted for its \"frenetic energy\" and \"clanging cowbell and polyrhythmic accompaniment,\" the composition combined Afro-Cuban rhythm with polytonality and preceded further use of modality and avant-garde harmony in Latin jazz.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria first recorded his composition \"Afro Blue\" in 1959. \"Afro Blue\" was the first jazz standard built upon a typical African three-against-two (3:2) cross-rhythm, or hemiola. The piece begins with the bass repeatedly playing 6 cross-beats per each measure of 8, or 6 cross-beats per 4 main beats—6:4 (two cells of 3:2).",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The following example shows the original ostinato \"Afro Blue\" bass line. The cross noteheads indicate the main beats (not bass notes).",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "When John Coltrane covered \"Afro Blue\" in 1963, he inverted the metric hierarchy, interpreting the tune as a 4 jazz waltz with duple cross-beats superimposed (2:3). Originally a B♭ pentatonic blues, Coltrane expanded the harmonic structure of \"Afro Blue\".",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Perhaps the most respected Afro-cuban jazz combo of the late 1950s was vibraphonist Cal Tjader's band. Tjader had Mongo Santamaria, Armando Peraza, and Willie Bobo on his early recording dates.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In the late 1940s, there was a revival of Dixieland, harking back to the contrapuntal New Orleans style. This was driven in large part by record company reissues of jazz classics by the Oliver, Morton, and Armstrong bands of the 1930s. There were two types of musicians involved in the revival: the first group was made up of those who had begun their careers playing in the traditional style and were returning to it (or continuing what they had been playing all along), such as Bob Crosby's Bobcats, Max Kaminsky, Eddie Condon, and Wild Bill Davison. Most of these players were originally Midwesterners, although there were a small number of New Orleans musicians involved. The second group of revivalists consisted of younger musicians, such as those in the Lu Watters band, Conrad Janis, and Ward Kimball and his Firehouse Five Plus Two Jazz Band. By the late 1940s, Louis Armstrong's Allstars band became a leading ensemble. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Dixieland was one of the most commercially popular jazz styles in the US, Europe, and Japan, although critics paid little attention to it.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Hard bop is an extension of bebop (or \"bop\") music that incorporates influences from blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel, especially in saxophone and piano playing. Hard bop was developed in the mid-1950s, coalescing in 1953 and 1954; it developed partly in response to the vogue for cool jazz in the early 1950s and paralleled the rise of rhythm and blues. It has been described as \"funky\" and can be considered a relative of soul jazz. Some elements of the genre were simplified from their bebop roots.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Miles Davis' 1954 performance of \"Walkin'\" at the first Newport Jazz Festival introduced the style to the jazz world. Further leaders of hard bop's development included the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, the Horace Silver Quintet, and trumpeters Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. The late 1950s to early 1960s saw hard boppers form their own bands as a new generation of blues- and bebop-influenced musicians entered the jazz world, from pianists Wynton Kelly and Tommy Flanagan to saxophonists Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley. Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Mobley, and Morgan all participated on the album A Blowin' Session (1957), considered by Al Campbell to have been one of the high points of the hard bop era.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Hard bop was prevalent within jazz for about a decade spanning from 1955 to 1965, but has remained highly influential on mainstream or \"straight-ahead\" jazz. It went into decline in the late 1960s through the 1970s due to the emergence of other styles such as jazz fusion, but again became influential following the Young Lions Movement and the emergence of neo-bop.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Modal jazz is a development which began in the later 1950s which takes the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Previously, a solo was meant to fit into a given chord progression, but with modal jazz, the soloist creates a melody using one (or a small number of) modes. The emphasis is thus shifted from harmony to melody: \"Historically, this caused a seismic shift among jazz musicians, away from thinking vertically (the chord), and towards a more horizontal approach (the scale)\", explained pianist Mark Levine.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The modal theory stems from a work by George Russell. Miles Davis introduced the concept to the greater jazz world with Kind of Blue (1959), an exploration of the possibilities of modal jazz which would become the best selling jazz album of all time. In contrast to Davis' earlier work with hard bop and its complex chord progression and improvisation, Kind of Blue was composed as a series of modal sketches in which the musicians were given scales that defined the parameters of their improvisation and style.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "\"I didn't write out the music for Kind of Blue, but brought in sketches for what everybody was supposed to play because I wanted a lot of spontaneity,\" recalled Davis. The track \"So What\" has only two chords: D-7 and E♭-7.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Other innovators in this style include Jackie McLean, and two of the musicians who had also played on Kind of Blue: John Coltrane and Bill Evans.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Free jazz, and the related form of avant-garde jazz, broke through into an open space of \"free tonality\" in which meter, beat, and formal symmetry all disappeared, and a range of world music from India, Africa, and Arabia were melded into an intense, even religiously ecstatic or orgiastic style of playing. While loosely inspired by bebop, free jazz tunes gave players much more latitude; the loose harmony and tempo was deemed controversial when this approach was first developed. The bassist Charles Mingus is also frequently associated with the avant-garde in jazz, although his compositions draw from myriad styles and genres.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The first major stirrings came in the 1950s with the early work of Ornette Coleman (whose 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation coined the term) and Cecil Taylor. In the 1960s, exponents included Albert Ayler, Gato Barbieri, Carla Bley, Don Cherry, Larry Coryell, John Coltrane, Bill Dixon, Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Lacy, Michael Mantler, Sun Ra, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, and John Tchicai. In developing his late style, Coltrane was especially influenced by the dissonance of Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, a rhythm section honed with Cecil Taylor as leader. In November 1961, Coltrane played a gig at the Village Vanguard, which resulted in the classic Chasin' the 'Trane, which DownBeat magazine panned as \"anti-jazz\". On his 1961 tour of France, he was booed, but persevered, signing with the new Impulse! Records in 1960 and turning it into \"the house that Trane built\", while championing many younger free jazz musicians, notably Archie Shepp, who often played with trumpeter Bill Dixon, who organized the 4-day \"October Revolution in Jazz\" in Manhattan in 1964, the first free jazz festival.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of 1965 show Coltrane's playing becoming increasingly abstract, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, utilization of overtones, and playing in the altissimo register, as well as a mutated return to Coltrane's sheets of sound. In the studio, he all but abandoned his soprano to concentrate on the tenor saxophone. In addition, the quartet responded to the leader by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the recordings The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, Living Space and Transition (both June 1965), New Thing at Newport (July 1965), Sun Ship (August 1965), and First Meditations (September 1965).",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "In June 1965, Coltrane and 10 other musicians recorded Ascension, a 40-minute-long piece without breaks that included adventurous solos by young avant-garde musicians as well as Coltrane, and was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos. Dave Liebman later called it \"the torch that lit the free jazz thing\". After recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Pharoah Sanders to join the band in September 1965. While Coltrane used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, Sanders would opt to overblow his entire solo, resulting in a constant screaming and screeching in the altissimo range of the instrument.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Free jazz was played in Europe in part because musicians such as Ayler, Taylor, Steve Lacy, and Eric Dolphy spent extended periods of time there, and European musicians such as Michael Mantler and John Tchicai traveled to the U.S. to experience American music firsthand. European contemporary jazz was shaped by Peter Brötzmann, John Surman, Krzysztof Komeda, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Tomasz Stanko, Lars Gullin, Joe Harriott, Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler, Graham Collier, Michael Garrick and Mike Westbrook. They were eager to develop approaches to music that reflected their heritage.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Since the 1960s, creative centers of jazz in Europe have developed, such as the creative jazz scene in Amsterdam. Following the work of drummer Han Bennink and pianist Misha Mengelberg, musicians started to explore by improvising collectively until a form (melody, rhythm, a famous song) is found Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead documented the free jazz scene in Amsterdam and some of its main exponents such as the ICP (Instant Composers Pool) orchestra in his book New Dutch Swing. Since the 1990s Keith Jarrett has defended free jazz from criticism. British writer Stuart Nicholson has argued European contemporary jazz has an identity different from American jazz and follows a different trajectory.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Latin jazz is jazz that employs Latin American rhythms and is generally understood to have a more specific meaning than simply jazz from Latin America. A more precise term might be Afro-Latin jazz, as the jazz subgenre typically employs rhythms that either have a direct analog in Africa or exhibit an African rhythmic influence beyond what is ordinarily heard in other jazz. The two main categories of Latin jazz are Afro-Cuban jazz and Brazilian jazz.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In the 1960s and 1970s, many jazz musicians had only a basic understanding of Cuban and Brazilian music, and jazz compositions which used Cuban or Brazilian elements were often referred to as \"Latin tunes\", with no distinction between a Cuban son montuno and a Brazilian bossa nova. Even as late as 2000, in Mark Gridley's Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, a bossa nova bass line is referred to as a \"Latin bass figure\". It was not uncommon during the 1960s and 1970s to hear a conga playing a Cuban tumbao while the drumset and bass played a Brazilian bossa nova pattern. Many jazz standards such as \"Manteca\", \"On Green Dolphin Street\" and \"Song for My Father\" have a \"Latin\" A section and a swung B section. Typically, the band would only play an even-eighth \"Latin\" feel in the A section of the head and swing throughout all of the solos. Latin jazz specialists like Cal Tjader tended to be the exception. For example, on a 1959 live Tjader recording of \"A Night in Tunisia\", pianist Vince Guaraldi soloed through the entire form over an authentic mambo.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "For most of its history, Afro-Cuban jazz had been a matter of superimposing jazz phrasing over Cuban rhythms. But by the end of the 1970s, a new generation of New York City musicians had emerged who were fluent in both salsa dance music and jazz, leading to a new level of integration of jazz and Cuban rhythms. This era of creativity and vitality is best represented by the Gonzalez brothers Jerry (congas and trumpet) and Andy (bass). During 1974–1976, they were members of one of Eddie Palmieri's most experimental salsa groups: salsa was the medium, but Palmieri was stretching the form in new ways. He incorporated parallel fourths, with McCoy Tyner-type vamps. The innovations of Palmieri, the Gonzalez brothers and others led to an Afro-Cuban jazz renaissance in New York City.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "This occurred in parallel with developments in Cuba The first Cuban band of this new wave was Irakere. Their \"Chékere-son\" (1976) introduced a style of \"Cubanized\" bebop-flavored horn lines that departed from the more angular guajeo-based lines which were typical of Cuban popular music and Latin jazz up until that time. It was based on Charlie Parker's composition \"Billie's Bounce\", jumbled together in a way that fused clave and bebop horn lines. In spite of the ambivalence of some band members towards Irakere's Afro-Cuban folkloric / jazz fusion, their experiments forever changed Cuban jazz: their innovations are still heard in the high level of harmonic and rhythmic complexity in Cuban jazz and in the jazzy and complex contemporary form of popular dance music known as timba.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Brazilian jazz, such as bossa nova, is derived from samba, with influences from jazz and other 20th-century classical and popular music styles. Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English, whilst the related jazz-samba is an adaptation of street samba into jazz.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The bossa nova style was pioneered by Brazilians João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim and was made popular by Elizete Cardoso's recording of \"Chega de Saudade\" on the Canção do Amor Demais LP. Gilberto's initial releases, and the 1959 film Black Orpheus, achieved significant popularity in Latin America; this spread to North America via visiting American jazz musicians. The resulting recordings by Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz cemented bossa nova's popularity and led to a worldwide boom, with 1963's Getz/Gilberto, numerous recordings by famous jazz performers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and the eventual entrenchment of the bossa nova style as a lasting influence in world music.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Brazilian percussionists such as Airto Moreira and Naná Vasconcelos also influenced jazz internationally by introducing Afro-Brazilian folkloric instruments and rhythms into a wide variety of jazz styles, thus attracting a greater audience to them.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "While bossa nova has been labeled as jazz by music critics, namely those from outside of Brazil, it has been rejected by many prominent bossa nova musicians such as Jobim, who once said \"Bossa nova is not Brazilian jazz.\"",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The first jazz standard composed by a non-Latino to use an overt African 8 cross-rhythm was Wayne Shorter's \"Footprints\" (1967). On the version recorded on Miles Smiles by Miles Davis, the bass switches to a 4 tresillo figure at 2:20. \"Footprints\" is not, however, a Latin jazz tune: African rhythmic structures are accessed directly by Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums) via the rhythmic sensibilities of swing. Throughout the piece, the four beats, whether sounded or not, are maintained as the temporal referent. The following example shows the 8 and 4 forms of the bass line. The slashed noteheads indicate the main beats (not bass notes), where one ordinarily taps their foot to \"keep time\".",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "The use of pentatonic scales was another trend associated with Africa. The use of pentatonic scales in Africa probably goes back thousands of years.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "McCoy Tyner perfected the use of the pentatonic scale in his solos, and also used parallel fifths and fourths, which are common harmonies in West Africa.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The minor pentatonic scale is often used in blues improvisation, and like a blues scale, a minor pentatonic scale can be played over all of the chords in a blues. The following pentatonic lick was played over blues changes by Joe Henderson on Horace Silver's \"African Queen\" (1965).",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Jazz pianist, theorist, and educator Mark Levine refers to the scale generated by beginning on the fifth step of a pentatonic scale as the V pentatonic scale.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Levine points out that the V pentatonic scale works for all three chords of the standard II–V–I jazz progression. This is a very common progression, used in pieces such as Miles Davis' \"Tune Up\". The following example shows the V pentatonic scale over a II–V–I progression.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Accordingly, John Coltrane's \"Giant Steps\" (1960), with its 26 chords per 16 bars, can be played using only three pentatonic scales. Coltrane studied Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, which contains material that is virtually identical to portions of \"Giant Steps\". The harmonic complexity of \"Giant Steps\" is on the level of the most advanced 20th-century art music. Superimposing the pentatonic scale over \"Giant Steps\" is not merely a matter of harmonic simplification, but also a sort of \"Africanizing\" of the piece, which provides an alternate approach for soloing. Mark Levine observes that when mixed in with more conventional \"playing the changes\", pentatonic scales provide \"structure and a feeling of increased space\".",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "As noted above, jazz has incorporated from its inception aspects of African-American sacred music including spirituals and hymns. Secular jazz musicians often performed renditions of spirituals and hymns as part of their repertoire or isolated compositions such as \"Come Sunday\", part of \"Black and Beige Suite\" by Duke Ellington. Later many other jazz artists borrowed from black gospel music. However, it was only after World War II that a few jazz musicians began to compose and perform extended works intended for religious settings or as religious expression. Since the 1950s, sacred and liturgical music has been performed and recorded by many prominent jazz composers and musicians. The \"Abyssinian Mass\" by Wynton Marsalis (Blueengine Records, 2016) is a recent example.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Relatively little has been written about sacred and liturgical jazz. In a 2013 doctoral dissertation, Angelo Versace examined the development of sacred jazz in the 1950s using disciplines of musicology and history. He noted that the traditions of black gospel music and jazz were combined in the 1950s to produce a new genre, \"sacred jazz\". Versace maintained that the religious intent separates sacred from secular jazz. Most prominent in initiating the sacred jazz movement were pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, known for her jazz masses in the 1950s and Duke Ellington. Prior to his death in 1974 in response to contacts from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Duke Ellington wrote three Sacred Concerts: 1965 – A Concert of Sacred Music; 1968 – Second Sacred Concert; 1973 – Third Sacred Concert.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "The most prominent form of sacred and liturgical jazz is the jazz mass. Although most often performed in a concert setting rather than church worship setting, this form has many examples. An eminent example of composers of the jazz mass was Mary Lou Williams. Williams converted to Catholicism in 1957, and proceeded to compose three masses in the jazz idiom. One was composed in 1968 to honor the recently assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. and the third was commissioned by a pontifical commission. It was performed once in 1975 in St Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. However the Catholic Church has not embraced jazz as appropriate for worship. In 1966 Joe Masters recorded \"Jazz Mass\" for Columbia Records. A jazz ensemble was joined by soloists and choir using the English text of the Roman Catholic Mass. Other examples include \"Jazz Mass in Concert\" by Lalo Schiffrin (Aleph Records, 1998, UPC 0651702632725) and \"Jazz Mass\" by Vince Guaraldi (Fantasy Records, 1965). In England, classical composer Will Todd recorded his \"Jazz Missa Brevis\" with a jazz ensemble, soloists and the St Martin's Voices on a 2018 Signum Records release, \"Passion Music/Jazz Missa Brevis\" also released as \"Mass in Blue\", and jazz organist James Taylor composed \"The Rochester Mass\" (Cherry Red Records, 2015). In 2013, Versace put forth bassist Ike Sturm and New York composer Deanna Witkowski as contemporary exemplars of sacred and liturgical jazz.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion was developed by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. Jazz fusion often uses mixed meters, odd time signatures, syncopation, complex chords, and harmonies.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "According to AllMusic:",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "... until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate. [However, ...] as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "In 1969, Davis fully embraced the electric instrument approach to jazz with In a Silent Way, which can be considered his first fusion album. Composed of two side-long suites edited heavily by producer Teo Macero, this quiet, static album would be equally influential to the development of ambient music.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "As Davis recalls:",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "The music I was really listening to in 1968 was James Brown, the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix, and a new group who had just come out with a hit record, \"Dance to the Music\", Sly and the Family Stone ... I wanted to make it more like rock. When we recorded In a Silent Way I just threw out all the chord sheets and told everyone to play off of that.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Two contributors to In a Silent Way also joined organist Larry Young to create one of the early acclaimed fusion albums: Emergency! (1969) by The Tony Williams Lifetime.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Weather Report's self-titled electronic and psychedelic Weather Report debut album caused a sensation in the jazz world on its arrival in 1971, thanks to the pedigree of the group's members (including percussionist Airto Moreira), and their unorthodox approach to music. The album featured a softer sound than would be the case in later years (predominantly using acoustic bass with Shorter exclusively playing soprano saxophone, and with no synthesizers involved), but is still considered a classic of early fusion. It built on the avant-garde experiments which Joe Zawinul and Shorter had pioneered with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew, including an avoidance of head-and-chorus composition in favor of continuous rhythm and movement – but took the music further. To emphasize the group's rejection of standard methodology, the album opened with the inscrutable avant-garde atmospheric piece \"Milky Way\", which featured by Shorter's extremely muted saxophone inducing vibrations in Zawinul's piano strings while the latter pedaled the instrument. DownBeat described the album as \"music beyond category\", and awarded it Album of the Year in the magazine's polls that year.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Weather Report's subsequent releases were creative funk-jazz works.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Although some jazz purists protested against the blend of jazz and rock, many jazz innovators crossed over from the contemporary hard bop scene into fusion. As well as the electric instruments of rock (such as electric guitar, electric bass, electric piano and synthesizer keyboards), fusion also used the powerful amplification, \"fuzz\" pedals, wah-wah pedals and other effects that were used by 1970s-era rock bands. Notable performers of jazz fusion included Miles Davis, Eddie Harris, keyboardists Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock, vibraphonist Gary Burton, drummer Tony Williams, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, guitarists Larry Coryell, Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Ryo Kawasaki, and Frank Zappa, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and bassists Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke. Jazz fusion was also popular in Japan, where the band Casiopea released more than thirty fusion albums.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "According to jazz writer Stuart Nicholson, \"just as free jazz appeared on the verge of creating a whole new musical language in the 1960s ... jazz-rock briefly suggested the promise of doing the same\" with albums such as Williams' Emergency! (1970) and Davis' Agharta (1975), which Nicholson said \"suggested the potential of evolving into something that might eventually define itself as a wholly independent genre quite apart from the sound and conventions of anything that had gone before.\" This development was stifled by commercialism, Nicholson said, as the genre \"mutated into a peculiar species of jazz-inflected pop music that eventually took up residence on FM radio\" at the end of the 1970s.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Although jazz-rock fusion reached the height of its popularity in the 1970s, the use of electronic instruments and rock-derived musical elements in jazz continued in the 1990s and 2000s. Musicians using this approach include Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, John Scofield and the Swedish group e.s.t. Since the beginning of the 1990s, electronic music had significant technical improvements that popularized and created new possibilities for the genre. Jazz elements such as improvisation, rhythmic complexities and harmonic textures were introduced to the genre and consequently had a big impact in new listeners and in some ways kept the versatility of jazz relatable to a newer generation that did not necessarily relate to what the traditionalists call real jazz (bebop, cool and modal jazz). Artists such as Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus and sub genres like IDM, drum 'n' bass, jungle and techno ended up incorporating a lot of these elements. Squarepusher being cited as one big influence for jazz performers drummer Mark Guiliana and pianist Brad Mehldau, showing the correlations between jazz and electronic music are a two-way street.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "By the mid-1970s, the sound known as jazz-funk had developed, characterized by a strong back beat (groove), electrified sounds and, often, the presence of electronic analog synthesizers. Jazz-funk also draws influences from traditional African music, Afro-Cuban rhythms and Jamaican reggae, notably Kingston bandleader Sonny Bradshaw. Another feature is the shift of emphasis from improvisation to composition: arrangements, melody and overall writing became important. The integration of funk, soul, and R&B music into jazz resulted in the creation of a genre whose spectrum is wide and ranges from strong jazz improvisation to soul, funk or disco with jazz arrangements, jazz riffs and jazz solos, and sometimes soul vocals.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Early examples are Herbie Hancock's Headhunters band and Miles Davis' On the Corner album, which, in 1972, began Davis' foray into jazz-funk and was, he claimed, an attempt at reconnecting with the young black audience which had largely forsaken jazz for rock and funk. While there is a discernible rock and funk influence in the timbres of the instruments employed, other tonal and rhythmic textures, such as the Indian tambora and tablas and Cuban congas and bongos, create a multi-layered soundscape. The album was a culmination of sorts of the musique concrète approach that Davis and producer Teo Macero had begun to explore in the late 1960s.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "The 1980s saw something of a reaction against the fusion and free jazz that had dominated the 1970s. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis emerged early in the decade, and strove to create music within what he believed was the tradition, rejecting both fusion and free jazz and creating extensions of the small and large forms initially pioneered by artists such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, as well as the hard bop of the 1950s. It is debatable whether Marsalis' critical and commercial success was a cause or a symptom of the reaction against Fusion and Free Jazz and the resurgence of interest in the kind of jazz pioneered in the 1960s (particularly modal jazz and post-bop); nonetheless there were many other manifestations of a resurgence of traditionalism, even if fusion and free jazz were by no means abandoned and continued to develop and evolve.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "For example, several musicians who had been prominent in the fusion genre during the 1970s began to record acoustic jazz once more, including Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Other musicians who had experimented with electronic instruments in the previous decade had abandoned them by the 1980s; for example, Bill Evans, Joe Henderson, and Stan Getz. Even the 1980s music of Miles Davis, although certainly still fusion, adopted a far more accessible and recognizably jazz-oriented approach than his abstract work of the mid-1970s, such as a return to a theme-and-solos approach.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "A similar reaction took place against free jazz. According to Ted Gioia:",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "the very leaders of the avant garde started to signal a retreat from the core principles of free jazz. Anthony Braxton began recording standards over familiar chord changes. Cecil Taylor played duets in concert with Mary Lou Williams, and let her set out structured harmonies and familiar jazz vocabulary under his blistering keyboard attack. And the next generation of progressive players would be even more accommodating, moving inside and outside the changes without thinking twice. Musicians such as David Murray or Don Pullen may have felt the call of free-form jazz, but they never forgot all the other ways one could play African-American music for fun and profit.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "Pianist Keith Jarrett—whose bands of the 1970s had played only original compositions with prominent free jazz elements—established his so-called 'Standards Trio' in 1983, which, although also occasionally exploring collective improvisation, has primarily performed and recorded jazz standards. Chick Corea similarly began exploring jazz standards in the 1980s, having neglected them for the 1970s.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "In 1987, the United States House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill proposed by Democratic Representative John Conyers Jr. to define jazz as a unique form of American music, stating \"jazz is hereby designated as a rare and valuable national American treasure to which we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated.\" It passed in the House on September 23, 1987, and in the Senate on November 4, 1987.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "In 2001, Ken Burns's documentary Jazz premiered on PBS, featuring Wynton Marsalis and other experts reviewing the entire history of American jazz to that time. It received some criticism, however, for its failure to reflect the many distinctive non-American traditions and styles in jazz that had developed, and its limited representation of US developments in the last quarter of the 20th century.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "The emergence of young jazz talent beginning to perform in older, established musicians' groups further impacted the resurgence of traditionalism in the jazz community. In the 1970s, the groups of Betty Carter and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers retained their conservative jazz approaches in the midst of fusion and jazz-rock, and in addition to difficulty booking their acts, struggled to find younger generations of personnel to authentically play traditional styles such as hard bop and bebop. In the late 1970s, however, a resurgence of younger jazz players in Blakey's band began to occur. This movement included musicians such as Valery Ponomarev and Bobby Watson, Dennis Irwin and James Williams. In the 1980s, in addition to Wynton and Branford Marsalis, the emergence of pianists in the Jazz Messengers such as Donald Brown, Mulgrew Miller, and later, Benny Green, bassists such as Charles Fambrough, Lonnie Plaxico (and later, Peter Washington and Essiet Essiet) horn players such as Bill Pierce, Donald Harrison and later Javon Jackson and Terence Blanchard emerged as talented jazz musicians, all of whom made significant contributions in the 1990s and 2000s.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "The young Jazz Messengers' contemporaries, including Roy Hargrove, Marcus Roberts, Wallace Roney and Mark Whitfield were also influenced by Wynton Marsalis's emphasis toward jazz tradition. These younger rising stars rejected avant-garde approaches and instead championed the acoustic jazz sound of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and early recordings of the first Miles Davis quintet. This group of \"Young Lions\" sought to reaffirm jazz as a high art tradition comparable to the discipline of classical music.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "In addition, Betty Carter's rotation of young musicians in her group foreshadowed many of New York's preeminent traditional jazz players later in their careers. Among these musicians were Jazz Messenger alumni Benny Green, Branford Marsalis and Ralph Peterson Jr., as well as Kenny Washington, Lewis Nash, Curtis Lundy, Cyrus Chestnut, Mark Shim, Craig Handy, Greg Hutchinson and Marc Cary, Taurus Mateen and Geri Allen. O.T.B. ensemble included a rotation of young jazz musicians such as Kenny Garrett, Steve Wilson, Kenny Davis, Renee Rosnes, Ralph Peterson Jr., Billy Drummond, and Robert Hurst.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "Starting in the 1990s, a number of players from largely straight-ahead or post-bop backgrounds emerged as a result of the rise of neo-traditionalist jazz, including pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Chris Potter and Joshua Redman, clarinetist Ken Peplowski and bassist Christian McBride.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called \"pop fusion\" or \"smooth jazz\" became successful, garnering significant radio airplay in \"quiet storm\" time slots at radio stations in urban markets across the U.S. This helped to establish or bolster the careers of vocalists including Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, and Sade, as well as saxophonists including Grover Washington Jr., Kenny G, Kirk Whalum, Boney James, and David Sanborn. In general, smooth jazz is downtempo (the most widely played tracks are of 90–105 beats per minute), and has a lead melody-playing instrument (saxophone, especially soprano and tenor, and legato electric guitar are popular).",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "In his Newsweek article \"The Problem With Jazz Criticism\", Stanley Crouch considers Miles Davis' playing of fusion to be a turning point that led to smooth jazz. Critic Aaron J. West has countered the often negative perceptions of smooth jazz, stating:",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "I challenge the prevalent marginalization and malignment of smooth jazz in the standard jazz narrative. Furthermore, I question the assumption that smooth jazz is an unfortunate and unwelcomed evolutionary outcome of the jazz-fusion era. Instead, I argue that smooth jazz is a long-lived musical style that merits multi-disciplinary analyses of its origins, critical dialogues, performance practice, and reception.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "Acid jazz developed in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, influenced by jazz-funk and electronic dance music. Acid jazz often contains various types of electronic composition (sometimes including sampling or live DJ cutting and scratching), but it is just as likely to be played live by musicians, who often showcase jazz interpretation as part of their performance. Richard S. Ginell of AllMusic considers Roy Ayers \"one of the prophets of acid jazz\".",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "Nu jazz is influenced by jazz harmony and melodies, and there are usually no improvisational aspects. It can be very experimental in nature and can vary widely in sound and concept. It ranges from the combination of live instrumentation with the beats of jazz house (as exemplified by St Germain, Jazzanova, and Fila Brazillia) to more band-based improvised jazz with electronic elements (for example, The Cinematic Orchestra, Kobol and the Norwegian \"future jazz\" style pioneered by Bugge Wesseltoft, Jaga Jazzist, and Nils Petter Molvær).",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "Jazz rap developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s and incorporates jazz influences into hip hop. In 1988, Gang Starr released the debut single \"Words I Manifest\", which sampled Dizzy Gillespie's 1962 \"Night in Tunisia\", and Stetsasonic released \"Talkin' All That Jazz\", which sampled Lonnie Liston Smith. Gang Starr's debut LP No More Mr. Nice Guy (1989) and their 1990 track \"Jazz Thing\" sampled Charlie Parker and Ramsey Lewis. The groups which made up the Native Tongues Posse tended toward jazzy releases: these include the Jungle Brothers' debut Straight Out the Jungle (1988), and A Tribe Called Quest's People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990) and The Low End Theory (1991). Rap duo Pete Rock & CL Smooth incorporated jazz influences on their 1992 debut Mecca and the Soul Brother. Rapper Guru's Jazzmatazz series began in 1993 using jazz musicians during the studio recordings.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "Although jazz rap had achieved little mainstream success, Miles Davis' final album Doo-Bop (released posthumously in 1992) was based on hip hop beats and collaborations with producer Easy Mo Bee. Davis' ex-bandmate Herbie Hancock also absorbed hip-hop influences in the mid-1990s, releasing the album Dis Is Da Drum in 1994.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "The mid-2010s saw an increased influence of R&B, hip-hop, and pop music on jazz. In 2015, Kendrick Lamar released his third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly. The album heavily featured prominent contemporary jazz artists such as Thundercat and redefined jazz rap with a larger focus on improvisation and live soloing rather than simply sampling. In that same year, saxophonist Kamasi Washington released his nearly three-hour long debut, The Epic. Its hip-hop inspired beats and R&B vocal interludes was not only acclaimed by critics for being innovative in keeping jazz relevant, but also sparked a small resurgence in jazz on the internet.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "The relaxation of orthodoxy which was concurrent with post-punk in London and New York City led to a new appreciation of jazz. In London, the Pop Group began to mix free jazz and dub reggae into their brand of punk rock. In New York, No Wave took direct inspiration from both free jazz and punk. Examples of this style include Lydia Lunch's Queen of Siam, Gray, the work of James Chance and the Contortions (who mixed Soul with free jazz and punk) and the Lounge Lizards (the first group to call themselves \"punk jazz\").",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "John Zorn took note of the emphasis on speed and dissonance that was becoming prevalent in punk rock, and incorporated this into free jazz with the release of the Spy vs. Spy album in 1986, a collection of Ornette Coleman tunes done in the contemporary thrashcore style. In the same year, Sonny Sharrock, Peter Brötzmann, Bill Laswell, and Ronald Shannon Jackson recorded the first album under the name Last Exit, a similarly aggressive blend of thrash and free jazz. These developments are the origins of jazzcore, the fusion of free jazz with hardcore punk.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "The M-Base movement started in the 1980s, when a loose collective of young African-American musicians in New York which included Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, and Gary Thomas developed a complex but grooving sound.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "In the 1990s, most M-Base participants turned to more conventional music, but Coleman, the most active participant, continued developing his music in accordance with the M-Base concept.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "Coleman's audience decreased, but his music and concepts influenced many musicians, according to pianist Vijay Iver and critic Ben Ratlifff of The New York Times.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "M-Base changed from a movement of a loose collective of young musicians to a kind of informal Coleman \"school\", with a much advanced but already originally implied concept. Steve Coleman's music and M-Base concept gained recognition as \"next logical step\" after Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "Since the 1990s, jazz has been characterized by a pluralism in which no one style dominates, but rather a wide range of styles and genres are popular. Individual performers often play in a variety of styles, sometimes in the same performance. Pianist Brad Mehldau and The Bad Plus have explored contemporary rock music within the context of the traditional jazz acoustic piano trio, recording instrumental jazz versions of songs by rock musicians. The Bad Plus have also incorporated elements of free jazz into their music. A firm avant-garde or free jazz stance has been maintained by some players, such as saxophonists Greg Osby and Charles Gayle, while others, such as James Carter, have incorporated free jazz elements into a more traditional framework.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "Harry Connick Jr. began his career playing stride piano and the Dixieland jazz of his home, New Orleans, beginning with his first recording when he was 10 years old. Some of his earliest lessons were at the home of pianist Ellis Marsalis. Connick had success on the pop charts after recording the soundtrack to the movie When Harry Met Sally, which sold over two million copies. Crossover success has also been achieved by Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Cassandra Wilson, Kurt Elling, and Jamie Cullum.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 165,
"text": "Additionally, the era saw the release of recordings and videos from the previous century, such as a Just Jazz tape broadcast by a band led by Gene Ammons and studio archives such as Just Coolin' by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 166,
"text": "An internet-aided trend of 2010's jazz was that of extreme reharmonization, inspired by both virtuosic players known for their speed and rhythm such as Art Tatum, as well as players known for their ambitious voicings and chords such as Bill Evans. Supergroup Snarky Puppy adopted this trend, allowing players like Cory Henry to shape the grooves and harmonies of modern jazz soloing. YouTube phenomenon Jacob Collier also gained recognition for his ability to play an incredibly large number of instruments and his ability to use microtones, advanced polyrhythms, and blend a spectrum of genres in his largely homemade production process.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 167,
"text": "Other jazz musicians gained popularity through social media during the 2010s and 2020s. These included Joan Chamorro, a bassist and bandleader based in Barcelona whose big band and jazz combo videos have received tens of millions of views on YouTube, and Emmet Cohen, who broadcast a series of performances live from New York starting in March 2020.",
"title": "Post-war jazz"
}
]
| Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, and gypsy jazz were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines. The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz. | 2001-11-09T02:23:38Z | 2023-12-18T16:37:12Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz |
15,614 | Jonathan Swift | Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".
Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, but he accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their Royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. His maternal grandfather, James Ericke, was the vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire. In 1634 the vicar was convicted of Puritan practices. Some time thereafter, Ericke and his family, including his young daughter Abigail, fled to Ireland.
Swift's father joined his elder brother, Godwin, in the practice of law in Ireland. He died in Dublin about seven months before his namesake was born. He died of syphilis, which he said he got from dirty sheets when out of town.
His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his uncle Godwin Swift (1628–1695), a close friend and confidant of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary.
At the age of one, child Jonathan was taken by his wet nurse to her hometown of Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. He said that there he learned to read the Bible. His nurse returned him to his mother, still in Ireland, when he was three.
Swift's family had several interesting literary connections. His grandmother Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of poet John Dryden. The same grandmother's aunt Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great-grandmother Margaret (Godwin) Swift was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone which influenced parts of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. His uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare.
Swift's benefactor and uncle Godwin Swift took primary responsibility for the young man, sending him with one of his cousins to Kilkenny College (also attended by philosopher George Berkeley). He arrived there at the age of six, where he was expected to have already learned the basic declensions in Latin. He had not, and thus began his schooling in a lower form. Swift graduated in 1682, when he was 15.
He attended Trinity College Dublin in 1682, financed by Godwin's son Willoughby. The four-year course followed a curriculum largely set in the Middle Ages for the priesthood. The lectures were dominated by Aristotelian logic and philosophy. The basic skill taught to students was debate, and they were expected to be able to argue both sides of any argument or topic. Swift was an above-average student but not exceptional, and received his B.A. in 1686 "by special grace."
Swift was studying for his master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who had arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668. He had retired from public service to his country estate, to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Gaining his employer's confidence, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance". Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple introduced his secretary to William III and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.
Swift took up his residence at Moor Park where he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the daughter of an impoverished widow who acted as companion to Temple's sister Lady Giffard. Swift was her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella", and the two maintained a close but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.
In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The illness consisted of fits of vertigo or giddiness, now believed to be Ménière's disease, and it continued to plague him throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1692. He then left Moor Park, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, in order to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland. He was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor in 1694, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.
Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, he may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring, whom he called "Varina", the sister of an old college friend. A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, and he remained there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time, Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690), though Battle was not published until 1704.
Temple died on 27 January 1699. Swift, normally a harsh judge of human nature, said that all that was good and amiable in mankind had died with Temple. He stayed on briefly in England to complete editing Temple's memoirs, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might earn him a suitable position in England. His work made enemies among some of Temple's family and friends, in particular Temple's formidable sister Martha, Lady Giffard, who objected to indiscretions included in the memoirs. Moreover, she noted that Swift had borrowed from her own biography, an accusation that Swift denied. Swift's next move was to approach King William directly, based on his imagined connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justice of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland, he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another. He soon obtained the living of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Swift ministered to a congregation of about 15 at Laracor, which was just over four and a half miles (7.2 km) from Summerhill, County Meath, and twenty miles (32 km) from Dublin. He had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park, planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and travelled to London frequently over the next ten years. In 1701, he anonymously published the political pamphlet A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.
Swift resided in Trim, County Meath, after 1700. He wrote many of his works during this time period. In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College Dublin. That spring he travelled to England and then returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson—now 20—and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson, nicknamed "Stella". Many, notably his close friend Thomas Sheridan, believed that they were secretly married in 1716; others, like Swift's housekeeper Mrs Brent and Rebecca Dingley (who lived with Stella all through her years in Ireland), dismissed the story as absurd. Swift certainly did not wish her to marry anyone else: in 1704, when their mutual friend William Tisdall informed Swift that he intended to propose to Stella, Swift wrote to him to dissuade him from the idea. Although the tone of the letter was courteous, Swift privately expressed his disgust for Tisdall as an "interloper", and they were estranged for many years.
During his visits to England in these years, Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).
Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. Swift supported the Glorious Revolution and early in his life belonged to the Whigs. As a member of the Anglican Church, he feared a return of the Catholic monarchy and "Papist" absolutism. From 1707 to 1709 and again in 1710, Swift was in London unsuccessfully urging upon the Whig administration of Lord Godolphin the claims of the Irish clergy to the First-Fruits and Twentieths ("Queen Anne's Bounty"), which brought in about £2,500 a year, already granted to their brethren in England. He found the opposition Tory leadership more sympathetic to his cause, and, when they came to power in 1710, he was recruited to support their cause as editor of The Examiner. In 1711, Swift published the political pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies, attacking the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with France. The incoming Tory government conducted secret (and illegal) negotiations with France, resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ending the War of the Spanish Succession.
Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as mediator between Henry St John (Viscount Bolingbroke), the secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710–15), and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford), lord treasurer and prime minister (1711–14). Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, collected and published after his death as A Journal to Stella. The animosity between the two Tory leaders eventually led to the dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and accession of George I that year, the Whigs returned to power, and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France.
Swift has been described by scholars as "a Whig in politics and Tory in religion" and Swift related his own views in similar terms, stating that as "a lover of liberty, I found myself to be what they called a Whig in politics ... But, as to religion, I confessed myself to be an High-Churchman." In his Thoughts on Religion, fearing the intense partisan strife waged over religious belief in seventeenth-century England, Swift wrote that "Every man, as a member of the commonwealth, ought to be content with the possession of his own opinion in private." However, it should be borne in mind that, during Swift's time period, terms like "Whig" and "Tory" both encompassed a wide array of opinions and factions, and neither term aligns with a modern political party or modern political alignments.
Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the Vanhomrigh family (Dutch merchants who had settled in Ireland, then moved to London) and became involved with one of the daughters, Esther. Swift furnished Esther with the nickname "Vanessa" (derived by adding "Essa", a pet form of Esther, to the "Van" of her surname, Vanhomrigh), and she features as one of the main characters in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem and their correspondence suggest that Esther was infatuated with Swift, and that he may have reciprocated her affections, only to regret this and then try to break off the relationship. Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714, and settled at her old family home, Celbridge Abbey. Their uneasy relationship continued for some years; then there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35, having destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour. Another lady with whom he had a close but less intense relationship was Anne Long, a toast of the Kit-Cat Club.
Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be rewarded with a church appointment in England. However, Queen Anne appeared to have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. Her dislike has been attributed to A Tale of a Tub, which she thought blasphemous, compounded by The Windsor Prophecy, where Swift, with a surprising lack of tact, advised the Queen on which of her bedchamber ladies she should and should not trust. The best position his friends could secure for him was the Deanery of St Patrick's; this was not in the Queen's gift, and Anne, who could be a bitter enemy, made it clear that Swift would not have received the preferment if she could have prevented it. With the return of the Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England and he returned to Ireland in disappointment, a virtual exile, to live "like a rat in a hole".
Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot. This new role was unwelcome to the Government, which made clumsy attempts to silence him. His printer, Edward Waters, was convicted of seditious libel in 1720, but four years later a grand jury refused to find that the Drapier's Letters (which, though written under a pseudonym, were universally known to be Swift's work) were seditious. Swift responded with an attack on the Irish judiciary almost unparalleled in its ferocity, his principal target being the "vile and profligate villain" William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode in which the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner. In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. During his visit, he stayed with his old friends Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727, and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.
Swift returned to England one more time in 1727, and stayed once again with Alexander Pope. The visit was cut short when Swift received word that Esther Johnson was dying, and rushed back home to be with her. On 28 January 1728, Johnson died; Swift had prayed at her bedside, even composing prayers for her comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of her death he began to write his The Death of Mrs Johnson. He was too ill to attend the funeral at St Patrick's. Many years later, a lock of hair, assumed to be Johnson's, was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, "Only a woman's hair".
Death became a frequent feature of Swift's life from this point. In 1731 he wrote Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, his own obituary, published in 1739. In 1732, his good friend and collaborator John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend from his days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness, and in 1742 he may have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realising his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled. ("I shall be like that tree", he once said, "I shall die at the top.") He became increasingly quarrelsome, and long-standing friendships, like that with Thomas Sheridan, ended without sufficient cause. To protect him from unscrupulous hangers-on, who had begun to prey on the great man, his closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind and memory". However, it was long believed by many that Swift was actually insane at this point. In his book Literature and Western Man, author J. B. Priestley even cites the final chapters of Gulliver's Travels as proof of Swift's approaching "insanity". Bewley attributes his decline to 'terminal dementia'.
In part VIII of his series, The Story of Civilization, Will Durant describes the final years of Swift's life as such:
"Definite symptoms of madness appeared in 1738. In 1741, guardians were appointed to take care of his affairs and watch lest in his outbursts of violence he should do himself harm. In 1742, he suffered great pain from the inflammation of his left eye, which swelled to the size of an egg; five attendants had to restrain him from tearing out his eye. He went a whole year without uttering a word."
In 1744, Alexander Pope died. Then on 19 October 1745, Swift, at nearly 78, died. After being laid out in public view for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, he was buried in his own cathedral by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune (£12,000) was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a psychiatric hospital.
Jonathan Swift wrote his own epitaph:
W. B. Yeats poetically translated it from the Latin as:
British politician Michael Foot was a great admirer of Swift and wrote about him extensively. In Debts of Honour he cites with approbation a theory propounded by Denis Johnston that offers an explanation of Swift's behavior towards Stella and Vanessa.
Pointing to contradictions in the received information about Swift's origins and parentage, Johnston postulates that Swift's real father was Sir William Temple's father, Sir John Temple who was Master of the Rolls in Dublin at the time. It is widely thought that Stella was Sir William Temple's illegitimate daughter. So Swift was Sir William's brother and Stella's uncle. Marriage or close relations between Swift and Stella would therefore have been incest, an unthinkable prospect.
It follows that Swift could not have married Vanessa either without Stella appearing to be a cast-off mistress, which he would not contemplate. Johnston's theory is expounded fully in his book In Search of Swift. He is also cited in the Dictionary of Irish Biography and the theory is presented without attribution in the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature.
Swift was a prolific writer. The collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965–) comprises fourteen volumes. A 1983 edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.
Swift's first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion, and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will that will let them make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and dominance. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, the narrator includes a series of whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.
In 1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning a defence of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns), holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of the Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and father of Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came from Richard Bentley, one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699). The final words on the topic belong to Swift in his Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he makes a humorous defence on behalf of Temple and the cause of the Ancients.
In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions for the Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die on 29 March. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on 30 March claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary. According to other sources, Richard Steele used the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff, and was the one who wrote about the "death" of John Partridge and published it in The Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.
The Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to mint copper coinage for Ireland. It was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased coinage in order to make a profit. In these "letters" Swift posed as a shopkeeper—a draper—to criticise the plan. Swift's writing was so effective in undermining opinion in the project that a reward was offered by the government to anyone disclosing the true identity of the author. Though hardly a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was greeted with a banner, "Welcome Home, Drapier") no one turned Swift in, although there was an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute the publisher John Harding. Thanks to the general outcry against the coinage, Wood's patent was rescinded in September 1725 and the coins were kept out of circulation. In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift recalled this as one of his best achievements.
Gulliver's Travels, a large portion of which Swift wrote at Woodbrook House in County Laois, was published in 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver's also-fictional cousin negotiating the book's publication has survived. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerised form as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticised for its apparent misanthropy. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterised human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.
In 1729, Swift's A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick was published in Dublin by Sarah Harding. It is a satire in which the narrator, with intentionally grotesque arguments, recommends that Ireland's poor escape their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich: "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food ..." Following the satirical form, he introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by deriding them:
Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients ... taxing our absentees ... using [nothing] except what is of our own growth and manufacture ... rejecting ... foreign luxury ... introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance ... learning to love our country ... quitting our animosities and factions ... teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. ... Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.
John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him. George Orwell named him as one of the writers he most admired, despite disagreeing with him on almost every moral and political issue. Modernist poet Edith Sitwell wrote a fictional biography of Swift, titled I Live Under a Black Sun and published in 1937. A. L. Rowse wrote a biography of Swift, essays on his works, and edited the Pan Books edition of Gulliver's Travels.
Literary scholar Frank Stier Goodwin wrote a full biography of Swift: Jonathan Swift – Giant in Chains, issued by Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York (1940, 450pp, with Bibliography).
In 1982, Soviet playwright Grigory Gorin wrote a theatrical fantasy called The House That Swift Built based on the last years of Jonathan Swift's life and episodes of his works. The play was filmed by director Mark Zakharov in the 1984 two-part television movie of the same name. Jake Arnott features him in his 2017 novel The Fatal Tree. A 2017 analysis of library holdings data revealed that Swift is the most popular Irish author, and that Gulliver’s Travels is the most widely held work of Irish literature in libraries globally.
The first woman to write a biography of Swift was Sophie Shilleto Smith, who published Dean Swift in 1910.
Swift crater, a crater on Mars's moon Deimos, is named after Jonathan Swift, who predicted the existence of the moons of Mars.
In honour of Swift's long-time residence in Trim, there are several monuments in the town marking his legacy. Most notable is Swift's Street, named after him. Trim also holds a recurring festival in honour of Swift, called the Trim Swift Festival.
Online works | [
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"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, \"Dean Swift\".",
"title": ""
},
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.",
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"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed \"Swiftian\".",
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"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, but he accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their Royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. His maternal grandfather, James Ericke, was the vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire. In 1634 the vicar was convicted of Puritan practices. Some time thereafter, Ericke and his family, including his young daughter Abigail, fled to Ireland.",
"title": "Biography"
},
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"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Swift's father joined his elder brother, Godwin, in the practice of law in Ireland. He died in Dublin about seven months before his namesake was born. He died of syphilis, which he said he got from dirty sheets when out of town.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his uncle Godwin Swift (1628–1695), a close friend and confidant of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "At the age of one, child Jonathan was taken by his wet nurse to her hometown of Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. He said that there he learned to read the Bible. His nurse returned him to his mother, still in Ireland, when he was three.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Swift's family had several interesting literary connections. His grandmother Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of poet John Dryden. The same grandmother's aunt Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great-grandmother Margaret (Godwin) Swift was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone which influenced parts of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. His uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Swift's benefactor and uncle Godwin Swift took primary responsibility for the young man, sending him with one of his cousins to Kilkenny College (also attended by philosopher George Berkeley). He arrived there at the age of six, where he was expected to have already learned the basic declensions in Latin. He had not, and thus began his schooling in a lower form. Swift graduated in 1682, when he was 15.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "He attended Trinity College Dublin in 1682, financed by Godwin's son Willoughby. The four-year course followed a curriculum largely set in the Middle Ages for the priesthood. The lectures were dominated by Aristotelian logic and philosophy. The basic skill taught to students was debate, and they were expected to be able to argue both sides of any argument or topic. Swift was an above-average student but not exceptional, and received his B.A. in 1686 \"by special grace.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Swift was studying for his master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who had arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668. He had retired from public service to his country estate, to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Gaining his employer's confidence, Swift \"was often trusted with matters of great importance\". Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple introduced his secretary to William III and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Swift took up his residence at Moor Park where he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the daughter of an impoverished widow who acted as companion to Temple's sister Lady Giffard. Swift was her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname \"Stella\", and the two maintained a close but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The illness consisted of fits of vertigo or giddiness, now believed to be Ménière's disease, and it continued to plague him throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1692. He then left Moor Park, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, in order to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland. He was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor in 1694, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, he may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring, whom he called \"Varina\", the sister of an old college friend. A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, and he remained there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time, Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690), though Battle was not published until 1704.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Temple died on 27 January 1699. Swift, normally a harsh judge of human nature, said that all that was good and amiable in mankind had died with Temple. He stayed on briefly in England to complete editing Temple's memoirs, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might earn him a suitable position in England. His work made enemies among some of Temple's family and friends, in particular Temple's formidable sister Martha, Lady Giffard, who objected to indiscretions included in the memoirs. Moreover, she noted that Swift had borrowed from her own biography, an accusation that Swift denied. Swift's next move was to approach King William directly, based on his imagined connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justice of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland, he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another. He soon obtained the living of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Swift ministered to a congregation of about 15 at Laracor, which was just over four and a half miles (7.2 km) from Summerhill, County Meath, and twenty miles (32 km) from Dublin. He had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park, planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and travelled to London frequently over the next ten years. In 1701, he anonymously published the political pamphlet A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Swift resided in Trim, County Meath, after 1700. He wrote many of his works during this time period. In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College Dublin. That spring he travelled to England and then returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson—now 20—and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson, nicknamed \"Stella\". Many, notably his close friend Thomas Sheridan, believed that they were secretly married in 1716; others, like Swift's housekeeper Mrs Brent and Rebecca Dingley (who lived with Stella all through her years in Ireland), dismissed the story as absurd. Swift certainly did not wish her to marry anyone else: in 1704, when their mutual friend William Tisdall informed Swift that he intended to propose to Stella, Swift wrote to him to dissuade him from the idea. Although the tone of the letter was courteous, Swift privately expressed his disgust for Tisdall as an \"interloper\", and they were estranged for many years.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "During his visits to England in these years, Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. Swift supported the Glorious Revolution and early in his life belonged to the Whigs. As a member of the Anglican Church, he feared a return of the Catholic monarchy and \"Papist\" absolutism. From 1707 to 1709 and again in 1710, Swift was in London unsuccessfully urging upon the Whig administration of Lord Godolphin the claims of the Irish clergy to the First-Fruits and Twentieths (\"Queen Anne's Bounty\"), which brought in about £2,500 a year, already granted to their brethren in England. He found the opposition Tory leadership more sympathetic to his cause, and, when they came to power in 1710, he was recruited to support their cause as editor of The Examiner. In 1711, Swift published the political pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies, attacking the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with France. The incoming Tory government conducted secret (and illegal) negotiations with France, resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ending the War of the Spanish Succession.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as mediator between Henry St John (Viscount Bolingbroke), the secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710–15), and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford), lord treasurer and prime minister (1711–14). Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, collected and published after his death as A Journal to Stella. The animosity between the two Tory leaders eventually led to the dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and accession of George I that year, the Whigs returned to power, and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Swift has been described by scholars as \"a Whig in politics and Tory in religion\" and Swift related his own views in similar terms, stating that as \"a lover of liberty, I found myself to be what they called a Whig in politics ... But, as to religion, I confessed myself to be an High-Churchman.\" In his Thoughts on Religion, fearing the intense partisan strife waged over religious belief in seventeenth-century England, Swift wrote that \"Every man, as a member of the commonwealth, ought to be content with the possession of his own opinion in private.\" However, it should be borne in mind that, during Swift's time period, terms like \"Whig\" and \"Tory\" both encompassed a wide array of opinions and factions, and neither term aligns with a modern political party or modern political alignments.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the Vanhomrigh family (Dutch merchants who had settled in Ireland, then moved to London) and became involved with one of the daughters, Esther. Swift furnished Esther with the nickname \"Vanessa\" (derived by adding \"Essa\", a pet form of Esther, to the \"Van\" of her surname, Vanhomrigh), and she features as one of the main characters in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem and their correspondence suggest that Esther was infatuated with Swift, and that he may have reciprocated her affections, only to regret this and then try to break off the relationship. Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714, and settled at her old family home, Celbridge Abbey. Their uneasy relationship continued for some years; then there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35, having destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour. Another lady with whom he had a close but less intense relationship was Anne Long, a toast of the Kit-Cat Club.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be rewarded with a church appointment in England. However, Queen Anne appeared to have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. Her dislike has been attributed to A Tale of a Tub, which she thought blasphemous, compounded by The Windsor Prophecy, where Swift, with a surprising lack of tact, advised the Queen on which of her bedchamber ladies she should and should not trust. The best position his friends could secure for him was the Deanery of St Patrick's; this was not in the Queen's gift, and Anne, who could be a bitter enemy, made it clear that Swift would not have received the preferment if she could have prevented it. With the return of the Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England and he returned to Ireland in disappointment, a virtual exile, to live \"like a rat in a hole\".",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot. This new role was unwelcome to the Government, which made clumsy attempts to silence him. His printer, Edward Waters, was convicted of seditious libel in 1720, but four years later a grand jury refused to find that the Drapier's Letters (which, though written under a pseudonym, were universally known to be Swift's work) were seditious. Swift responded with an attack on the Irish judiciary almost unparalleled in its ferocity, his principal target being the \"vile and profligate villain\" William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode in which the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner. In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. During his visit, he stayed with his old friends Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727, and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Swift returned to England one more time in 1727, and stayed once again with Alexander Pope. The visit was cut short when Swift received word that Esther Johnson was dying, and rushed back home to be with her. On 28 January 1728, Johnson died; Swift had prayed at her bedside, even composing prayers for her comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of her death he began to write his The Death of Mrs Johnson. He was too ill to attend the funeral at St Patrick's. Many years later, a lock of hair, assumed to be Johnson's, was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, \"Only a woman's hair\".",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Death became a frequent feature of Swift's life from this point. In 1731 he wrote Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, his own obituary, published in 1739. In 1732, his good friend and collaborator John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend from his days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness, and in 1742 he may have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realising his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled. (\"I shall be like that tree\", he once said, \"I shall die at the top.\") He became increasingly quarrelsome, and long-standing friendships, like that with Thomas Sheridan, ended without sufficient cause. To protect him from unscrupulous hangers-on, who had begun to prey on the great man, his closest companions had him declared of \"unsound mind and memory\". However, it was long believed by many that Swift was actually insane at this point. In his book Literature and Western Man, author J. B. Priestley even cites the final chapters of Gulliver's Travels as proof of Swift's approaching \"insanity\". Bewley attributes his decline to 'terminal dementia'.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In part VIII of his series, The Story of Civilization, Will Durant describes the final years of Swift's life as such:",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "\"Definite symptoms of madness appeared in 1738. In 1741, guardians were appointed to take care of his affairs and watch lest in his outbursts of violence he should do himself harm. In 1742, he suffered great pain from the inflammation of his left eye, which swelled to the size of an egg; five attendants had to restrain him from tearing out his eye. He went a whole year without uttering a word.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1744, Alexander Pope died. Then on 19 October 1745, Swift, at nearly 78, died. After being laid out in public view for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, he was buried in his own cathedral by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune (£12,000) was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a psychiatric hospital.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Jonathan Swift wrote his own epitaph:",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "W. B. Yeats poetically translated it from the Latin as:",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "British politician Michael Foot was a great admirer of Swift and wrote about him extensively. In Debts of Honour he cites with approbation a theory propounded by Denis Johnston that offers an explanation of Swift's behavior towards Stella and Vanessa.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Pointing to contradictions in the received information about Swift's origins and parentage, Johnston postulates that Swift's real father was Sir William Temple's father, Sir John Temple who was Master of the Rolls in Dublin at the time. It is widely thought that Stella was Sir William Temple's illegitimate daughter. So Swift was Sir William's brother and Stella's uncle. Marriage or close relations between Swift and Stella would therefore have been incest, an unthinkable prospect.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "It follows that Swift could not have married Vanessa either without Stella appearing to be a cast-off mistress, which he would not contemplate. Johnston's theory is expounded fully in his book In Search of Swift. He is also cited in the Dictionary of Irish Biography and the theory is presented without attribution in the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Swift was a prolific writer. The collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965–) comprises fourteen volumes. A 1983 edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Swift's first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion, and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will that will let them make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and dominance. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, the narrator includes a series of whimsical \"digressions\" on various subjects.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning a defence of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns), holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of the Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and father of Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came from Richard Bentley, one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699). The final words on the topic belong to Swift in his Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he makes a humorous defence on behalf of Temple and the cause of the Ancients.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions for the Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die on 29 March. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on 30 March claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary. According to other sources, Richard Steele used the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff, and was the one who wrote about the \"death\" of John Partridge and published it in The Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to mint copper coinage for Ireland. It was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased coinage in order to make a profit. In these \"letters\" Swift posed as a shopkeeper—a draper—to criticise the plan. Swift's writing was so effective in undermining opinion in the project that a reward was offered by the government to anyone disclosing the true identity of the author. Though hardly a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was greeted with a banner, \"Welcome Home, Drapier\") no one turned Swift in, although there was an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute the publisher John Harding. Thanks to the general outcry against the coinage, Wood's patent was rescinded in September 1725 and the coins were kept out of circulation. In \"Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift\" (1739) Swift recalled this as one of his best achievements.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Gulliver's Travels, a large portion of which Swift wrote at Woodbrook House in County Laois, was published in 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver's also-fictional cousin negotiating the book's publication has survived. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerised form as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticised for its apparent misanthropy. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterised human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 1729, Swift's A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick was published in Dublin by Sarah Harding. It is a satire in which the narrator, with intentionally grotesque arguments, recommends that Ireland's poor escape their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich: \"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food ...\" Following the satirical form, he introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by deriding them:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients ... taxing our absentees ... using [nothing] except what is of our own growth and manufacture ... rejecting ... foreign luxury ... introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance ... learning to love our country ... quitting our animosities and factions ... teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. ... Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him. George Orwell named him as one of the writers he most admired, despite disagreeing with him on almost every moral and political issue. Modernist poet Edith Sitwell wrote a fictional biography of Swift, titled I Live Under a Black Sun and published in 1937. A. L. Rowse wrote a biography of Swift, essays on his works, and edited the Pan Books edition of Gulliver's Travels.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Literary scholar Frank Stier Goodwin wrote a full biography of Swift: Jonathan Swift – Giant in Chains, issued by Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York (1940, 450pp, with Bibliography).",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1982, Soviet playwright Grigory Gorin wrote a theatrical fantasy called The House That Swift Built based on the last years of Jonathan Swift's life and episodes of his works. The play was filmed by director Mark Zakharov in the 1984 two-part television movie of the same name. Jake Arnott features him in his 2017 novel The Fatal Tree. A 2017 analysis of library holdings data revealed that Swift is the most popular Irish author, and that Gulliver’s Travels is the most widely held work of Irish literature in libraries globally.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The first woman to write a biography of Swift was Sophie Shilleto Smith, who published Dean Swift in 1910.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Swift crater, a crater on Mars's moon Deimos, is named after Jonathan Swift, who predicted the existence of the moons of Mars.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In honour of Swift's long-time residence in Trim, there are several monuments in the town marking his legacy. Most notable is Swift's Street, named after him. Trim also holds a recurring festival in honour of Swift, called the Trim Swift Festival.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Online works",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift". Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian". | 2001-03-18T13:15:39Z | 2023-12-07T08:56:39Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift |
15,616 | Jello Biafra | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and political activist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud, and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a supporter of a free society and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra uses absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. He has a Jewish great-grandparent, but was unaware of this until he was in his mid-40s. Due to his secular upbringing and lack of knowledge of his distant Jewish ancestry until adulthood, he does not consider himself Jewish.
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Boucher became a fan of rock music after first hearing it in 1965 when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. As a teenager, his high school guidance counselor advised him to spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
In 1977, he worked as a roadie for a local band called The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), helping set up their equipment at shows, including as an opener for the Ramones. The job ended shortly after the Ramones show, when The Ravers were offered a record contract and left Colorado. Boucher credits seeing Joey Ramone as inspiration to become a singer, and the Ramones lyrics for inspiring the use of humor in his own songs.
Shortly after graduating high school, he formed a band called The Healers, with John Greenway and an unknown third member. Boucher has described The Healers' music as "banging on instruments we didn't know how to play when our parents weren't home". While never playing a show, the band made recordings, including an early version of "California Über Alles", but did not want any of it to be released to the public. Some of their music was made available on a 2009 compilation of late 1970s Colorado punk bands titled Rocky Mountain Low, including the original version of "California Über Alles", which Maximum Rocknroll described as experimental improv in their review.
Boucher left Boulder to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz but dropped out after the first quarter of the school year.
In June 1978, Boucher responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use the stage name Jello Biafra, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state of Biafra.
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
The first single by Dead Kennedys was their version of "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. Its popularity resulted in being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song.
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure in the Californian punk scene and was one of the third-generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to retry the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in the works on a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hip-hop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon, and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics in Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception was live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance, he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high-speed rail system. I'm totally down with that." Music critic Anthony Fantano credits Biafra as his "political idol".
For those of them who have seen my candidacy as a publicity stunt or a joke, they should keep in mind that it is no more of a joke, and no less of a joke, than anyone else they care to name.
—Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedys: The Early Years
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well-known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco, any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticized the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result. He also criticized Trump's cabinet picks, saying of then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. "I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down." He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote: "I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope someday to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister specifically to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986.
Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and political activist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his \"unique quiver of a voice\". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud, and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a supporter of a free society and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra uses absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. He has a Jewish great-grandparent, but was unaware of this until he was in his mid-40s. Due to his secular upbringing and lack of knowledge of his distant Jewish ancestry until adulthood, he does not consider himself Jewish.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Boucher became a fan of rock music after first hearing it in 1965 when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. As a teenager, his high school guidance counselor advised him to spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1977, he worked as a roadie for a local band called The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), helping set up their equipment at shows, including as an opener for the Ramones. The job ended shortly after the Ramones show, when The Ravers were offered a record contract and left Colorado. Boucher credits seeing Joey Ramone as inspiration to become a singer, and the Ramones lyrics for inspiring the use of humor in his own songs.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Shortly after graduating high school, he formed a band called The Healers, with John Greenway and an unknown third member. Boucher has described The Healers' music as \"banging on instruments we didn't know how to play when our parents weren't home\". While never playing a show, the band made recordings, including an early version of \"California Über Alles\", but did not want any of it to be released to the public. Some of their music was made available on a 2009 compilation of late 1970s Colorado punk bands titled Rocky Mountain Low, including the original version of \"California Über Alles\", which Maximum Rocknroll described as experimental improv in their review.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Boucher left Boulder to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz but dropped out after the first quarter of the school year.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In June 1978, Boucher responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating \"guitarist wants to form punk band\", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use the stage name Jello Biafra, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state of Biafra.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being \"a fumbler with my hands\" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The first single by Dead Kennedys was their version of \"California über alles\". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. Its popularity resulted in being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with \"Holiday in Cambodia\" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as \"possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene\" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single \"Too Drunk to Fuck\". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song \"Nazi Punks Fuck Off!\" as well as \"We've Got A Bigger Problem Now\", a rewritten version of \"California über alles\" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that \"defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk\". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song \"MTV Get Off the Air,\" which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious \"Pull My Strings\" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a \"sell out\" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling \"Sellout rock star, kick him\", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Biafra has been a prominent figure in the Californian punk scene and was one of the third-generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's \"biggest star\" who was a \"powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer].\"",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song \"That's Progress\", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing \"harmful material to minors\" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a \"small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle.\" Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to retry the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks \"Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?\" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, \"Episode 285: Know Your Enemy\", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, \"Holiday in Cambodia\", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or \"posthumous\" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in the works on a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song \"Biotech is Godzilla\" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hip-hop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name \"Jello Biafra and the Melvins\", though fans sometimes refer to them as \"The Jelvins\". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon, and Down entitled, \"Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars\" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics in Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, \"California über alles\". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception was live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as \"absentee thoughtlord\".",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Biafra is an collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.",
"title": "Musical career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance, he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.",
"title": "Spoken word"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.",
"title": "Spoken word"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.",
"title": "Spoken word"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular ideology, saying, \"I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that,\" In a 2012 interview, Biafra said \"I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high-speed rail system. I'm totally down with that.\" Music critic Anthony Fantano credits Biafra as his \"political idol\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "For those of them who have seen my candidacy as a publicity stunt or a joke, they should keep in mind that it is no more of a joke, and no less of a joke, than anyone else they care to name.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "—Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedys: The Early Years",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, \"There's always room for Jello\", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, \"Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor.\" As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well-known signs held by supporters said \"If he doesn't win I'll kill myself\" and \"What if he does win?\"",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "At the time, in San Francisco, any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as \"The Camcorder Truth Jihad\"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that \"Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008.\" Biafra dubbed Obama \"Barackstar O'Bummer\". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing \"worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying.\"",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticized the political position of Donald Trump, saying \"how can people be so fucking stupid\" on hearing the election result. He also criticized Trump's cabinet picks, saying of then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, \"The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult.\"",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. \"I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.\" He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg \"almost as bad as Trump\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra \"deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote: \"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope someday to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends.\"",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister specifically to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.",
"title": "Selected discography"
}
]
| Eric Reed Boucher, known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and political activist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys. Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud, and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films. Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a supporter of a free society and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra uses absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice. | 2001-03-19T19:21:35Z | 2023-11-24T16:21:05Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jello_Biafra |
15,621 | John Grierson | John Grierson CBE (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's Moana.
Grierson was born in the old schoolhouse in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland, to schoolmaster Robert Morrison Grierson from Boddam, near Peterhead, and Jane Anthony, a teacher from Ayrshire. His mother, a suffragette and ardent Labour Party activist, often took the chair at Tom Johnston's election meetings.
The family moved to Cambusbarron, Stirling, in 1900, when the children were still young, after Grierson's father was appointed headmaster of Cambusbarron school. When the family moved, John had three elder sisters, Agnes, Janet, and Margaret, and a younger brother, Anthony. John and Anthony were enrolled at Cambusbarron school in November 1903. His sister Margaret died in 1906; however, the family continued to grow as John gained three younger sisters, Dorothy, Ruby, and finally Marion in 1907.
Both parents steeped their son in liberal politics, humanistic ideals, and Calvinist moral and religious philosophies, particularly that education was essential to individual freedom and that hard and meaningful work was the way to prove oneself worthy in the sight of God. John was enrolled in the High School at Stirling in September 1908, and he played football and rugby for the school.
In July 1915, Grierson left school with an overall subject mark of 82%; John had sat the bursary examination at Gilmorehill the month before, as his parents wanted him to follow his elder sisters, Janet and Agnes, in going to the University of Glasgow. The results for the bursary examination were not posted until October 1915; Grierson applied to work at the munitions at Alexandria; the munitions building had been the original home of the Argyll Motor Company which had earlier in the twentieth century built the first complete motor car in Scotland.
Grierson was the second name on the bursary list and received the John Clark bursary, which was tenable for four years. Grierson entered the University of Glasgow in 1916; however, he was unhappy that his efforts to help in World War I were only through his work at the munitions. Grierson wanted to join the navy; his family on his father's side had long been lighthouse keepers, and John had many memories of visiting lighthouses and being beside the sea. He went to the Crystal Palace in London to train with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. In his recruitment letter he had added a year to his age so that he could attend.
On 7 January 1916, Grierson was sent to the wireless telegraphy station at Aultbea, Cromarty, as an ordinary telegraphist but was promoted to telegraphist on 2 June 1916. On 23 January 1917, he became a telegraphist on the minesweeper H.M.S Surf and served there until 13 October 1917. The next day he joined H.M.S Rightwhale, where he was promoted to leading telegraphist on 2 June 1918 and remained on the vessel until he was demobilised with a British War Medal and the Victory Medal.
Grierson returned to university in 1919; he joined the Fabian Society in 1919 and dissolved it in 1921. The New University Labour Club was initiated by John as well as the Critic's Club; he also had poetry published in the Glasgow University magazine from November 1920 until February 1923. Grierson received the Buchan Prize in the Ordinary Class of English Language in the academic year of 1919–20, he also received the prize and first-class certificate in the academic year of 1920–21 in the Ordinary Class of Moral Philosophy and graduated with a Master of Arts in English and moral philosophy in 1923.
In 1923, Grierson received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship to study in the United States at the University of Chicago, and later at Columbia and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focus was the psychology of propaganda—the impact of the press, film, and other mass media on forming public opinion. Grierson was particularly interested in the popular appeal and influence of the "yellow" (tabloid) press, and the influence and role of these journals on the education of new American citizens from abroad.
In his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926) in the New York Sun (8 February 1926), Grierson wrote that it had 'documentary' value. In his essay "First Principles of Documentary" (1932), Grierson argued that the principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's views align with the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov's contempt for dramatic fiction as "bourgeois excess", though with considerably more subtlety. Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance, though it presents philosophical questions about documentaries containing stagings and reenactments.
Like many social critics of the time, Grierson was profoundly concerned about what he perceived to be clear threats to democracy. In the US, he encountered a marked tendency toward political reaction, anti-democratic sentiments, and political apathy. He read and agreed with the journalist and political philosopher Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion which blamed the erosion of democracy in part on the fact that the political and social complexities of contemporary society made it difficult if not impossible for the public to comprehend and respond to issues vital to the maintenance of democratic society.
In Grierson's view, a way to counter these problems was to involve citizens in their government with the kind of engaging excitement generated by the popular press, which simplified and dramatized public affairs. It was during this time that Grierson developed a conviction that motion pictures could play a central role in promoting this process. (It has been suggested that some of Grierson's notions regarding the social and political uses of film were influenced by reading Lenin's writing about film as education and propaganda.)
Grierson's emerging view of film was as a form of social and political communication—a mechanism for social reform, education, and perhaps spiritual uplift. His view of Hollywood movie-making was considerably less sanguine:
Grierson's emerging and outspoken film philosophies caught the attention of New York film critics at the time. He was asked to write criticism for the New York Sun. At the Sun, Grierson wrote articles on film aesthetics and audience reception, and developed broad contacts in the film world. According to popular myth, in the course of this writing stint, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in writing about Robert J. Flaherty's film Moana (1926): "Of course Moana, being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family, has documentary value."
During this time, Grierson was also involved in scrutinizing the film industries of other countries. He may have been involved in arranging to bring Sergei Eisenstein's groundbreaking film The Battleship Potemkin (1925) to US audiences for the first time. Eisenstein's editing techniques and film theories, particularly the use of montage, would have a significant influence on Grierson's own work.
Grierson returned to Great Britain in 1927 armed with the sense that film could be enlisted to deal with the problems of the Great Depression, and to build national morale and national consensus. Filmmaking for Grierson was an exalted calling; the Filmmaker a patriot. In all of this, there was more than a little elitism, a stance reflected in Grierson's many dicta of the time: "The elect have their duty." "I look on cinema as a pulpit, and use it as a propagandist."
In the US Grierson had met pioneering documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty. Grierson respected Flaherty immensely for his contributions to documentary form and his attempts to use the camera to bring alive the lives of everyday people and everyday events. Less commendable in Grierson's view was Flaherty's focus on exotic and faraway cultures. ("In the profounder kind of way", wrote Grierson of Flaherty, "we live and prosper each of us by denouncing the other"). In Grierson's view, the focus of film should be on the everyday drama of ordinary people. As Grierson wrote in his diaries: "Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty." "'You keep your savages in the far place Bob; we are going after the savages of Birmingham,' I think I said to him pretty early on. And we did.")
On his return to England, Grierson was employed on a temporary basis as an Assistant Films Officer of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), a governmental agency which had been established in 1926 to promote British world trade and British unity throughout the empire. One of the major functions of the EMB was publicity, which the Board accomplished through exhibits, posters, and publications and films. It was within the context of this State-funded organisation that the "documentary" as we know it today got its start.
In late 1929 Grierson and his cameraman, Basil Emmott completed his first film, Drifters, which he wrote, produced and directed. The film, which follows the heroic work of North Sea herring fishermen, was a radical departure from anything being made by the British film industry or Hollywood. A large part of its innovation lies in the fierce boldness in bringing the camera to rugged locations such as a small boat in the middle of a gale while leaving relatively less of the action staged. The choice of topic was chosen less from Grierson's curiosity than the fact that he discovered that the Financial Secretary had made the herring industry his hobbyhorse. It premiered in a private film club in London in November 1929 on a double-bill with Eisenstein's -then controversial- film The Battleship Potemkin (which was banned from general release in Britain until 1954) and received high praise from both its sponsors and the press. The film was shown from 9 December 1929, in the Stoll in Kingsway and then was later screened throughout Britain.
After this success, Grierson moved away from film direction into a greater focus on production and administration within the EMB. He became a tireless organizer and recruiter for the EMB, enlisting a stable of energetic young filmmakers into the film unit between 1930 and 1933. Those enlisted included filmmakers Basil Wright, Edgar Anstey, Stuart Legg, Paul Rotha, Arthur Elton, Humphrey Jennings, Harry Watt, and Alberto Cavalcanti. This group formed the core of what was to become known as the British Documentary Film Movement. Robert Flaherty himself also worked briefly for the unit. In 1933 the EMB Film Unit was disbanded, a casualty of Depression-era economics.
Grierson's boss at the EMB moved to the General Post Office (GPO) as its first public relations officer, with the stipulation that he could bring the EMB film unit with him. Grierson's crew were charged with demonstrating how the Post Office facilitated modern communication and brought the nation together, a task aimed as much at GPO workers as the general public. During Grierson's administration, the GPO Film Unit produced a series of groundbreaking films, including Night Mail (dir. Basil Wright and Harry Watt, 1936) and Coal Face (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935). In 1934 he produced at the GPO Film Unit the award-winning The Song of Ceylon (dir. Basil Wright) which was sponsored jointly by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Bureau and the EMB.
In 1934, Grierson sailed on the Isabella Greig out of Granton to film Granton Trawler on Viking Bank which is between Shetland and the Norwegian coast. The footage from his voyage was handed over to Edgar Anstey, who pulled footage of when the camera had fallen over on the deck of the boat to create a storm scene. Granton Trawler was a favourite film of Grierson's, he saw it as a homage to the Isabella Greig that was sunk in 1941 by German bombs when it went out to fish and was never seen again. The Private Life of Gannets was also filmed on the Isabella Greig; the film was shot on Grassholm with Grierson shooting the slow-motion sequence of the gannets diving for fish which took only one afternoon to shoot near Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. The Private Life of Gannets went on to pick up an Academy Award in 1937.
Grierson eventually grew restless with having to work within the bureaucratic and budgetary confines of government sponsorship. Grierson resigned from the G.P.O. on 30 June 1937, which gave him more time to pursue his passions and the freedom to speak his mind on issues around the world. In response, he sought out private industry sponsorship for film production. He was finally successful in getting the British gas industry to underwrite an annual film program. Perhaps the most significant works produced during this time were Housing Problems (dir. Arthur Elton, Edgar Anstey, John Taylor, and Grierson's sister Ruby Grierson, 1935).
In 1938, Grierson was invited by the Canadian government to study the country's film production. Grierson sailed at the end of May in 1938 for Canada and arrived on 17 June. Grierson met with the Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King and also spoke with many important figures across Canada, they were all in agreement of the importance of film in reducing sectionalism and in promoting the relationship of Canada between home and abroad. The head of the Motion Picture Bureau for Canada, Frank Bagdley, did not appreciate Grierson's assessment and criticism of the films made by the Bureau which was that they focused too much on Canada as a place to holiday. Grierson delivered his report on government film propaganda and the weaknesses he had found in Canadian film production; his suggestion was to create a national coordinating body for the production of films. An abridged version of the report ran to 66 pages, which was prepared by August in London. Grierson returned to Britain but was invited back to Canada on 14 October 1938; he returned in November.
In 1939, Canada created the National Film Commission, which would later become the National Film Board of Canada. The bill to create a National Film Board was drafted by Grierson; the bill was introduced in March 1939 and given Royal Assent on 2 May 1939. Grierson was appointed the first Commissioner of the National Film Board in October 1939. When Canada entered World War II in 1939, the NFB focused on the production of propaganda films, many of which Grierson directed. For example, captured footage of German war activity was incorporated in documentaries that were distributed to the then-neutral United States.
Grierson grieved the death of his sister Ruby in 1940; she was on the SS City of Benares while it was evacuating one hundred children to Canada. The Benares was torpedoed four days after its sailing, and sank within thirty-one minutes in a Force 10 Gale. Ruby Grierson had managed to enter Lifeboat 8, full with more than thirty people, including eighteen girls and two female escorts, but as it was lowering, a wave crashed into the lifeboat, sending it into a vertical position, and throwing everyone in that boat into the sea. No one from Boat 8 survived. In the end, of 406 people on board, only 148 people survived, including only 19 of 100 children. Grierson resigned from his position in January 1941. Over his year as Commissioner at the National Film Board 40 films were made; the year before the Motion Picture Bureau had made only one and a half. Recommendations for the future running were made for the National Film Board, and Grierson was persuaded to stay for a further six months to oversee the changes.
During WWII, Grierson was a consultant to prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as a minister of the Wartime Information Board. He remained on the National Film Board and managed to complete his duties to Wartime Information Board as well through his deputies that aided him in the task. Grierson was asked to keep his dual role until January 1944, however, he resigned in 1943 as the job he had been asked to complete had been finished as far as he was concerned. Before he finished with the Wartime Information Bureau Grierson was also offered the role of chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but turned it down as he believed that this would give him too much power.
On 26 February 1942, Grierson attended the Academy Awards and received the award on behalf of the National Film Board for Churchill's Island. Grierson also presented the award for the best documentary, the first time that this award was given by the Academy. After the Dieppe Raid, there were reports that Canadians that had been taken as prisoners of war had been manacled under Hitler's orders. Grierson proposed that the Film Board show how the German prisoners of war were being treated in Canada through a film. Ham Wright directed the film showing the German sailors that had been captured; playing football, enjoying meals and looking healthy. Only one copy of the film was made, it was sent to the Swiss Red Cross who deliberately let it fall into German hands. Grierson was to learn at a later date that Hitler had indeed watched the film and ordered that the Canadian prisoners of war released from their manacles.
After the war, the National Film Board focused on producing documentaries that reflected the lives of Canadians. The National Film Board has become recognized around the world for producing quality films, some of which have won Academy Awards. The National Film Board had become one of the largest film studios and was respected around the world for what it had achieved; it had especially had influence in Czechoslovakia and China.
In December 1943 Grierson was elected by the Permanent Film Committee of the National Council for Canadian-Soviet Friendship to become honorary chairman. One of the tasks at the National Film Board that Grierson strongly pushed for the films being produced to be in French as well as English. He also pushed for a French unit in the National Film Board.
Grierson concentrated on documentary film production in New York after resigning his post following in August 1945; his resignation was to take effect in November 1945. In 1946 Grierson was asked to testify as part of the investigation of the Gouzenko Affair regarding communist spies in the National Film Board and the Wartime Information Board, rumours spread that he had been a leader of a spy ring during his offices with the Canadian government, a rumour he denied. Due to the rumours, the projects that Grierson had been trying to put together were not commissioned and he was barred from taking an important position at the United Nations.
Grierson was appointed as a foreign adviser to the Commission on Freedom of the Press in December 1943, which had been set up by the University of Chicago. Grierson was able to make a large contribution to the committee which included Robert M. Hutchins, William E. Hocking, Harold D. Lasswell, Archibald McLeish and Charles Merriam. A Free and Responsible Press was published in 1947.
Grierson was offered the position of head of information at UNESCO at the end of 1946; he attended the first General Conference of UNESCO from 26 November until 10 December in Paris. He had the idea for the Unesco Courier which was published in several languages across the world, first as a tabloid and later as a magazine. Grierson was invited to open the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1947, from 31 August to 7 September. At the start of 1948 he resigned from his position as director for Mass Communications and Public Information, he left in April to return to Britain.
In February 1948, Grierson was appointed the controller of the Central Office of Information's film operations to co-ordinate the work of the Crown Film Unit and Films Division, and to take overall charge of the planning, production and distribution of government films. On 23 June 1948, he accepted an honorary degree, an LL.D from the University of Glasgow. He left in 1950 due to financial restrictions on the documentaries that he wished to make.
Grierson was appointed to the position of executive producer of Group 3 at the end of 1950; it was a film production enterprise that received loans of government money through the National Film Finance Corporation. They filmed at Southall Studios in West London but later moved to Beaconsfield Studios. Group 3 was to have continuous production from 1951 until 1955 when it stopped producing films, the organisation had made a loss of over £400,000 as production of the films usually ran over the time allocated, and there had also been difficulty getting the films shown in cinemas.
During this time Grierson had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in May 1953, he spent a fortnight in hospital and then had a year of convalescing at his home, Tog Hill in Calstone. Grierson spent much of his time corresponding with the directors at Group 3, as well as commenting on scripts and story ideas. He had recovered enough to attend the Cannes Film Festival in April 1954, taking the production of Man of Africa. At the Edinburgh Film Festival in the same year, a dinner was held in Grierson's honour to celebrate twenty-five years of documentary.
Grierson joined the newly revived Films of Scotland Committee in 1955. Also on the committee were Norman Wilson, Forsyth Hardy, George Singleton, C. A. Oakley and Neil Paterson. In 1956, Grierson was the president of the Venice Film Festival's jury; he was also jury president at the Cork Film Festival and the South American Film Festival in 1958. In 1957, Grierson received a special Canadian Film Award. Grierson wrote the script for, Seawards the Great Ships, which was directed by Hilary Harris and awarded an Academy Award in 1961, a feat for the Films of Scotland Committee.
The first programme of This Wonderful World was aired on 11 October 1957 in Scotland; it was on The Culbin Sands which focused on how the Forestry Commission had replanted six thousand acres of woodland along the mouth of Findhorn. In the seventeenth century wild sand had blown into the mouth and covered the land, the successful replanting of the forest was a great success for the commission. This Wonderful World was shown weekly, other topics for episodes included Leonardo da Vinci, ballet, King Penguins and Norman McLaren's Boogie Doodle.
This Wonderful World began to be aired in England in February 1959, it ran for a further eight years and was in the Top Ten programmes for the week for the UK in 1960. In 1961, Grierson was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours. In 1962, he was a member of the jury for the Vancouver Film Festival, during his visit to Canada he also received the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal for his contribution to the visual arts. In 1963, he was busy with This Wonderful World and the Films of Scotland Committee but still found time to attend the twenty-fifth anniversary of the National Film Board in Montreal.
In 1965, Grierson was the patron of the Commonwealth Film Festival which took place in Cardiff in that year. In 1966, he was offered the role of Governor of the British Film Institute; however, he turned down the position. This Wonderful World changed the title to John Grierson Presents.
In 1967, after returning from the Oberhausen Film Festival where he had been the President of Honour of the jury, Grierson suffered a bout of bronchitis which lasted eight days. His brother Anthony, who had trained to be a doctor was called and diagnosed Grierson with emphysema, his coughing fits were a cause for concern, and he was admitted to Manor Hospital. Grierson decided to give up smoking and drinking to benefit his health.
Grierson opened the new primary school at Cambusbarron on 10 October 1967; his sister Dorothy attended the day with him. The BBC expressed their wishes to make a programme about Grierson in the year of his seventieth birthday, which he turned down three times In the year of his seventieth birthday, Grierson received many tributes from across the globe. He was made an honorary member of the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians; he pressed for the ceremony to be held in Glasgow. He also received the Golden Thistle Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Art of Cinema at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
In January 1969, Grierson left for Canada to lecture at McGill University; enrollment for his classes grew to around seven hundred students. He also lectured at Carleton University once a fortnight. At Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh on 8 July 1969, Grierson received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature. A few days earlier on 4 July 1969, Grierson had opened the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther.
Grierson was a member of the jury for the Canadian Film Awards in 1970. He spent a few months in 1971, travelling around India instilling the importance of having small production units throughout the country. He returned to the UK in December 1971 and was meant to travel back to India; however, his trip was delayed by the Indo-Pakistani War. Grierson went into hospital for a health check-up in January 1972; he was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer and was given months to live. During his time in hospital he spent time dictating letters to his wife, Margaret, and received visitors; however, he fell unconscious on 18 February and died on the 19th. In his wishes for his funeral he had detailed his desire to be cremated. Also according to his wishes, his urn was placed in the sea off the Old Head in Kinsale, and his brother Anthony, who had died in August 1971, had his ashes placed at the same time. A small flotilla followed the Able Seaman, which carried the ashes, and when the urns were lowered into the water, the fishing boats sounded their sirens.
The Grierson Archive at the University of Stirling Archives was opened by Angus Macdonald in October 1977.
Filmography as director:
Filmography as producer/creative contributor:
The Grierson Documentary Film Awards were established in 1972 to commemorate John Grierson and are currently supervised by The Grierson Trust. The aim of the awards is to recognise outstanding films that demonstrate integrity, originality and technical excellence, together with social or cultural significance.
Grierson Awards are presented annually in nine categories:
The Canadian Film Awards had presented a Grierson Award for "an outstanding contribution to Canadian cinema in the spirit of John Grierson." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Grierson CBE (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term \"documentary\" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's Moana.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Grierson was born in the old schoolhouse in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland, to schoolmaster Robert Morrison Grierson from Boddam, near Peterhead, and Jane Anthony, a teacher from Ayrshire. His mother, a suffragette and ardent Labour Party activist, often took the chair at Tom Johnston's election meetings.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The family moved to Cambusbarron, Stirling, in 1900, when the children were still young, after Grierson's father was appointed headmaster of Cambusbarron school. When the family moved, John had three elder sisters, Agnes, Janet, and Margaret, and a younger brother, Anthony. John and Anthony were enrolled at Cambusbarron school in November 1903. His sister Margaret died in 1906; however, the family continued to grow as John gained three younger sisters, Dorothy, Ruby, and finally Marion in 1907.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Both parents steeped their son in liberal politics, humanistic ideals, and Calvinist moral and religious philosophies, particularly that education was essential to individual freedom and that hard and meaningful work was the way to prove oneself worthy in the sight of God. John was enrolled in the High School at Stirling in September 1908, and he played football and rugby for the school.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In July 1915, Grierson left school with an overall subject mark of 82%; John had sat the bursary examination at Gilmorehill the month before, as his parents wanted him to follow his elder sisters, Janet and Agnes, in going to the University of Glasgow. The results for the bursary examination were not posted until October 1915; Grierson applied to work at the munitions at Alexandria; the munitions building had been the original home of the Argyll Motor Company which had earlier in the twentieth century built the first complete motor car in Scotland.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Grierson was the second name on the bursary list and received the John Clark bursary, which was tenable for four years. Grierson entered the University of Glasgow in 1916; however, he was unhappy that his efforts to help in World War I were only through his work at the munitions. Grierson wanted to join the navy; his family on his father's side had long been lighthouse keepers, and John had many memories of visiting lighthouses and being beside the sea. He went to the Crystal Palace in London to train with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. In his recruitment letter he had added a year to his age so that he could attend.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On 7 January 1916, Grierson was sent to the wireless telegraphy station at Aultbea, Cromarty, as an ordinary telegraphist but was promoted to telegraphist on 2 June 1916. On 23 January 1917, he became a telegraphist on the minesweeper H.M.S Surf and served there until 13 October 1917. The next day he joined H.M.S Rightwhale, where he was promoted to leading telegraphist on 2 June 1918 and remained on the vessel until he was demobilised with a British War Medal and the Victory Medal.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Grierson returned to university in 1919; he joined the Fabian Society in 1919 and dissolved it in 1921. The New University Labour Club was initiated by John as well as the Critic's Club; he also had poetry published in the Glasgow University magazine from November 1920 until February 1923. Grierson received the Buchan Prize in the Ordinary Class of English Language in the academic year of 1919–20, he also received the prize and first-class certificate in the academic year of 1920–21 in the Ordinary Class of Moral Philosophy and graduated with a Master of Arts in English and moral philosophy in 1923.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1923, Grierson received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship to study in the United States at the University of Chicago, and later at Columbia and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focus was the psychology of propaganda—the impact of the press, film, and other mass media on forming public opinion. Grierson was particularly interested in the popular appeal and influence of the \"yellow\" (tabloid) press, and the influence and role of these journals on the education of new American citizens from abroad.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926) in the New York Sun (8 February 1926), Grierson wrote that it had 'documentary' value. In his essay \"First Principles of Documentary\" (1932), Grierson argued that the principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the \"original\" actor and \"original\" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials \"thus taken from the raw\" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's views align with the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov's contempt for dramatic fiction as \"bourgeois excess\", though with considerably more subtlety. Grierson's definition of documentary as \"creative treatment of actuality\" has gained some acceptance, though it presents philosophical questions about documentaries containing stagings and reenactments.",
"title": "Social critic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Like many social critics of the time, Grierson was profoundly concerned about what he perceived to be clear threats to democracy. In the US, he encountered a marked tendency toward political reaction, anti-democratic sentiments, and political apathy. He read and agreed with the journalist and political philosopher Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion which blamed the erosion of democracy in part on the fact that the political and social complexities of contemporary society made it difficult if not impossible for the public to comprehend and respond to issues vital to the maintenance of democratic society.",
"title": "Social critic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In Grierson's view, a way to counter these problems was to involve citizens in their government with the kind of engaging excitement generated by the popular press, which simplified and dramatized public affairs. It was during this time that Grierson developed a conviction that motion pictures could play a central role in promoting this process. (It has been suggested that some of Grierson's notions regarding the social and political uses of film were influenced by reading Lenin's writing about film as education and propaganda.)",
"title": "Social critic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Grierson's emerging view of film was as a form of social and political communication—a mechanism for social reform, education, and perhaps spiritual uplift. His view of Hollywood movie-making was considerably less sanguine:",
"title": "Social critic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Grierson's emerging and outspoken film philosophies caught the attention of New York film critics at the time. He was asked to write criticism for the New York Sun. At the Sun, Grierson wrote articles on film aesthetics and audience reception, and developed broad contacts in the film world. According to popular myth, in the course of this writing stint, Grierson coined the term \"documentary\" in writing about Robert J. Flaherty's film Moana (1926): \"Of course Moana, being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family, has documentary value.\"",
"title": "Film critic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During this time, Grierson was also involved in scrutinizing the film industries of other countries. He may have been involved in arranging to bring Sergei Eisenstein's groundbreaking film The Battleship Potemkin (1925) to US audiences for the first time. Eisenstein's editing techniques and film theories, particularly the use of montage, would have a significant influence on Grierson's own work.",
"title": "Film critic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Grierson returned to Great Britain in 1927 armed with the sense that film could be enlisted to deal with the problems of the Great Depression, and to build national morale and national consensus. Filmmaking for Grierson was an exalted calling; the Filmmaker a patriot. In all of this, there was more than a little elitism, a stance reflected in Grierson's many dicta of the time: \"The elect have their duty.\" \"I look on cinema as a pulpit, and use it as a propagandist.\"",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In the US Grierson had met pioneering documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty. Grierson respected Flaherty immensely for his contributions to documentary form and his attempts to use the camera to bring alive the lives of everyday people and everyday events. Less commendable in Grierson's view was Flaherty's focus on exotic and faraway cultures. (\"In the profounder kind of way\", wrote Grierson of Flaherty, \"we live and prosper each of us by denouncing the other\"). In Grierson's view, the focus of film should be on the everyday drama of ordinary people. As Grierson wrote in his diaries: \"Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty.\" \"'You keep your savages in the far place Bob; we are going after the savages of Birmingham,' I think I said to him pretty early on. And we did.\")",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "On his return to England, Grierson was employed on a temporary basis as an Assistant Films Officer of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), a governmental agency which had been established in 1926 to promote British world trade and British unity throughout the empire. One of the major functions of the EMB was publicity, which the Board accomplished through exhibits, posters, and publications and films. It was within the context of this State-funded organisation that the \"documentary\" as we know it today got its start.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In late 1929 Grierson and his cameraman, Basil Emmott completed his first film, Drifters, which he wrote, produced and directed. The film, which follows the heroic work of North Sea herring fishermen, was a radical departure from anything being made by the British film industry or Hollywood. A large part of its innovation lies in the fierce boldness in bringing the camera to rugged locations such as a small boat in the middle of a gale while leaving relatively less of the action staged. The choice of topic was chosen less from Grierson's curiosity than the fact that he discovered that the Financial Secretary had made the herring industry his hobbyhorse. It premiered in a private film club in London in November 1929 on a double-bill with Eisenstein's -then controversial- film The Battleship Potemkin (which was banned from general release in Britain until 1954) and received high praise from both its sponsors and the press. The film was shown from 9 December 1929, in the Stoll in Kingsway and then was later screened throughout Britain.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "After this success, Grierson moved away from film direction into a greater focus on production and administration within the EMB. He became a tireless organizer and recruiter for the EMB, enlisting a stable of energetic young filmmakers into the film unit between 1930 and 1933. Those enlisted included filmmakers Basil Wright, Edgar Anstey, Stuart Legg, Paul Rotha, Arthur Elton, Humphrey Jennings, Harry Watt, and Alberto Cavalcanti. This group formed the core of what was to become known as the British Documentary Film Movement. Robert Flaherty himself also worked briefly for the unit. In 1933 the EMB Film Unit was disbanded, a casualty of Depression-era economics.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Grierson's boss at the EMB moved to the General Post Office (GPO) as its first public relations officer, with the stipulation that he could bring the EMB film unit with him. Grierson's crew were charged with demonstrating how the Post Office facilitated modern communication and brought the nation together, a task aimed as much at GPO workers as the general public. During Grierson's administration, the GPO Film Unit produced a series of groundbreaking films, including Night Mail (dir. Basil Wright and Harry Watt, 1936) and Coal Face (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935). In 1934 he produced at the GPO Film Unit the award-winning The Song of Ceylon (dir. Basil Wright) which was sponsored jointly by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Bureau and the EMB.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1934, Grierson sailed on the Isabella Greig out of Granton to film Granton Trawler on Viking Bank which is between Shetland and the Norwegian coast. The footage from his voyage was handed over to Edgar Anstey, who pulled footage of when the camera had fallen over on the deck of the boat to create a storm scene. Granton Trawler was a favourite film of Grierson's, he saw it as a homage to the Isabella Greig that was sunk in 1941 by German bombs when it went out to fish and was never seen again. The Private Life of Gannets was also filmed on the Isabella Greig; the film was shot on Grassholm with Grierson shooting the slow-motion sequence of the gannets diving for fish which took only one afternoon to shoot near Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. The Private Life of Gannets went on to pick up an Academy Award in 1937.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Grierson eventually grew restless with having to work within the bureaucratic and budgetary confines of government sponsorship. Grierson resigned from the G.P.O. on 30 June 1937, which gave him more time to pursue his passions and the freedom to speak his mind on issues around the world. In response, he sought out private industry sponsorship for film production. He was finally successful in getting the British gas industry to underwrite an annual film program. Perhaps the most significant works produced during this time were Housing Problems (dir. Arthur Elton, Edgar Anstey, John Taylor, and Grierson's sister Ruby Grierson, 1935).",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1938, Grierson was invited by the Canadian government to study the country's film production. Grierson sailed at the end of May in 1938 for Canada and arrived on 17 June. Grierson met with the Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King and also spoke with many important figures across Canada, they were all in agreement of the importance of film in reducing sectionalism and in promoting the relationship of Canada between home and abroad. The head of the Motion Picture Bureau for Canada, Frank Bagdley, did not appreciate Grierson's assessment and criticism of the films made by the Bureau which was that they focused too much on Canada as a place to holiday. Grierson delivered his report on government film propaganda and the weaknesses he had found in Canadian film production; his suggestion was to create a national coordinating body for the production of films. An abridged version of the report ran to 66 pages, which was prepared by August in London. Grierson returned to Britain but was invited back to Canada on 14 October 1938; he returned in November.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1939, Canada created the National Film Commission, which would later become the National Film Board of Canada. The bill to create a National Film Board was drafted by Grierson; the bill was introduced in March 1939 and given Royal Assent on 2 May 1939. Grierson was appointed the first Commissioner of the National Film Board in October 1939. When Canada entered World War II in 1939, the NFB focused on the production of propaganda films, many of which Grierson directed. For example, captured footage of German war activity was incorporated in documentaries that were distributed to the then-neutral United States.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Grierson grieved the death of his sister Ruby in 1940; she was on the SS City of Benares while it was evacuating one hundred children to Canada. The Benares was torpedoed four days after its sailing, and sank within thirty-one minutes in a Force 10 Gale. Ruby Grierson had managed to enter Lifeboat 8, full with more than thirty people, including eighteen girls and two female escorts, but as it was lowering, a wave crashed into the lifeboat, sending it into a vertical position, and throwing everyone in that boat into the sea. No one from Boat 8 survived. In the end, of 406 people on board, only 148 people survived, including only 19 of 100 children. Grierson resigned from his position in January 1941. Over his year as Commissioner at the National Film Board 40 films were made; the year before the Motion Picture Bureau had made only one and a half. Recommendations for the future running were made for the National Film Board, and Grierson was persuaded to stay for a further six months to oversee the changes.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "During WWII, Grierson was a consultant to prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as a minister of the Wartime Information Board. He remained on the National Film Board and managed to complete his duties to Wartime Information Board as well through his deputies that aided him in the task. Grierson was asked to keep his dual role until January 1944, however, he resigned in 1943 as the job he had been asked to complete had been finished as far as he was concerned. Before he finished with the Wartime Information Bureau Grierson was also offered the role of chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but turned it down as he believed that this would give him too much power.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On 26 February 1942, Grierson attended the Academy Awards and received the award on behalf of the National Film Board for Churchill's Island. Grierson also presented the award for the best documentary, the first time that this award was given by the Academy. After the Dieppe Raid, there were reports that Canadians that had been taken as prisoners of war had been manacled under Hitler's orders. Grierson proposed that the Film Board show how the German prisoners of war were being treated in Canada through a film. Ham Wright directed the film showing the German sailors that had been captured; playing football, enjoying meals and looking healthy. Only one copy of the film was made, it was sent to the Swiss Red Cross who deliberately let it fall into German hands. Grierson was to learn at a later date that Hitler had indeed watched the film and ordered that the Canadian prisoners of war released from their manacles.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "After the war, the National Film Board focused on producing documentaries that reflected the lives of Canadians. The National Film Board has become recognized around the world for producing quality films, some of which have won Academy Awards. The National Film Board had become one of the largest film studios and was respected around the world for what it had achieved; it had especially had influence in Czechoslovakia and China.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In December 1943 Grierson was elected by the Permanent Film Committee of the National Council for Canadian-Soviet Friendship to become honorary chairman. One of the tasks at the National Film Board that Grierson strongly pushed for the films being produced to be in French as well as English. He also pushed for a French unit in the National Film Board.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Grierson concentrated on documentary film production in New York after resigning his post following in August 1945; his resignation was to take effect in November 1945. In 1946 Grierson was asked to testify as part of the investigation of the Gouzenko Affair regarding communist spies in the National Film Board and the Wartime Information Board, rumours spread that he had been a leader of a spy ring during his offices with the Canadian government, a rumour he denied. Due to the rumours, the projects that Grierson had been trying to put together were not commissioned and he was barred from taking an important position at the United Nations.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Grierson was appointed as a foreign adviser to the Commission on Freedom of the Press in December 1943, which had been set up by the University of Chicago. Grierson was able to make a large contribution to the committee which included Robert M. Hutchins, William E. Hocking, Harold D. Lasswell, Archibald McLeish and Charles Merriam. A Free and Responsible Press was published in 1947.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Grierson was offered the position of head of information at UNESCO at the end of 1946; he attended the first General Conference of UNESCO from 26 November until 10 December in Paris. He had the idea for the Unesco Courier which was published in several languages across the world, first as a tabloid and later as a magazine. Grierson was invited to open the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1947, from 31 August to 7 September. At the start of 1948 he resigned from his position as director for Mass Communications and Public Information, he left in April to return to Britain.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In February 1948, Grierson was appointed the controller of the Central Office of Information's film operations to co-ordinate the work of the Crown Film Unit and Films Division, and to take overall charge of the planning, production and distribution of government films. On 23 June 1948, he accepted an honorary degree, an LL.D from the University of Glasgow. He left in 1950 due to financial restrictions on the documentaries that he wished to make.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Grierson was appointed to the position of executive producer of Group 3 at the end of 1950; it was a film production enterprise that received loans of government money through the National Film Finance Corporation. They filmed at Southall Studios in West London but later moved to Beaconsfield Studios. Group 3 was to have continuous production from 1951 until 1955 when it stopped producing films, the organisation had made a loss of over £400,000 as production of the films usually ran over the time allocated, and there had also been difficulty getting the films shown in cinemas.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "During this time Grierson had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in May 1953, he spent a fortnight in hospital and then had a year of convalescing at his home, Tog Hill in Calstone. Grierson spent much of his time corresponding with the directors at Group 3, as well as commenting on scripts and story ideas. He had recovered enough to attend the Cannes Film Festival in April 1954, taking the production of Man of Africa. At the Edinburgh Film Festival in the same year, a dinner was held in Grierson's honour to celebrate twenty-five years of documentary.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Grierson joined the newly revived Films of Scotland Committee in 1955. Also on the committee were Norman Wilson, Forsyth Hardy, George Singleton, C. A. Oakley and Neil Paterson. In 1956, Grierson was the president of the Venice Film Festival's jury; he was also jury president at the Cork Film Festival and the South American Film Festival in 1958. In 1957, Grierson received a special Canadian Film Award. Grierson wrote the script for, Seawards the Great Ships, which was directed by Hilary Harris and awarded an Academy Award in 1961, a feat for the Films of Scotland Committee.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The first programme of This Wonderful World was aired on 11 October 1957 in Scotland; it was on The Culbin Sands which focused on how the Forestry Commission had replanted six thousand acres of woodland along the mouth of Findhorn. In the seventeenth century wild sand had blown into the mouth and covered the land, the successful replanting of the forest was a great success for the commission. This Wonderful World was shown weekly, other topics for episodes included Leonardo da Vinci, ballet, King Penguins and Norman McLaren's Boogie Doodle.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "This Wonderful World began to be aired in England in February 1959, it ran for a further eight years and was in the Top Ten programmes for the week for the UK in 1960. In 1961, Grierson was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours. In 1962, he was a member of the jury for the Vancouver Film Festival, during his visit to Canada he also received the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal for his contribution to the visual arts. In 1963, he was busy with This Wonderful World and the Films of Scotland Committee but still found time to attend the twenty-fifth anniversary of the National Film Board in Montreal.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 1965, Grierson was the patron of the Commonwealth Film Festival which took place in Cardiff in that year. In 1966, he was offered the role of Governor of the British Film Institute; however, he turned down the position. This Wonderful World changed the title to John Grierson Presents.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1967, after returning from the Oberhausen Film Festival where he had been the President of Honour of the jury, Grierson suffered a bout of bronchitis which lasted eight days. His brother Anthony, who had trained to be a doctor was called and diagnosed Grierson with emphysema, his coughing fits were a cause for concern, and he was admitted to Manor Hospital. Grierson decided to give up smoking and drinking to benefit his health.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Grierson opened the new primary school at Cambusbarron on 10 October 1967; his sister Dorothy attended the day with him. The BBC expressed their wishes to make a programme about Grierson in the year of his seventieth birthday, which he turned down three times In the year of his seventieth birthday, Grierson received many tributes from across the globe. He was made an honorary member of the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians; he pressed for the ceremony to be held in Glasgow. He also received the Golden Thistle Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Art of Cinema at the Edinburgh Film Festival.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In January 1969, Grierson left for Canada to lecture at McGill University; enrollment for his classes grew to around seven hundred students. He also lectured at Carleton University once a fortnight. At Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh on 8 July 1969, Grierson received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature. A few days earlier on 4 July 1969, Grierson had opened the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Grierson was a member of the jury for the Canadian Film Awards in 1970. He spent a few months in 1971, travelling around India instilling the importance of having small production units throughout the country. He returned to the UK in December 1971 and was meant to travel back to India; however, his trip was delayed by the Indo-Pakistani War. Grierson went into hospital for a health check-up in January 1972; he was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer and was given months to live. During his time in hospital he spent time dictating letters to his wife, Margaret, and received visitors; however, he fell unconscious on 18 February and died on the 19th. In his wishes for his funeral he had detailed his desire to be cremated. Also according to his wishes, his urn was placed in the sea off the Old Head in Kinsale, and his brother Anthony, who had died in August 1971, had his ashes placed at the same time. A small flotilla followed the Able Seaman, which carried the ashes, and when the urns were lowered into the water, the fishing boats sounded their sirens.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Grierson Archive at the University of Stirling Archives was opened by Angus Macdonald in October 1977.",
"title": "Filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Filmography as director:",
"title": "Filmography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Filmography as producer/creative contributor:",
"title": "Filmography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Grierson Documentary Film Awards were established in 1972 to commemorate John Grierson and are currently supervised by The Grierson Trust. The aim of the awards is to recognise outstanding films that demonstrate integrity, originality and technical excellence, together with social or cultural significance.",
"title": "Awards named for John Grierson"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Grierson Awards are presented annually in nine categories:",
"title": "Awards named for John Grierson"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Canadian Film Awards had presented a Grierson Award for \"an outstanding contribution to Canadian cinema in the spirit of John Grierson.\"",
"title": "Awards named for John Grierson"
}
]
| John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's Moana. | 2001-03-21T19:51:14Z | 2023-11-20T10:42:51Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grierson |
15,622 | James Cameron | James Francis Cameron CC (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a major figure in the post-New Hollywood era, and one of the industry's most innovative filmmakers. He often uses novel technologies with a classical filmmaking style. He first gained recognition for writing and directing The Terminator (1984) and found further success with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and the action comedy True Lies (1994). He wrote and directed Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009) and its sequels, with Titanic winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. He is a recipient of various other industry accolades, and three of his films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Cameron co-founded the production companies Lightstorm Entertainment, Digital Domain, and Earthship Productions. In addition to filmmaking, he is a National Geographic sea tourist and has produced many documentaries on the subject, including Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2005). Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies and helped create the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. In 2012, Cameron became the first person to do a solo descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth's ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible.
Cameron's films have grossed over $8 billion worldwide, making him the second-highest-grossing film director of all time. Three of Cameron's films are amongst the top four highest-grossing films of all time; Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Titanic (1997) are the highest, third-highest and fourth-highest-grossing films of all time, respectively. Cameron directed the first film to gross over $1 billion, the first two films to gross over $2 billion, and is the only director to have had three films gross over $2 billion. In 2010, Time named Cameron one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Cameron is also an environmentalist and runs several sustainability businesses.
James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954, in Kapuskasing, Ontario, to Philip Cameron, an electrical engineer, and Shirley (née Lowe), an artist and nurse. He is the first of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. His paternal great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from Balquhidder, Scotland, in 1825. Cameron spent summers on his grandfather's farm in southern Ontario. He attended Stamford Collegiate in Niagara Falls. At age 17, Cameron and his family moved from Chippawa to Brea, California. He attended Sonora High School and then moved to Brea Olinda High School. Classmates recalled that he was not a sportsman but instead enjoyed building things that "either went up into the air or into the deep".
After high school, Cameron enrolled at Fullerton College, a community college in 1973 to study physics. He switched subjects to English, but left the college at the end of 1974. Cameron worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver and a high school janitor, drank beer, smoked cannabis and did a lot of LSD, but wrote in his free time. During this period, he learned about special effects by reading other students' work on "optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology" at the USC library. After the excitement of seeing Star Wars in 1977, Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.
Cameron's directing career began in 1978. After borrowing money from a consortium of dentists, he learned to direct, write and produce his first short film, Xenogenesis (1978) with a friend. Learning as they went, Cameron said he felt like a doctor doing his first surgical procedure. He then served as a production assistant for Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979). While educating himself about filmmaking techniques, Cameron started a job as a miniature model maker at Roger Corman Studios. He was soon employed as an art director for the science-fiction film Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). He carried out the special effects for John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981), served as production designer for Galaxy of Terror (1981), and consulted on the design for Android (1982).
Cameron was hired as the special effects director for the sequel to Piranha (1978), titled Piranha II: The Spawning in 1982. The original director, Miller Drake, left the project due to creative differences with producer Ovidio Assonitis. Shot in Rome, Italy and on Grand Cayman, the film gave Cameron the opportunity to become director for a major film for the first time. Cameron later said that it did not feel like his first film due to power-struggles with Assonitis. Upon release of Piranha II: The Spawning, critics were not impressed; author Tim Healey called it "a marvellously bad movie which splices clichés from every conceivable source".
In 1982, inspired by John Carpenter's horror film Halloween (1978), as well as a nightmare about an invincible robot hit-man sent from the future to assassinate him, Cameron wrote the script for The Terminator (1984), a sci-fi action film about a cyborg sent from the future to carry out a lethal mission. Cameron wanted to sell the script so that he could direct the movie. Whilst some film studios expressed interest in the project, many executives were unwilling to let a new and unfamiliar director make the movie. Gale Anne Hurd, a colleague and founder of Pacific Western Productions, agreed to buy Cameron's script for one dollar, on the condition that Cameron direct the film. He convinced the president of Hemdale Pictures to make the film, with Cameron as director and Hurd as a producer. Lance Henriksen, who starred in Piranha II: The Spawning, was considered for the lead role, but Cameron decided that Arnold Schwarzenegger was more suitable as the cyborg villain due to his bodybuilder appearance. Henriksen was given a smaller role instead. Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton also joined the cast. The Terminator was a box office success, exceeding expectations set by Orion Pictures. The film proved popular with audiences and earned over $78 million worldwide. George Perry of the BBC praised Cameron's direction, writing "Cameron laces the action with ironic jokes, but never lets up on hinting that the terror may strike at any moment". In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 1984, Cameron was hired to write a sequel to First Blood; it was rewritten by Sylvester Stallone and released as Rambo: First Blood Part II. Cameron was then hired to write and direct a sequel to Alien (1979), a science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott. Like the original, the sequel Aliens (1986) featured Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. Aliens follows Ripley as she helps a group of marines fight off extraterrestrials. Despite conflicts with cast and crew during production, and having to replace one of the lead actors — James Remar with Michael Biehn — Aliens was a box office success, generating over $130 million worldwide. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1987; Best Actress, Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Sound. It won awards for Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. In addition, Weaver and the film made the cover of Time in July 1986.
After Aliens, Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd decided to make The Abyss, a story about oil-rig workers who discover strange intelligent life in the ocean. Based on an idea which Cameron had conceived of during high school, the film was initially budgeted at $41 million, although it ran considerably over this amount. It starred Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn. The production process began in the Cayman Islands and in South Carolina, inside the building of an unfinished nuclear power plant with two huge water tanks. The cast and crew recall Cameron's dictatorial behavior, and the filming of water scenes which were mentally and physically exhausting. Upon the film's release, The Abyss was praised for its special effects, and earned $90 million at the worldwide box office. The Abyss received four Academy Award nominations, and won Best Visual Effects.
In 1990, Cameron co-founded the firm Lightstorm Entertainment with partner Lawrence Kasanoff. In 1991, Cameron served as executive producer for Point Break (1991), directed by Kathryn Bigelow. After the success of The Terminator, there were discussions for a sequel, and by the late 1980s, Mario Kassar of Carolco Pictures secured the rights to the sequel, allowing Cameron to begin production of the film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton reprise their roles. The story follows on from Terminator, depicting a new villain (T-1000), with shape-shifting abilities who hunts for Sarah Connor's son, John (Edward Furlong). Cameron cast Robert Patrick as T-1000 because of his lean and thin appearance — a sharp contrast to Schwarzenegger. Cameron explained: "I wanted someone who was extremely fast and agile. If the T-800 is a human Panzer tank, then the T-1000 is a Porsche". Terminator 2 was one of the most expensive films to be produced, costing at least $94 million ($202 million in 2022). Despite the challenging use of computer-generated imagery (CGI), the film was completed on time and released on July 3, 1991. Terminator 2 broke box office records (including the opening weekend record for an R-rated film), earning over $200 million in North America and being the first to earn over $300 million worldwide (respectively over $430 million and $645 million in 2022). It won four Academy Awards: Best Makeup, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. It also received nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing, but lost both to political thriller JFK (1991).
In subsequent years, Cameron planned to do a third Terminator film, but plans never materialized. The rights to the Terminator franchise were eventually purchased by Kassar from a bankruptcy sale of Carolco's assets. Cameron moved on to other projects and, in 1993, co-founded Digital Domain, a visual effects production company. In 1994, Cameron and Schwarzenegger reunited for their third collaboration, True Lies, a remake of the 1991 French comedy La Totale! The story depicts an American secret agent who leads a double life as a married man, whose wife believes he is a computer salesman. The film co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Eliza Dushku and Tom Arnold. Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment signed a deal with 20th Century Fox for the production of True Lies. Budgeted at a minimum of $100 million, the film earned $146 million in the United States and Canada. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and Curtis won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. In 1995, Cameron co-produced Strange Days, a science fiction thriller. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and co-written by Jay Cocks, Strange Days was critically and financially unsuccessful. In 1996, Cameron reunited with the cast of Terminator 2 to film T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, an attraction at Universal Studios Florida, and in other parks around the world.
His next major project was Titanic (1997), an epic about RMS Titanic, which sank in 1912 after striking an iceberg. With a production budget of $200 million, at the time it was the most expensive film ever made. Starting in 1995, Cameron took several dives to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to capture footage of the wreck, which would later be used in the film. A replica of the ship was built in Rosarito Beach and principal photography began in September 1996. Titanic made headlines before its release, for being over-budget and exceeding its schedule. Cameron's completed screenplay depicts two star-crossed lovers, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, from different social classes who fall in love amid the backdrop of the tragedy; a radical departure from his previous work. The supporting cast includes Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Victor Garber, Danny Nucci, David Warner and Bill Paxton.
After months of delay, Titanic premiered on December 19, 1997. The film received strong critical acclaim and became the highest-grossing film of all time, holding this position for twelve years, until Cameron's Avatar beat the record in 2010. The costumes and sets were praised, and The Washington Post considered the CGI graphics to be spectacular. Titanic received a record-tie of fourteen nominations (tied with All About Eve (1950)) at the 1998 Academy Awards. It won eleven of the awards, tying the record for most wins with 1959's Ben-Hur, and 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, including: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Upon receiving Best Picture, Cameron and producer Jon Landau asked for a moment of silence to remember the 1,500 people who died when the ship sank. Film critic Roger Ebert praised Cameron's storytelling, writing: "It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding". Authors Kevin Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar wrote in 1999 that the romance, historical nostalgia and James Horner's music contributed to the film's cultural phenomenon. In 2017, on its 20th anniversary, Titanic became Cameron's second film to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
After the huge success of Titanic, Cameron kept a low profile. In 1998, he and his brother, John, formed Earthship Productions, to stream documentaries about the deep sea, one of Cameron's interests. He had planned to make a film about Spider-Man, a project developed by Menahem Golan of Cannon Films. Columbia hired David Koepp to adapt Cameron's ideas into a screenplay, but due to various disagreements, Cameron abandoned the project. In 2002, Spider-Man was released with the screenplay credited solely to Koepp.
In 2000, Cameron made his debut in television and co-created Dark Angel with Charles H. Eglee, a television series influenced by cyberpunk, biopunk, contemporary superheroes and third-wave feminism. Dark Angel starred Jessica Alba as Max Guevara, a genetically enhanced super-soldier created by a secretive organization. While the first season was moderately successful, the second season did less well, which led to its cancellation.
In 2002, Cameron served as producer on the 2002 film Solaris, a science fiction drama directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film gained mixed reviews and failed at the box office. Keen to make documentaries, Cameron directed Expedition: Bismarck, about the German Battleship Bismarck. In 2003, he directed Ghosts of the Abyss, a documentary about RMS Titanic which was released by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, and designed for 3D theaters. Cameron told The Guardian his intention for filming everything in 3D. In 2005, Cameron co-directed Aliens of the Deep, a documentary about the various forms of life in the ocean. He also starred in Titanic Adventure with Tony Robinson, another documentary about the Titanic shipwreck. In 2006, Cameron co-created and narrated The Exodus Decoded, a documentary exploring the Biblical account of the Exodus. In 2007, Cameron and fellow director Simcha Jacobovici, produced The Lost Tomb of Jesus. It was broadcast on Discovery Channel on March 4, 2007; the documentary was controversial for arguing that the Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth.
By the mid-2000s, Cameron returned to directing and producing another mainstream film since Titanic. Cameron had displayed interest in making Avatar (2009) and Alita: Battle Angel (2019) as early as June 2005, with both films to be shot using 3D technology. He wanted to make Alita: Battle Angel first, followed by Avatar, but switched the order in February 2006. Although Cameron had written an 80-page treatment for Avatar in 1995, Cameron stated that he wanted the necessary technology to improve before starting production. Avatar, with the story line set in the mid-22nd century, had an estimated budget in excess of $300 million. The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. It was composed with a mix of live-action footage and computer-generated animation, using an advanced version of the performance capture technique, previously used by director Robert Zemeckis in The Polar Express. Cameron intended Avatar to be 3D-only but decided to adapt it for conventional viewing as well.
Intended for release in May 2009, Avatar premiered on December 18, 2009. This delay allowed more time for post-production and the opportunity for theaters to install 3D projectors. Avatar broke several box office records during its initial theatrical run. It grossed $749.7 million in the United States and Canada and more than $2.74 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time in the United States and Canada, surpassing Titanic. It was the first film to earn more than $2 billion worldwide. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. In July 2010, an extended theatrical re-release generated an additional $33.2 million worldwide (equivalent to $43,710,000 in 2022) at the box office. In his mixed review, Sukhdev Sandhu of The Telegraph complimented the 3D, but opined that Cameron "should have been more brutal in his editing". That year, Vanity Fair reported that Cameron's earnings were US$257 million, making him the highest earner in Hollywood. As of 2022, Avatar and Titanic hold the achievement for being the first two of the six films in history to gross over $2 billion worldwide.
In 2011, Cameron served as an executive producer for Sanctum, a disaster-survival film about a cave diving expedition which turns deadly. Although receiving mixed reviews, the film earned a fair $108 million at the worldwide box office. Cameron re-investigated the sinking of RMS Titanic with eight experts in a 2012 TV documentary special, Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron, which premiered on April 8 on the National Geographic channel. In the feature, the experts revised the CGI animation of the sinking conceived in 1995. In March 2010, Cameron announced that Titanic will be converted and re-released in 3D to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the tragedy. On March 27, 2012, Titanic 3D premiered at London's Royal Albert Hall. He also served as executive producer of Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away and Deepsea Challenge 3D in 2012 and 2014, respectively.
Cameron starred in the 2017 documentary Atlantis Rising, with collaborator Simcha Jacobovici. The pair go on an adventure to explore the existence of the city of Atlantis. The programme aired on January 29 on National Geographic. Next, Cameron produced and appeared in a documentary about the history of science fiction. James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction, the six-episodic series was broadcast on AMC in 2018. The series featured interviews with guests including Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Christopher Nolan. He stated "Without Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, there wouldn't have been Ray Bradbury or Robert A. Heinlein, and without them, there wouldn't be [George] Lucas, [Steven] Spielberg, Ridley Scott or me".
Alita: Battle Angel was finally released in 2019, after being in parallel development with Avatar. Written by Cameron and friend Jon Landau, the film was directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by Cameron. The film is based on a 1990s Japanese manga series Battle Angel Alita, depicting a cyborg who cannot remember anything of her past life and tries to uncover the truth. Produced with similar techniques and technology as in Avatar, the film starred Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley and Keean Johnson. The film premiered on January 31, 2019, to generally positive reviews and $404 million (equivalent to $458,300,000 in 2022) at the worldwide box office. In her review, Monica Castillo of RogerEbert.com called it "an awe-inspiring jump for [Rodriguez]" and "a visual bonanza", despite the bulky script. Cameron then returned to the Terminator franchise as producer and writer for Tim Miller's Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).
In August 2013, Cameron announced plans to direct three sequels to Avatar simultaneously, for release in December 2016, 2017, and 2018. However, the release dates were adjusted due to Cameron's other priorities, with Avatar 3, 4 and 5 to be released, respectively, on December 20, 2024, December 18, 2026, and December 22, 2028. Deadline Hollywood estimated that the budget for these would be over $1 billion. Avatar 2 (later given the subtitle The Way of Water) and Avatar 3 began simultaneous production in Manhattan Beach, California on August 15, 2017. Principal photography began in New Zealand on September 25, 2017. Parts of Avatar 4 were also filmed during this time. Cameron stated in a 2017 interview: "Let's face it, if Avatar 2 and 3 don't make enough money, there's not going to be a 4 and 5". Avatar: The Way of Water had its world premiere in London on December 6, 2022. It became the highest-grossing film released in 2022, and as of 2023 stood as the 3rd highest-grossing film of all time, behind only Avatar and Avengers: Endgame, and just ahead of Titanic.
Lightstorm Entertainment bought the film rights to the Taylor Stevens novel, The Informationist, a thriller set in Africa with Cameron planning to direct. In 2010, he indicated he would adapt the Charles R. Pellegrino book The Last Train from Hiroshima, which is about the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cameron met with survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi before his death in 2010.
As of 2012, Cameron and his family have adopted a vegan diet. Cameron states that "by changing what you eat, you will change the entire contract between the human species and the natural world". He and his wife are advocates of plant-based food and have called for constructive actions to produce more plant-based food and less meat to mitigate the impact of climate change. In 2006, Cameron's wife co-founded MUSE School, which became the first K-12 vegan school in the United States. He has also hosted events for Global Green USA, and pushed for sustainable solutions to energy use.
In early 2014, Cameron purchased the Beaufort Vineyard and Estate Winery in Courtenay, British Columbia for $2.7 million (equivalent to $3,304,000 in 2022), to pursue his passion for sustainable agribusiness. He sold the vineyard in 2020. In June 2019, Cameron announced a business venture with film director Peter Jackson, to produce plant-based meat, cheese and dairy products in New Zealand. He suggested that we need "a nice transition to a meatless or relatively meatless world in 20 or 30 years". In 2012, Cameron purchased more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of land in remote South Wairarapa, New Zealand; subsequent purchases have seen that grow to approximately 5,000 hectares. The Camerons grow a range of organic fruit, nuts and vegetables on the land. Nearby in Greytown, they run a café and grocery store, Forest Food Organics, selling produce from their land.
In June 2010, Cameron met with officials of the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss possible solutions to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was reported that he offered his assistance to help stop the oil well from leaking. He is a member of the NASA Advisory Council and he worked with the space agency to build cameras for the Curiosity rover sent for Mars. NASA launched the rover without Cameron's technology due to a lack of time during testing. He has expressed interest in a project about Mars, stating: "I've been very interested in the Humans to Mars movement ... and I've done a tremendous amount of personal research for a novel, a miniseries, and a 3D film." Cameron is a member of the Mars Society, a non-profit organization lobbying for the colonization of Mars. Cameron endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for the 2016 United States presidential election.
Cameron has experience with deep-sea exploration, in part because of his work on The Abyss and Titanic, and his childhood fascination with shipwrecks. He has contributed to advancements in underwater filming and remotely operated vehicles, and helped develop the 3D Fusion Camera System. In 2011, Cameron became a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. In this role, on March 7, 2012, he dived five miles deep to the bottom of the New Britain Trench with the Deepsea Challenger. 19 days later, Cameron reached the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. He spent more than three hours exploring the ocean floor, becoming the first to accomplish the trip alone. During his dive to the Challenger Deep, he discovered new species of sea cucumber, squid worm and a giant single-celled amoeba. He was preceded by unmanned dives in 1995 and 2009, as well as by Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, the first men to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench aboard the Bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960.
In the aftermath of the Titan submersible implosion, Cameron made appearances in multiple news outlets where he criticized OceanGate and its co-founder Stockton Rush for failing to certify the company's submersibles for safety. He was also critical of the use of carbon-fiber composite in the company's Titan submersible, stating that the material has "no strength in external compression" when withstanding the pressure in deep-sea environments. On July 15, Cameron stated that he had no plans for an OceanGate documentary.
Cameron has been married five times. He was married to Sharon Williams from 1978 to 1984. A year after he and Williams divorced, Cameron married film producer Gale Anne Hurd, a close collaborator for his 1980s films. They divorced in 1989. Soon after separating from Hurd, Cameron met the director Kathryn Bigelow, whom he wed in 1989; they divorced in 1991. Cameron then began a relationship with Linda Hamilton, the lead actress in The Terminator series. Their daughter was born in 1993. Cameron married Hamilton in 1997. Amid speculation of an affair between Cameron and actress Suzy Amis, Cameron and Hamilton separated after two years of marriage, with Hamilton receiving a settlement of $50 million. He married Amis, his fifth wife, in 2000. They have one son and two daughters together.
Cameron applied for American citizenship in 2004, but withdrew his application after George W. Bush won the presidential election. Cameron resided in the United States, but after filming Avatar in New Zealand, Cameron bought a home and a farm there in 2012. He divided his time between Malibu, California and New Zealand until 2020, after which he sold his Malibu home and decided to live in New Zealand permanently. He said in August 2020: "I plan to make all my future films in New Zealand, and I see the country having an opportunity to demonstrate to the international film industry how to safely return to work. Doing so with Avatar [sequels] will be a beacon that, when this is over [COVID-19 pandemic], will attract more production to New Zealand and continue to stimulate the screen industry and the economy for years."
Cameron is an atheist; he formerly associated himself with agnosticism, a stance he said he had come to see as "cowardly atheism." Cameron met close friend Guillermo del Toro on the production of his 1993 film, Cronos. In 1998, del Toro's father was kidnapped in Guadalajara and Cameron gave del Toro more than $1 million (equivalent to $1,683,000 in 2022) in cash to pay a ransom and have his father released. Cameron had been friends with Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet for over 25 years before the latter's death.
In June 2013, British artist Roger Dean filed a copyright complaint against Cameron, seeking damages of $50 million (equivalent to $62,240,000 in 2022). Relating to Avatar, Cameron was accused of "wilful and deliberate copying, dissemination and exploitation" of Dean's original images; the case was dismissed by US district judge Jesse Furman in 2014. In 2016, Premier Exhibitions, owner of many RMS Titanic artifacts, filed for bankruptcy. Cameron supported the UK's National Maritime Museum and National Museums Northern Ireland decision to bid for the artifacts, but they were acquired by an investment group before a formal bid took place.
Cameron's films are often based on themes which explore the conflicts between intelligent machines and humanity or nature, dangers of corporate greed, strong female characters, and a romance subplot. Cameron has further stated in an interview with The Talks, "All my movies are love stories." Both Titanic and Avatar are noted for featuring star-crossed lovers. Characters suffering from emotionally intense and dramatic environments in the sea wilderness are explored in The Abyss and Titanic. The Terminator series amplifies technology as an enemy which could lead to devastation of mankind. Similarly, Avatar views tribal people as an honest group, whereas a "technologically advanced imperial culture is fundamentally evil".
Cameron is regarded as an innovative filmmaker in the industry, with a classical filmmaking style, as well as not easy to work for. Radio Times critic John Ferguson described Cameron as "the king of hi-tech thrillers". Dalin Rowell of /Film stated: "Known for his larger-than-life creations and unique filmmaking style, director James Cameron is in a league all of his own. With his genre-spanning work, lofty ambitions, and unrestrained energy, Cameron has carved out a name for himself in Hollywood as an artist willing to do anything to see his vision come true." Rebecca Keegan, author of The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron, describes Cameron as "comically hands-on", and would try to do every job on the set. Andrew Gumbel of The Independent says Cameron "is a nightmare to work with. Studios fear his habit of straying way over schedule and over budget. He is notorious on set for his uncompromising and dictatorial manner, as well as his flaming temper". Author Alexandra Keller writes that Cameron is an egomaniac, obsessed with vision, but praises his "technological ingenuity" at creating a "visceral viewing experience".
According to Ed Harris, who starred in Cameron's film The Abyss, Cameron behaved in an autocratic manner. Orson Scott Card, who novelized The Abyss, stated that Cameron "made everyone around him miserable, and his unkindness did nothing to improve the film in any way. Nor did it motivate people to work faster or better". Harris later said: "I like Jim. He's an incredibly talented, intelligent guy", adding that "it was always good to see him" in later years. Speaking of her experience on Titanic, Kate Winslet said that she admired Cameron, but "there were times I was genuinely frightened of him". Describing him as having "a temper like you wouldn't believe", she had said she would not work with him again unless it was "for a lot of money". Despite this, Winslet and Cameron still looked for future projects, and Winslet was eventually cast in Avatar 2. Her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio told Esquire: "When somebody felt a different way on the set, there was a confrontation. He lets you know exactly how he feels", but complimented Cameron, "he's of the lineage of John Ford. He knows what he wants his film to be." Sam Worthington, who starred in Avatar, said that if a mobile phone rang during filming, Cameron would "nail it to the wall with a nail gun". Composer James Horner was also not immune to Cameron's demands; he recalls having to write music in a short time frame for Aliens. After the experience, Horner did not work with Cameron for a decade. In 1996, they reconciled their friendship and Horner produced the soundtracks for Titanic and Avatar.
Despite this reputation, Sigourney Weaver has praised Cameron's perfectionism and attention to detail, saying: "He really does want us to risk our lives and limbs for the shot, but he doesn't mind risking his own". In 2015, Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis both applauded Cameron in an interview. Curtis remarked: "He can do every other job [than acting]. I'm talking about every single department, from art direction to props to wardrobe to cameras, he knows more than everyone doing the job". Curtis also said Cameron "loves actors", while Weaver referred to Cameron as "so generous to actors" and a "genius". Michael Biehn, a frequent collaborator, also praised Cameron, saying he "is a really passionate person. He cares more about his movies than other directors care about their movies", adding, "I've never seen him yell at anybody". Biehn acknowledged that Cameron is "not real sensitive when it comes to actors and their trailers, and waiting for actors to come to the set". Worthington commented: "He demands excellence. If you don't give it to him, you're going to get chewed out. And that's a good thing". When asked in 2012 about his reputation, Cameron dryly responded: "I don't have to shout any more, because the word is out there already".
In 2021, while giving a MasterClass during a break from his work on the Avatar sequels, Cameron acknowledged his past demanding behaviour, opining that if he could go back in time, he would improve the working relationship with his cast and crew members by being less autocratic, thinking of himself as a "tinpot dictator"; Cameron stated that when he visited one of Ron Howard's sets, he was "dumbfounded" at how much time Howard took to compliment his crew, aspiring to become "his inner Ron Howard".
Cameron's work has had an impact in the Hollywood film industry. The Avengers (2012), directed by Joss Whedon, was inspired by Cameron's approach to action sequences. Whedon also admires Cameron's ability for writing heroic female characters such as Ellen Ripley of Aliens, adding that he is "the leader and the teacher and the Yoda". Director Michael Bay idolizes Cameron and was convinced by him to use 3D cameras for filming Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). Cameron's approach to 3D inspired Baz Luhrmann during the production of The Great Gatsby (2013). Other directors that have been inspired by Cameron include Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp, and Xavier Dolan.
Cameron received the inaugural Ray Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1992 for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In recognition of "a distinguished career as a Canadian filmmaker", Carleton University awarded Cameron the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts on June 13, 1998. Cameron received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1998, presented by Awards Council member George Lucas. He also received an honorary doctorate in 1998 from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, for his accomplishments in the international film industry. In 1998, Cameron attended a convocation to receive an honorary degree from Ryerson University, Toronto. The university awards its highest honor to those who have made extraordinary contributions in Canada or internationally. A year later, Cameron received the honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from California State University, Fullerton. He accepted the degree at the university's summer annual commencement exercise.
Cameron's work has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; as one of the few directors to have won three Academy Awards in a single year. For Titanic, he won Best Director, Best Picture (shared with Jon Landau) and Best Film Editing (shared with Conrad Buff and Richard A. Harris). In 2009, he was nominated for awards in Best Film Editing (shared with John Refoua and Stephen E. Rivkin, Best Director and Best Picture for Avatar. Cameron has won two Golden Globes: Best Director for Titanic and Avatar.
In recognition of his contributions to underwater filming and remote vehicle technology, University of Southampton awarded Cameron the honorary degree of doctor of the university in July 2004. Cameron accepted the award at the National Oceanography Centre. In 2008, Cameron received a star on Canada's Walk of Fame and a year later, received the 2,396th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On February 28, 2010, Cameron was honored with a Visual Effects Society (VES) Lifetime Achievement Award. In June 2012, Cameron was inducted to The Science Fiction Hall of Fame at the Museum of Pop Culture for his contribution to the science fiction and fantasy field. Cameron collaborated with Walt Disney Imagineering and served as a creative consultant on Pandora – The World of Avatar, an Avatar-themed land at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida which opened to the public on May 27, 2017. A species of frog, Pristimantis jamescameroni, was named after Cameron for his work in promoting environmental awareness and advocacy of veganism.
In 2010, Time magazine named Cameron one of the 100 most influential people in the world. That same year, he was ranked at the top of the list in The Guardian Film Power 100 and in 30th place in New Statesman's list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010". In 2013, Cameron received the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public, which is annually awarded by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2019, Cameron was appointed as a Companion of the Order of Canada by Governor General Julie Payette, giving him the Post Nominal Letters "CC" for life.
In 2020, Cameron was the subject of the second season of the Epicleff Media dramatic podcast Blockbuster. The audio drama, created and narrated by Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker Matt Schrader, chronicles Cameron's life and career (leading up to the creation and release of Titanic), and stars actor Ross Marquand in the lead voice role as Cameron. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "James Francis Cameron CC (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a major figure in the post-New Hollywood era, and one of the industry's most innovative filmmakers. He often uses novel technologies with a classical filmmaking style. He first gained recognition for writing and directing The Terminator (1984) and found further success with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and the action comedy True Lies (1994). He wrote and directed Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009) and its sequels, with Titanic winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. He is a recipient of various other industry accolades, and three of his films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Cameron co-founded the production companies Lightstorm Entertainment, Digital Domain, and Earthship Productions. In addition to filmmaking, he is a National Geographic sea tourist and has produced many documentaries on the subject, including Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2005). Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies and helped create the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. In 2012, Cameron became the first person to do a solo descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth's ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Cameron's films have grossed over $8 billion worldwide, making him the second-highest-grossing film director of all time. Three of Cameron's films are amongst the top four highest-grossing films of all time; Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Titanic (1997) are the highest, third-highest and fourth-highest-grossing films of all time, respectively. Cameron directed the first film to gross over $1 billion, the first two films to gross over $2 billion, and is the only director to have had three films gross over $2 billion. In 2010, Time named Cameron one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Cameron is also an environmentalist and runs several sustainability businesses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954, in Kapuskasing, Ontario, to Philip Cameron, an electrical engineer, and Shirley (née Lowe), an artist and nurse. He is the first of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. His paternal great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from Balquhidder, Scotland, in 1825. Cameron spent summers on his grandfather's farm in southern Ontario. He attended Stamford Collegiate in Niagara Falls. At age 17, Cameron and his family moved from Chippawa to Brea, California. He attended Sonora High School and then moved to Brea Olinda High School. Classmates recalled that he was not a sportsman but instead enjoyed building things that \"either went up into the air or into the deep\".",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "After high school, Cameron enrolled at Fullerton College, a community college in 1973 to study physics. He switched subjects to English, but left the college at the end of 1974. Cameron worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver and a high school janitor, drank beer, smoked cannabis and did a lot of LSD, but wrote in his free time. During this period, he learned about special effects by reading other students' work on \"optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology\" at the USC library. After the excitement of seeing Star Wars in 1977, Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Cameron's directing career began in 1978. After borrowing money from a consortium of dentists, he learned to direct, write and produce his first short film, Xenogenesis (1978) with a friend. Learning as they went, Cameron said he felt like a doctor doing his first surgical procedure. He then served as a production assistant for Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979). While educating himself about filmmaking techniques, Cameron started a job as a miniature model maker at Roger Corman Studios. He was soon employed as an art director for the science-fiction film Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). He carried out the special effects for John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981), served as production designer for Galaxy of Terror (1981), and consulted on the design for Android (1982).",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Cameron was hired as the special effects director for the sequel to Piranha (1978), titled Piranha II: The Spawning in 1982. The original director, Miller Drake, left the project due to creative differences with producer Ovidio Assonitis. Shot in Rome, Italy and on Grand Cayman, the film gave Cameron the opportunity to become director for a major film for the first time. Cameron later said that it did not feel like his first film due to power-struggles with Assonitis. Upon release of Piranha II: The Spawning, critics were not impressed; author Tim Healey called it \"a marvellously bad movie which splices clichés from every conceivable source\".",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1982, inspired by John Carpenter's horror film Halloween (1978), as well as a nightmare about an invincible robot hit-man sent from the future to assassinate him, Cameron wrote the script for The Terminator (1984), a sci-fi action film about a cyborg sent from the future to carry out a lethal mission. Cameron wanted to sell the script so that he could direct the movie. Whilst some film studios expressed interest in the project, many executives were unwilling to let a new and unfamiliar director make the movie. Gale Anne Hurd, a colleague and founder of Pacific Western Productions, agreed to buy Cameron's script for one dollar, on the condition that Cameron direct the film. He convinced the president of Hemdale Pictures to make the film, with Cameron as director and Hurd as a producer. Lance Henriksen, who starred in Piranha II: The Spawning, was considered for the lead role, but Cameron decided that Arnold Schwarzenegger was more suitable as the cyborg villain due to his bodybuilder appearance. Henriksen was given a smaller role instead. Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton also joined the cast. The Terminator was a box office success, exceeding expectations set by Orion Pictures. The film proved popular with audiences and earned over $78 million worldwide. George Perry of the BBC praised Cameron's direction, writing \"Cameron laces the action with ironic jokes, but never lets up on hinting that the terror may strike at any moment\". In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\".",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1984, Cameron was hired to write a sequel to First Blood; it was rewritten by Sylvester Stallone and released as Rambo: First Blood Part II. Cameron was then hired to write and direct a sequel to Alien (1979), a science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott. Like the original, the sequel Aliens (1986) featured Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. Aliens follows Ripley as she helps a group of marines fight off extraterrestrials. Despite conflicts with cast and crew during production, and having to replace one of the lead actors — James Remar with Michael Biehn — Aliens was a box office success, generating over $130 million worldwide. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1987; Best Actress, Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Sound. It won awards for Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. In addition, Weaver and the film made the cover of Time in July 1986.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After Aliens, Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd decided to make The Abyss, a story about oil-rig workers who discover strange intelligent life in the ocean. Based on an idea which Cameron had conceived of during high school, the film was initially budgeted at $41 million, although it ran considerably over this amount. It starred Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn. The production process began in the Cayman Islands and in South Carolina, inside the building of an unfinished nuclear power plant with two huge water tanks. The cast and crew recall Cameron's dictatorial behavior, and the filming of water scenes which were mentally and physically exhausting. Upon the film's release, The Abyss was praised for its special effects, and earned $90 million at the worldwide box office. The Abyss received four Academy Award nominations, and won Best Visual Effects.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1990, Cameron co-founded the firm Lightstorm Entertainment with partner Lawrence Kasanoff. In 1991, Cameron served as executive producer for Point Break (1991), directed by Kathryn Bigelow. After the success of The Terminator, there were discussions for a sequel, and by the late 1980s, Mario Kassar of Carolco Pictures secured the rights to the sequel, allowing Cameron to begin production of the film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton reprise their roles. The story follows on from Terminator, depicting a new villain (T-1000), with shape-shifting abilities who hunts for Sarah Connor's son, John (Edward Furlong). Cameron cast Robert Patrick as T-1000 because of his lean and thin appearance — a sharp contrast to Schwarzenegger. Cameron explained: \"I wanted someone who was extremely fast and agile. If the T-800 is a human Panzer tank, then the T-1000 is a Porsche\". Terminator 2 was one of the most expensive films to be produced, costing at least $94 million ($202 million in 2022). Despite the challenging use of computer-generated imagery (CGI), the film was completed on time and released on July 3, 1991. Terminator 2 broke box office records (including the opening weekend record for an R-rated film), earning over $200 million in North America and being the first to earn over $300 million worldwide (respectively over $430 million and $645 million in 2022). It won four Academy Awards: Best Makeup, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. It also received nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing, but lost both to political thriller JFK (1991).",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In subsequent years, Cameron planned to do a third Terminator film, but plans never materialized. The rights to the Terminator franchise were eventually purchased by Kassar from a bankruptcy sale of Carolco's assets. Cameron moved on to other projects and, in 1993, co-founded Digital Domain, a visual effects production company. In 1994, Cameron and Schwarzenegger reunited for their third collaboration, True Lies, a remake of the 1991 French comedy La Totale! The story depicts an American secret agent who leads a double life as a married man, whose wife believes he is a computer salesman. The film co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Eliza Dushku and Tom Arnold. Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment signed a deal with 20th Century Fox for the production of True Lies. Budgeted at a minimum of $100 million, the film earned $146 million in the United States and Canada. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and Curtis won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. In 1995, Cameron co-produced Strange Days, a science fiction thriller. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and co-written by Jay Cocks, Strange Days was critically and financially unsuccessful. In 1996, Cameron reunited with the cast of Terminator 2 to film T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, an attraction at Universal Studios Florida, and in other parks around the world.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "His next major project was Titanic (1997), an epic about RMS Titanic, which sank in 1912 after striking an iceberg. With a production budget of $200 million, at the time it was the most expensive film ever made. Starting in 1995, Cameron took several dives to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to capture footage of the wreck, which would later be used in the film. A replica of the ship was built in Rosarito Beach and principal photography began in September 1996. Titanic made headlines before its release, for being over-budget and exceeding its schedule. Cameron's completed screenplay depicts two star-crossed lovers, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, from different social classes who fall in love amid the backdrop of the tragedy; a radical departure from his previous work. The supporting cast includes Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Victor Garber, Danny Nucci, David Warner and Bill Paxton.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "After months of delay, Titanic premiered on December 19, 1997. The film received strong critical acclaim and became the highest-grossing film of all time, holding this position for twelve years, until Cameron's Avatar beat the record in 2010. The costumes and sets were praised, and The Washington Post considered the CGI graphics to be spectacular. Titanic received a record-tie of fourteen nominations (tied with All About Eve (1950)) at the 1998 Academy Awards. It won eleven of the awards, tying the record for most wins with 1959's Ben-Hur, and 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, including: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Upon receiving Best Picture, Cameron and producer Jon Landau asked for a moment of silence to remember the 1,500 people who died when the ship sank. Film critic Roger Ebert praised Cameron's storytelling, writing: \"It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding\". Authors Kevin Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar wrote in 1999 that the romance, historical nostalgia and James Horner's music contributed to the film's cultural phenomenon. In 2017, on its 20th anniversary, Titanic became Cameron's second film to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "After the huge success of Titanic, Cameron kept a low profile. In 1998, he and his brother, John, formed Earthship Productions, to stream documentaries about the deep sea, one of Cameron's interests. He had planned to make a film about Spider-Man, a project developed by Menahem Golan of Cannon Films. Columbia hired David Koepp to adapt Cameron's ideas into a screenplay, but due to various disagreements, Cameron abandoned the project. In 2002, Spider-Man was released with the screenplay credited solely to Koepp.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 2000, Cameron made his debut in television and co-created Dark Angel with Charles H. Eglee, a television series influenced by cyberpunk, biopunk, contemporary superheroes and third-wave feminism. Dark Angel starred Jessica Alba as Max Guevara, a genetically enhanced super-soldier created by a secretive organization. While the first season was moderately successful, the second season did less well, which led to its cancellation.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 2002, Cameron served as producer on the 2002 film Solaris, a science fiction drama directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film gained mixed reviews and failed at the box office. Keen to make documentaries, Cameron directed Expedition: Bismarck, about the German Battleship Bismarck. In 2003, he directed Ghosts of the Abyss, a documentary about RMS Titanic which was released by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, and designed for 3D theaters. Cameron told The Guardian his intention for filming everything in 3D. In 2005, Cameron co-directed Aliens of the Deep, a documentary about the various forms of life in the ocean. He also starred in Titanic Adventure with Tony Robinson, another documentary about the Titanic shipwreck. In 2006, Cameron co-created and narrated The Exodus Decoded, a documentary exploring the Biblical account of the Exodus. In 2007, Cameron and fellow director Simcha Jacobovici, produced The Lost Tomb of Jesus. It was broadcast on Discovery Channel on March 4, 2007; the documentary was controversial for arguing that the Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "By the mid-2000s, Cameron returned to directing and producing another mainstream film since Titanic. Cameron had displayed interest in making Avatar (2009) and Alita: Battle Angel (2019) as early as June 2005, with both films to be shot using 3D technology. He wanted to make Alita: Battle Angel first, followed by Avatar, but switched the order in February 2006. Although Cameron had written an 80-page treatment for Avatar in 1995, Cameron stated that he wanted the necessary technology to improve before starting production. Avatar, with the story line set in the mid-22nd century, had an estimated budget in excess of $300 million. The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. It was composed with a mix of live-action footage and computer-generated animation, using an advanced version of the performance capture technique, previously used by director Robert Zemeckis in The Polar Express. Cameron intended Avatar to be 3D-only but decided to adapt it for conventional viewing as well.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Intended for release in May 2009, Avatar premiered on December 18, 2009. This delay allowed more time for post-production and the opportunity for theaters to install 3D projectors. Avatar broke several box office records during its initial theatrical run. It grossed $749.7 million in the United States and Canada and more than $2.74 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time in the United States and Canada, surpassing Titanic. It was the first film to earn more than $2 billion worldwide. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. In July 2010, an extended theatrical re-release generated an additional $33.2 million worldwide (equivalent to $43,710,000 in 2022) at the box office. In his mixed review, Sukhdev Sandhu of The Telegraph complimented the 3D, but opined that Cameron \"should have been more brutal in his editing\". That year, Vanity Fair reported that Cameron's earnings were US$257 million, making him the highest earner in Hollywood. As of 2022, Avatar and Titanic hold the achievement for being the first two of the six films in history to gross over $2 billion worldwide.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2011, Cameron served as an executive producer for Sanctum, a disaster-survival film about a cave diving expedition which turns deadly. Although receiving mixed reviews, the film earned a fair $108 million at the worldwide box office. Cameron re-investigated the sinking of RMS Titanic with eight experts in a 2012 TV documentary special, Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron, which premiered on April 8 on the National Geographic channel. In the feature, the experts revised the CGI animation of the sinking conceived in 1995. In March 2010, Cameron announced that Titanic will be converted and re-released in 3D to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the tragedy. On March 27, 2012, Titanic 3D premiered at London's Royal Albert Hall. He also served as executive producer of Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away and Deepsea Challenge 3D in 2012 and 2014, respectively.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Cameron starred in the 2017 documentary Atlantis Rising, with collaborator Simcha Jacobovici. The pair go on an adventure to explore the existence of the city of Atlantis. The programme aired on January 29 on National Geographic. Next, Cameron produced and appeared in a documentary about the history of science fiction. James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction, the six-episodic series was broadcast on AMC in 2018. The series featured interviews with guests including Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Christopher Nolan. He stated \"Without Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, there wouldn't have been Ray Bradbury or Robert A. Heinlein, and without them, there wouldn't be [George] Lucas, [Steven] Spielberg, Ridley Scott or me\".",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Alita: Battle Angel was finally released in 2019, after being in parallel development with Avatar. Written by Cameron and friend Jon Landau, the film was directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by Cameron. The film is based on a 1990s Japanese manga series Battle Angel Alita, depicting a cyborg who cannot remember anything of her past life and tries to uncover the truth. Produced with similar techniques and technology as in Avatar, the film starred Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley and Keean Johnson. The film premiered on January 31, 2019, to generally positive reviews and $404 million (equivalent to $458,300,000 in 2022) at the worldwide box office. In her review, Monica Castillo of RogerEbert.com called it \"an awe-inspiring jump for [Rodriguez]\" and \"a visual bonanza\", despite the bulky script. Cameron then returned to the Terminator franchise as producer and writer for Tim Miller's Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In August 2013, Cameron announced plans to direct three sequels to Avatar simultaneously, for release in December 2016, 2017, and 2018. However, the release dates were adjusted due to Cameron's other priorities, with Avatar 3, 4 and 5 to be released, respectively, on December 20, 2024, December 18, 2026, and December 22, 2028. Deadline Hollywood estimated that the budget for these would be over $1 billion. Avatar 2 (later given the subtitle The Way of Water) and Avatar 3 began simultaneous production in Manhattan Beach, California on August 15, 2017. Principal photography began in New Zealand on September 25, 2017. Parts of Avatar 4 were also filmed during this time. Cameron stated in a 2017 interview: \"Let's face it, if Avatar 2 and 3 don't make enough money, there's not going to be a 4 and 5\". Avatar: The Way of Water had its world premiere in London on December 6, 2022. It became the highest-grossing film released in 2022, and as of 2023 stood as the 3rd highest-grossing film of all time, behind only Avatar and Avengers: Endgame, and just ahead of Titanic.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Lightstorm Entertainment bought the film rights to the Taylor Stevens novel, The Informationist, a thriller set in Africa with Cameron planning to direct. In 2010, he indicated he would adapt the Charles R. Pellegrino book The Last Train from Hiroshima, which is about the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cameron met with survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi before his death in 2010.",
"title": "Film career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "As of 2012, Cameron and his family have adopted a vegan diet. Cameron states that \"by changing what you eat, you will change the entire contract between the human species and the natural world\". He and his wife are advocates of plant-based food and have called for constructive actions to produce more plant-based food and less meat to mitigate the impact of climate change. In 2006, Cameron's wife co-founded MUSE School, which became the first K-12 vegan school in the United States. He has also hosted events for Global Green USA, and pushed for sustainable solutions to energy use.",
"title": "Activism and deep-sea exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In early 2014, Cameron purchased the Beaufort Vineyard and Estate Winery in Courtenay, British Columbia for $2.7 million (equivalent to $3,304,000 in 2022), to pursue his passion for sustainable agribusiness. He sold the vineyard in 2020. In June 2019, Cameron announced a business venture with film director Peter Jackson, to produce plant-based meat, cheese and dairy products in New Zealand. He suggested that we need \"a nice transition to a meatless or relatively meatless world in 20 or 30 years\". In 2012, Cameron purchased more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of land in remote South Wairarapa, New Zealand; subsequent purchases have seen that grow to approximately 5,000 hectares. The Camerons grow a range of organic fruit, nuts and vegetables on the land. Nearby in Greytown, they run a café and grocery store, Forest Food Organics, selling produce from their land.",
"title": "Activism and deep-sea exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In June 2010, Cameron met with officials of the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss possible solutions to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was reported that he offered his assistance to help stop the oil well from leaking. He is a member of the NASA Advisory Council and he worked with the space agency to build cameras for the Curiosity rover sent for Mars. NASA launched the rover without Cameron's technology due to a lack of time during testing. He has expressed interest in a project about Mars, stating: \"I've been very interested in the Humans to Mars movement ... and I've done a tremendous amount of personal research for a novel, a miniseries, and a 3D film.\" Cameron is a member of the Mars Society, a non-profit organization lobbying for the colonization of Mars. Cameron endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for the 2016 United States presidential election.",
"title": "Activism and deep-sea exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Cameron has experience with deep-sea exploration, in part because of his work on The Abyss and Titanic, and his childhood fascination with shipwrecks. He has contributed to advancements in underwater filming and remotely operated vehicles, and helped develop the 3D Fusion Camera System. In 2011, Cameron became a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. In this role, on March 7, 2012, he dived five miles deep to the bottom of the New Britain Trench with the Deepsea Challenger. 19 days later, Cameron reached the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. He spent more than three hours exploring the ocean floor, becoming the first to accomplish the trip alone. During his dive to the Challenger Deep, he discovered new species of sea cucumber, squid worm and a giant single-celled amoeba. He was preceded by unmanned dives in 1995 and 2009, as well as by Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, the first men to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench aboard the Bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960.",
"title": "Activism and deep-sea exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In the aftermath of the Titan submersible implosion, Cameron made appearances in multiple news outlets where he criticized OceanGate and its co-founder Stockton Rush for failing to certify the company's submersibles for safety. He was also critical of the use of carbon-fiber composite in the company's Titan submersible, stating that the material has \"no strength in external compression\" when withstanding the pressure in deep-sea environments. On July 15, Cameron stated that he had no plans for an OceanGate documentary.",
"title": "Activism and deep-sea exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Cameron has been married five times. He was married to Sharon Williams from 1978 to 1984. A year after he and Williams divorced, Cameron married film producer Gale Anne Hurd, a close collaborator for his 1980s films. They divorced in 1989. Soon after separating from Hurd, Cameron met the director Kathryn Bigelow, whom he wed in 1989; they divorced in 1991. Cameron then began a relationship with Linda Hamilton, the lead actress in The Terminator series. Their daughter was born in 1993. Cameron married Hamilton in 1997. Amid speculation of an affair between Cameron and actress Suzy Amis, Cameron and Hamilton separated after two years of marriage, with Hamilton receiving a settlement of $50 million. He married Amis, his fifth wife, in 2000. They have one son and two daughters together.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Cameron applied for American citizenship in 2004, but withdrew his application after George W. Bush won the presidential election. Cameron resided in the United States, but after filming Avatar in New Zealand, Cameron bought a home and a farm there in 2012. He divided his time between Malibu, California and New Zealand until 2020, after which he sold his Malibu home and decided to live in New Zealand permanently. He said in August 2020: \"I plan to make all my future films in New Zealand, and I see the country having an opportunity to demonstrate to the international film industry how to safely return to work. Doing so with Avatar [sequels] will be a beacon that, when this is over [COVID-19 pandemic], will attract more production to New Zealand and continue to stimulate the screen industry and the economy for years.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Cameron is an atheist; he formerly associated himself with agnosticism, a stance he said he had come to see as \"cowardly atheism.\" Cameron met close friend Guillermo del Toro on the production of his 1993 film, Cronos. In 1998, del Toro's father was kidnapped in Guadalajara and Cameron gave del Toro more than $1 million (equivalent to $1,683,000 in 2022) in cash to pay a ransom and have his father released. Cameron had been friends with Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet for over 25 years before the latter's death.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In June 2013, British artist Roger Dean filed a copyright complaint against Cameron, seeking damages of $50 million (equivalent to $62,240,000 in 2022). Relating to Avatar, Cameron was accused of \"wilful and deliberate copying, dissemination and exploitation\" of Dean's original images; the case was dismissed by US district judge Jesse Furman in 2014. In 2016, Premier Exhibitions, owner of many RMS Titanic artifacts, filed for bankruptcy. Cameron supported the UK's National Maritime Museum and National Museums Northern Ireland decision to bid for the artifacts, but they were acquired by an investment group before a formal bid took place.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Cameron's films are often based on themes which explore the conflicts between intelligent machines and humanity or nature, dangers of corporate greed, strong female characters, and a romance subplot. Cameron has further stated in an interview with The Talks, \"All my movies are love stories.\" Both Titanic and Avatar are noted for featuring star-crossed lovers. Characters suffering from emotionally intense and dramatic environments in the sea wilderness are explored in The Abyss and Titanic. The Terminator series amplifies technology as an enemy which could lead to devastation of mankind. Similarly, Avatar views tribal people as an honest group, whereas a \"technologically advanced imperial culture is fundamentally evil\".",
"title": "Filmmaking style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Cameron is regarded as an innovative filmmaker in the industry, with a classical filmmaking style, as well as not easy to work for. Radio Times critic John Ferguson described Cameron as \"the king of hi-tech thrillers\". Dalin Rowell of /Film stated: \"Known for his larger-than-life creations and unique filmmaking style, director James Cameron is in a league all of his own. With his genre-spanning work, lofty ambitions, and unrestrained energy, Cameron has carved out a name for himself in Hollywood as an artist willing to do anything to see his vision come true.\" Rebecca Keegan, author of The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron, describes Cameron as \"comically hands-on\", and would try to do every job on the set. Andrew Gumbel of The Independent says Cameron \"is a nightmare to work with. Studios fear his habit of straying way over schedule and over budget. He is notorious on set for his uncompromising and dictatorial manner, as well as his flaming temper\". Author Alexandra Keller writes that Cameron is an egomaniac, obsessed with vision, but praises his \"technological ingenuity\" at creating a \"visceral viewing experience\".",
"title": "Filmmaking style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "According to Ed Harris, who starred in Cameron's film The Abyss, Cameron behaved in an autocratic manner. Orson Scott Card, who novelized The Abyss, stated that Cameron \"made everyone around him miserable, and his unkindness did nothing to improve the film in any way. Nor did it motivate people to work faster or better\". Harris later said: \"I like Jim. He's an incredibly talented, intelligent guy\", adding that \"it was always good to see him\" in later years. Speaking of her experience on Titanic, Kate Winslet said that she admired Cameron, but \"there were times I was genuinely frightened of him\". Describing him as having \"a temper like you wouldn't believe\", she had said she would not work with him again unless it was \"for a lot of money\". Despite this, Winslet and Cameron still looked for future projects, and Winslet was eventually cast in Avatar 2. Her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio told Esquire: \"When somebody felt a different way on the set, there was a confrontation. He lets you know exactly how he feels\", but complimented Cameron, \"he's of the lineage of John Ford. He knows what he wants his film to be.\" Sam Worthington, who starred in Avatar, said that if a mobile phone rang during filming, Cameron would \"nail it to the wall with a nail gun\". Composer James Horner was also not immune to Cameron's demands; he recalls having to write music in a short time frame for Aliens. After the experience, Horner did not work with Cameron for a decade. In 1996, they reconciled their friendship and Horner produced the soundtracks for Titanic and Avatar.",
"title": "Filmmaking style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Despite this reputation, Sigourney Weaver has praised Cameron's perfectionism and attention to detail, saying: \"He really does want us to risk our lives and limbs for the shot, but he doesn't mind risking his own\". In 2015, Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis both applauded Cameron in an interview. Curtis remarked: \"He can do every other job [than acting]. I'm talking about every single department, from art direction to props to wardrobe to cameras, he knows more than everyone doing the job\". Curtis also said Cameron \"loves actors\", while Weaver referred to Cameron as \"so generous to actors\" and a \"genius\". Michael Biehn, a frequent collaborator, also praised Cameron, saying he \"is a really passionate person. He cares more about his movies than other directors care about their movies\", adding, \"I've never seen him yell at anybody\". Biehn acknowledged that Cameron is \"not real sensitive when it comes to actors and their trailers, and waiting for actors to come to the set\". Worthington commented: \"He demands excellence. If you don't give it to him, you're going to get chewed out. And that's a good thing\". When asked in 2012 about his reputation, Cameron dryly responded: \"I don't have to shout any more, because the word is out there already\".",
"title": "Filmmaking style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2021, while giving a MasterClass during a break from his work on the Avatar sequels, Cameron acknowledged his past demanding behaviour, opining that if he could go back in time, he would improve the working relationship with his cast and crew members by being less autocratic, thinking of himself as a \"tinpot dictator\"; Cameron stated that when he visited one of Ron Howard's sets, he was \"dumbfounded\" at how much time Howard took to compliment his crew, aspiring to become \"his inner Ron Howard\".",
"title": "Filmmaking style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Cameron's work has had an impact in the Hollywood film industry. The Avengers (2012), directed by Joss Whedon, was inspired by Cameron's approach to action sequences. Whedon also admires Cameron's ability for writing heroic female characters such as Ellen Ripley of Aliens, adding that he is \"the leader and the teacher and the Yoda\". Director Michael Bay idolizes Cameron and was convinced by him to use 3D cameras for filming Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). Cameron's approach to 3D inspired Baz Luhrmann during the production of The Great Gatsby (2013). Other directors that have been inspired by Cameron include Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp, and Xavier Dolan.",
"title": "Filmmaking style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Cameron received the inaugural Ray Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1992 for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In recognition of \"a distinguished career as a Canadian filmmaker\", Carleton University awarded Cameron the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts on June 13, 1998. Cameron received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1998, presented by Awards Council member George Lucas. He also received an honorary doctorate in 1998 from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, for his accomplishments in the international film industry. In 1998, Cameron attended a convocation to receive an honorary degree from Ryerson University, Toronto. The university awards its highest honor to those who have made extraordinary contributions in Canada or internationally. A year later, Cameron received the honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from California State University, Fullerton. He accepted the degree at the university's summer annual commencement exercise.",
"title": "Awards and recognition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Cameron's work has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; as one of the few directors to have won three Academy Awards in a single year. For Titanic, he won Best Director, Best Picture (shared with Jon Landau) and Best Film Editing (shared with Conrad Buff and Richard A. Harris). In 2009, he was nominated for awards in Best Film Editing (shared with John Refoua and Stephen E. Rivkin, Best Director and Best Picture for Avatar. Cameron has won two Golden Globes: Best Director for Titanic and Avatar.",
"title": "Awards and recognition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In recognition of his contributions to underwater filming and remote vehicle technology, University of Southampton awarded Cameron the honorary degree of doctor of the university in July 2004. Cameron accepted the award at the National Oceanography Centre. In 2008, Cameron received a star on Canada's Walk of Fame and a year later, received the 2,396th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On February 28, 2010, Cameron was honored with a Visual Effects Society (VES) Lifetime Achievement Award. In June 2012, Cameron was inducted to The Science Fiction Hall of Fame at the Museum of Pop Culture for his contribution to the science fiction and fantasy field. Cameron collaborated with Walt Disney Imagineering and served as a creative consultant on Pandora – The World of Avatar, an Avatar-themed land at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida which opened to the public on May 27, 2017. A species of frog, Pristimantis jamescameroni, was named after Cameron for his work in promoting environmental awareness and advocacy of veganism.",
"title": "Awards and recognition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 2010, Time magazine named Cameron one of the 100 most influential people in the world. That same year, he was ranked at the top of the list in The Guardian Film Power 100 and in 30th place in New Statesman's list of \"The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010\". In 2013, Cameron received the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public, which is annually awarded by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2019, Cameron was appointed as a Companion of the Order of Canada by Governor General Julie Payette, giving him the Post Nominal Letters \"CC\" for life.",
"title": "Awards and recognition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 2020, Cameron was the subject of the second season of the Epicleff Media dramatic podcast Blockbuster. The audio drama, created and narrated by Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker Matt Schrader, chronicles Cameron's life and career (leading up to the creation and release of Titanic), and stars actor Ross Marquand in the lead voice role as Cameron.",
"title": "Awards and recognition"
}
]
| James Francis Cameron is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a major figure in the post-New Hollywood era, and one of the industry's most innovative filmmakers. He often uses novel technologies with a classical filmmaking style. He first gained recognition for writing and directing The Terminator (1984) and found further success with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and the action comedy True Lies (1994). He wrote and directed Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009) and its sequels, with Titanic winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. He is a recipient of various other industry accolades, and three of his films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Cameron co-founded the production companies Lightstorm Entertainment, Digital Domain, and Earthship Productions. In addition to filmmaking, he is a National Geographic sea tourist and has produced many documentaries on the subject, including Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2005). Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies and helped create the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. In 2012, Cameron became the first person to do a solo descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth's ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible. Cameron's films have grossed over $8 billion worldwide, making him the second-highest-grossing film director of all time. Three of Cameron's films are amongst the top four highest-grossing films of all time; Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Titanic (1997) are the highest, third-highest and fourth-highest-grossing films of all time, respectively. Cameron directed the first film to gross over $1 billion, the first two films to gross over $2 billion, and is the only director to have had three films gross over $2 billion. In 2010, Time named Cameron one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Cameron is also an environmentalist and runs several sustainability businesses. | 2001-07-25T10:43:28Z | 2023-12-23T07:51:32Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron |
15,624 | Judaism | Judaism (Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת Yahăḏūṯ) is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion. It comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people, having originated as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Contemporary Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the cultic religious movement of ancient Israel and Judah, around the 6th/5th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which was established between God and the Israelites, their ancestors. Jewish religious doctrine encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization.
Among Judaism's core texts is the Torah, the first five books of the Tanakh, a collection of ancient Hebrew scriptures. The Tanakh, known in English as the Hebrew Bible, is also referred to as the "Old Testament" in Christianity. In addition to the original written scripture, the supplemental Oral Torah is represented by later texts, such as the Midrash and the Talmud. The Hebrew-language word torah can mean "teaching", "law", or "instruction", although "Torah" can also be used as a general term that refers to any Jewish text that expands or elaborates on the original Five Books of Moses. Representing the core of the Jewish spiritual and religious tradition, the Torah is a term and a set of teachings that are explicitly self-positioned as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. Judaism's texts, traditions, and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam. Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity.
Within Judaism, there are a variety of religious movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. Historically, all or part of this assertion was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period; the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Some modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be considered secular or nontheistic. Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi and Modern Orthodox), Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between these groups are their approaches to halakha (Jewish law), the authority of the rabbinic tradition, and the significance of the State of Israel. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and halakha are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that halakha should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced halakha; today, these courts still exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts and the rabbis and scholars who interpret them.
Jews are an ethnoreligious group including those born Jewish (or "ethnic Jews"), in addition to converts to Judaism. In 2021, the world Jewish population was estimated at 15.2 million, or roughly 0.195% of the total world population, although religious observance varies from strict to none. In 2021, about 45.6% of all Jews resided in Israel and another 42.1% resided in the United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
The term Judaism derives from Iudaismus, a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek Ioudaismos (Ἰουδαϊσμός) (from the verb ἰουδαΐζειν, "to side with or imitate the [Judeans]"). Its ultimate source was the Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah", which is also the source of the Hebrew term for Judaism: יַהֲדוּת, Yahadut. The term Ἰουδαϊσμός first appears in the Hellenistic Greek book of 2 Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE. In the context of the age and period it meant "seeking or forming part of a cultural entity" and it resembled its antonym hellenismos, a word that signified a people's submission to Hellenic (Greek) cultural norms. The conflict between iudaismos and hellenismos lay behind the Maccabean revolt and hence the invention of the term iudaismos.
Shaye J. D. Cohen writes in his book The Beginnings of Jewishness:
We are tempted, of course, to translate [Ioudaïsmós] as "Judaism," but this translation is too narrow, because in this first occurrence of the term, Ioudaïsmós has not yet been reduced to the designation of a religion. It means rather "the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish)." Among these characteristics, to be sure, are practices and beliefs that we would today call "religious," but these practices and beliefs are not the sole content of the term. Thus Ioudaïsmós should be translated not as "Judaism" but as Judaeanness.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the earliest citation in English where the term was used to mean "the profession or practice of the Jewish religion; the religious system or polity of the Jews" is Robert Fabyan's The newe cronycles of Englande and of Fraunce (1516). "Judaism" as a direct translation of the Latin Iudaismus first occurred in a 1611 English translation of the apocrypha (Deuterocanon in Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy), 2 Macc. ii. 21: "Those that behaved themselves manfully to their honour for Iudaisme."
At its core, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is an account of the Israelites' relationship with God from their earliest history until the building of the Second Temple (c. 535 BCE). Abraham is hailed as the first Hebrew and the father of the Jewish people. As a reward for his act of faith in one God, he was promised that Isaac, his second son, would inherit the Land of Israel (then called Canaan). Later, the descendants of Isaac's son Jacob were enslaved in Egypt, and God commanded Moses to lead the Exodus from Egypt. At Mount Sinai, they received the Torah—the five books of Moses. These books, together with Nevi'im and Ketuvim are known as Torah Shebikhtav as opposed to the Oral Torah, which refers to the Mishnah and the Talmud. Eventually, God led them to the land of Israel where the tabernacle was planted in the city of Shiloh for over 300 years to rally the nation against attacking enemies. As time went on, the spiritual level of the nation declined to the point that God allowed the Philistines to capture the tabernacle. The people of Israel then told Samuel the prophet that they needed to be governed by a permanent king, and Samuel appointed Saul to be their King. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to appoint David in his stead.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the law, which are called the Oral Torah or oral law, were originally an unwritten tradition based upon what God told Moses on Mount Sinai. However, as the persecutions of the Jews increased and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by Rabbi Judah HaNasi (Judah the Prince) in the Mishnah, redacted circa 200 CE. The Talmud was a compilation of both the Mishnah and the Gemara, rabbinic commentaries redacted over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud. It was compiled sometime during the 4th century in Palestine.
According to critical scholars, the Torah consists of inconsistent texts edited together in a way that calls attention to divergent accounts. Several of these scholars, such as Professor Martin Rose and John Bright, suggest that during the First Temple period the people of Israel believed that each nation had its own god, but that their god was superior to other gods. Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, perhaps in reaction to Zoroastrian dualism. In this view, it was only by the Hellenic period that most Jews came to believe that their god was the only god and that the notion of a clearly bounded Jewish nation identical with the Jewish religion formed. John Day argues that the origins of biblical Yahweh, El, Asherah, and Ba'al, may be rooted in earlier Canaanite religion, which was centered on a pantheon of gods much like the Greek pantheon.
According to the Hebrew Bible, a United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued under King David and Solomon with its capital in Jerusalem. After Solomon's reign, the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire; many people were taken captive from the capital Samaria to Media and the Khabur River valley. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, which was at the center of ancient Jewish worship. The Judeans were exiled to Babylon, in what is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora. Later, many of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylon by the Persian Achaemenid Empire seventy years later, an event known as the Return to Zion. A Second Temple was constructed and old religious practices were resumed.
During the early years of the Second Temple, the highest religious authority was a council known as the Great Assembly, led by Ezra the Scribe. Among other accomplishments of the Great Assembly, the last books of the Bible were written at this time and the canon sealed. Hellenistic Judaism spread to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BCE, and its creation sparked widespread controversy in Jewish communities, starting "conflicts within Jewish communities about accommodating the cultures of occupying powers."
During the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Later, Roman emperor Hadrian built a pagan idol on the Temple Mount and prohibited circumcision; these acts of ethnocide provoked the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE), after which the Romans banned the study of the Torah and the celebration of Jewish holidays, and forcibly removed virtually all Jews from Judea. In 200 CE, however, Jews were granted Roman citizenship and Judaism was recognized as a religio licita ("legitimate religion") until the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity in the fourth century.
Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around the community (represented by a minimum of ten adult men) and the establishment of the authority of rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities.
Unlike other ancient Near Eastern gods, the Hebrew God is portrayed as unitary and solitary; consequently, the Hebrew God's principal relationships are not with other gods, but with the world, and more specifically, with the people he created. Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism: the belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of mankind. According to the Hebrew Bible, God promised Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation. Many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God; that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate God's concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to love one another; that is, Jews are to imitate God's love for people.
Thus, although there is an esoteric tradition in Judaism (Kabbalah), Rabbinic scholar Max Kadushin has characterized normative Judaism as "normal mysticism", because it involves everyday personal experiences of God through ways or modes that are common to all Jews. This is played out through the observance of the halakha (Jewish law) and given verbal expression in the Birkat Ha-Mizvot, the short blessings that are spoken every time a positive commandment is to be fulfilled:
The ordinary, familiar, everyday things and occurrences we have, constitute occasions for the experience of God. Such things as one's daily sustenance, the very day itself, are felt as manifestations of God's loving-kindness, calling for the Berakhot. Kedushah, holiness, which is nothing else than the imitation of God, is concerned with daily conduct, with being gracious and merciful, with keeping oneself from defilement by idolatry, adultery, and the shedding of blood. The Birkat Ha-Mitzwot evokes the consciousness of holiness at a rabbinic rite, but the objects employed in the majority of these rites are non-holy and of general character, while the several holy objects are non-theurgic. And not only do ordinary things and occurrences bring with them the experience of God. Everything that happens to a man evokes that experience, evil as well as good, for a Berakah is said also at evil tidings. Hence, although the experience of God is like none other, the occasions for experiencing Him, for having a consciousness of Him, are manifold, even if we consider only those that call for Berakot.
Whereas Jewish philosophers often debate whether God is immanent or transcendent, and whether people have free will or their lives are determined, halakha is a system through which any Jew acts to bring God into the world.
Ethical monotheism is central in all sacred or normative texts of Judaism. However, monotheism has not always been followed in practice. The Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) records and repeatedly condemns the widespread worship of other gods in ancient Israel. In the Greco-Roman era, many different interpretations of monotheism existed in Judaism, including the interpretations that gave rise to Christianity.
Moreover, some have argued that Judaism is a non-creedal religion that does not require one to believe in God. For some, observance of halakha is more important than belief in God per se. The debate about whether one can speak of authentic or normative Judaism is not only a debate among religious Jews but also among historians.
In continental Europe, Judaism is heavily associated with and most often thought of as Orthodox Judaism.
13 Principles of Faith:
—Maimonides
In the strict sense, in Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, there are no fixed universally binding articles of faith, due to their incorporation into the liturgy. Scholars throughout Jewish history have proposed numerous formulations of Judaism's core tenets, all of which have met with criticism. The most popular formulation is Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith, developed in the 12th century. According to Maimonides, any Jew who rejects even one of these principles would be considered an apostate and a heretic. Jewish scholars have held points of view diverging in various ways from Maimonides' principles. Thus, within Reform Judaism only the first five principles are endorsed.
In Maimonides' time, his list of tenets was criticized by Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo. Albo and the Raavad argued that Maimonides' principles contained too many items that, while true, were not fundamentals of the faith
Along these lines, the ancient historian Josephus emphasized practices and observances rather than religious beliefs, associating apostasy with a failure to observe halakha and maintaining that the requirements for conversion to Judaism included circumcision and adherence to traditional customs. Maimonides' principles were largely ignored over the next few centuries. Later, two poetic restatements of these principles ("Ani Ma'amin" and "Yigdal") became integrated into many Jewish liturgies, leading to their eventual near-universal acceptance.
The oldest non-Rabbinic instance of articles of faith were formulated, under Islamic influence, by the 12th century Karaite figure Judah ben Elijah Hadassi:
(1) God is the Creator of all created beings; (2) He is premundane and has no peer or associate; (3) the whole universe is created; (4) God called Moses and the other Prophets of the Biblical canon; (5) the Law of Moses alone is true; (6) to know the language of the Bible is a religious duty; (7) the Temple at Jerusalem is the palace of the world's Ruler; (8) belief in Resurrection contemporaneous with the advent of the Messiah; (9) final judgment; (10) retribution.
In modern times, Judaism lacks a centralized authority that would dictate an exact religious dogma. Because of this, many different variations on the basic beliefs are considered within the scope of Judaism. Even so, all Jewish religious movements are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on the principles of the Hebrew Bible or various commentaries such as the Talmud and Midrash. Judaism also universally recognizes the Biblical Covenant between God and the Patriarch Abraham as well as the additional aspects of the Covenant revealed to Moses, who is considered Judaism's greatest prophet. In the Mishnah, a core text of Rabbinic Judaism, acceptance of the Divine origins of this covenant is considered an essential aspect of Judaism and those who reject the Covenant forfeit their share in the World to Come.
Establishing the core tenets of Judaism in the modern era is even more difficult, given the number and diversity of the contemporary Jewish denominations. Even if to restrict the problem to the most influential intellectual trends of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the matter remains complicated. Thus, for instance, Joseph Soloveitchik's (associated with the Modern Orthodox movement) answer to modernity is constituted upon the identification of Judaism with following the halakha whereas its ultimate goal is to bring the holiness down to the world. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist Judaism, abandons the idea of religion for the sake of identifying Judaism with civilization and by means of the latter term and secular translation of the core ideas, he tries to embrace as many Jewish denominations as possible. In turn, Solomon Schechter's Conservative Judaism was identical with the tradition understood as the interpretation of Torah, in itself being the history of the constant updates and adjustment of the Law performed by means of the creative interpretation. Finally, David Philipson draws the outlines of the Reform movement in Judaism by opposing it to the strict and traditional rabbinical approach and thus comes to the conclusions similar to that of the Conservative movement.
The following is a basic, structured list of the central works of Jewish practice and thought:
The basis of halakha and tradition is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses). According to rabbinic tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or to women, some only to the ancient priestly groups, the Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the tribe of Levi), some only to farmers within the Land of Israel. Many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed, and only 369 of these commandments are still applicable today.
While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were based on the written text of the Torah alone (e.g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites), most Jews believe in the oral law. These oral traditions were transmitted by the Pharisee school of thought of ancient Judaism and were later recorded in written form and expanded upon by the rabbis.
According to Rabbinical Jewish tradition, God gave both the Written Law (the Torah) and the Oral Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Oral law is the oral tradition as relayed by God to Moses and from him, transmitted and taught to the sages (rabbinic leaders) of each subsequent generation.
For centuries, the Torah appeared only as a written text transmitted in parallel with the oral tradition. Fearing that the oral teachings might be forgotten, Rabbi Judah haNasi undertook the mission of consolidating the various opinions into one body of law which became known as the Mishnah.
The Mishnah consists of 63 tractates codifying halakha, which are the basis of the Talmud. According to Abraham ben David, the Mishnah was compiled by Rabbi Judah haNasi after the destruction of Jerusalem, in anno mundi 3949, which corresponds to 189 CE.
Over the next four centuries, the Mishnah underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's major Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylonia). The commentaries from each of these communities were eventually compiled into the two Talmuds, the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi) and the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli). These have been further expounded by commentaries of various Torah scholars during the ages.
In the text of the Torah, many words are left undefined, and many procedures are mentioned without explanation or instructions. Such phenomena are sometimes offered to validate the viewpoint that the Written Law has always been transmitted with a parallel oral tradition, illustrating the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the details from other, i.e., oral, sources.
Halakha, the rabbinic Jewish way of life, then, is based on a combined reading of the Torah, and the oral tradition—the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries. The halakha has developed slowly, through a precedent-based system. The literature of questions to rabbis, and their considered answers, is referred to as responsa (in Hebrew, Sheelot U-Teshuvot.) Over time, as practices develop, codes of halakha are written that are based on the responsa; the most important code, the Shulchan Aruch, largely determines Orthodox religious practice today.
Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. Major Jewish philosophers include Philo of Alexandria, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Saadia Gaon, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Gersonides. Major changes occurred in response to the Enlightenment (late 18th to early 19th century) leading to the post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers. Modern Jewish philosophy consists of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox oriented philosophy. Notable among Orthodox Jewish philosophers are Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Yitzchok Hutner. Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Will Herberg, and Emmanuel Lévinas.
13 Principles of Hermeneutics:
—R. Ishmael
Orthodox and many other Jews do not believe that the revealed Torah consists solely of its written contents, but of its interpretations as well. The study of Torah (in its widest sense, to include both poetry, narrative, and law, and both the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud) is in Judaism itself a sacred act of central importance. For the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, and for their successors today, the study of Torah was therefore not merely a means to learn the contents of God's revelation, but an end in itself. According to the Talmud:
These are the things for which a person enjoys the dividends in this world while the principal remains for the person to enjoy in the world to come; they are: honoring parents, loving deeds of kindness, and making peace between one person and another. But the study of the Torah is equal to them all. (Talmud Shabbat 127a).
In Judaism, "the study of Torah can be a means of experiencing God". Reflecting on the contribution of the Amoraim and Tanaim to contemporary Judaism, Professor Jacob Neusner observed:
The rabbi's logical and rational inquiry is not mere logic-chopping. It is a most serious and substantive effort to locate in trivialities the fundamental principles of the revealed will of God to guide and sanctify the most specific and concrete actions in the workaday world. ... Here is the mystery of Talmudic Judaism: the alien and remote conviction that the intellect is an instrument not of unbelief and desacralization but of sanctification.
To study the Written Torah and the Oral Torah in light of each other is thus also to study how to study the word of God.
In the study of Torah, the sages formulated and followed various logical and hermeneutical principles. According to David Stern, all Rabbinic hermeneutics rest on two basic axioms:
first, the belief in the omni-significance of Scripture, in the meaningfulness of its every word, letter, even (according to one famous report) scribal flourish; second, the claim of the essential unity of Scripture as the expression of the single divine will.
These two principles make possible a great variety of interpretations. According to the Talmud:
A single verse has several meanings, but no two verses hold the same meaning. It was taught in the school of R. Ishmael: 'Behold, My word is like fire—declares the Lord—and like a hammer that shatters rock' (Jer 23:29). Just as this hammer produces many sparks (when it strikes the rock), so a single verse has several meanings." (Talmud Sanhedrin 34a).
Observant Jews thus view the Torah as dynamic, because it contains within it a host of interpretations.
According to Rabbinic tradition, all valid interpretations of the written Torah were revealed to Moses at Sinai in oral form, and handed down from teacher to pupil (The oral revelation is in effect coextensive with the Talmud itself). When different rabbis forwarded conflicting interpretations, they sometimes appealed to hermeneutic principles to legitimize their arguments; some rabbis claim that these principles were themselves revealed by God to Moses at Sinai.
Thus, Hillel called attention to seven commonly used hermeneutical principles in the interpretation of laws (baraita at the beginning of Sifra); R. Ishmael, thirteen (baraita at the beginning of Sifra; this collection is largely an amplification of that of Hillel). Eliezer b. Jose ha-Gelili listed 32, largely used for the exegesis of narrative elements of Torah. All the hermeneutic rules scattered through the Talmudim and Midrashim have been collected by Malbim in Ayyelet ha-Shachar, the introduction to his commentary on the Sifra. Nevertheless, R. Ishmael's 13 principles are perhaps the ones most widely known; they constitute an important, and one of Judaism's earliest, contributions to logic, hermeneutics, and jurisprudence. Judah Hadassi incorporated Ishmael's principles into Karaite Judaism in the 12th century. Today R. Ishmael's 13 principles are incorporated into the Jewish prayer book to be read by observant Jews on a daily basis.
According to Daniel Boyarin, the underlying distinction between religion and ethnicity is foreign to Judaism itself, and is one form of the dualism between spirit and flesh that has its origin in Platonic philosophy and that permeated Hellenistic Judaism. Consequently, in his view, Judaism does not fit easily into conventional Western categories, such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Boyarin suggests that this in part reflects the fact that much of Judaism's more than 3,000-year history predates the rise of Western culture and occurred outside the West (that is, Europe, particularly medieval and modern Europe). During this time, Jews experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile. In the Jewish diaspora, they were in contact with, and influenced by, ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment (see Haskalah) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in their ancient homeland, the Land of Israel. Thus, Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."
In contrast to this point of view, practices such as Humanistic Judaism reject the religious aspects of Judaism, while retaining certain cultural traditions.
According to Rabbinic Judaism, a Jew is anyone who was either born of a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism in accordance with halakha. Reconstructionist Judaism and the larger denominations of worldwide Progressive Judaism (also known as Liberal or Reform Judaism) accept the child as Jewish if one of the parents is Jewish, if the parents raise the child with a Jewish identity, but not the smaller regional branches. All mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts, although conversion has traditionally been discouraged since the time of the Talmud. The conversion process is evaluated by an authority, and the convert is examined on his or her sincerity and knowledge. Converts are called "ben Abraham" or "bat Abraham", (son or daughter of Abraham). Conversions have on occasion been overturned. In 2008, Israel's highest religious court invalidated the conversion of 40,000 Jews, mostly from Russian immigrant families, even though they had been approved by an Orthodox rabbi.
Rabbinical Judaism maintains that a Jew, whether by birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. Thus a Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by traditional Judaism to be Jewish. According to some sources, the Reform movement has maintained that a Jew who has converted to another religion is no longer a Jew, and the Israeli Government has also taken that stance after Supreme Court cases and statutes. However, the Reform movement has indicated that this is not so cut and dried, and different situations call for consideration and differing actions. For example, Jews who have converted under duress may be permitted to return to Judaism "without any action on their part but their desire to rejoin the Jewish community" and "A proselyte who has become an apostate remains, nevertheless, a Jew".
Karaite Judaism believes that Jewish identity can only be transmitted by patrilineal descent. Although a minority of modern Karaites believe that Jewish identity requires that both parents be Jewish, and not only the father. They argue that only patrilineal descent can transmit Jewish identity on the grounds that all descent in the Torah went according to the male line.
The question of what determines Jewish identity in the State of Israel was given new impetus when, in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on mihu Yehudi ("Who is a Jew") from Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals worldwide in order to settle citizenship questions. This is still not settled, and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics.
Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. Historical definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations of sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and Canaanites because "[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods (i.e., idols) of others." Leviticus 24 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.
The total number of Jews worldwide is difficult to assess because the definition of "who is a Jew" is problematic; not all Jews identify themselves as Jewish, and some who identify as Jewish are not considered so by other Jews. According to the Jewish Year Book (1901), the global Jewish population in 1900 was around 11 million. The latest available data is from the World Jewish Population Survey of 2002 and the Jewish Year Calendar (2005). In 2002, according to the Jewish Population Survey, there were 13.3 million Jews around the world. The Jewish Year Calendar cites 14.6 million. It is 0.25% of world population.
Jewish population growth is currently near zero percent, with 0.3% growth from 2000 to 2001. The overall growth rate of Jews in Israel is 1.7% annually, and is consistently growing through natural population growth and extensive immigration. The diaspora countries, by contrast, have low Jewish birth rates, an increasingly elderly age composition, high rates of interreligious marriage and a negative balance of people leaving Judaism versus those joining.
In 2022, the world Jewish population was estimated at 15.2 million, the majority live in one of only two countires: Israel and the United States. About 46.6% of all Jews resided in Israel (6.9 million) and another 6 million Jews resided in the United States, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other groups spread throughout Canada, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
Rabbinic Judaism (or in some older sources, Rabbinism; Hebrew: "Yahadut Rabanit" – יהדות רבנית) has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Talmud. It is characterised by the belief that the Written Torah (Written Law) cannot be correctly interpreted without reference to the Oral Torah and the voluminous literature specifying what behavior is sanctioned by the Law.
The Jewish Enlightenment of the late 18th century resulted in the division of Western Jewry (primeraly, the Ashkenazi, but also western part of Sephardim and Italian rite Jews, a.k.a. Italkim, and Greek Romaniote Jews—both last groups are considered distinct from Ashkenazim and Sephardim) into religious movements or denominations, especially in North America and Anglophone countries. The main denominations today outside Israel (where the situation is rather different) are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. The notion "traditional Judaism" includes the Orthodox with Conservative or solely the Orthodox Jews:
While traditions and customs vary between discrete communities, it can be said that Sephardi (Iberian, for example, most Jews from France and the Netherlands) and Mizrahi (Oriental) Jewish communities do not generally adhere to the "movement" framework popular in and among Ashkenazi Jewry. Historically, Sephardi and Mizrahi communities have eschewed denominations in favour of a "big tent" approach. This is particularly the case in contemporary Israel, which is home to the largest communities of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in the world. (However, individual Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews or some their communities may be members of or attend synagogues that do adhere to one Ashkenazi-inflected movement or another.) Among the pioneers of Reform Judaism in the 1820s there was the Sephardic congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina. A part of the European Sephardim were also linked with the Judaic modernization.
Sephardi and Mizrahi observance of Judaism tends toward the traditional (Orthodox) and prayer rites are reflective of this, with the text of each rite being largely unchanged since their respective inception. Observant Sephardim may follow the teachings of a particular rabbi or school of thought; for example, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel.
In Israel, as in the West, Judaism is also divided into major Orthodox, Conservative and Reform traditions. At the same time, for statistical and practical purposes, a different division of society is used there on the basis of a person's attitude to religion.
Most Jewish Israelis classify themselves as "secular" (hiloni), "traditional" (masorti), "religious" (dati) or "ultra-religious" (haredi). The term "secular" is more popular as a self-description among Israeli families of western (European) origin, whose Jewish identity may be a very powerful force in their lives, but who see it as largely independent of traditional religious belief and practice. This portion of the population largely ignores organized religious life, be it of the official Israeli rabbinate (Orthodox) or of the liberal movements common to diaspora Judaism (Reform, Conservative).
The term "traditional" (masorti) is most common as a self-description among Israeli families of "eastern" origin (i.e., the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa). This term, as commonly used, has nothing to do with Conservative Judaism, which also names itself "Masorti" outside North America. Only a few authors, like Elliot Nelson Dorff, consider the American Conservative (masorti) movement and Israeli masorti sector to be one and the same. There is a great deal of ambiguity in the ways "secular" and "traditional" are used in Israel: they often overlap, and they cover an extremely wide range in terms of worldview and practical religious observance. The term "Orthodox" is not popular in Israeli discourse, although the percentage of Jews who come under that category is far greater than in the Jewish diaspora. What would be called "Orthodox" in the diaspora includes what is commonly called dati (religious, including religious zionist) or haredi (ultra-Orthodox) in Israel. The former term includes what is called "religious Zionism" or the "National Orthodox" community, as well as what has become known over the past decade or so as haredi-leumi (nationalist haredi), or "Hardal", which combines a largely haredi lifestyle with nationalist ideology. (Some people, in Yiddish, also refer to observant Orthodox Jews as frum, as opposed to frei (more liberal Jews)).
Karaite Judaism defines itself as the remnants of the non-Rabbinic Jewish sects of the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees. The Karaites ("Scripturalists") accept only the Hebrew Bible and what they view as the Peshat ("simple" meaning); they do not accept non-biblical writings as authoritative. Some European Karaites do not see themselves as part of the Jewish community at all, although most do.
The Samaritans, a very small community located entirely around Mount Gerizim in the Nablus/Shechem region of the West Bank and in Holon, near Tel Aviv in Israel, regard themselves as the descendants of the Israelites of the Iron Age kingdom of Israel. Their religious practices are based on the literal text of the written Torah (Five Books of Moses), which they view as the only authoritative scripture (with a special regard also for the Samaritan Book of Joshua).
Haymanot (meaning "religion" in Ge'ez and Amharic) refers the Judaism practiced by Ethiopian Jews. This version of Judaism differs substantially from Rabbinic, Karaite, and Samaritan Judaisms, Ethiopian Jews having diverged from their coreligionists earlier. Sacred scriptures (the Orit) are written in Ge'ez, not Hebrew, and dietary laws are based strictly on the text of the Orit, without explication from ancillary commentaries. Holidays also differ, with some Rabbinic holidays not observed in Ethiopian Jewish communities, and some additional holidays, like Sigd.
Noahidism is a Jewish religious movement based on the Seven Laws of Noah and their traditional interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism. According to the halakha, non-Jews (gentiles) are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah to be assured of a place in the World to Come (Olam Ha-Ba), the final reward of the righteous. The divinely ordained penalty for violating any of the Laws of Noah is discussed in the Talmud, but in practical terms it is subject to the working legal system which is established by the society at large. Those who subscribe to the observance of the Noahic Covenant are referred to as B'nei Noach (Hebrew: בני נח, "Children of Noah") or Noahides (/ˈnoʊ.ə.haɪdɪs/). Supporting organizations have been established around the world over the past decades by both Noahides and Orthodox Jews.
Historically, the Hebrew term B'nei Noach has applied to all non-Jews as descendants of Noah. However, nowadays it's primarily used to refer specifically to those non-Jews who observe the Seven Laws of Noah.
Jewish ethics may be guided by halakhic traditions, by other moral principles, or by central Jewish virtues. Jewish ethical practice is typically understood to be marked by values such as justice, truth, peace, loving-kindness (chesed), compassion, humility, and self-respect. Specific Jewish ethical practices include practices of charity (tzedakah) and refraining from negative speech (lashon hara). Proper ethical practices regarding sexuality and many other issues are subjects of dispute among Jews.
Traditionally, Jews recite prayers three times daily, Shacharit, Mincha, and Ma'ariv with a fourth prayer, Mussaf added on Shabbat and holidays. At the heart of each service is the Amidah or Shemoneh Esrei. Another key prayer in many services is the declaration of faith, the Shema Yisrael (or Shema). The Shema is the recitation of a verse from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4): Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad—"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is One!"
Most of the prayers in a traditional Jewish service can be recited in solitary prayer, although communal prayer is preferred. Communal prayer requires a quorum of ten adult Jews, called a minyan. In nearly all Orthodox and a few Conservative circles, only male Jews are counted toward a minyan; most Conservative Jews and members of other Jewish denominations count female Jews as well.
In addition to prayer services, observant traditional Jews recite prayers and benedictions throughout the day when performing various acts. Prayers are recited upon waking up in the morning, before eating or drinking different foods, after eating a meal, and so on.
The approach to prayer varies among the Jewish denominations. Differences can include the texts of prayers, the frequency of prayer, the number of prayers recited at various religious events, the use of musical instruments and choral music, and whether prayers are recited in the traditional liturgical languages or the vernacular. In general, Orthodox and Conservative congregations adhere most closely to tradition, and Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues are more likely to incorporate translations and contemporary writings in their services. Also, in most Conservative synagogues, and all Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, women participate in prayer services on an equal basis with men, including roles traditionally filled only by men, such as reading from the Torah. In addition, many Reform temples use musical accompaniment such as organs and mixed choirs.
A kippah (Hebrew: כִּפָּה, plural kippot; Yiddish: יאַרמלקע, yarmulke) is a slightly rounded brimless skullcap worn by many Jews while praying, eating, reciting blessings, or studying Jewish religious texts, and at all times by some Jewish men. In Orthodox communities, only men wear kippot; in non-Orthodox communities, some women also wear kippot. Kippot range in size from a small round beanie that covers only the back of the head to a large, snug cap that covers the whole crown.
Tzitzit (Hebrew: צִיציִת) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tzitzis) are special knotted "fringes" or "tassels" found on the four corners of the tallit (Hebrew: טַלִּית) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tallis), or prayer shawl. The tallit is worn by Jewish men and some Jewish women during the prayer service. Customs vary regarding when a Jew begins wearing a tallit. In the Sephardi community, boys wear a tallit from bar mitzvah age. In some Ashkenazi communities, it is customary to wear one only after marriage. A tallit katan (small tallit) is a fringed garment worn under the clothing throughout the day. In some Orthodox circles, the fringes are allowed to hang freely outside the clothing.
Tefillin (Hebrew: תְפִלִּין), known in English as phylacteries (from the Greek word φυλακτήριον, meaning safeguard or amulet), are two square leather boxes containing biblical verses, attached to the forehead and wound around the left arm by leather straps. They are worn during weekday morning prayer by observant Jewish men and some Jewish women.
A kittel (Yiddish: קיטל), a white knee-length overgarment, is worn by prayer leaders and some observant traditional Jews on the High Holidays. It is traditional for the head of the household to wear a kittel at the Passover seder in some communities, and some grooms wear one under the wedding canopy. Jewish males are buried in a tallit and sometimes also a kittel which are part of the tachrichim (burial garments).
Jewish holidays are special days in the Jewish calendar, which celebrate moments in Jewish history, as well as central themes in the relationship between God and the world, such as creation, revelation, and redemption.
Shabbat, the weekly day of rest lasting from shortly before sundown on Friday night to nightfall on Saturday night, commemorates God's day of rest after six days of creation. It plays a pivotal role in Jewish practice and is governed by a large corpus of religious law. At sundown on Friday, the woman of the house welcomes the Shabbat by lighting two or more candles and reciting a blessing. The evening meal begins with the Kiddush, a blessing recited aloud over a cup of wine, and the Mohtzi, a blessing recited over the bread. It is customary to have challah, two braided loaves of bread, on the table. During Shabbat, Jews are forbidden to engage in any activity that falls under 39 categories of melakhah, translated literally as "work". In fact, the activities banned on the Sabbath are not "work" in the usual sense: They include such actions as lighting a fire, writing, using money and carrying in the public domain. The prohibition of lighting a fire has been extended in the modern era to driving a car, which involves burning fuel and using electricity.
Jewish holy days (chaggim), celebrate landmark events in Jewish history, such as the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah, and sometimes mark the change of seasons and transitions in the agricultural cycle. The three major festivals, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot, are called "regalim" (derived from the Hebrew word "regel", or foot). On the three regalim, it was customary for the Israelites to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the Temple:
The High Holidays (Yamim Noraim or "Days of Awe") revolve around judgment and forgiveness:
Purim (Hebrew: פורים Pûrîm "lots") is a joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the plot of the evil Haman, who sought to exterminate them, as recorded in the biblical Book of Esther. It is characterized by public recitation of the Book of Esther, mutual gifts of food and drink, charity to the poor, and a celebratory meal (Esther 9:22). Other customs include drinking wine, eating special pastries called hamantashen, dressing up in masks and costumes, and organizing carnivals and parties.
Purim has celebrated annually on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar, which occurs in February or March of the Gregorian calendar.
Hanukkah (Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה, "dedication") also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday that starts on the 25th day of Kislev (Hebrew calendar). The festival is observed in Jewish homes by the kindling of lights on each of the festival's eight nights, one on the first night, two on the second night and so on.
The holiday was called Hanukkah (meaning "dedication") because it marks the re-dedication of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Spiritually, Hanukkah commemorates the "Miracle of the Oil". According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days—which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate new oil.
Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Bible and was never considered a major holiday in Judaism, but it has become much more visible and widely celebrated in modern times, mainly because it falls around the same time as Christmas and has national Jewish overtones that have been emphasized since the establishment of the State of Israel.
Tisha B'Av (Hebrew: תשעה באב or ט׳ באב, "the Ninth of Av") is a day of mourning and fasting commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and in later times, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
There are three more minor Jewish fast days that commemorate various stages of the destruction of the Temples. They are the 17th Tamuz, the 10th of Tevet and Tzom Gedaliah (the 3rd of Tishrei).
The modern holidays of Yom Ha-shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) commemorate the horrors of the Holocaust, the fallen soldiers of Israel and victims of terrorism, and Israeli independence, respectively.
There are some who prefer to commemorate those who were killed in the Holocaust on the 10th of Tevet.
The core of festival and Shabbat prayer services is the public reading of the Torah, along with connected readings from the other books of the Tanakh, called Haftarah. Over the course of a year, the whole Torah is read, with the cycle starting over in the autumn, on Simchat Torah.
Synagogues are Jewish houses of prayer and study. They usually contain separate rooms for prayer (the main sanctuary), smaller rooms for study, and often an area for community or educational use. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. The Reform movement mostly refer to their synagogues as temples. Some traditional features of a synagogue are:
In addition to synagogues, other buildings of significance in Judaism include yeshivas, or institutions of Jewish learning, and mikvahs, which are ritual baths.
The Jewish dietary laws are known as kashrut. Food prepared in accordance with them is termed kosher, and food that is not kosher is also known as treifah or treif. People who observe these laws are colloquially said to be "keeping kosher".
Many of the laws apply to animal-based foods. For example, in order to be considered kosher, mammals must have split hooves and chew their cud. The pig is arguably the most well-known example of a non-kosher animal. Although it has split hooves, it does not chew its cud. For seafood to be kosher, the animal must have fins and scales. Certain types of seafood, such as shellfish, crustaceans, and eels, are therefore considered non-kosher. Concerning birds, a list of non-kosher species is given in the Torah. The exact translations of many of the species have not survived, and some non-kosher birds' identities are no longer certain. However, traditions exist about the kashrut status of a few birds. For example, both chickens and turkeys are permitted in most communities. Other types of animals, such as amphibians, reptiles, and most insects, are prohibited altogether.
In addition to the requirement that the species be considered kosher, meat and poultry (but not fish) must come from a healthy animal slaughtered in a process known as shechitah. Without the proper slaughtering practices even an otherwise kosher animal will be rendered treif. The slaughtering process is intended to be quick and relatively painless to the animal. Forbidden parts of animals include the blood, some fats, and the area in and around the sciatic nerve.
Halakha also forbids the consumption of meat and dairy products together. The waiting period between eating meat and eating dairy varies by the order in which they are consumed and by community and can extend for up to six hours. Based on the Biblical injunction against cooking a kid in its mother's milk, this rule is mostly derived from the Oral Torah, the Talmud and Rabbinic law. Chicken and other kosher birds are considered the same as meat under the laws of kashrut, but the prohibition is rabbinic, not biblical.
The use of dishes, serving utensils, and ovens may make food treif that would otherwise be kosher. Utensils that have been used to prepare non-kosher food, or dishes that have held meat and are now used for dairy products, render the food treif under certain conditions.
Furthermore, all Orthodox and some Conservative authorities forbid the consumption of processed grape products made by non-Jews, due to ancient pagan practices of using wine in rituals. Some Conservative authorities permit wine and grape juice made without rabbinic supervision.
The Torah does not give specific reasons for most of the laws of kashrut. However, a number of explanations have been offered, including maintaining ritual purity, teaching impulse control, encouraging obedience to God, improving health, reducing cruelty to animals and preserving the distinctness of the Jewish community. The various categories of dietary laws may have developed for different reasons, and some may exist for multiple reasons. For example, people are forbidden from consuming the blood of birds and mammals because, according to the Torah, this is where animal souls are contained. In contrast, the Torah forbids Israelites from eating non-kosher species because "they are unclean". The Kabbalah describes sparks of holiness that are released by the act of eating kosher foods but are too tightly bound in non-kosher foods to be released by eating.
Survival concerns supersede all the laws of kashrut, as they do for most halakhot.
The Tanakh describes circumstances in which a person who is tahor or ritually pure may become tamei or ritually impure. Some of these circumstances are contact with human corpses or graves, seminal flux, vaginal flux, menstruation, and contact with people who have become impure from any of these. In Rabbinic Judaism, Kohanim, members of the hereditary caste that served as priests in the time of the Temple, are mostly restricted from entering grave sites and touching dead bodies. During the Temple period, such priests (Kohanim) were required to eat their bread offering (Terumah) in a state of ritual purity, which laws eventually led to more rigid laws being enacted, such as hand-washing which became a requisite of all Jews before consuming ordinary bread.
An important subcategory of the ritual purity laws relates to the segregation of menstruating women. These laws are also known as niddah, literally "separation", or family purity. Vital aspects of halakha for traditionally observant Jews, they are not usually followed by Jews in liberal denominations.
Especially in Orthodox Judaism, the Biblical laws are augmented by Rabbinical injunctions. For example, the Torah mandates that a woman in her normal menstrual period must abstain from sexual intercourse for seven days. A woman whose menstruation is prolonged must continue to abstain for seven more days after bleeding has stopped. The Rabbis conflated ordinary niddah with this extended menstrual period, known in the Torah as zavah, and mandated that a woman may not have sexual intercourse with her husband from the time she begins her menstrual flow until seven days after it ends. In addition, Rabbinical law forbids the husband from touching or sharing a bed with his wife during this period. Afterwards, purification can occur in a ritual bath called a mikveh
Traditional Ethiopian Jews keep menstruating women in separate huts and, similar to Karaite practice, do not allow menstruating women into their temples because of a temple's special sanctity. Emigration to Israel and the influence of other Jewish denominations have led to Ethiopian Jews adopting more normative Jewish practices.
Life-cycle events, or rites of passage, occur throughout a Jew's life that serves to strengthen Jewish identity and bind him/her to the entire community:
The role of the priesthood in Judaism has significantly diminished since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE when priests attended to the Temple and sacrifices. The priesthood is an inherited position, and although priests no longer have any but ceremonial duties, they are still honored in many Jewish communities. Many Orthodox Jewish communities believe that they will be needed again for a future Third Temple and need to remain in readiness for future duty:
From the time of the Mishnah and Talmud to the present, Judaism has required specialists or authorities for the practice of very few rituals or ceremonies. A Jew can fulfill most requirements for prayer by himself. Some activities—reading the Torah and haftarah (a supplementary portion from the Prophets or Writings), the prayer for mourners, the blessings for bridegroom and bride, the complete grace after meals—require a minyan, the presence of ten Jews.
The most common professional clergy in a synagogue are:
Jewish prayer services do involve two specified roles, which are sometimes, but not always, filled by a rabbi or hazzan in many congregations. In other congregations these roles are filled on an ad-hoc basis by members of the congregation who lead portions of services on a rotating basis:
Many congregations, especially larger ones, also rely on a:
The three preceding positions are usually voluntary and considered an honor. Since the Enlightenment large synagogues have often adopted the practice of hiring rabbis and hazzans to act as shatz and baal kriyah, and this is still typically the case in many Conservative and Reform congregations. However, in most Orthodox synagogues these positions are filled by laypeople on a rotating or ad-hoc basis. Although most congregations hire one or more Rabbis, the use of a professional hazzan is generally declining in American congregations, and the use of professionals for other offices is rarer still.
Around the 1st century CE, there were several small Jewish sects: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, and Christians. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, these sects vanished. Christianity survived, but by breaking with Judaism and becoming a separate religion; the Pharisees survived but in the form of Rabbinic Judaism (today, known simply as "Judaism"). The Sadducees rejected the divine inspiration of the Prophets and the Writings, relying only on the Torah as divinely inspired. Consequently, a number of other core tenets of the Pharisees' belief system (which became the basis for modern Judaism), were also dismissed by the Sadducees. (The Samaritans practiced a similar religion, which is traditionally considered separate from Judaism.)
Like the Sadducees who relied only on the Torah, some Jews in the 8th and 9th centuries rejected the authority and divine inspiration of the oral law as recorded in the Mishnah (and developed by later rabbis in the two Talmuds), relying instead only upon the Tanakh. These included the Isunians, the Yudganites, the Malikites, and others. They soon developed oral traditions of their own, which differed from the rabbinic traditions, and eventually formed the Karaite sect. Karaites exist in small numbers today, mostly living in Israel. Rabbinical and Karaite Jews each hold that the others are Jews, but that the other faith is erroneous.
Over a long time, Jews formed distinct ethnic groups in several different geographic areas—amongst others, the Ashkenazi Jews (of central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardi Jews (of Spain, Portugal, and North Africa), the Beta Israel of Ethiopia, the Yemenite Jews from the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and the Malabari and Cochin Jews from Kerala . Many of these groups have developed differences in their prayers, traditions and accepted canons; however, these distinctions are mainly the result of their being formed at some cultural distance from normative (rabbinic) Judaism, rather than based on any doctrinal dispute.
Antisemitism arose during the Middle Ages, in the form of persecutions, pogroms, forced conversions, expulsions, social restrictions and ghettoization.
This was different in quality from the repressions of Jews which had occurred in ancient times. Ancient repressions were politically motivated and Jews were treated the same as members of other ethnic groups. With the rise of the Churches, the main motive for attacks on Jews changed from politics to religion and the religious motive for such attacks was specifically derived from Christian views about Jews and Judaism. During the Middle Ages, Jewish people who lived under Muslim rule generally experienced tolerance and integration, but there were occasional outbreaks of violence like Almohad's persecutions.
Hasidic Judaism was founded by Yisroel ben Eliezer (1700–1760), also known as the Ba'al Shem Tov (or Besht). It originated in a time of persecution of the Jewish people when European Jews had turned inward to Talmud study; many felt that most expressions of Jewish life had become too "academic", and that they no longer had any emphasis on spirituality or joy. Its adherents favored small and informal gatherings called Shtiebel, which, in contrast to a traditional synagogue, could be used both as a place of worship and for celebrations involving dancing, eating, and socializing. Ba'al Shem Tov's disciples attracted many followers; they themselves established numerous Hasidic sects across Europe. Unlike other religions, which typically expanded through word of mouth or by use of print, Hasidism spread largely owing to Tzadiks, who used their influence to encourage others to follow the movement. Hasidism appealed to many Europeans because it was easy to learn, did not require full immediate commitment, and presented a compelling spectacle. Hasidic Judaism eventually became the way of life for many Jews in Eastern Europe. Waves of Jewish immigration in the 1880s carried it to the United States. The movement itself claims to be nothing new, but a refreshment of original Judaism. As some have put it: "they merely re-emphasized that which the generations had lost". Nevertheless, early on there was a serious schism between Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. European Jews who rejected the Hasidic movement were dubbed by the Hasidim as Misnagdim, (lit. "opponents"). Some of the reasons for the rejection of Hasidic Judaism were the exuberance of Hasidic worship, its deviation from tradition in ascribing infallibility and miracles to their leaders, and the concern that it might become a messianic sect. Over time differences between the Hasidim and their opponents have slowly diminished and both groups are now considered part of Haredi Judaism.
In the late 18th century CE, Europe was swept by a group of intellectual, social and political movements known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment led to reductions in the European laws that prohibited Jews to interact with the wider secular world, thus allowing Jews access to secular education and experience. A parallel Jewish movement, Haskalah or the "Jewish Enlightenment", began, especially in Central Europe and Western Europe, in response to both the Enlightenment and these new freedoms. It placed an emphasis on integration with secular society and a pursuit of non-religious knowledge through reason. With the promise of political emancipation, many Jews saw no reason to continue to observe halakha and increasing numbers of Jews assimilated into Christian Europe. Modern religious movements of Judaism all formed in reaction to this trend.
In Central Europe, followed by Great Britain and the United States, Reform (or Liberal) Judaism developed, relaxing legal obligations (especially those that limited Jewish relations with non-Jews), emulating Protestant decorum in prayer, and emphasizing the ethical values of Judaism's Prophetic tradition. Modern Orthodox Judaism developed in reaction to Reform Judaism, by leaders who argued that Jews could participate in public life as citizens equal to Christians while maintaining the observance of halakha. Meanwhile, in the United States, wealthy Reform Jews helped European scholars, who were Orthodox in practice but critical (and skeptical) in their study of the Bible and Talmud, to establish a seminary to train rabbis for immigrants from Eastern Europe. These left-wing Orthodox rabbis were joined by right-wing Reform rabbis who felt that halakha should not be entirely abandoned, to form the Conservative movement. Orthodox Jews who opposed the Haskalah formed Haredi Orthodox Judaism. After massive movements of Jews following The Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel, these movements have competed for followers from among traditional Jews in or from other countries.
Jewish religious practice varies widely through all levels of observance. According to the 2001 edition of the National Jewish Population Survey, in the United States' Jewish community—the world's second largest—4.3 million Jews out of 5.1 million had some sort of connection to the religion. Of that population of connected Jews, 80% participated in some sort of Jewish religious observance, but only 48% belonged to a congregation, and fewer than 16% attend regularly.
Christianity was originally a sect of Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions diverged in the first century. The differences between Christianity and Judaism originally centered on whether Jesus was the Jewish Messiah but eventually became irreconcilable. Major differences between the two faiths include the nature of the Messiah, of atonement and sin, the status of God's commandments to Israel, and perhaps most significantly of the nature of God himself. Due to these differences, Judaism traditionally regards Christianity as Shituf or worship of the God of Israel which is not monotheistic. Christianity has traditionally regarded Judaism as obsolete with the invention of Christianity and Jews as a people replaced by the Church, though a Christian belief in dual-covenant theology emerged as a phenomenon following Christian reflection on how their theology influenced the Nazi Holocaust.
Since the time of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church upheld the Constitutio pro Judæis (Formal Statement on the Jews), which stated:
We decree that no Christian shall use violence to force them to be baptized, so long as they are unwilling and refuse.…Without the judgment of the political authority of the land, no Christian shall presume to wound them or kill them or rob them of their money or change the good customs that they have thus far enjoyed in the place where they live."
Until their emancipation in the late 18th and the 19th century, Jews in Christian lands were subject to humiliating legal restrictions and limitations. They included provisions requiring Jews to wear specific and identifying clothing such as the Jewish hat and the yellow badge, restricting Jews to certain cities and towns or in certain parts of towns (ghettos), and forbidding Jews to enter certain trades (for example selling new clothes in medieval Sweden). Disabilities also included special taxes levied on Jews, exclusion from public life, restraints on the performance of religious ceremonies, and linguistic censorship. Some countries went even further and completely expelled Jews, for example, England in 1290 (Jews were readmitted in 1655) and Spain in 1492 (readmitted in 1868). The first Jewish settlers in North America arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1654; they were forbidden to hold public office, open a retail shop, or establish a synagogue. When the colony was seized by the British in 1664 Jewish rights remained unchanged, but by 1671 Asser Levy was the first Jew to serve on a jury in North America. In 1791, Revolutionary France was the first country to abolish disabilities altogether, followed by Prussia in 1848. Emancipation of the Jews in the United Kingdom was achieved in 1858 after an almost 30-year struggle championed by Isaac Lyon Goldsmid with the ability of Jews to sit in parliament with the passing of the Jews Relief Act 1858. The newly created German Empire in 1871 abolished Jewish disabilities in Germany, which were reinstated in the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.
Jewish life in Christian lands was marked by frequent blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. Religious prejudice was an underlying source against Jews in Europe. Christian rhetoric and antipathy towards Jews developed in the early years of Christianity and was reinforced by ever increasing anti-Jewish measures over the ensuing centuries. The action taken by Christians against Jews included acts of violence, and murder culminating in the Holocaust. These attitudes were reinforced by Christian preaching, in art and popular teaching for two millennia which expressed contempt for Jews, as well as statutes which were designed to humiliate and stigmatise Jews. The Nazi Party was known for its persecution of Christian Churches; many of them, such as the Protestant Confessing Church and the Catholic Church, as well as Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses, aided and rescued Jews who were being targeted by the antireligious régime.
The attitude of Christians and Christian Churches toward the Jewish people and Judaism have changed in a mostly positive direction since World War II. Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church have "upheld the Church's acceptance of the continuing and permanent election of the Jewish people" as well as a reaffirmation of the covenant between God and the Jews. In December 2015, the Vatican released a 10,000-word document that, among other things, stated that Catholics should work with Jews to fight antisemitism.
Both Judaism and Islam track their origins from the patriarch Abraham, and they are therefore considered Abrahamic religions. In both Jewish and Muslim tradition, the Jewish and Arab peoples are descended from the two sons of Abraham—Isaac and Ishmael, respectively. While both religions are monotheistic and share many commonalities, they differ based on the fact that Jews do not consider Jesus or Muhammad to be prophets. The religions' adherents have interacted with each other since the 7th century when Islam originated and spread in the Arabian peninsula. Indeed, the years 712 to 1066 CE under the Ummayad and the Abbasid rulers have been called the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Non-Muslim monotheists living in these countries, including Jews, were known as dhimmis. Dhimmis were allowed to practice their own religions and administer their own internal affairs, but they were subject to certain restrictions that were not imposed on Muslims. For example, they had to pay the jizya, a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males, and they were also forbidden to bear arms or testify in court cases involving Muslims. Many of the laws regarding dhimmis were highly symbolic. For example, dhimmis in some countries were required to wear distinctive clothing, a practice not found in either the Qur'an or the hadiths but invented in early medieval Baghdad and inconsistently enforced. Jews in Muslim countries were not entirely free from persecution—for example, many were killed, exiled or forcibly converted in the 12th century, in Persia, and by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in North Africa and Al-Andalus, as well as by the Zaydi imams of Yemen in the 17th century (see: Mawza Exile). At times, Jews were also restricted in their choice of residence—in Morocco, for example, Jews were confined to walled quarters (mellahs) beginning in the 15th century and increasingly since the early 19th century.
In the mid-20th century, Jews were expelled from nearly all of the Arab countries. Most have chosen to live in Israel. Today, antisemitic themes including Holocaust denial have become commonplace in the propaganda of Islamic movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Refah Partisi.
There are some movements in other religions that include elements of Judaism. Among Christianity these are a number of denominations of ancient and contemporary Judaizers. The most well-known of these is Messianic Judaism, a religious movement, which arose in the 1960s, In this, elements of the messianic traditions in Judaism, are incorporated in, and melded with the tenets of Christianity. The movement generally states that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, that he is one of the Three Divine Persons, and that salvation is only achieved through acceptance of Jesus as one's savior. Some members of Messianic Judaism argue that it is a sect of Judaism. Jewish organizations of every denomination reject this, stating that Messianic Judaism is a Christian sect, because it teaches creeds which are identical to those of Pauline Christianity, and because the conditions for Messiah to have come accordingly within traditional Jewish thought have not yet been met. Another religious movement is the Black Hebrew Israelite group, which not to be confused with less syncretic Black Judaism (a constellation of movements which, depending on their adherence to normative Jewish tradition, receive varying degrees of recognition by the broader Jewish community).
Other examples of syncretism include Semitic neopaganism, loosely organized sects which incorporate pagan, Goddess movement or Wiccan beliefs with some Jewish religious practices; Jewish Buddhists, another loosely organized group that incorporates elements of Buddhism and other Asian spirituality in their faith.
Some Renewal Jews borrow freely and openly from Buddhism, Sufism, Native American religions, and other faiths.
The Kabbalah Centre, which employs teachers from multiple religions, is a one of "New Age Judaism" movements that claims to popularize the kabbalah, part of the Jewish esoteric tradition.
See also Torah database for links to more Judaism e-texts.
Text study projects at Wikisource. In many instances, the Hebrew versions of these projects are more fully developed than the English. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Judaism (Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת Yahăḏūṯ) is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion. It comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people, having originated as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Contemporary Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the cultic religious movement of ancient Israel and Judah, around the 6th/5th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which was established between God and the Israelites, their ancestors. Jewish religious doctrine encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Among Judaism's core texts is the Torah, the first five books of the Tanakh, a collection of ancient Hebrew scriptures. The Tanakh, known in English as the Hebrew Bible, is also referred to as the \"Old Testament\" in Christianity. In addition to the original written scripture, the supplemental Oral Torah is represented by later texts, such as the Midrash and the Talmud. The Hebrew-language word torah can mean \"teaching\", \"law\", or \"instruction\", although \"Torah\" can also be used as a general term that refers to any Jewish text that expands or elaborates on the original Five Books of Moses. Representing the core of the Jewish spiritual and religious tradition, the Torah is a term and a set of teachings that are explicitly self-positioned as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. Judaism's texts, traditions, and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam. Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Within Judaism, there are a variety of religious movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. Historically, all or part of this assertion was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period; the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Some modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be considered secular or nontheistic. Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi and Modern Orthodox), Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between these groups are their approaches to halakha (Jewish law), the authority of the rabbinic tradition, and the significance of the State of Israel. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and halakha are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that halakha should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced halakha; today, these courts still exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts and the rabbis and scholars who interpret them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Jews are an ethnoreligious group including those born Jewish (or \"ethnic Jews\"), in addition to converts to Judaism. In 2021, the world Jewish population was estimated at 15.2 million, or roughly 0.195% of the total world population, although religious observance varies from strict to none. In 2021, about 45.6% of all Jews resided in Israel and another 42.1% resided in the United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The term Judaism derives from Iudaismus, a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek Ioudaismos (Ἰουδαϊσμός) (from the verb ἰουδαΐζειν, \"to side with or imitate the [Judeans]\"). Its ultimate source was the Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, \"Judah\", which is also the source of the Hebrew term for Judaism: יַהֲדוּת, Yahadut. The term Ἰουδαϊσμός first appears in the Hellenistic Greek book of 2 Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE. In the context of the age and period it meant \"seeking or forming part of a cultural entity\" and it resembled its antonym hellenismos, a word that signified a people's submission to Hellenic (Greek) cultural norms. The conflict between iudaismos and hellenismos lay behind the Maccabean revolt and hence the invention of the term iudaismos.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Shaye J. D. Cohen writes in his book The Beginnings of Jewishness:",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "We are tempted, of course, to translate [Ioudaïsmós] as \"Judaism,\" but this translation is too narrow, because in this first occurrence of the term, Ioudaïsmós has not yet been reduced to the designation of a religion. It means rather \"the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish).\" Among these characteristics, to be sure, are practices and beliefs that we would today call \"religious,\" but these practices and beliefs are not the sole content of the term. Thus Ioudaïsmós should be translated not as \"Judaism\" but as Judaeanness.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "According to the Oxford English Dictionary the earliest citation in English where the term was used to mean \"the profession or practice of the Jewish religion; the religious system or polity of the Jews\" is Robert Fabyan's The newe cronycles of Englande and of Fraunce (1516). \"Judaism\" as a direct translation of the Latin Iudaismus first occurred in a 1611 English translation of the apocrypha (Deuterocanon in Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy), 2 Macc. ii. 21: \"Those that behaved themselves manfully to their honour for Iudaisme.\"",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "At its core, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is an account of the Israelites' relationship with God from their earliest history until the building of the Second Temple (c. 535 BCE). Abraham is hailed as the first Hebrew and the father of the Jewish people. As a reward for his act of faith in one God, he was promised that Isaac, his second son, would inherit the Land of Israel (then called Canaan). Later, the descendants of Isaac's son Jacob were enslaved in Egypt, and God commanded Moses to lead the Exodus from Egypt. At Mount Sinai, they received the Torah—the five books of Moses. These books, together with Nevi'im and Ketuvim are known as Torah Shebikhtav as opposed to the Oral Torah, which refers to the Mishnah and the Talmud. Eventually, God led them to the land of Israel where the tabernacle was planted in the city of Shiloh for over 300 years to rally the nation against attacking enemies. As time went on, the spiritual level of the nation declined to the point that God allowed the Philistines to capture the tabernacle. The people of Israel then told Samuel the prophet that they needed to be governed by a permanent king, and Samuel appointed Saul to be their King. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to appoint David in his stead.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the law, which are called the Oral Torah or oral law, were originally an unwritten tradition based upon what God told Moses on Mount Sinai. However, as the persecutions of the Jews increased and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by Rabbi Judah HaNasi (Judah the Prince) in the Mishnah, redacted circa 200 CE. The Talmud was a compilation of both the Mishnah and the Gemara, rabbinic commentaries redacted over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud. It was compiled sometime during the 4th century in Palestine.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "According to critical scholars, the Torah consists of inconsistent texts edited together in a way that calls attention to divergent accounts. Several of these scholars, such as Professor Martin Rose and John Bright, suggest that during the First Temple period the people of Israel believed that each nation had its own god, but that their god was superior to other gods. Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, perhaps in reaction to Zoroastrian dualism. In this view, it was only by the Hellenic period that most Jews came to believe that their god was the only god and that the notion of a clearly bounded Jewish nation identical with the Jewish religion formed. John Day argues that the origins of biblical Yahweh, El, Asherah, and Ba'al, may be rooted in earlier Canaanite religion, which was centered on a pantheon of gods much like the Greek pantheon.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "According to the Hebrew Bible, a United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued under King David and Solomon with its capital in Jerusalem. After Solomon's reign, the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire; many people were taken captive from the capital Samaria to Media and the Khabur River valley. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, which was at the center of ancient Jewish worship. The Judeans were exiled to Babylon, in what is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora. Later, many of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylon by the Persian Achaemenid Empire seventy years later, an event known as the Return to Zion. A Second Temple was constructed and old religious practices were resumed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During the early years of the Second Temple, the highest religious authority was a council known as the Great Assembly, led by Ezra the Scribe. Among other accomplishments of the Great Assembly, the last books of the Bible were written at this time and the canon sealed. Hellenistic Judaism spread to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BCE, and its creation sparked widespread controversy in Jewish communities, starting \"conflicts within Jewish communities about accommodating the cultures of occupying powers.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "During the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Later, Roman emperor Hadrian built a pagan idol on the Temple Mount and prohibited circumcision; these acts of ethnocide provoked the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE), after which the Romans banned the study of the Torah and the celebration of Jewish holidays, and forcibly removed virtually all Jews from Judea. In 200 CE, however, Jews were granted Roman citizenship and Judaism was recognized as a religio licita (\"legitimate religion\") until the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity in the fourth century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around the community (represented by a minimum of ten adult men) and the establishment of the authority of rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Unlike other ancient Near Eastern gods, the Hebrew God is portrayed as unitary and solitary; consequently, the Hebrew God's principal relationships are not with other gods, but with the world, and more specifically, with the people he created. Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism: the belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of mankind. According to the Hebrew Bible, God promised Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation. Many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God; that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate God's concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to love one another; that is, Jews are to imitate God's love for people.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Thus, although there is an esoteric tradition in Judaism (Kabbalah), Rabbinic scholar Max Kadushin has characterized normative Judaism as \"normal mysticism\", because it involves everyday personal experiences of God through ways or modes that are common to all Jews. This is played out through the observance of the halakha (Jewish law) and given verbal expression in the Birkat Ha-Mizvot, the short blessings that are spoken every time a positive commandment is to be fulfilled:",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The ordinary, familiar, everyday things and occurrences we have, constitute occasions for the experience of God. Such things as one's daily sustenance, the very day itself, are felt as manifestations of God's loving-kindness, calling for the Berakhot. Kedushah, holiness, which is nothing else than the imitation of God, is concerned with daily conduct, with being gracious and merciful, with keeping oneself from defilement by idolatry, adultery, and the shedding of blood. The Birkat Ha-Mitzwot evokes the consciousness of holiness at a rabbinic rite, but the objects employed in the majority of these rites are non-holy and of general character, while the several holy objects are non-theurgic. And not only do ordinary things and occurrences bring with them the experience of God. Everything that happens to a man evokes that experience, evil as well as good, for a Berakah is said also at evil tidings. Hence, although the experience of God is like none other, the occasions for experiencing Him, for having a consciousness of Him, are manifold, even if we consider only those that call for Berakot.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Whereas Jewish philosophers often debate whether God is immanent or transcendent, and whether people have free will or their lives are determined, halakha is a system through which any Jew acts to bring God into the world.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Ethical monotheism is central in all sacred or normative texts of Judaism. However, monotheism has not always been followed in practice. The Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) records and repeatedly condemns the widespread worship of other gods in ancient Israel. In the Greco-Roman era, many different interpretations of monotheism existed in Judaism, including the interpretations that gave rise to Christianity.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Moreover, some have argued that Judaism is a non-creedal religion that does not require one to believe in God. For some, observance of halakha is more important than belief in God per se. The debate about whether one can speak of authentic or normative Judaism is not only a debate among religious Jews but also among historians.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In continental Europe, Judaism is heavily associated with and most often thought of as Orthodox Judaism.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "13 Principles of Faith:",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "—Maimonides",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the strict sense, in Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, there are no fixed universally binding articles of faith, due to their incorporation into the liturgy. Scholars throughout Jewish history have proposed numerous formulations of Judaism's core tenets, all of which have met with criticism. The most popular formulation is Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith, developed in the 12th century. According to Maimonides, any Jew who rejects even one of these principles would be considered an apostate and a heretic. Jewish scholars have held points of view diverging in various ways from Maimonides' principles. Thus, within Reform Judaism only the first five principles are endorsed.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In Maimonides' time, his list of tenets was criticized by Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo. Albo and the Raavad argued that Maimonides' principles contained too many items that, while true, were not fundamentals of the faith",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Along these lines, the ancient historian Josephus emphasized practices and observances rather than religious beliefs, associating apostasy with a failure to observe halakha and maintaining that the requirements for conversion to Judaism included circumcision and adherence to traditional customs. Maimonides' principles were largely ignored over the next few centuries. Later, two poetic restatements of these principles (\"Ani Ma'amin\" and \"Yigdal\") became integrated into many Jewish liturgies, leading to their eventual near-universal acceptance.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The oldest non-Rabbinic instance of articles of faith were formulated, under Islamic influence, by the 12th century Karaite figure Judah ben Elijah Hadassi:",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "(1) God is the Creator of all created beings; (2) He is premundane and has no peer or associate; (3) the whole universe is created; (4) God called Moses and the other Prophets of the Biblical canon; (5) the Law of Moses alone is true; (6) to know the language of the Bible is a religious duty; (7) the Temple at Jerusalem is the palace of the world's Ruler; (8) belief in Resurrection contemporaneous with the advent of the Messiah; (9) final judgment; (10) retribution.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In modern times, Judaism lacks a centralized authority that would dictate an exact religious dogma. Because of this, many different variations on the basic beliefs are considered within the scope of Judaism. Even so, all Jewish religious movements are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on the principles of the Hebrew Bible or various commentaries such as the Talmud and Midrash. Judaism also universally recognizes the Biblical Covenant between God and the Patriarch Abraham as well as the additional aspects of the Covenant revealed to Moses, who is considered Judaism's greatest prophet. In the Mishnah, a core text of Rabbinic Judaism, acceptance of the Divine origins of this covenant is considered an essential aspect of Judaism and those who reject the Covenant forfeit their share in the World to Come.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Establishing the core tenets of Judaism in the modern era is even more difficult, given the number and diversity of the contemporary Jewish denominations. Even if to restrict the problem to the most influential intellectual trends of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the matter remains complicated. Thus, for instance, Joseph Soloveitchik's (associated with the Modern Orthodox movement) answer to modernity is constituted upon the identification of Judaism with following the halakha whereas its ultimate goal is to bring the holiness down to the world. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist Judaism, abandons the idea of religion for the sake of identifying Judaism with civilization and by means of the latter term and secular translation of the core ideas, he tries to embrace as many Jewish denominations as possible. In turn, Solomon Schechter's Conservative Judaism was identical with the tradition understood as the interpretation of Torah, in itself being the history of the constant updates and adjustment of the Law performed by means of the creative interpretation. Finally, David Philipson draws the outlines of the Reform movement in Judaism by opposing it to the strict and traditional rabbinical approach and thus comes to the conclusions similar to that of the Conservative movement.",
"title": "Defining characteristics and principles of faith"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The following is a basic, structured list of the central works of Jewish practice and thought:",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The basis of halakha and tradition is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses). According to rabbinic tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or to women, some only to the ancient priestly groups, the Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the tribe of Levi), some only to farmers within the Land of Israel. Many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed, and only 369 of these commandments are still applicable today.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were based on the written text of the Torah alone (e.g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites), most Jews believe in the oral law. These oral traditions were transmitted by the Pharisee school of thought of ancient Judaism and were later recorded in written form and expanded upon by the rabbis.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "According to Rabbinical Jewish tradition, God gave both the Written Law (the Torah) and the Oral Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Oral law is the oral tradition as relayed by God to Moses and from him, transmitted and taught to the sages (rabbinic leaders) of each subsequent generation.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "For centuries, the Torah appeared only as a written text transmitted in parallel with the oral tradition. Fearing that the oral teachings might be forgotten, Rabbi Judah haNasi undertook the mission of consolidating the various opinions into one body of law which became known as the Mishnah.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Mishnah consists of 63 tractates codifying halakha, which are the basis of the Talmud. According to Abraham ben David, the Mishnah was compiled by Rabbi Judah haNasi after the destruction of Jerusalem, in anno mundi 3949, which corresponds to 189 CE.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Over the next four centuries, the Mishnah underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's major Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylonia). The commentaries from each of these communities were eventually compiled into the two Talmuds, the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi) and the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli). These have been further expounded by commentaries of various Torah scholars during the ages.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In the text of the Torah, many words are left undefined, and many procedures are mentioned without explanation or instructions. Such phenomena are sometimes offered to validate the viewpoint that the Written Law has always been transmitted with a parallel oral tradition, illustrating the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the details from other, i.e., oral, sources.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Halakha, the rabbinic Jewish way of life, then, is based on a combined reading of the Torah, and the oral tradition—the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries. The halakha has developed slowly, through a precedent-based system. The literature of questions to rabbis, and their considered answers, is referred to as responsa (in Hebrew, Sheelot U-Teshuvot.) Over time, as practices develop, codes of halakha are written that are based on the responsa; the most important code, the Shulchan Aruch, largely determines Orthodox religious practice today.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. Major Jewish philosophers include Philo of Alexandria, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Saadia Gaon, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Gersonides. Major changes occurred in response to the Enlightenment (late 18th to early 19th century) leading to the post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers. Modern Jewish philosophy consists of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox oriented philosophy. Notable among Orthodox Jewish philosophers are Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Yitzchok Hutner. Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Will Herberg, and Emmanuel Lévinas.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "13 Principles of Hermeneutics:",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "—R. Ishmael",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Orthodox and many other Jews do not believe that the revealed Torah consists solely of its written contents, but of its interpretations as well. The study of Torah (in its widest sense, to include both poetry, narrative, and law, and both the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud) is in Judaism itself a sacred act of central importance. For the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, and for their successors today, the study of Torah was therefore not merely a means to learn the contents of God's revelation, but an end in itself. According to the Talmud:",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "These are the things for which a person enjoys the dividends in this world while the principal remains for the person to enjoy in the world to come; they are: honoring parents, loving deeds of kindness, and making peace between one person and another. But the study of the Torah is equal to them all. (Talmud Shabbat 127a).",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In Judaism, \"the study of Torah can be a means of experiencing God\". Reflecting on the contribution of the Amoraim and Tanaim to contemporary Judaism, Professor Jacob Neusner observed:",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The rabbi's logical and rational inquiry is not mere logic-chopping. It is a most serious and substantive effort to locate in trivialities the fundamental principles of the revealed will of God to guide and sanctify the most specific and concrete actions in the workaday world. ... Here is the mystery of Talmudic Judaism: the alien and remote conviction that the intellect is an instrument not of unbelief and desacralization but of sanctification.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "To study the Written Torah and the Oral Torah in light of each other is thus also to study how to study the word of God.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the study of Torah, the sages formulated and followed various logical and hermeneutical principles. According to David Stern, all Rabbinic hermeneutics rest on two basic axioms:",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "first, the belief in the omni-significance of Scripture, in the meaningfulness of its every word, letter, even (according to one famous report) scribal flourish; second, the claim of the essential unity of Scripture as the expression of the single divine will.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "These two principles make possible a great variety of interpretations. According to the Talmud:",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "A single verse has several meanings, but no two verses hold the same meaning. It was taught in the school of R. Ishmael: 'Behold, My word is like fire—declares the Lord—and like a hammer that shatters rock' (Jer 23:29). Just as this hammer produces many sparks (when it strikes the rock), so a single verse has several meanings.\" (Talmud Sanhedrin 34a).",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Observant Jews thus view the Torah as dynamic, because it contains within it a host of interpretations.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "According to Rabbinic tradition, all valid interpretations of the written Torah were revealed to Moses at Sinai in oral form, and handed down from teacher to pupil (The oral revelation is in effect coextensive with the Talmud itself). When different rabbis forwarded conflicting interpretations, they sometimes appealed to hermeneutic principles to legitimize their arguments; some rabbis claim that these principles were themselves revealed by God to Moses at Sinai.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Thus, Hillel called attention to seven commonly used hermeneutical principles in the interpretation of laws (baraita at the beginning of Sifra); R. Ishmael, thirteen (baraita at the beginning of Sifra; this collection is largely an amplification of that of Hillel). Eliezer b. Jose ha-Gelili listed 32, largely used for the exegesis of narrative elements of Torah. All the hermeneutic rules scattered through the Talmudim and Midrashim have been collected by Malbim in Ayyelet ha-Shachar, the introduction to his commentary on the Sifra. Nevertheless, R. Ishmael's 13 principles are perhaps the ones most widely known; they constitute an important, and one of Judaism's earliest, contributions to logic, hermeneutics, and jurisprudence. Judah Hadassi incorporated Ishmael's principles into Karaite Judaism in the 12th century. Today R. Ishmael's 13 principles are incorporated into the Jewish prayer book to be read by observant Jews on a daily basis.",
"title": "Religious texts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "According to Daniel Boyarin, the underlying distinction between religion and ethnicity is foreign to Judaism itself, and is one form of the dualism between spirit and flesh that has its origin in Platonic philosophy and that permeated Hellenistic Judaism. Consequently, in his view, Judaism does not fit easily into conventional Western categories, such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Boyarin suggests that this in part reflects the fact that much of Judaism's more than 3,000-year history predates the rise of Western culture and occurred outside the West (that is, Europe, particularly medieval and modern Europe). During this time, Jews experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile. In the Jewish diaspora, they were in contact with, and influenced by, ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment (see Haskalah) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in their ancient homeland, the Land of Israel. Thus, Boyarin has argued that \"Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension.\"",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In contrast to this point of view, practices such as Humanistic Judaism reject the religious aspects of Judaism, while retaining certain cultural traditions.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "According to Rabbinic Judaism, a Jew is anyone who was either born of a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism in accordance with halakha. Reconstructionist Judaism and the larger denominations of worldwide Progressive Judaism (also known as Liberal or Reform Judaism) accept the child as Jewish if one of the parents is Jewish, if the parents raise the child with a Jewish identity, but not the smaller regional branches. All mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts, although conversion has traditionally been discouraged since the time of the Talmud. The conversion process is evaluated by an authority, and the convert is examined on his or her sincerity and knowledge. Converts are called \"ben Abraham\" or \"bat Abraham\", (son or daughter of Abraham). Conversions have on occasion been overturned. In 2008, Israel's highest religious court invalidated the conversion of 40,000 Jews, mostly from Russian immigrant families, even though they had been approved by an Orthodox rabbi.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Rabbinical Judaism maintains that a Jew, whether by birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. Thus a Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by traditional Judaism to be Jewish. According to some sources, the Reform movement has maintained that a Jew who has converted to another religion is no longer a Jew, and the Israeli Government has also taken that stance after Supreme Court cases and statutes. However, the Reform movement has indicated that this is not so cut and dried, and different situations call for consideration and differing actions. For example, Jews who have converted under duress may be permitted to return to Judaism \"without any action on their part but their desire to rejoin the Jewish community\" and \"A proselyte who has become an apostate remains, nevertheless, a Jew\".",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Karaite Judaism believes that Jewish identity can only be transmitted by patrilineal descent. Although a minority of modern Karaites believe that Jewish identity requires that both parents be Jewish, and not only the father. They argue that only patrilineal descent can transmit Jewish identity on the grounds that all descent in the Torah went according to the male line.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The question of what determines Jewish identity in the State of Israel was given new impetus when, in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on mihu Yehudi (\"Who is a Jew\") from Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals worldwide in order to settle citizenship questions. This is still not settled, and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. Historical definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations of sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and Canaanites because \"[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods (i.e., idols) of others.\" Leviticus 24 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is \"of the community of Israel.\" This is complemented by Ezra 10, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The total number of Jews worldwide is difficult to assess because the definition of \"who is a Jew\" is problematic; not all Jews identify themselves as Jewish, and some who identify as Jewish are not considered so by other Jews. According to the Jewish Year Book (1901), the global Jewish population in 1900 was around 11 million. The latest available data is from the World Jewish Population Survey of 2002 and the Jewish Year Calendar (2005). In 2002, according to the Jewish Population Survey, there were 13.3 million Jews around the world. The Jewish Year Calendar cites 14.6 million. It is 0.25% of world population.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Jewish population growth is currently near zero percent, with 0.3% growth from 2000 to 2001. The overall growth rate of Jews in Israel is 1.7% annually, and is consistently growing through natural population growth and extensive immigration. The diaspora countries, by contrast, have low Jewish birth rates, an increasingly elderly age composition, high rates of interreligious marriage and a negative balance of people leaving Judaism versus those joining.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 2022, the world Jewish population was estimated at 15.2 million, the majority live in one of only two countires: Israel and the United States. About 46.6% of all Jews resided in Israel (6.9 million) and another 6 million Jews resided in the United States, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other groups spread throughout Canada, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.",
"title": "Jewish identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Rabbinic Judaism (or in some older sources, Rabbinism; Hebrew: \"Yahadut Rabanit\" – יהדות רבנית) has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Talmud. It is characterised by the belief that the Written Torah (Written Law) cannot be correctly interpreted without reference to the Oral Torah and the voluminous literature specifying what behavior is sanctioned by the Law.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The Jewish Enlightenment of the late 18th century resulted in the division of Western Jewry (primeraly, the Ashkenazi, but also western part of Sephardim and Italian rite Jews, a.k.a. Italkim, and Greek Romaniote Jews—both last groups are considered distinct from Ashkenazim and Sephardim) into religious movements or denominations, especially in North America and Anglophone countries. The main denominations today outside Israel (where the situation is rather different) are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. The notion \"traditional Judaism\" includes the Orthodox with Conservative or solely the Orthodox Jews:",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "While traditions and customs vary between discrete communities, it can be said that Sephardi (Iberian, for example, most Jews from France and the Netherlands) and Mizrahi (Oriental) Jewish communities do not generally adhere to the \"movement\" framework popular in and among Ashkenazi Jewry. Historically, Sephardi and Mizrahi communities have eschewed denominations in favour of a \"big tent\" approach. This is particularly the case in contemporary Israel, which is home to the largest communities of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in the world. (However, individual Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews or some their communities may be members of or attend synagogues that do adhere to one Ashkenazi-inflected movement or another.) Among the pioneers of Reform Judaism in the 1820s there was the Sephardic congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina. A part of the European Sephardim were also linked with the Judaic modernization.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Sephardi and Mizrahi observance of Judaism tends toward the traditional (Orthodox) and prayer rites are reflective of this, with the text of each rite being largely unchanged since their respective inception. Observant Sephardim may follow the teachings of a particular rabbi or school of thought; for example, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In Israel, as in the West, Judaism is also divided into major Orthodox, Conservative and Reform traditions. At the same time, for statistical and practical purposes, a different division of society is used there on the basis of a person's attitude to religion.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Most Jewish Israelis classify themselves as \"secular\" (hiloni), \"traditional\" (masorti), \"religious\" (dati) or \"ultra-religious\" (haredi). The term \"secular\" is more popular as a self-description among Israeli families of western (European) origin, whose Jewish identity may be a very powerful force in their lives, but who see it as largely independent of traditional religious belief and practice. This portion of the population largely ignores organized religious life, be it of the official Israeli rabbinate (Orthodox) or of the liberal movements common to diaspora Judaism (Reform, Conservative).",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The term \"traditional\" (masorti) is most common as a self-description among Israeli families of \"eastern\" origin (i.e., the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa). This term, as commonly used, has nothing to do with Conservative Judaism, which also names itself \"Masorti\" outside North America. Only a few authors, like Elliot Nelson Dorff, consider the American Conservative (masorti) movement and Israeli masorti sector to be one and the same. There is a great deal of ambiguity in the ways \"secular\" and \"traditional\" are used in Israel: they often overlap, and they cover an extremely wide range in terms of worldview and practical religious observance. The term \"Orthodox\" is not popular in Israeli discourse, although the percentage of Jews who come under that category is far greater than in the Jewish diaspora. What would be called \"Orthodox\" in the diaspora includes what is commonly called dati (religious, including religious zionist) or haredi (ultra-Orthodox) in Israel. The former term includes what is called \"religious Zionism\" or the \"National Orthodox\" community, as well as what has become known over the past decade or so as haredi-leumi (nationalist haredi), or \"Hardal\", which combines a largely haredi lifestyle with nationalist ideology. (Some people, in Yiddish, also refer to observant Orthodox Jews as frum, as opposed to frei (more liberal Jews)).",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Karaite Judaism defines itself as the remnants of the non-Rabbinic Jewish sects of the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees. The Karaites (\"Scripturalists\") accept only the Hebrew Bible and what they view as the Peshat (\"simple\" meaning); they do not accept non-biblical writings as authoritative. Some European Karaites do not see themselves as part of the Jewish community at all, although most do.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Samaritans, a very small community located entirely around Mount Gerizim in the Nablus/Shechem region of the West Bank and in Holon, near Tel Aviv in Israel, regard themselves as the descendants of the Israelites of the Iron Age kingdom of Israel. Their religious practices are based on the literal text of the written Torah (Five Books of Moses), which they view as the only authoritative scripture (with a special regard also for the Samaritan Book of Joshua).",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Haymanot (meaning \"religion\" in Ge'ez and Amharic) refers the Judaism practiced by Ethiopian Jews. This version of Judaism differs substantially from Rabbinic, Karaite, and Samaritan Judaisms, Ethiopian Jews having diverged from their coreligionists earlier. Sacred scriptures (the Orit) are written in Ge'ez, not Hebrew, and dietary laws are based strictly on the text of the Orit, without explication from ancillary commentaries. Holidays also differ, with some Rabbinic holidays not observed in Ethiopian Jewish communities, and some additional holidays, like Sigd.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Noahidism is a Jewish religious movement based on the Seven Laws of Noah and their traditional interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism. According to the halakha, non-Jews (gentiles) are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah to be assured of a place in the World to Come (Olam Ha-Ba), the final reward of the righteous. The divinely ordained penalty for violating any of the Laws of Noah is discussed in the Talmud, but in practical terms it is subject to the working legal system which is established by the society at large. Those who subscribe to the observance of the Noahic Covenant are referred to as B'nei Noach (Hebrew: בני נח, \"Children of Noah\") or Noahides (/ˈnoʊ.ə.haɪdɪs/). Supporting organizations have been established around the world over the past decades by both Noahides and Orthodox Jews.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Historically, the Hebrew term B'nei Noach has applied to all non-Jews as descendants of Noah. However, nowadays it's primarily used to refer specifically to those non-Jews who observe the Seven Laws of Noah.",
"title": "Jewish religious movements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Jewish ethics may be guided by halakhic traditions, by other moral principles, or by central Jewish virtues. Jewish ethical practice is typically understood to be marked by values such as justice, truth, peace, loving-kindness (chesed), compassion, humility, and self-respect. Specific Jewish ethical practices include practices of charity (tzedakah) and refraining from negative speech (lashon hara). Proper ethical practices regarding sexuality and many other issues are subjects of dispute among Jews.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Traditionally, Jews recite prayers three times daily, Shacharit, Mincha, and Ma'ariv with a fourth prayer, Mussaf added on Shabbat and holidays. At the heart of each service is the Amidah or Shemoneh Esrei. Another key prayer in many services is the declaration of faith, the Shema Yisrael (or Shema). The Shema is the recitation of a verse from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4): Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad—\"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is One!\"",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Most of the prayers in a traditional Jewish service can be recited in solitary prayer, although communal prayer is preferred. Communal prayer requires a quorum of ten adult Jews, called a minyan. In nearly all Orthodox and a few Conservative circles, only male Jews are counted toward a minyan; most Conservative Jews and members of other Jewish denominations count female Jews as well.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In addition to prayer services, observant traditional Jews recite prayers and benedictions throughout the day when performing various acts. Prayers are recited upon waking up in the morning, before eating or drinking different foods, after eating a meal, and so on.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The approach to prayer varies among the Jewish denominations. Differences can include the texts of prayers, the frequency of prayer, the number of prayers recited at various religious events, the use of musical instruments and choral music, and whether prayers are recited in the traditional liturgical languages or the vernacular. In general, Orthodox and Conservative congregations adhere most closely to tradition, and Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues are more likely to incorporate translations and contemporary writings in their services. Also, in most Conservative synagogues, and all Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, women participate in prayer services on an equal basis with men, including roles traditionally filled only by men, such as reading from the Torah. In addition, many Reform temples use musical accompaniment such as organs and mixed choirs.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "A kippah (Hebrew: כִּפָּה, plural kippot; Yiddish: יאַרמלקע, yarmulke) is a slightly rounded brimless skullcap worn by many Jews while praying, eating, reciting blessings, or studying Jewish religious texts, and at all times by some Jewish men. In Orthodox communities, only men wear kippot; in non-Orthodox communities, some women also wear kippot. Kippot range in size from a small round beanie that covers only the back of the head to a large, snug cap that covers the whole crown.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Tzitzit (Hebrew: צִיציִת) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tzitzis) are special knotted \"fringes\" or \"tassels\" found on the four corners of the tallit (Hebrew: טַלִּית) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tallis), or prayer shawl. The tallit is worn by Jewish men and some Jewish women during the prayer service. Customs vary regarding when a Jew begins wearing a tallit. In the Sephardi community, boys wear a tallit from bar mitzvah age. In some Ashkenazi communities, it is customary to wear one only after marriage. A tallit katan (small tallit) is a fringed garment worn under the clothing throughout the day. In some Orthodox circles, the fringes are allowed to hang freely outside the clothing.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Tefillin (Hebrew: תְפִלִּין), known in English as phylacteries (from the Greek word φυλακτήριον, meaning safeguard or amulet), are two square leather boxes containing biblical verses, attached to the forehead and wound around the left arm by leather straps. They are worn during weekday morning prayer by observant Jewish men and some Jewish women.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "A kittel (Yiddish: קיטל), a white knee-length overgarment, is worn by prayer leaders and some observant traditional Jews on the High Holidays. It is traditional for the head of the household to wear a kittel at the Passover seder in some communities, and some grooms wear one under the wedding canopy. Jewish males are buried in a tallit and sometimes also a kittel which are part of the tachrichim (burial garments).",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Jewish holidays are special days in the Jewish calendar, which celebrate moments in Jewish history, as well as central themes in the relationship between God and the world, such as creation, revelation, and redemption.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Shabbat, the weekly day of rest lasting from shortly before sundown on Friday night to nightfall on Saturday night, commemorates God's day of rest after six days of creation. It plays a pivotal role in Jewish practice and is governed by a large corpus of religious law. At sundown on Friday, the woman of the house welcomes the Shabbat by lighting two or more candles and reciting a blessing. The evening meal begins with the Kiddush, a blessing recited aloud over a cup of wine, and the Mohtzi, a blessing recited over the bread. It is customary to have challah, two braided loaves of bread, on the table. During Shabbat, Jews are forbidden to engage in any activity that falls under 39 categories of melakhah, translated literally as \"work\". In fact, the activities banned on the Sabbath are not \"work\" in the usual sense: They include such actions as lighting a fire, writing, using money and carrying in the public domain. The prohibition of lighting a fire has been extended in the modern era to driving a car, which involves burning fuel and using electricity.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Jewish holy days (chaggim), celebrate landmark events in Jewish history, such as the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah, and sometimes mark the change of seasons and transitions in the agricultural cycle. The three major festivals, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot, are called \"regalim\" (derived from the Hebrew word \"regel\", or foot). On the three regalim, it was customary for the Israelites to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the Temple:",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The High Holidays (Yamim Noraim or \"Days of Awe\") revolve around judgment and forgiveness:",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Purim (Hebrew: פורים Pûrîm \"lots\") is a joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the plot of the evil Haman, who sought to exterminate them, as recorded in the biblical Book of Esther. It is characterized by public recitation of the Book of Esther, mutual gifts of food and drink, charity to the poor, and a celebratory meal (Esther 9:22). Other customs include drinking wine, eating special pastries called hamantashen, dressing up in masks and costumes, and organizing carnivals and parties.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Purim has celebrated annually on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar, which occurs in February or March of the Gregorian calendar.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Hanukkah (Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה, \"dedication\") also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday that starts on the 25th day of Kislev (Hebrew calendar). The festival is observed in Jewish homes by the kindling of lights on each of the festival's eight nights, one on the first night, two on the second night and so on.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The holiday was called Hanukkah (meaning \"dedication\") because it marks the re-dedication of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Spiritually, Hanukkah commemorates the \"Miracle of the Oil\". According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days—which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate new oil.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Bible and was never considered a major holiday in Judaism, but it has become much more visible and widely celebrated in modern times, mainly because it falls around the same time as Christmas and has national Jewish overtones that have been emphasized since the establishment of the State of Israel.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Tisha B'Av (Hebrew: תשעה באב or ט׳ באב, \"the Ninth of Av\") is a day of mourning and fasting commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and in later times, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "There are three more minor Jewish fast days that commemorate various stages of the destruction of the Temples. They are the 17th Tamuz, the 10th of Tevet and Tzom Gedaliah (the 3rd of Tishrei).",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The modern holidays of Yom Ha-shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) commemorate the horrors of the Holocaust, the fallen soldiers of Israel and victims of terrorism, and Israeli independence, respectively.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "There are some who prefer to commemorate those who were killed in the Holocaust on the 10th of Tevet.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The core of festival and Shabbat prayer services is the public reading of the Torah, along with connected readings from the other books of the Tanakh, called Haftarah. Over the course of a year, the whole Torah is read, with the cycle starting over in the autumn, on Simchat Torah.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Synagogues are Jewish houses of prayer and study. They usually contain separate rooms for prayer (the main sanctuary), smaller rooms for study, and often an area for community or educational use. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. The Reform movement mostly refer to their synagogues as temples. Some traditional features of a synagogue are:",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In addition to synagogues, other buildings of significance in Judaism include yeshivas, or institutions of Jewish learning, and mikvahs, which are ritual baths.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The Jewish dietary laws are known as kashrut. Food prepared in accordance with them is termed kosher, and food that is not kosher is also known as treifah or treif. People who observe these laws are colloquially said to be \"keeping kosher\".",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Many of the laws apply to animal-based foods. For example, in order to be considered kosher, mammals must have split hooves and chew their cud. The pig is arguably the most well-known example of a non-kosher animal. Although it has split hooves, it does not chew its cud. For seafood to be kosher, the animal must have fins and scales. Certain types of seafood, such as shellfish, crustaceans, and eels, are therefore considered non-kosher. Concerning birds, a list of non-kosher species is given in the Torah. The exact translations of many of the species have not survived, and some non-kosher birds' identities are no longer certain. However, traditions exist about the kashrut status of a few birds. For example, both chickens and turkeys are permitted in most communities. Other types of animals, such as amphibians, reptiles, and most insects, are prohibited altogether.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "In addition to the requirement that the species be considered kosher, meat and poultry (but not fish) must come from a healthy animal slaughtered in a process known as shechitah. Without the proper slaughtering practices even an otherwise kosher animal will be rendered treif. The slaughtering process is intended to be quick and relatively painless to the animal. Forbidden parts of animals include the blood, some fats, and the area in and around the sciatic nerve.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Halakha also forbids the consumption of meat and dairy products together. The waiting period between eating meat and eating dairy varies by the order in which they are consumed and by community and can extend for up to six hours. Based on the Biblical injunction against cooking a kid in its mother's milk, this rule is mostly derived from the Oral Torah, the Talmud and Rabbinic law. Chicken and other kosher birds are considered the same as meat under the laws of kashrut, but the prohibition is rabbinic, not biblical.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The use of dishes, serving utensils, and ovens may make food treif that would otherwise be kosher. Utensils that have been used to prepare non-kosher food, or dishes that have held meat and are now used for dairy products, render the food treif under certain conditions.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Furthermore, all Orthodox and some Conservative authorities forbid the consumption of processed grape products made by non-Jews, due to ancient pagan practices of using wine in rituals. Some Conservative authorities permit wine and grape juice made without rabbinic supervision.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The Torah does not give specific reasons for most of the laws of kashrut. However, a number of explanations have been offered, including maintaining ritual purity, teaching impulse control, encouraging obedience to God, improving health, reducing cruelty to animals and preserving the distinctness of the Jewish community. The various categories of dietary laws may have developed for different reasons, and some may exist for multiple reasons. For example, people are forbidden from consuming the blood of birds and mammals because, according to the Torah, this is where animal souls are contained. In contrast, the Torah forbids Israelites from eating non-kosher species because \"they are unclean\". The Kabbalah describes sparks of holiness that are released by the act of eating kosher foods but are too tightly bound in non-kosher foods to be released by eating.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Survival concerns supersede all the laws of kashrut, as they do for most halakhot.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "The Tanakh describes circumstances in which a person who is tahor or ritually pure may become tamei or ritually impure. Some of these circumstances are contact with human corpses or graves, seminal flux, vaginal flux, menstruation, and contact with people who have become impure from any of these. In Rabbinic Judaism, Kohanim, members of the hereditary caste that served as priests in the time of the Temple, are mostly restricted from entering grave sites and touching dead bodies. During the Temple period, such priests (Kohanim) were required to eat their bread offering (Terumah) in a state of ritual purity, which laws eventually led to more rigid laws being enacted, such as hand-washing which became a requisite of all Jews before consuming ordinary bread.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "An important subcategory of the ritual purity laws relates to the segregation of menstruating women. These laws are also known as niddah, literally \"separation\", or family purity. Vital aspects of halakha for traditionally observant Jews, they are not usually followed by Jews in liberal denominations.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Especially in Orthodox Judaism, the Biblical laws are augmented by Rabbinical injunctions. For example, the Torah mandates that a woman in her normal menstrual period must abstain from sexual intercourse for seven days. A woman whose menstruation is prolonged must continue to abstain for seven more days after bleeding has stopped. The Rabbis conflated ordinary niddah with this extended menstrual period, known in the Torah as zavah, and mandated that a woman may not have sexual intercourse with her husband from the time she begins her menstrual flow until seven days after it ends. In addition, Rabbinical law forbids the husband from touching or sharing a bed with his wife during this period. Afterwards, purification can occur in a ritual bath called a mikveh",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Traditional Ethiopian Jews keep menstruating women in separate huts and, similar to Karaite practice, do not allow menstruating women into their temples because of a temple's special sanctity. Emigration to Israel and the influence of other Jewish denominations have led to Ethiopian Jews adopting more normative Jewish practices.",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Life-cycle events, or rites of passage, occur throughout a Jew's life that serves to strengthen Jewish identity and bind him/her to the entire community:",
"title": "Jewish observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "The role of the priesthood in Judaism has significantly diminished since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE when priests attended to the Temple and sacrifices. The priesthood is an inherited position, and although priests no longer have any but ceremonial duties, they are still honored in many Jewish communities. Many Orthodox Jewish communities believe that they will be needed again for a future Third Temple and need to remain in readiness for future duty:",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "From the time of the Mishnah and Talmud to the present, Judaism has required specialists or authorities for the practice of very few rituals or ceremonies. A Jew can fulfill most requirements for prayer by himself. Some activities—reading the Torah and haftarah (a supplementary portion from the Prophets or Writings), the prayer for mourners, the blessings for bridegroom and bride, the complete grace after meals—require a minyan, the presence of ten Jews.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The most common professional clergy in a synagogue are:",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Jewish prayer services do involve two specified roles, which are sometimes, but not always, filled by a rabbi or hazzan in many congregations. In other congregations these roles are filled on an ad-hoc basis by members of the congregation who lead portions of services on a rotating basis:",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Many congregations, especially larger ones, also rely on a:",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "The three preceding positions are usually voluntary and considered an honor. Since the Enlightenment large synagogues have often adopted the practice of hiring rabbis and hazzans to act as shatz and baal kriyah, and this is still typically the case in many Conservative and Reform congregations. However, in most Orthodox synagogues these positions are filled by laypeople on a rotating or ad-hoc basis. Although most congregations hire one or more Rabbis, the use of a professional hazzan is generally declining in American congregations, and the use of professionals for other offices is rarer still.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Around the 1st century CE, there were several small Jewish sects: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, and Christians. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, these sects vanished. Christianity survived, but by breaking with Judaism and becoming a separate religion; the Pharisees survived but in the form of Rabbinic Judaism (today, known simply as \"Judaism\"). The Sadducees rejected the divine inspiration of the Prophets and the Writings, relying only on the Torah as divinely inspired. Consequently, a number of other core tenets of the Pharisees' belief system (which became the basis for modern Judaism), were also dismissed by the Sadducees. (The Samaritans practiced a similar religion, which is traditionally considered separate from Judaism.)",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Like the Sadducees who relied only on the Torah, some Jews in the 8th and 9th centuries rejected the authority and divine inspiration of the oral law as recorded in the Mishnah (and developed by later rabbis in the two Talmuds), relying instead only upon the Tanakh. These included the Isunians, the Yudganites, the Malikites, and others. They soon developed oral traditions of their own, which differed from the rabbinic traditions, and eventually formed the Karaite sect. Karaites exist in small numbers today, mostly living in Israel. Rabbinical and Karaite Jews each hold that the others are Jews, but that the other faith is erroneous.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Over a long time, Jews formed distinct ethnic groups in several different geographic areas—amongst others, the Ashkenazi Jews (of central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardi Jews (of Spain, Portugal, and North Africa), the Beta Israel of Ethiopia, the Yemenite Jews from the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and the Malabari and Cochin Jews from Kerala . Many of these groups have developed differences in their prayers, traditions and accepted canons; however, these distinctions are mainly the result of their being formed at some cultural distance from normative (rabbinic) Judaism, rather than based on any doctrinal dispute.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Antisemitism arose during the Middle Ages, in the form of persecutions, pogroms, forced conversions, expulsions, social restrictions and ghettoization.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "This was different in quality from the repressions of Jews which had occurred in ancient times. Ancient repressions were politically motivated and Jews were treated the same as members of other ethnic groups. With the rise of the Churches, the main motive for attacks on Jews changed from politics to religion and the religious motive for such attacks was specifically derived from Christian views about Jews and Judaism. During the Middle Ages, Jewish people who lived under Muslim rule generally experienced tolerance and integration, but there were occasional outbreaks of violence like Almohad's persecutions.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Hasidic Judaism was founded by Yisroel ben Eliezer (1700–1760), also known as the Ba'al Shem Tov (or Besht). It originated in a time of persecution of the Jewish people when European Jews had turned inward to Talmud study; many felt that most expressions of Jewish life had become too \"academic\", and that they no longer had any emphasis on spirituality or joy. Its adherents favored small and informal gatherings called Shtiebel, which, in contrast to a traditional synagogue, could be used both as a place of worship and for celebrations involving dancing, eating, and socializing. Ba'al Shem Tov's disciples attracted many followers; they themselves established numerous Hasidic sects across Europe. Unlike other religions, which typically expanded through word of mouth or by use of print, Hasidism spread largely owing to Tzadiks, who used their influence to encourage others to follow the movement. Hasidism appealed to many Europeans because it was easy to learn, did not require full immediate commitment, and presented a compelling spectacle. Hasidic Judaism eventually became the way of life for many Jews in Eastern Europe. Waves of Jewish immigration in the 1880s carried it to the United States. The movement itself claims to be nothing new, but a refreshment of original Judaism. As some have put it: \"they merely re-emphasized that which the generations had lost\". Nevertheless, early on there was a serious schism between Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. European Jews who rejected the Hasidic movement were dubbed by the Hasidim as Misnagdim, (lit. \"opponents\"). Some of the reasons for the rejection of Hasidic Judaism were the exuberance of Hasidic worship, its deviation from tradition in ascribing infallibility and miracles to their leaders, and the concern that it might become a messianic sect. Over time differences between the Hasidim and their opponents have slowly diminished and both groups are now considered part of Haredi Judaism.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "In the late 18th century CE, Europe was swept by a group of intellectual, social and political movements known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment led to reductions in the European laws that prohibited Jews to interact with the wider secular world, thus allowing Jews access to secular education and experience. A parallel Jewish movement, Haskalah or the \"Jewish Enlightenment\", began, especially in Central Europe and Western Europe, in response to both the Enlightenment and these new freedoms. It placed an emphasis on integration with secular society and a pursuit of non-religious knowledge through reason. With the promise of political emancipation, many Jews saw no reason to continue to observe halakha and increasing numbers of Jews assimilated into Christian Europe. Modern religious movements of Judaism all formed in reaction to this trend.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "In Central Europe, followed by Great Britain and the United States, Reform (or Liberal) Judaism developed, relaxing legal obligations (especially those that limited Jewish relations with non-Jews), emulating Protestant decorum in prayer, and emphasizing the ethical values of Judaism's Prophetic tradition. Modern Orthodox Judaism developed in reaction to Reform Judaism, by leaders who argued that Jews could participate in public life as citizens equal to Christians while maintaining the observance of halakha. Meanwhile, in the United States, wealthy Reform Jews helped European scholars, who were Orthodox in practice but critical (and skeptical) in their study of the Bible and Talmud, to establish a seminary to train rabbis for immigrants from Eastern Europe. These left-wing Orthodox rabbis were joined by right-wing Reform rabbis who felt that halakha should not be entirely abandoned, to form the Conservative movement. Orthodox Jews who opposed the Haskalah formed Haredi Orthodox Judaism. After massive movements of Jews following The Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel, these movements have competed for followers from among traditional Jews in or from other countries.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Jewish religious practice varies widely through all levels of observance. According to the 2001 edition of the National Jewish Population Survey, in the United States' Jewish community—the world's second largest—4.3 million Jews out of 5.1 million had some sort of connection to the religion. Of that population of connected Jews, 80% participated in some sort of Jewish religious observance, but only 48% belonged to a congregation, and fewer than 16% attend regularly.",
"title": "Community leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Christianity was originally a sect of Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions diverged in the first century. The differences between Christianity and Judaism originally centered on whether Jesus was the Jewish Messiah but eventually became irreconcilable. Major differences between the two faiths include the nature of the Messiah, of atonement and sin, the status of God's commandments to Israel, and perhaps most significantly of the nature of God himself. Due to these differences, Judaism traditionally regards Christianity as Shituf or worship of the God of Israel which is not monotheistic. Christianity has traditionally regarded Judaism as obsolete with the invention of Christianity and Jews as a people replaced by the Church, though a Christian belief in dual-covenant theology emerged as a phenomenon following Christian reflection on how their theology influenced the Nazi Holocaust.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Since the time of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church upheld the Constitutio pro Judæis (Formal Statement on the Jews), which stated:",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "We decree that no Christian shall use violence to force them to be baptized, so long as they are unwilling and refuse.…Without the judgment of the political authority of the land, no Christian shall presume to wound them or kill them or rob them of their money or change the good customs that they have thus far enjoyed in the place where they live.\"",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Until their emancipation in the late 18th and the 19th century, Jews in Christian lands were subject to humiliating legal restrictions and limitations. They included provisions requiring Jews to wear specific and identifying clothing such as the Jewish hat and the yellow badge, restricting Jews to certain cities and towns or in certain parts of towns (ghettos), and forbidding Jews to enter certain trades (for example selling new clothes in medieval Sweden). Disabilities also included special taxes levied on Jews, exclusion from public life, restraints on the performance of religious ceremonies, and linguistic censorship. Some countries went even further and completely expelled Jews, for example, England in 1290 (Jews were readmitted in 1655) and Spain in 1492 (readmitted in 1868). The first Jewish settlers in North America arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1654; they were forbidden to hold public office, open a retail shop, or establish a synagogue. When the colony was seized by the British in 1664 Jewish rights remained unchanged, but by 1671 Asser Levy was the first Jew to serve on a jury in North America. In 1791, Revolutionary France was the first country to abolish disabilities altogether, followed by Prussia in 1848. Emancipation of the Jews in the United Kingdom was achieved in 1858 after an almost 30-year struggle championed by Isaac Lyon Goldsmid with the ability of Jews to sit in parliament with the passing of the Jews Relief Act 1858. The newly created German Empire in 1871 abolished Jewish disabilities in Germany, which were reinstated in the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Jewish life in Christian lands was marked by frequent blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. Religious prejudice was an underlying source against Jews in Europe. Christian rhetoric and antipathy towards Jews developed in the early years of Christianity and was reinforced by ever increasing anti-Jewish measures over the ensuing centuries. The action taken by Christians against Jews included acts of violence, and murder culminating in the Holocaust. These attitudes were reinforced by Christian preaching, in art and popular teaching for two millennia which expressed contempt for Jews, as well as statutes which were designed to humiliate and stigmatise Jews. The Nazi Party was known for its persecution of Christian Churches; many of them, such as the Protestant Confessing Church and the Catholic Church, as well as Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses, aided and rescued Jews who were being targeted by the antireligious régime.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "The attitude of Christians and Christian Churches toward the Jewish people and Judaism have changed in a mostly positive direction since World War II. Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church have \"upheld the Church's acceptance of the continuing and permanent election of the Jewish people\" as well as a reaffirmation of the covenant between God and the Jews. In December 2015, the Vatican released a 10,000-word document that, among other things, stated that Catholics should work with Jews to fight antisemitism.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Both Judaism and Islam track their origins from the patriarch Abraham, and they are therefore considered Abrahamic religions. In both Jewish and Muslim tradition, the Jewish and Arab peoples are descended from the two sons of Abraham—Isaac and Ishmael, respectively. While both religions are monotheistic and share many commonalities, they differ based on the fact that Jews do not consider Jesus or Muhammad to be prophets. The religions' adherents have interacted with each other since the 7th century when Islam originated and spread in the Arabian peninsula. Indeed, the years 712 to 1066 CE under the Ummayad and the Abbasid rulers have been called the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Non-Muslim monotheists living in these countries, including Jews, were known as dhimmis. Dhimmis were allowed to practice their own religions and administer their own internal affairs, but they were subject to certain restrictions that were not imposed on Muslims. For example, they had to pay the jizya, a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males, and they were also forbidden to bear arms or testify in court cases involving Muslims. Many of the laws regarding dhimmis were highly symbolic. For example, dhimmis in some countries were required to wear distinctive clothing, a practice not found in either the Qur'an or the hadiths but invented in early medieval Baghdad and inconsistently enforced. Jews in Muslim countries were not entirely free from persecution—for example, many were killed, exiled or forcibly converted in the 12th century, in Persia, and by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in North Africa and Al-Andalus, as well as by the Zaydi imams of Yemen in the 17th century (see: Mawza Exile). At times, Jews were also restricted in their choice of residence—in Morocco, for example, Jews were confined to walled quarters (mellahs) beginning in the 15th century and increasingly since the early 19th century.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "In the mid-20th century, Jews were expelled from nearly all of the Arab countries. Most have chosen to live in Israel. Today, antisemitic themes including Holocaust denial have become commonplace in the propaganda of Islamic movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Refah Partisi.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "There are some movements in other religions that include elements of Judaism. Among Christianity these are a number of denominations of ancient and contemporary Judaizers. The most well-known of these is Messianic Judaism, a religious movement, which arose in the 1960s, In this, elements of the messianic traditions in Judaism, are incorporated in, and melded with the tenets of Christianity. The movement generally states that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, that he is one of the Three Divine Persons, and that salvation is only achieved through acceptance of Jesus as one's savior. Some members of Messianic Judaism argue that it is a sect of Judaism. Jewish organizations of every denomination reject this, stating that Messianic Judaism is a Christian sect, because it teaches creeds which are identical to those of Pauline Christianity, and because the conditions for Messiah to have come accordingly within traditional Jewish thought have not yet been met. Another religious movement is the Black Hebrew Israelite group, which not to be confused with less syncretic Black Judaism (a constellation of movements which, depending on their adherence to normative Jewish tradition, receive varying degrees of recognition by the broader Jewish community).",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Other examples of syncretism include Semitic neopaganism, loosely organized sects which incorporate pagan, Goddess movement or Wiccan beliefs with some Jewish religious practices; Jewish Buddhists, another loosely organized group that incorporates elements of Buddhism and other Asian spirituality in their faith.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Some Renewal Jews borrow freely and openly from Buddhism, Sufism, Native American religions, and other faiths.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "The Kabbalah Centre, which employs teachers from multiple religions, is a one of \"New Age Judaism\" movements that claims to popularize the kabbalah, part of the Jewish esoteric tradition.",
"title": "Judaism and other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "See also Torah database for links to more Judaism e-texts.",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Text study projects at Wikisource. In many instances, the Hebrew versions of these projects are more fully developed than the English.",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Judaism is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion. It comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people, having originated as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Contemporary Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the cultic religious movement of ancient Israel and Judah, around the 6th/5th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which was established between God and the Israelites, their ancestors. Jewish religious doctrine encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. Among Judaism's core texts is the Torah, the first five books of the Tanakh, a collection of ancient Hebrew scriptures. The Tanakh, known in English as the Hebrew Bible, is also referred to as the "Old Testament" in Christianity. In addition to the original written scripture, the supplemental Oral Torah is represented by later texts, such as the Midrash and the Talmud. The Hebrew-language word torah can mean "teaching", "law", or "instruction", although "Torah" can also be used as a general term that refers to any Jewish text that expands or elaborates on the original Five Books of Moses. Representing the core of the Jewish spiritual and religious tradition, the Torah is a term and a set of teachings that are explicitly self-positioned as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. Judaism's texts, traditions, and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam. Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity. Within Judaism, there are a variety of religious movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. Historically, all or part of this assertion was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period; the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Some modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be considered secular or nontheistic. Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between these groups are their approaches to halakha, the authority of the rabbinic tradition, and the significance of the State of Israel. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and halakha are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that halakha should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced halakha; today, these courts still exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts and the rabbis and scholars who interpret them. Jews are an ethnoreligious group including those born Jewish, in addition to converts to Judaism. In 2021, the world Jewish population was estimated at 15.2 million, or roughly 0.195% of the total world population, although religious observance varies from strict to none. In 2021, about 45.6% of all Jews resided in Israel and another 42.1% resided in the United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. | 2001-11-08T03:57:29Z | 2023-12-24T19:55:22Z | [
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15,626 | John Stuart Mill | John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.
Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell.
A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work The Subjection of Women, Mill was also the second member of Parliament to call for women's suffrage after Henry Hunt in 1832.
John Stuart Mill was born at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville, then on the edge of the capital and now in central London, the eldest son of Harriet Barrow and the Scottish philosopher, historian, and economist James Mill. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.
Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy.
At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of his earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time he also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe.
His father's work, The History of British India, was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, at about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production. Mill's comptes rendus of his daily economy lessons helped his father in writing Elements of Political Economy in 1821, a textbook to promote the ideas of Ricardian economics; however, the book lacked popular support. Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk to talk about political economy.
At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham and in the company of George Ensor, then pursuing his polemic against the political economy of Thomas Malthus. The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences, as well as taking a course in higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon.
Mill went through months of sadness and contemplated suicide at twenty years of age. According to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his life's objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered "no", and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective. Eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy. With renewed vigour, he continued to work towards a just society, but with more relish for the journey. He considered this one of the most pivotal shifts in his thinking. In fact, many of the differences between him and his father stemmed from this expanded source of joy.
Mill met Thomas Carlyle during one of the latter's visits to London in the early 1830s, and the two quickly became companions and correspondents. Mill offered to print Carlyle's works at his own expense and encouraged Carlyle to write his French Revolution, supplying him with materials in order to do so. In March 1835, while the manuscript of the completed first volume was in Mill's possession, Mill's housemaid unwittingly used it as tinder, destroying all "except some three or four bits of leaves". Mortified, Mill offered Carlyle £200 (£17,742.16 in 2021) as compensation (Carlyle would only accept £100). Ideological differences would put an end to the friendship during the 1840s, though Carlyle's early influence on Mill would colour his later thought.
Mill had been engaged in a pen-friendship with Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism and sociology, since Mill first contacted Comte in November 1841. Comte's sociologie was more an early philosophy of science than modern sociology is. Comte's positivism motivated Mill to eventually reject Bentham's psychological egoism and what he regarded as Bentham's cold, abstract view of human nature focused on legislation and politics, instead coming to favour Comte's more sociable view of human nature focused on historical facts and directed more towards human individuals in all their complexities.
As a nonconformist who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, Mill was not eligible to study at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge. Instead he followed his father to work for the East India Company, and attended University College, London, to hear the lectures of John Austin, the first Professor of Jurisprudence. He was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856.
Mill's career as a colonial administrator at the East India Company spanned from when he was 17 years old in 1823 until 1858, when the company's territories in India were directly annexed by the Crown, establishing direct Crown control over India. In 1836, he was promoted to the company's political department, where he was responsible for correspondence pertaining to the company's relations with the princely states, and, in 1856, was finally promoted to the position of Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In On Liberty, A Few Words on Non-Intervention, and other works, he opined that "To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject." (However, Mill immediately added that "A violation of the great principles of morality it may easily be.") Mill viewed places such as India as having once been progressive in their outlook, but had now become stagnant in their development; he opined that this meant these regions had to be ruled via a form of "benevolent despotism...provided the end is improvement". When the Crown proposed to take direct control over the territories of the East India Company, Mill was tasked with defending Company rule and penned Memorandum on the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years, among other petitions. He was offered a seat on the Council of India, the body created to advise the new Secretary of State for India, but declined, citing disapproval of the new system of administration in India.
On 21 April 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of intimate friendship. Taylor was married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died in 1849. The couple waited two years before marrying in 1851. Accomplished in her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights. He said that in his stand against domestic violence, and for women's rights he was "chiefly an amanuensis to my wife". He called her mind a "perfect instrument", and said she was "the most eminently qualified of all those known to the author". He cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, which was published shortly after her death. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion, after only seven years of marriage to Mill.
Between the years 1865 and 1868 Mill served as Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews. At his inaugural address, delivered to the University on 1 February 1867, he made the now-famous (but often wrongly attributed) remark that "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing". That Mill included that sentence in the address is a matter of historical record, but it by no means follows that it expressed a wholly original insight. During the same period, 1865–68, he was also a Member of Parliament (MP) for City of Westminster. He was sitting for the Liberal Party. During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland. In 1866, he became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debate. He also became a strong advocate of such social reforms as labour unions and farm cooperatives. In Considerations on Representative Government, he called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional representation, the single transferable vote, and the extension of suffrage. In April 1868, he favoured in a Commons debate the retention of capital punishment for such crimes as aggravated murder; he termed its abolition "an effeminacy in the general mind of the country".
He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1867.
He was godfather to the philosopher Bertrand Russell.
In his views on religion, Mill was an agnostic and a sceptic.
Mill died in 1873, thirteen days before his 67th birthday, of erysipelas in Avignon, France, where his body was buried alongside his wife's.
Mill joined the debate over scientific method which followed on from John Herschel's 1830 publication of A Preliminary Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy, which incorporated inductive reasoning from the known to the unknown, discovering general laws in specific facts and verifying these laws empirically. William Whewell expanded on this in his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time, followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon their History, presenting induction as the mind superimposing concepts on facts. Laws were self-evident truths, which could be known without need for empirical verification.
Mill countered this in 1843 in A System of Logic (fully titled A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation). In "Mill's Methods" (of induction), as in Herschel's, laws were discovered through observation and induction, and required empirical verification. Matilal remarks that Dignāga analysis is much like John Stuart Mill's Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, which is inductive. He suggested that it is very likely that during his stay in India he may have come across the tradition of logic, on which scholars started taking interest after 1824, though it is unknown whether it influenced his work or not.
Mill's On Liberty (1859) addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. Mill's idea is that only if a democratic society follows the Principle of Liberty can its political and social institutions fulfill their role of shaping national character so that its citizens can realise the permanent interests of people as progressive beings (Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy; p 289).
Mill states the Principle of Liberty as: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection". "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."
One way to read Mill's Principle of Liberty as a principle of public reason is to see it excluding certain kinds of reasons from being taken into account in legislation, or in guiding the moral coercion of public opinion. (Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy; p. 291). These reasons include those founded in other persons good; reasons of excellence and ideals of human perfection; reasons of dislike or disgust, or of preference.
Mill states that "harms" which may be prevented include acts of omission as well as acts of commission. Thus, failing to rescue a drowning child counts as a harmful act, as does failing to pay taxes, or failing to appear as a witness in court. All such harmful omissions may be regulated, according to Mill. By contrast, it does not count as harming someone if—without force or fraud—the affected individual consents to assume the risk: thus one may permissibly offer unsafe employment to others, provided there is no deception involved. (He does, however, recognise one limit to consent: society should not permit people to sell themselves into slavery.)
The question of what counts as a self-regarding action and what actions, whether of omission or commission, constitute harmful actions subject to regulation, continues to exercise interpreters of Mill. He did not consider giving offence to constitute "harm"; an action could not be restricted because it violated the conventions or morals of a given society.
Mill believed that "the struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history." For him, liberty in antiquity was a "contest…between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government."
Mill defined social liberty as protection from "the tyranny of political rulers". He introduced a number of different concepts of the form tyranny can take, referred to as social tyranny, and tyranny of the majority. Social liberty for Mill meant putting limits on the ruler's power so that he would not be able to use that power to further his own wishes and thus make decisions that could harm society. In other words, people should have the right to have a say in the government's decisions. He said that social liberty was "the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual." It was attempted in two ways: first, by obtaining recognition of certain immunities (called political liberties or rights); and second, by establishment of a system of "constitutional checks".
However, in Mill's view, limiting the power of government was not enough:
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
Mill's view on liberty, which was influenced by Joseph Priestley and Josiah Warren, is that individuals ought to be free to do as they wished unless they caused harm to others. Individuals are rational enough to make decisions about their well-being. Government should interfere when it is for the protection of society. Mill explained:
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.… The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
On Liberty involves an impassioned defense of free speech. Mill argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one. Along those same lines Mill wrote, "unmeasured vituperation, employed on the side of prevailing opinion, really does deter people from expressing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who express them."
As an influential advocate of freedom of speech, Mill objected to censorship:
I choose, by preference the cases which are least favourable to me—In which the argument opposing freedom of opinion, both on truth and that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief of God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality ... But I must be permitted to observe that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less if it is put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However positive anyone's persuasion may be, not only of the faculty but of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of opinion.—yet if, in pursuance of that private judgement, though backed by the public judgement of his country or contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal.
Mill outlines the benefits of "searching for and discovering the truth" as a way to further knowledge. He argued that even if an opinion is false, the truth can be better understood by refuting the error. And as most opinions are neither completely true nor completely false, he points out that allowing free expression allows the airing of competing views as a way to preserve partial truth in various opinions. Worried about minority views being suppressed, he argued in support of freedom of speech on political grounds, stating that it is a critical component for a representative government to have to empower debate over public policy. He also eloquently argued that freedom of expression allows for personal growth and self-realization. He said that freedom of speech was a vital way to develop talents and realise a person's potential and creativity. He repeatedly said that eccentricity was preferable to uniformity and stagnation.
The belief that freedom of speech would advance society presupposed a society sufficiently culturally and institutionally advanced to be capable of progressive improvement. If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful, and then those arguments cannot be sustained and will be excluded. Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government should not be politically suppressed or socially persecuted. According to him, if rebellion is really necessary, people should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. However, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others. Such is the harm principle: "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
At the beginning of the 20th century, Associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. made the standard of "clear and present danger" based on Mill's idea. In the majority opinion, Holmes writes:
The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Holmes suggested that falsely shouting out "Fire!" in a dark theatre, which evokes panic and provokes injury, would be such a case of speech that creates an illegal danger. But if the situation allows people to reason by themselves and decide to accept it or not, any argument or theology should not be blocked.
Mill's argument is now generally accepted by many democratic countries, and they have laws at least guided by the harm principle. For example, in American law some exceptions limit free speech such as obscenity, defamation, breach of peace, and "fighting words".
In On Liberty, Mill thought it was necessary for him to restate the case for press freedom. He considered that argument already won. Almost no politician or commentator in mid-19th-century Britain wanted a return to Tudor and Stuart-type press censorship. However, Mill warned new forms of censorship could emerge in the future. Indeed, in 2013 the Cameron Tory government considered setting up a so-called independent official regulator of the UK press. This prompted demands for better basic legal protection of press freedom. A new British Bill of Rights could include a US-type constitutional ban on governmental infringement of press freedom and block other official attempts to control freedom of opinion and expression.
Mill, an employee of the East India Company from 1823 to 1858, argued in support of what he called a "benevolent despotism" with regard to the administration of overseas colonies. Mill argued:
To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error.… To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject.
Mill expressed general support for Company rule in India, but expressed reservations on specific Company policies in India which he disagreed with.
In 1850, Mill sent an anonymous letter (which came to be known under the title "The Negro Question"), in rebuttal to Thomas Carlyle's letter to Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country in which Carlyle argued for slavery. Mill supported abolishing slavery in the United States, expressing his opposition to slavery in his essay of 1869, The Subjection of Women:
This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which, of all others, presents features the most revolting to the feeling of all who look at it from an impartial position, was the law of civilized and Christian England within the memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-Saxon America three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised: and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence.
Mill corresponded with John Appleton, an American legal reformer from Maine, extensively on the topic of racial equality. Appleton influenced Mill's work on such, especially swaying him on the optimal economic and social welfare plan for the Antebellum South. In a letter sent to Appleton in response to a previous letter, Mill expressed his view on antebellum integration:
I cannot look forward with satisfaction to any settlement but complete emancipation—land given to every negro family either separately or in organized communities under such rules as may be found temporarily necessary—the schoolmaster set to work in every village & the tide of free immigration turned on in those fertile regions from which slavery has hitherto excluded it. If this be done, the gentle & docile character which seems to distinguish the negroes will prevent any mischief on their side, while the proofs they are giving of fighting powers will do more in a year than all other things in a century to make the whites respect them & consent to their being politically & socially equals.
Mill's view of history was that right up until his time "the whole of the female" and "the great majority of the male sex" were simply "slaves". He countered arguments to the contrary, arguing that relations between sexes simply amounted to "the legal subordination of one sex to the other – [which] is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality". Here, then, we have an instance of Mill's use of "slavery" in a sense which, compared to its fundamental meaning of absolute unfreedom of person, is an extended and arguably a rhetorical rather than a literal sense.
With this, Mill can be considered among the earliest male proponents of gender equality, having been recruited by American feminist John Neal during his stay in London circa 1825–1827. His book The Subjection of Women (1861, publ.1869) is one of the earliest written on this subject by a male author. In The Subjection of Women, Mill attempts to make a case for perfect equality.
In his proposal for a universal education system sponsored by the state, Mill expands benefits for many marginalized groups, especially for women. For Mill, a universal education held the potential to create new abilities and novel types of behavior of which the current receiving generation and their descendants could both benefit from. Such a pathway to opportunity would enable women to gain "industrial and social independence" that would allow them the same movement in their agency and citizenship as men. Mill's view of opportunity stands out in its reach, but even more so for the population he foresees who could benefit from it. Mill was hopeful of the autonomy such an education could allow for its recipients and especially for women. Through the consequential sophistication and knowledge attained, individuals are able to properly act in ways that recedes away from those leading towards overpopulation. This stands directly in contrast with the view held by many of Mill's contemporaries and predecessors who viewed such inclusive programs to be counter intuitive. Aiming such help at marginalized groups, such as the poor and working class, would only serve to reward them with the opportunity to move to a higher status, thus encouraging greater fertility which at its extreme could lead to overproduction.
He talks about the role of women in marriage and how it must be changed. Mill comments on three major facets of women's lives that he felt are hindering them:
He argues that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity. As a Member of Parliament, Mill introduced an unsuccessful amendment to the Reform Bill to substitute the word "person" in place of "man".
The canonical statement of Mill's utilitarianism can be found in his book, Utilitarianism. Although this philosophy has a long tradition, Mill's account is primarily influenced by Jeremy Bentham and Mill's father James Mill.
John Stuart Mill believed in the philosophy of utilitarianism, which he would describe as the principle that holds "that actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness". By happiness he means, "intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure". It is clear that we do not all value virtues as a path to happiness and that we sometimes only value them for selfish reasons. However, Mill asserts that upon reflection, even when we value virtues for selfish reasons we are in fact cherishing them as a part of our happiness.
Bentham's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the greatest-happiness principle. It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason. In a similar vein, Mill's method of determining the best utility is that a moral agent, when given the choice between two or more actions, ought to choose the action that contributes most to (maximizes) the total happiness in the world. Happiness, in this context, is understood as the production of pleasure or privation of pain. Given that determining the action that produces the most utility is not always so clear cut, Mill suggests that the utilitarian moral agent, when attempting to rank the utility of different actions, should refer to the general experience of persons. That is, if people generally experience more happiness following action X than they do action Y, the utilitarian should conclude that action X produces more utility than action Y, and so is to be preferred.
Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory, meaning that it holds that acts are justified insofar as they produce a desirable outcome. The overarching goal of utilitarianism—the ideal consequence—is to achieve the "greatest good for the greatest number as the end result of human action." In Utilitarianism, Mill states that "happiness is the sole end of human action". This statement aroused some controversy, which is why Mill took it a step further, explaining how the very nature of humans wanting happiness, and who "take it to be reasonable under free consideration", demands that happiness is indeed desirable. In other words, free will leads everyone to make actions inclined on their own happiness, unless reasoned that it would improve the happiness of others, in which case, the greatest utility is still being achieved. To that extent, the utilitarianism that Mill is describing is a default lifestyle that he believes is what people who have not studied a specific opposing field of ethics would naturally and subconsciously use when faced with a decision.
Utilitarianism is thought of by some of its activists to be a more developed and overarching ethical theory of Immanuel Kant's belief in goodwill, and not just some default cognitive process of humans. Where Kant (1724–1804) would argue that reason can only be used properly by goodwill, Mill would say that the only way to universally create fair laws and systems would be to step back to the consequences, whereby Kant's ethical theories become based around the ultimate good—utility. By this logic the only valid way to discern what is the proper reason would be to view the consequences of any action and weigh the good and the bad, even if on the surface, the ethical reasoning seems to indicate a different train of thought.
Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures (higher pleasures) are superior to more physical forms of pleasure (lower pleasures). He distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that, "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."
This made Mill believe that "our only ultimate end" is happiness. One unique part of his utilitarian view, that is not seen in others, is the idea of higher and lower pleasures. Mill explains the different pleasures as:
If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference […] that is the more desirable pleasure.
He defines higher pleasures as mental, moral, and aesthetic pleasures, and lower pleasures as being more sensational. He believed that higher pleasures should be seen as preferable to lower pleasures since they have a greater quality in virtue. He holds that pleasures gained in activity are of a higher quality than those gained passively.
Mill defines the difference between higher and lower forms of pleasure with the principle that those who have experienced both tend to prefer one over the other. This is, perhaps, in direct contrast with Bentham's statement that "Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry", that, if a simple child's game like hopscotch causes more pleasure to more people than a night at the opera house, it is more incumbent upon a society to devote more resources to propagating hopscotch than running opera houses. Mill's argument is that the "simple pleasures" tend to be preferred by people who have no experience with high art, and are therefore not in a proper position to judge. He also argues that people who, for example, are noble or practise philosophy, benefit society more than those who engage in individualist practices for pleasure, which are lower forms of happiness. It is not the agent's own greatest happiness that matters "but the greatest amount of happiness altogether".
Mill separated his explanation of Utilitarianism into five different sections:
In the General Remarks portion of his essay, he speaks how next to no progress has been made when it comes to judging what is right and what is wrong of morality and if there is such a thing as moral instinct (which he argues that there may not be). However, he agrees that in general "Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments".
In What Utilitarianism Is, he focuses no longer on background information but utilitarianism itself. He quotes utilitarianism as "The greatest happiness principle", defining this theory by saying that pleasure and no pain are the only inherently good things in the world and expands on it by saying that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." He views it not as an animalistic concept because he sees seeking out pleasure as a way of using our higher facilities. He also says in this chapter that the happiness principle is based not exclusively on the individual but mainly on the community.
Mill also defends the idea of a "strong utilitarian conscience (i.e. a strong feeling of obligation to the general happiness)". He argued that humans have a desire to be happy and that that desire causes us to want to be in unity with other humans. This causes us to care about the happiness of others, as well as the happiness of complete strangers. But this desire also causes us to experience pain when we perceive harm to other people. He believes in internal sanctions that make us experience guilt and appropriate our actions. These internal sanctions make us want to do good because we do not want to feel guilty for our actions. Happiness is our ultimate end because it is our duty. He argues that we do not need to be constantly motivated by the concern of people's happiness because most of the actions done by people are done out of good intention, and the good of the world is made up of the good of the people.
In Mill's fourth chapter, Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible, he speaks of what proofs of Utility are affected. He starts this chapter off by saying that all of his claims cannot be backed up by reasoning. He claims that the only proof that something brings one pleasure is if someone finds it pleasurable. Next, he talks about how morality is the basic way to achieve happiness. He also discusses in this chapter that Utilitarianism is beneficial for virtue. He says that "it maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself." In his final chapter he looks at the connection between Utilitarianism and justice. He contemplates the question of whether justice is something distinct from Utility or not. He reasons this question in several different ways and finally comes to the conclusion that in certain cases justice is essential for Utility, but in others, social duty is far more important than justice. Mill believes that "justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case."
The qualitative account of happiness that Mill advocates thus sheds light on his account presented in On Liberty. As he suggests in that text, utility is to be conceived in relation to humanity "as a progressive being", which includes the development and exercise of rational capacities as we strive to achieve a "higher mode of existence". The rejection of censorship and paternalism is intended to provide the necessary social conditions for the achievement of knowledge and the greatest ability for the greatest number to develop and exercise their deliberative and rational capacities.
Mill redefines the definition of happiness as "the ultimate end, for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence as free as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyments". He firmly believed that moral rules and obligations could be referenced to promoting happiness, which connects to having a noble character. While Mill is not a standard act utilitarian or rule utilitarian, he is a minimizing utilitarian, which "affirms that it would be desirable to maximize happiness for the greatest number, but not that we are morally required to do so".
Mill believed that for the majority of people (those with but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment) happiness is best achieved en passant, rather than striving for it directly. This meant no self-consciousness, scrutiny, self-interrogation, dwelling on, thinking about, imagining or questioning on one's happiness. Then, if otherwise fortunately circumstanced, one would "inhale happiness with the air you breathe".
Mill's early economic philosophy was one of free markets. However, he accepted interventions in the economy, such as a tax on alcohol, if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds. He also accepted the principle of legislative intervention for the purpose of animal welfare. He originally believed that "equality of taxation" meant "equality of sacrifice" and that progressive taxation penalized those who worked harder and saved more and was therefore "a mild form of robbery".
Given an equal tax rate regardless of income, Mill agreed that inheritance should be taxed. A utilitarian society would agree that everyone should be equal one way or another. Therefore, receiving inheritance would put one ahead of society unless taxed on the inheritance. Those who donate should consider and choose carefully where their money goes—some charities are more deserving than others. Considering public charities boards such as a government will disburse the money equally. However, a private charity board like a church would disburse the monies fairly to those who are in more need than others.
Later he altered his views toward a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defence of a socialist outlook, and defending some socialist causes. Within this revised work he also made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system. Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained, albeit altered in the third edition of the Principles of Political Economy to reflect a concern for differentiating restrictions on "unearned" incomes, which he favoured, and those on "earned" incomes, which he did not favour.
In his autobiography, Mill stated that in relation to his later views on political economy, his "ideal of ultimate improvement... would class [him] decidedly under the general designation of Socialists". His views shifted partly due to reading the works of utopian socialists, but also from the influence of Harriet Taylor. In his work Socialism, Mill argued that the prevalence of poverty in contemporary industrial capitalist societies was "pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements", and that attempts to condone this state of affairs as being the result of individual failings did not represent a justification of them but instead were "an irresistible claim upon every human being for protection against suffering".
Mill's Principles, first published in 1848, was one of the most widely read of all books on economics in the period. As Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations had during an earlier period, Principles came to dominate economics teaching. In the case of Oxford University it was the standard text until 1919, when it was replaced by Marshall's Principles of Economics.
Karl Marx, in his critique of political economy, mentioned Mill in the Grundrisse. Marx contended that Mill's thinking posited the categories of capital in an ahistorical fashion.
Mill's main objection to Marxism focused on what he saw its destruction of competition. He wrote, "I utterly dissent from the most conspicuous and vehement part of their teaching—their declamations against competition." Though he was an egalitarian, Mill argued more for equal opportunity and placed meritocracy above all other ideals in this regard. He further argued that a socialist society would only be attainable through the provision of basic education for all, promoting economic democracy instead of capitalism, in the manner of substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives. He says:
The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.
Mill's major work on political democracy, Considerations on Representative Government, defends two fundamental principles: extensive participation by citizens and enlightened competence of rulers. The two values are obviously in tension, and some readers have concluded that he is an elitist democrat, while others count him as an earlier participatory democrat. In one section, he appears to defend plural voting, in which more competent citizens are given extra votes (a view he later repudiated). However, in another chapter he argues cogently for the value of participation by all citizens. He believed that the incompetence of the masses could eventually be overcome if they were given a chance to take part in politics, especially at the local level.
Mill is one of the few political philosophers ever to serve in government as an elected official. In his three years in Parliament, he was more willing to compromise than the "radical" principles expressed in his writing would lead one to expect.
Mill was a major proponent of the diffusion and use of public education to the working class. He saw the value of the individual person, and believed that "man had the inherent capability of guiding his own destiny-but only if his faculties were developed and fulfilled", which could be achieved through education. He regarded education as a pathway to improve human nature which to him meant "to encourage, among other characteristics, diversity and originality, the energy of character, initiative, autonomy, intellectual cultivation, aesthetic sensibility, non-self-regarding interests, prudence, responsibility, and self-control". Education allowed for humans to develop into full informed citizens that had the tools to improve their condition and make fully informed electoral decisions. The power of education lay in its ability to serve as a great equalizer among the classes allowing the working class the ability to control their own destiny and compete with the upper classes. Mill recognised the paramount importance of public education in avoiding the tyranny of the majority by ensuring that all the voters and political participants were fully developed individuals. It was through education, he believed, that an individual could become a full participant within representative democracy.
In regards to higher education, Mill defended liberal education against contemporary arguments for models of higher education focused on religion or science. His 1867 St. Andrews Address called on elites educated in reformed universities to work towards education policy committed to liberal principles.
In Principles of Political Economy, Mill offered an analysis of two economic phenomena often linked together: the laws of production and wealth and the modes of its distribution. Regarding the former, he believed that it was not possible to alter to laws of production, "the ultimate properties of matter and mind... only to employ these properties to bring about events we are interested". The modes of distribution of wealth is a matter of human institutions solely, starting with what Mill believed to be the primary and fundamental institution: Individual Property. He believed that all individuals must start on equal terms, with division of the instruments of production fairly among all members of society. Once each member has an equal amount of individual property, they must be left to their own exertion not to be interfered with by the state. Regarding inequality of wealth, Mill believed that it was the role of the government to establish both social and economic policies that promote the equality of opportunity.
The government, according to Mill, should implement three tax policies to help alleviate poverty:
Inheritance of capital and wealth plays a large role in development of inequality, because it provides greater opportunity for those receiving the inheritance. Mill's solution to inequality of wealth brought about by inheritance was to implement a greater tax on inheritances, because he believed the most important authoritative function of the government is taxation, and taxation judiciously implemented could promote equality.
Mill demonstrated an early insight into the value of the natural world. In Book IV, chapter VI of Principles of Political Economy: "Of the Stationary State", Mill recognised wealth beyond the material and argued that the logical conclusion of unlimited growth was destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life. He concluded that a stationary state could be preferable to unending economic growth:
I cannot, therefore, regard the stationary states of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school.
If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compel them to it.
According to Mill, the ultimate tendency in an economy is for the rate of profit to decline due to diminishing returns in agriculture and increase in population at a Malthusian rate. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed \"the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century\" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work The Subjection of Women, Mill was also the second member of Parliament to call for women's suffrage after Henry Hunt in 1832.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "John Stuart Mill was born at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville, then on the edge of the capital and now in central London, the eldest son of Harriet Barrow and the Scottish philosopher, historian, and economist James Mill. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of his earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time he also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "His father's work, The History of British India, was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, at about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production. Mill's comptes rendus of his daily economy lessons helped his father in writing Elements of Political Economy in 1821, a textbook to promote the ideas of Ricardian economics; however, the book lacked popular support. Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk to talk about political economy.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham and in the company of George Ensor, then pursuing his polemic against the political economy of Thomas Malthus. The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences, as well as taking a course in higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Mill went through months of sadness and contemplated suicide at twenty years of age. According to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his life's objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered \"no\", and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective. Eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy. With renewed vigour, he continued to work towards a just society, but with more relish for the journey. He considered this one of the most pivotal shifts in his thinking. In fact, many of the differences between him and his father stemmed from this expanded source of joy.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Mill met Thomas Carlyle during one of the latter's visits to London in the early 1830s, and the two quickly became companions and correspondents. Mill offered to print Carlyle's works at his own expense and encouraged Carlyle to write his French Revolution, supplying him with materials in order to do so. In March 1835, while the manuscript of the completed first volume was in Mill's possession, Mill's housemaid unwittingly used it as tinder, destroying all \"except some three or four bits of leaves\". Mortified, Mill offered Carlyle £200 (£17,742.16 in 2021) as compensation (Carlyle would only accept £100). Ideological differences would put an end to the friendship during the 1840s, though Carlyle's early influence on Mill would colour his later thought.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Mill had been engaged in a pen-friendship with Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism and sociology, since Mill first contacted Comte in November 1841. Comte's sociologie was more an early philosophy of science than modern sociology is. Comte's positivism motivated Mill to eventually reject Bentham's psychological egoism and what he regarded as Bentham's cold, abstract view of human nature focused on legislation and politics, instead coming to favour Comte's more sociable view of human nature focused on historical facts and directed more towards human individuals in all their complexities.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "As a nonconformist who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, Mill was not eligible to study at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge. Instead he followed his father to work for the East India Company, and attended University College, London, to hear the lectures of John Austin, the first Professor of Jurisprudence. He was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Mill's career as a colonial administrator at the East India Company spanned from when he was 17 years old in 1823 until 1858, when the company's territories in India were directly annexed by the Crown, establishing direct Crown control over India. In 1836, he was promoted to the company's political department, where he was responsible for correspondence pertaining to the company's relations with the princely states, and, in 1856, was finally promoted to the position of Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In On Liberty, A Few Words on Non-Intervention, and other works, he opined that \"To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject.\" (However, Mill immediately added that \"A violation of the great principles of morality it may easily be.\") Mill viewed places such as India as having once been progressive in their outlook, but had now become stagnant in their development; he opined that this meant these regions had to be ruled via a form of \"benevolent despotism...provided the end is improvement\". When the Crown proposed to take direct control over the territories of the East India Company, Mill was tasked with defending Company rule and penned Memorandum on the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years, among other petitions. He was offered a seat on the Council of India, the body created to advise the new Secretary of State for India, but declined, citing disapproval of the new system of administration in India.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On 21 April 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of intimate friendship. Taylor was married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died in 1849. The couple waited two years before marrying in 1851. Accomplished in her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights. He said that in his stand against domestic violence, and for women's rights he was \"chiefly an amanuensis to my wife\". He called her mind a \"perfect instrument\", and said she was \"the most eminently qualified of all those known to the author\". He cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, which was published shortly after her death. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion, after only seven years of marriage to Mill.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Between the years 1865 and 1868 Mill served as Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews. At his inaugural address, delivered to the University on 1 February 1867, he made the now-famous (but often wrongly attributed) remark that \"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing\". That Mill included that sentence in the address is a matter of historical record, but it by no means follows that it expressed a wholly original insight. During the same period, 1865–68, he was also a Member of Parliament (MP) for City of Westminster. He was sitting for the Liberal Party. During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland. In 1866, he became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debate. He also became a strong advocate of such social reforms as labour unions and farm cooperatives. In Considerations on Representative Government, he called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional representation, the single transferable vote, and the extension of suffrage. In April 1868, he favoured in a Commons debate the retention of capital punishment for such crimes as aggravated murder; he termed its abolition \"an effeminacy in the general mind of the country\".",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1867.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "He was godfather to the philosopher Bertrand Russell.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In his views on religion, Mill was an agnostic and a sceptic.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Mill died in 1873, thirteen days before his 67th birthday, of erysipelas in Avignon, France, where his body was buried alongside his wife's.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Mill joined the debate over scientific method which followed on from John Herschel's 1830 publication of A Preliminary Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy, which incorporated inductive reasoning from the known to the unknown, discovering general laws in specific facts and verifying these laws empirically. William Whewell expanded on this in his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time, followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon their History, presenting induction as the mind superimposing concepts on facts. Laws were self-evident truths, which could be known without need for empirical verification.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Mill countered this in 1843 in A System of Logic (fully titled A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation). In \"Mill's Methods\" (of induction), as in Herschel's, laws were discovered through observation and induction, and required empirical verification. Matilal remarks that Dignāga analysis is much like John Stuart Mill's Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, which is inductive. He suggested that it is very likely that during his stay in India he may have come across the tradition of logic, on which scholars started taking interest after 1824, though it is unknown whether it influenced his work or not.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Mill's On Liberty (1859) addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. Mill's idea is that only if a democratic society follows the Principle of Liberty can its political and social institutions fulfill their role of shaping national character so that its citizens can realise the permanent interests of people as progressive beings (Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy; p 289).",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Mill states the Principle of Liberty as: \"the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection\". \"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.\"",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "One way to read Mill's Principle of Liberty as a principle of public reason is to see it excluding certain kinds of reasons from being taken into account in legislation, or in guiding the moral coercion of public opinion. (Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy; p. 291). These reasons include those founded in other persons good; reasons of excellence and ideals of human perfection; reasons of dislike or disgust, or of preference.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Mill states that \"harms\" which may be prevented include acts of omission as well as acts of commission. Thus, failing to rescue a drowning child counts as a harmful act, as does failing to pay taxes, or failing to appear as a witness in court. All such harmful omissions may be regulated, according to Mill. By contrast, it does not count as harming someone if—without force or fraud—the affected individual consents to assume the risk: thus one may permissibly offer unsafe employment to others, provided there is no deception involved. (He does, however, recognise one limit to consent: society should not permit people to sell themselves into slavery.)",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The question of what counts as a self-regarding action and what actions, whether of omission or commission, constitute harmful actions subject to regulation, continues to exercise interpreters of Mill. He did not consider giving offence to constitute \"harm\"; an action could not be restricted because it violated the conventions or morals of a given society.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Mill believed that \"the struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history.\" For him, liberty in antiquity was a \"contest…between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government.\"",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Mill defined social liberty as protection from \"the tyranny of political rulers\". He introduced a number of different concepts of the form tyranny can take, referred to as social tyranny, and tyranny of the majority. Social liberty for Mill meant putting limits on the ruler's power so that he would not be able to use that power to further his own wishes and thus make decisions that could harm society. In other words, people should have the right to have a say in the government's decisions. He said that social liberty was \"the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.\" It was attempted in two ways: first, by obtaining recognition of certain immunities (called political liberties or rights); and second, by establishment of a system of \"constitutional checks\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "However, in Mill's view, limiting the power of government was not enough:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Mill's view on liberty, which was influenced by Joseph Priestley and Josiah Warren, is that individuals ought to be free to do as they wished unless they caused harm to others. Individuals are rational enough to make decisions about their well-being. Government should interfere when it is for the protection of society. Mill explained:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.… The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On Liberty involves an impassioned defense of free speech. Mill argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one. Along those same lines Mill wrote, \"unmeasured vituperation, employed on the side of prevailing opinion, really does deter people from expressing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who express them.\"",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "As an influential advocate of freedom of speech, Mill objected to censorship:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "I choose, by preference the cases which are least favourable to me—In which the argument opposing freedom of opinion, both on truth and that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief of God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality ... But I must be permitted to observe that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less if it is put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However positive anyone's persuasion may be, not only of the faculty but of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of opinion.—yet if, in pursuance of that private judgement, though backed by the public judgement of his country or contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Mill outlines the benefits of \"searching for and discovering the truth\" as a way to further knowledge. He argued that even if an opinion is false, the truth can be better understood by refuting the error. And as most opinions are neither completely true nor completely false, he points out that allowing free expression allows the airing of competing views as a way to preserve partial truth in various opinions. Worried about minority views being suppressed, he argued in support of freedom of speech on political grounds, stating that it is a critical component for a representative government to have to empower debate over public policy. He also eloquently argued that freedom of expression allows for personal growth and self-realization. He said that freedom of speech was a vital way to develop talents and realise a person's potential and creativity. He repeatedly said that eccentricity was preferable to uniformity and stagnation.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The belief that freedom of speech would advance society presupposed a society sufficiently culturally and institutionally advanced to be capable of progressive improvement. If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful, and then those arguments cannot be sustained and will be excluded. Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government should not be politically suppressed or socially persecuted. According to him, if rebellion is really necessary, people should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. However, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others. Such is the harm principle: \"That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.\"",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "At the beginning of the 20th century, Associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. made the standard of \"clear and present danger\" based on Mill's idea. In the majority opinion, Holmes writes:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Holmes suggested that falsely shouting out \"Fire!\" in a dark theatre, which evokes panic and provokes injury, would be such a case of speech that creates an illegal danger. But if the situation allows people to reason by themselves and decide to accept it or not, any argument or theology should not be blocked.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Mill's argument is now generally accepted by many democratic countries, and they have laws at least guided by the harm principle. For example, in American law some exceptions limit free speech such as obscenity, defamation, breach of peace, and \"fighting words\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In On Liberty, Mill thought it was necessary for him to restate the case for press freedom. He considered that argument already won. Almost no politician or commentator in mid-19th-century Britain wanted a return to Tudor and Stuart-type press censorship. However, Mill warned new forms of censorship could emerge in the future. Indeed, in 2013 the Cameron Tory government considered setting up a so-called independent official regulator of the UK press. This prompted demands for better basic legal protection of press freedom. A new British Bill of Rights could include a US-type constitutional ban on governmental infringement of press freedom and block other official attempts to control freedom of opinion and expression.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Mill, an employee of the East India Company from 1823 to 1858, argued in support of what he called a \"benevolent despotism\" with regard to the administration of overseas colonies. Mill argued:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error.… To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Mill expressed general support for Company rule in India, but expressed reservations on specific Company policies in India which he disagreed with.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1850, Mill sent an anonymous letter (which came to be known under the title \"The Negro Question\"), in rebuttal to Thomas Carlyle's letter to Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country in which Carlyle argued for slavery. Mill supported abolishing slavery in the United States, expressing his opposition to slavery in his essay of 1869, The Subjection of Women:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which, of all others, presents features the most revolting to the feeling of all who look at it from an impartial position, was the law of civilized and Christian England within the memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-Saxon America three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised: and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Mill corresponded with John Appleton, an American legal reformer from Maine, extensively on the topic of racial equality. Appleton influenced Mill's work on such, especially swaying him on the optimal economic and social welfare plan for the Antebellum South. In a letter sent to Appleton in response to a previous letter, Mill expressed his view on antebellum integration:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "I cannot look forward with satisfaction to any settlement but complete emancipation—land given to every negro family either separately or in organized communities under such rules as may be found temporarily necessary—the schoolmaster set to work in every village & the tide of free immigration turned on in those fertile regions from which slavery has hitherto excluded it. If this be done, the gentle & docile character which seems to distinguish the negroes will prevent any mischief on their side, while the proofs they are giving of fighting powers will do more in a year than all other things in a century to make the whites respect them & consent to their being politically & socially equals.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Mill's view of history was that right up until his time \"the whole of the female\" and \"the great majority of the male sex\" were simply \"slaves\". He countered arguments to the contrary, arguing that relations between sexes simply amounted to \"the legal subordination of one sex to the other – [which] is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality\". Here, then, we have an instance of Mill's use of \"slavery\" in a sense which, compared to its fundamental meaning of absolute unfreedom of person, is an extended and arguably a rhetorical rather than a literal sense.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "With this, Mill can be considered among the earliest male proponents of gender equality, having been recruited by American feminist John Neal during his stay in London circa 1825–1827. His book The Subjection of Women (1861, publ.1869) is one of the earliest written on this subject by a male author. In The Subjection of Women, Mill attempts to make a case for perfect equality.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In his proposal for a universal education system sponsored by the state, Mill expands benefits for many marginalized groups, especially for women. For Mill, a universal education held the potential to create new abilities and novel types of behavior of which the current receiving generation and their descendants could both benefit from. Such a pathway to opportunity would enable women to gain \"industrial and social independence\" that would allow them the same movement in their agency and citizenship as men. Mill's view of opportunity stands out in its reach, but even more so for the population he foresees who could benefit from it. Mill was hopeful of the autonomy such an education could allow for its recipients and especially for women. Through the consequential sophistication and knowledge attained, individuals are able to properly act in ways that recedes away from those leading towards overpopulation. This stands directly in contrast with the view held by many of Mill's contemporaries and predecessors who viewed such inclusive programs to be counter intuitive. Aiming such help at marginalized groups, such as the poor and working class, would only serve to reward them with the opportunity to move to a higher status, thus encouraging greater fertility which at its extreme could lead to overproduction.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "He talks about the role of women in marriage and how it must be changed. Mill comments on three major facets of women's lives that he felt are hindering them:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "He argues that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity. As a Member of Parliament, Mill introduced an unsuccessful amendment to the Reform Bill to substitute the word \"person\" in place of \"man\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The canonical statement of Mill's utilitarianism can be found in his book, Utilitarianism. Although this philosophy has a long tradition, Mill's account is primarily influenced by Jeremy Bentham and Mill's father James Mill.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "John Stuart Mill believed in the philosophy of utilitarianism, which he would describe as the principle that holds \"that actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness\". By happiness he means, \"intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure\". It is clear that we do not all value virtues as a path to happiness and that we sometimes only value them for selfish reasons. However, Mill asserts that upon reflection, even when we value virtues for selfish reasons we are in fact cherishing them as a part of our happiness.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Bentham's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the greatest-happiness principle. It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason. In a similar vein, Mill's method of determining the best utility is that a moral agent, when given the choice between two or more actions, ought to choose the action that contributes most to (maximizes) the total happiness in the world. Happiness, in this context, is understood as the production of pleasure or privation of pain. Given that determining the action that produces the most utility is not always so clear cut, Mill suggests that the utilitarian moral agent, when attempting to rank the utility of different actions, should refer to the general experience of persons. That is, if people generally experience more happiness following action X than they do action Y, the utilitarian should conclude that action X produces more utility than action Y, and so is to be preferred.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory, meaning that it holds that acts are justified insofar as they produce a desirable outcome. The overarching goal of utilitarianism—the ideal consequence—is to achieve the \"greatest good for the greatest number as the end result of human action.\" In Utilitarianism, Mill states that \"happiness is the sole end of human action\". This statement aroused some controversy, which is why Mill took it a step further, explaining how the very nature of humans wanting happiness, and who \"take it to be reasonable under free consideration\", demands that happiness is indeed desirable. In other words, free will leads everyone to make actions inclined on their own happiness, unless reasoned that it would improve the happiness of others, in which case, the greatest utility is still being achieved. To that extent, the utilitarianism that Mill is describing is a default lifestyle that he believes is what people who have not studied a specific opposing field of ethics would naturally and subconsciously use when faced with a decision.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Utilitarianism is thought of by some of its activists to be a more developed and overarching ethical theory of Immanuel Kant's belief in goodwill, and not just some default cognitive process of humans. Where Kant (1724–1804) would argue that reason can only be used properly by goodwill, Mill would say that the only way to universally create fair laws and systems would be to step back to the consequences, whereby Kant's ethical theories become based around the ultimate good—utility. By this logic the only valid way to discern what is the proper reason would be to view the consequences of any action and weigh the good and the bad, even if on the surface, the ethical reasoning seems to indicate a different train of thought.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures (higher pleasures) are superior to more physical forms of pleasure (lower pleasures). He distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that, \"it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.\"",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "This made Mill believe that \"our only ultimate end\" is happiness. One unique part of his utilitarian view, that is not seen in others, is the idea of higher and lower pleasures. Mill explains the different pleasures as:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference […] that is the more desirable pleasure.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "He defines higher pleasures as mental, moral, and aesthetic pleasures, and lower pleasures as being more sensational. He believed that higher pleasures should be seen as preferable to lower pleasures since they have a greater quality in virtue. He holds that pleasures gained in activity are of a higher quality than those gained passively.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Mill defines the difference between higher and lower forms of pleasure with the principle that those who have experienced both tend to prefer one over the other. This is, perhaps, in direct contrast with Bentham's statement that \"Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry\", that, if a simple child's game like hopscotch causes more pleasure to more people than a night at the opera house, it is more incumbent upon a society to devote more resources to propagating hopscotch than running opera houses. Mill's argument is that the \"simple pleasures\" tend to be preferred by people who have no experience with high art, and are therefore not in a proper position to judge. He also argues that people who, for example, are noble or practise philosophy, benefit society more than those who engage in individualist practices for pleasure, which are lower forms of happiness. It is not the agent's own greatest happiness that matters \"but the greatest amount of happiness altogether\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Mill separated his explanation of Utilitarianism into five different sections:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In the General Remarks portion of his essay, he speaks how next to no progress has been made when it comes to judging what is right and what is wrong of morality and if there is such a thing as moral instinct (which he argues that there may not be). However, he agrees that in general \"Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In What Utilitarianism Is, he focuses no longer on background information but utilitarianism itself. He quotes utilitarianism as \"The greatest happiness principle\", defining this theory by saying that pleasure and no pain are the only inherently good things in the world and expands on it by saying that \"actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.\" He views it not as an animalistic concept because he sees seeking out pleasure as a way of using our higher facilities. He also says in this chapter that the happiness principle is based not exclusively on the individual but mainly on the community.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Mill also defends the idea of a \"strong utilitarian conscience (i.e. a strong feeling of obligation to the general happiness)\". He argued that humans have a desire to be happy and that that desire causes us to want to be in unity with other humans. This causes us to care about the happiness of others, as well as the happiness of complete strangers. But this desire also causes us to experience pain when we perceive harm to other people. He believes in internal sanctions that make us experience guilt and appropriate our actions. These internal sanctions make us want to do good because we do not want to feel guilty for our actions. Happiness is our ultimate end because it is our duty. He argues that we do not need to be constantly motivated by the concern of people's happiness because most of the actions done by people are done out of good intention, and the good of the world is made up of the good of the people.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In Mill's fourth chapter, Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible, he speaks of what proofs of Utility are affected. He starts this chapter off by saying that all of his claims cannot be backed up by reasoning. He claims that the only proof that something brings one pleasure is if someone finds it pleasurable. Next, he talks about how morality is the basic way to achieve happiness. He also discusses in this chapter that Utilitarianism is beneficial for virtue. He says that \"it maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself.\" In his final chapter he looks at the connection between Utilitarianism and justice. He contemplates the question of whether justice is something distinct from Utility or not. He reasons this question in several different ways and finally comes to the conclusion that in certain cases justice is essential for Utility, but in others, social duty is far more important than justice. Mill believes that \"justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case.\"",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The qualitative account of happiness that Mill advocates thus sheds light on his account presented in On Liberty. As he suggests in that text, utility is to be conceived in relation to humanity \"as a progressive being\", which includes the development and exercise of rational capacities as we strive to achieve a \"higher mode of existence\". The rejection of censorship and paternalism is intended to provide the necessary social conditions for the achievement of knowledge and the greatest ability for the greatest number to develop and exercise their deliberative and rational capacities.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Mill redefines the definition of happiness as \"the ultimate end, for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence as free as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyments\". He firmly believed that moral rules and obligations could be referenced to promoting happiness, which connects to having a noble character. While Mill is not a standard act utilitarian or rule utilitarian, he is a minimizing utilitarian, which \"affirms that it would be desirable to maximize happiness for the greatest number, but not that we are morally required to do so\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Mill believed that for the majority of people (those with but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment) happiness is best achieved en passant, rather than striving for it directly. This meant no self-consciousness, scrutiny, self-interrogation, dwelling on, thinking about, imagining or questioning on one's happiness. Then, if otherwise fortunately circumstanced, one would \"inhale happiness with the air you breathe\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Mill's early economic philosophy was one of free markets. However, he accepted interventions in the economy, such as a tax on alcohol, if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds. He also accepted the principle of legislative intervention for the purpose of animal welfare. He originally believed that \"equality of taxation\" meant \"equality of sacrifice\" and that progressive taxation penalized those who worked harder and saved more and was therefore \"a mild form of robbery\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Given an equal tax rate regardless of income, Mill agreed that inheritance should be taxed. A utilitarian society would agree that everyone should be equal one way or another. Therefore, receiving inheritance would put one ahead of society unless taxed on the inheritance. Those who donate should consider and choose carefully where their money goes—some charities are more deserving than others. Considering public charities boards such as a government will disburse the money equally. However, a private charity board like a church would disburse the monies fairly to those who are in more need than others.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Later he altered his views toward a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defence of a socialist outlook, and defending some socialist causes. Within this revised work he also made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system. Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained, albeit altered in the third edition of the Principles of Political Economy to reflect a concern for differentiating restrictions on \"unearned\" incomes, which he favoured, and those on \"earned\" incomes, which he did not favour.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In his autobiography, Mill stated that in relation to his later views on political economy, his \"ideal of ultimate improvement... would class [him] decidedly under the general designation of Socialists\". His views shifted partly due to reading the works of utopian socialists, but also from the influence of Harriet Taylor. In his work Socialism, Mill argued that the prevalence of poverty in contemporary industrial capitalist societies was \"pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements\", and that attempts to condone this state of affairs as being the result of individual failings did not represent a justification of them but instead were \"an irresistible claim upon every human being for protection against suffering\".",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Mill's Principles, first published in 1848, was one of the most widely read of all books on economics in the period. As Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations had during an earlier period, Principles came to dominate economics teaching. In the case of Oxford University it was the standard text until 1919, when it was replaced by Marshall's Principles of Economics.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Karl Marx, in his critique of political economy, mentioned Mill in the Grundrisse. Marx contended that Mill's thinking posited the categories of capital in an ahistorical fashion.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Mill's main objection to Marxism focused on what he saw its destruction of competition. He wrote, \"I utterly dissent from the most conspicuous and vehement part of their teaching—their declamations against competition.\" Though he was an egalitarian, Mill argued more for equal opportunity and placed meritocracy above all other ideals in this regard. He further argued that a socialist society would only be attainable through the provision of basic education for all, promoting economic democracy instead of capitalism, in the manner of substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives. He says:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Mill's major work on political democracy, Considerations on Representative Government, defends two fundamental principles: extensive participation by citizens and enlightened competence of rulers. The two values are obviously in tension, and some readers have concluded that he is an elitist democrat, while others count him as an earlier participatory democrat. In one section, he appears to defend plural voting, in which more competent citizens are given extra votes (a view he later repudiated). However, in another chapter he argues cogently for the value of participation by all citizens. He believed that the incompetence of the masses could eventually be overcome if they were given a chance to take part in politics, especially at the local level.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Mill is one of the few political philosophers ever to serve in government as an elected official. In his three years in Parliament, he was more willing to compromise than the \"radical\" principles expressed in his writing would lead one to expect.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Mill was a major proponent of the diffusion and use of public education to the working class. He saw the value of the individual person, and believed that \"man had the inherent capability of guiding his own destiny-but only if his faculties were developed and fulfilled\", which could be achieved through education. He regarded education as a pathway to improve human nature which to him meant \"to encourage, among other characteristics, diversity and originality, the energy of character, initiative, autonomy, intellectual cultivation, aesthetic sensibility, non-self-regarding interests, prudence, responsibility, and self-control\". Education allowed for humans to develop into full informed citizens that had the tools to improve their condition and make fully informed electoral decisions. The power of education lay in its ability to serve as a great equalizer among the classes allowing the working class the ability to control their own destiny and compete with the upper classes. Mill recognised the paramount importance of public education in avoiding the tyranny of the majority by ensuring that all the voters and political participants were fully developed individuals. It was through education, he believed, that an individual could become a full participant within representative democracy.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In regards to higher education, Mill defended liberal education against contemporary arguments for models of higher education focused on religion or science. His 1867 St. Andrews Address called on elites educated in reformed universities to work towards education policy committed to liberal principles.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In Principles of Political Economy, Mill offered an analysis of two economic phenomena often linked together: the laws of production and wealth and the modes of its distribution. Regarding the former, he believed that it was not possible to alter to laws of production, \"the ultimate properties of matter and mind... only to employ these properties to bring about events we are interested\". The modes of distribution of wealth is a matter of human institutions solely, starting with what Mill believed to be the primary and fundamental institution: Individual Property. He believed that all individuals must start on equal terms, with division of the instruments of production fairly among all members of society. Once each member has an equal amount of individual property, they must be left to their own exertion not to be interfered with by the state. Regarding inequality of wealth, Mill believed that it was the role of the government to establish both social and economic policies that promote the equality of opportunity.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The government, according to Mill, should implement three tax policies to help alleviate poverty:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Inheritance of capital and wealth plays a large role in development of inequality, because it provides greater opportunity for those receiving the inheritance. Mill's solution to inequality of wealth brought about by inheritance was to implement a greater tax on inheritances, because he believed the most important authoritative function of the government is taxation, and taxation judiciously implemented could promote equality.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Mill demonstrated an early insight into the value of the natural world. In Book IV, chapter VI of Principles of Political Economy: \"Of the Stationary State\", Mill recognised wealth beyond the material and argued that the logical conclusion of unlimited growth was destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life. He concluded that a stationary state could be preferable to unending economic growth:",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "I cannot, therefore, regard the stationary states of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compel them to it.",
"title": "Works and theories"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "According to Mill, the ultimate tendency in an economy is for the rate of profit to decline due to diminishing returns in agriculture and increase in population at a Malthusian rate.",
"title": "Works and theories"
}
]
| John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control. Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell. A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work The Subjection of Women, Mill was also the second member of Parliament to call for women's suffrage after Henry Hunt in 1832. | 2001-03-26T03:32:06Z | 2023-12-09T00:14:16Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill |
15,627 | Junk science | Junk science is spurious or fraudulent scientific data, research, or analysis. The concept is often invoked in political and legal contexts where facts and scientific results have a great amount of weight in making a determination. It usually conveys a pejorative connotation that the research has been untowardly driven by political, ideological, financial, or otherwise unscientific motives.
The concept was popularized in the 1990s in relation to expert testimony in civil litigation. More recently, invoking the concept has been a tactic to criticize research on the harmful environmental or public health effects of corporate activities, and occasionally in response to such criticism. Author Dan Agin in his book Junk Science harshly criticized those who deny the basic premise of global warming,
In some contexts, junk science is counterposed to the "sound science" or "solid science" that favors one's own point of view. Junk science has been criticized for undermining public trust in real science. Junk science is not the same as pseudoscience.
Junk science has been defined as:
Junk science happens for different reasons, including because researchers believe that their own ideas are correct (a sort of scientific self-delusion or drinking the Kool-Aid), because they are biased with their study designs, and due to a "plain old lack of ethics". Being overly attached to one's own ideas can lead a research from ordinary junk science (e.g., choosing an experiment that is expected to produce the desired results) into scientific fraud (e.g., lying about the results) and pseudoscience (e.g., claiming that the unfavorable results actually proved the idea correct).
Junk science tends to appear when the person engaging in it has something to gain from getting the desired answer. It is therefore seen in the testimony of expert witnesses in legal proceedings and in the self-serving advertising of products and services. These situations may encourage researchers to overstate their claims and to make sweeping claims based on limited evidence.
The phrase junk science appears to have been in use prior to 1985. A 1985 United States Department of Justice report by the Tort Policy Working Group noted:
The use of such invalid scientific evidence (commonly referred to as 'junk science') has resulted in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge.
In 1989, the climate scientist Jerry Mahlman (Director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory) characterized the theory that global warming was due to solar variation (presented in Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem by Frederick Seitz et al.) as "noisy junk science."
Peter W. Huber popularized the term with respect to litigation in his 1991 book Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom. The book has been cited in over 100 legal textbooks and references; as a consequence, some sources cite Huber as the first to coin the term. By 1997, the term had entered the legal lexicon as seen in an opinion by Supreme Court of the United States Justice John Paul Stevens:
An example of 'junk science' that should be excluded under the Daubert standard as too unreliable would be the testimony of a phrenologist who would purport to prove a defendant's future dangerousness based on the contours of the defendant's skull.
Lower courts have subsequently set guidelines for identifying junk science, such as the 2005 opinion of United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Judge Frank H. Easterbrook:
Positive reports about magnetic water treatment are not replicable; this plus the lack of a physical explanation for any effects are hallmarks of junk science.
As the subtitle of Huber's book, Junk Science in the Courtroom, suggests, his emphasis was on the use or misuse of expert testimony in civil litigation. One prominent example cited in the book was litigation over casual contact in the spread of AIDS. A California school district sought to prevent a young boy with AIDS, Ryan Thomas, from attending kindergarten. The school district produced an expert witness, Steven Armentrout, who testified that a possibility existed that AIDS could be transmitted to schoolmates through yet undiscovered "vectors". However, five experts testified on behalf of Thomas that AIDS is not transmitted through casual contact, and the court affirmed the "solid science" (as Huber called it) and rejected Armentrout's argument.
In 1999, Paul Ehrlich and others advocated public policies to improve the dissemination of valid environmental scientific knowledge and discourage junk science:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports offer an antidote to junk science by articulating the current consensus on the prospects for climate change, by outlining the extent of the uncertainties, and by describing the potential benefits and costs of policies to address climate change.
In a 2003 study about changes in environmental activism regarding the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, Pedynowski noted that junk science can undermine the credibility of science over a much broader scale because misrepresentation by special interests casts doubt on more defensible claims and undermines the credibility of all research.
In his 2006 book Junk Science, Dan Agin emphasized two main causes of junk science: fraud, and ignorance. In the first case, Agin discussed falsified results in the development of organic transistors:
As far as understanding junk science is concerned, the important aspect is that both Bell Laboratories and the international physics community were fooled until someone noticed that noise records published by Jan Hendrik Schön in several papers were identical—which means physically impossible.
In the second case, he cites an example that demonstrates ignorance of statistical principles in the lay press:
Since no such proof is possible [that genetically modified food is harmless], the article in The New York Times was what is called a "bad rap" against the U.S. Department of Agriculture—a bad rap based on a junk-science belief that it's possible to prove a null hypothesis.
Agin asks the reader to step back from the rhetoric, as "how things are labeled does not make a science junk science." In its place, he offers that junk science is ultimately motivated by the desire to hide undesirable truths from the public.
The rise of open source (free to read) journals has resulted in economic pressure on academic publishers to publish junk science. Even when the journal is peer-reviewed, the authors, rather than the readers, become the customer and the source of funding for the journal, so the publisher is incentivized to publish as many papers as possible, including those that are methodologically unsound.
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of PR Watch say the concept of junk science has come to be invoked in attempts to dismiss scientific findings that stand in the way of short-term corporate profits. In their book Trust Us, We're Experts (2001), they write that industries have launched multimillion-dollar campaigns to position certain theories as junk science in the popular mind, often failing to employ the scientific method themselves. For example, the tobacco industry has described research demonstrating the harmful effects of smoking and second-hand smoke as junk science, through the vehicle of various astroturf groups.
Theories more favorable to corporate activities are portrayed in words as "sound science". Past examples where "sound science" was used include the research into the toxicity of Alar, which was heavily criticized by antiregulatory advocates, and Herbert Needleman's research into low dose lead poisoning. Needleman was accused of fraud and personally attacked.
Fox News commentator Steven Milloy often denigrates credible scientific research on topics like global warming, ozone depletion, and passive smoking as "junk science". The credibility of Milloy's website junkscience.com was questioned by Paul D. Thacker, a writer for The New Republic, in the wake of evidence that Milloy had received funding from Philip Morris, RJR Tobacco, and Exxon Mobil. Thacker also noted that Milloy was receiving almost $100,000 a year in consulting fees from Philip Morris while he criticized the evidence regarding the hazards of second-hand smoke as junk science. Following the publication of this article, the Cato Institute, which had hosted the junkscience.com site, ceased its association with the site and removed Milloy from its list of adjunct scholars.
Tobacco industry documents reveal that Philip Morris executives conceived of the "Whitecoat Project" in the 1980s as a response to emerging scientific data on the harmfulness of second-hand smoke. The goal of the Whitecoat Project, as conceived by Philip Morris and other tobacco companies, was to use ostensibly independent "scientific consultants" to spread doubt in the public mind about scientific data through invoking concepts like junk science. According to epidemiologist David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety, and Health in the Clinton Administration, the tobacco industry invented the "sound science" movement in the 1980s as part of their campaign against the regulation of second-hand smoke.
David Michaels has argued that, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., lay judges have become "gatekeepers" of scientific testimony and, as a result, respected scientists have sometimes been unable to provide testimony so that corporate defendants are "increasingly emboldened" to accuse adversaries of practicing junk science.
American psychologist Paul Cameron has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an anti-gay extremist and a purveyor of "junk science". Cameron's research has been heavily criticized for unscientific methods and distortions which attempt to link homosexuality with pedophilia. In one instance, Cameron claimed that lesbians are 300 times more likely to get into car accidents. The SPLC states his work has been continually cited in some sections of the media despite being discredited. Cameron was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983.
In 1995, the Union of Concerned Scientists launched the Sound Science Initiative, a national network of scientists committed to debunking junk science through media outreach, lobbying, and developing joint strategies to participate in town meetings or public hearings. In its newsletter on Science and Technology in Congress, the American Association for the Advancement of Science also recognized the need for increased understanding between scientists and lawmakers: "Although most individuals would agree that sound science is preferable to junk science, fewer recognize what makes a scientific study 'good' or 'bad'." The American Dietetic Association, criticizing marketing claims made for food products, has created a list of "Ten Red Flags of Junk Science". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Junk science is spurious or fraudulent scientific data, research, or analysis. The concept is often invoked in political and legal contexts where facts and scientific results have a great amount of weight in making a determination. It usually conveys a pejorative connotation that the research has been untowardly driven by political, ideological, financial, or otherwise unscientific motives.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The concept was popularized in the 1990s in relation to expert testimony in civil litigation. More recently, invoking the concept has been a tactic to criticize research on the harmful environmental or public health effects of corporate activities, and occasionally in response to such criticism. Author Dan Agin in his book Junk Science harshly criticized those who deny the basic premise of global warming,",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In some contexts, junk science is counterposed to the \"sound science\" or \"solid science\" that favors one's own point of view. Junk science has been criticized for undermining public trust in real science. Junk science is not the same as pseudoscience.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Junk science has been defined as:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Junk science happens for different reasons, including because researchers believe that their own ideas are correct (a sort of scientific self-delusion or drinking the Kool-Aid), because they are biased with their study designs, and due to a \"plain old lack of ethics\". Being overly attached to one's own ideas can lead a research from ordinary junk science (e.g., choosing an experiment that is expected to produce the desired results) into scientific fraud (e.g., lying about the results) and pseudoscience (e.g., claiming that the unfavorable results actually proved the idea correct).",
"title": "Motivations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Junk science tends to appear when the person engaging in it has something to gain from getting the desired answer. It is therefore seen in the testimony of expert witnesses in legal proceedings and in the self-serving advertising of products and services. These situations may encourage researchers to overstate their claims and to make sweeping claims based on limited evidence.",
"title": "Motivations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The phrase junk science appears to have been in use prior to 1985. A 1985 United States Department of Justice report by the Tort Policy Working Group noted:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The use of such invalid scientific evidence (commonly referred to as 'junk science') has resulted in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1989, the climate scientist Jerry Mahlman (Director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory) characterized the theory that global warming was due to solar variation (presented in Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem by Frederick Seitz et al.) as \"noisy junk science.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Peter W. Huber popularized the term with respect to litigation in his 1991 book Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom. The book has been cited in over 100 legal textbooks and references; as a consequence, some sources cite Huber as the first to coin the term. By 1997, the term had entered the legal lexicon as seen in an opinion by Supreme Court of the United States Justice John Paul Stevens:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "An example of 'junk science' that should be excluded under the Daubert standard as too unreliable would be the testimony of a phrenologist who would purport to prove a defendant's future dangerousness based on the contours of the defendant's skull.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Lower courts have subsequently set guidelines for identifying junk science, such as the 2005 opinion of United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Judge Frank H. Easterbrook:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Positive reports about magnetic water treatment are not replicable; this plus the lack of a physical explanation for any effects are hallmarks of junk science.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "As the subtitle of Huber's book, Junk Science in the Courtroom, suggests, his emphasis was on the use or misuse of expert testimony in civil litigation. One prominent example cited in the book was litigation over casual contact in the spread of AIDS. A California school district sought to prevent a young boy with AIDS, Ryan Thomas, from attending kindergarten. The school district produced an expert witness, Steven Armentrout, who testified that a possibility existed that AIDS could be transmitted to schoolmates through yet undiscovered \"vectors\". However, five experts testified on behalf of Thomas that AIDS is not transmitted through casual contact, and the court affirmed the \"solid science\" (as Huber called it) and rejected Armentrout's argument.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1999, Paul Ehrlich and others advocated public policies to improve the dissemination of valid environmental scientific knowledge and discourage junk science:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports offer an antidote to junk science by articulating the current consensus on the prospects for climate change, by outlining the extent of the uncertainties, and by describing the potential benefits and costs of policies to address climate change.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In a 2003 study about changes in environmental activism regarding the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, Pedynowski noted that junk science can undermine the credibility of science over a much broader scale because misrepresentation by special interests casts doubt on more defensible claims and undermines the credibility of all research.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In his 2006 book Junk Science, Dan Agin emphasized two main causes of junk science: fraud, and ignorance. In the first case, Agin discussed falsified results in the development of organic transistors:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "As far as understanding junk science is concerned, the important aspect is that both Bell Laboratories and the international physics community were fooled until someone noticed that noise records published by Jan Hendrik Schön in several papers were identical—which means physically impossible.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the second case, he cites an example that demonstrates ignorance of statistical principles in the lay press:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Since no such proof is possible [that genetically modified food is harmless], the article in The New York Times was what is called a \"bad rap\" against the U.S. Department of Agriculture—a bad rap based on a junk-science belief that it's possible to prove a null hypothesis.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Agin asks the reader to step back from the rhetoric, as \"how things are labeled does not make a science junk science.\" In its place, he offers that junk science is ultimately motivated by the desire to hide undesirable truths from the public.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The rise of open source (free to read) journals has resulted in economic pressure on academic publishers to publish junk science. Even when the journal is peer-reviewed, the authors, rather than the readers, become the customer and the source of funding for the journal, so the publisher is incentivized to publish as many papers as possible, including those that are methodologically unsound.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of PR Watch say the concept of junk science has come to be invoked in attempts to dismiss scientific findings that stand in the way of short-term corporate profits. In their book Trust Us, We're Experts (2001), they write that industries have launched multimillion-dollar campaigns to position certain theories as junk science in the popular mind, often failing to employ the scientific method themselves. For example, the tobacco industry has described research demonstrating the harmful effects of smoking and second-hand smoke as junk science, through the vehicle of various astroturf groups.",
"title": "Misuse in public relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Theories more favorable to corporate activities are portrayed in words as \"sound science\". Past examples where \"sound science\" was used include the research into the toxicity of Alar, which was heavily criticized by antiregulatory advocates, and Herbert Needleman's research into low dose lead poisoning. Needleman was accused of fraud and personally attacked.",
"title": "Misuse in public relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Fox News commentator Steven Milloy often denigrates credible scientific research on topics like global warming, ozone depletion, and passive smoking as \"junk science\". The credibility of Milloy's website junkscience.com was questioned by Paul D. Thacker, a writer for The New Republic, in the wake of evidence that Milloy had received funding from Philip Morris, RJR Tobacco, and Exxon Mobil. Thacker also noted that Milloy was receiving almost $100,000 a year in consulting fees from Philip Morris while he criticized the evidence regarding the hazards of second-hand smoke as junk science. Following the publication of this article, the Cato Institute, which had hosted the junkscience.com site, ceased its association with the site and removed Milloy from its list of adjunct scholars.",
"title": "Misuse in public relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Tobacco industry documents reveal that Philip Morris executives conceived of the \"Whitecoat Project\" in the 1980s as a response to emerging scientific data on the harmfulness of second-hand smoke. The goal of the Whitecoat Project, as conceived by Philip Morris and other tobacco companies, was to use ostensibly independent \"scientific consultants\" to spread doubt in the public mind about scientific data through invoking concepts like junk science. According to epidemiologist David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety, and Health in the Clinton Administration, the tobacco industry invented the \"sound science\" movement in the 1980s as part of their campaign against the regulation of second-hand smoke.",
"title": "Misuse in public relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "David Michaels has argued that, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., lay judges have become \"gatekeepers\" of scientific testimony and, as a result, respected scientists have sometimes been unable to provide testimony so that corporate defendants are \"increasingly emboldened\" to accuse adversaries of practicing junk science.",
"title": "Misuse in public relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "American psychologist Paul Cameron has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an anti-gay extremist and a purveyor of \"junk science\". Cameron's research has been heavily criticized for unscientific methods and distortions which attempt to link homosexuality with pedophilia. In one instance, Cameron claimed that lesbians are 300 times more likely to get into car accidents. The SPLC states his work has been continually cited in some sections of the media despite being discredited. Cameron was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983.",
"title": "Notable cases"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1995, the Union of Concerned Scientists launched the Sound Science Initiative, a national network of scientists committed to debunking junk science through media outreach, lobbying, and developing joint strategies to participate in town meetings or public hearings. In its newsletter on Science and Technology in Congress, the American Association for the Advancement of Science also recognized the need for increased understanding between scientists and lawmakers: \"Although most individuals would agree that sound science is preferable to junk science, fewer recognize what makes a scientific study 'good' or 'bad'.\" The American Dietetic Association, criticizing marketing claims made for food products, has created a list of \"Ten Red Flags of Junk Science\".",
"title": "Combatting junk science"
}
]
| Junk science is spurious or fraudulent scientific data, research, or analysis. The concept is often invoked in political and legal contexts where facts and scientific results have a great amount of weight in making a determination. It usually conveys a pejorative connotation that the research has been untowardly driven by political, ideological, financial, or otherwise unscientific motives. The concept was popularized in the 1990s in relation to expert testimony in civil litigation. More recently, invoking the concept has been a tactic to criticize research on the harmful environmental or public health effects of corporate activities, and occasionally in response to such criticism. Author Dan Agin in his book Junk Science harshly criticized those who deny the basic premise of global warming, In some contexts, junk science is counterposed to the "sound science" or "solid science" that favors one's own point of view. Junk science has been criticized for undermining public trust in real science. Junk science is not the same as pseudoscience. | 2001-10-01T04:29:03Z | 2023-12-21T07:01:20Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_science |
15,628 | Java (disambiguation) | Java is an island of Indonesia.
Java may also refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Java is an island of Indonesia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Java may also refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| Java is an island of Indonesia. Java may also refer to: | 2001-11-03T18:20:10Z | 2023-08-27T12:14:46Z | [
"Template:Wiktionary",
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15,630 | James Cook | Captain James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.
In these voyages, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. He surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.
In 1779, during Cook's third exploratory voyage in the Pacific, tensions escalated between his men and the natives of Hawaii, and an attempt to kidnap chief Kalaniʻōpuʻu led to the death of Cook. There is controversy over Cook's role as an enabler of British colonialism and the violence associated with some of his contacts with indigenous peoples. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him.
James Cook was born on 7 November 1728 (NS) in the village of Marton in the North Riding of Yorkshire and baptised on 14 November (N.S.) in the parish church of St Cuthbert, where his name can be seen in the church register. He was the second of eight children of James Cook (1693–1779), a Scottish farm labourer from Ednam in Roxburghshire, and his locally born wife, Grace Pace (1702–1765), from Thornaby-on-Tees. In 1736, his family moved to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton, where his father's employer, Thomas Skottowe, paid for him to attend the local school. In 1741, after five years' schooling, he began work for his father, who had been promoted to farm manager. Despite not being formally educated, he became capable in mathematics, astronomy and charting by the time of his Endeavour voyage. For leisure, he would climb a nearby hill, Roseberry Topping, enjoying the opportunity for solitude.
In 1745, when he was 16, Cook moved 20 miles (32 km) to the fishing village of Staithes, to be apprenticed as a shop boy to grocer and haberdasher William Sanderson. Historians have speculated that this is where Cook first felt the lure of the sea while gazing out of the shop window.
After 18 months, not proving suited for shop work, Cook travelled to the nearby port town of Whitby to be introduced to Sanderson's friends John and Henry Walker. The Walkers, who were Quakers, were prominent local ship-owners in the coal trade. Their house is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in their small fleet of vessels, plying coal along the English coast. His first assignment was aboard the collier Freelove, and he spent several years on this and various other coasters, sailing between the Tyne and London. As part of his apprenticeship, Cook applied himself to the study of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, navigation and astronomy – all skills he would need one day to command his own ship.
His three-year apprenticeship completed, Cook began working on trading ships in the Baltic Sea. After passing his examinations in 1752, he soon progressed through the merchant navy ranks, starting with his promotion in that year to mate aboard the collier brig Friendship. In 1755, within a month of being offered command of this vessel, he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy, when Britain was re-arming for what was to become the Seven Years' War. Despite the need to start back at the bottom of the naval hierarchy, Cook realised his career would advance more quickly in military service and entered the Navy at Wapping on 17 June 1755.
Cook married Elizabeth Batts, the daughter of Samuel Batts, keeper of the Bell Inn in Wapping and one of his mentors, on 21 December 1762 at St Margaret's Church, Barking, Essex. The couple had six children: James (1763–1794), Nathaniel (1764–1780, lost aboard HMS Thunderer which foundered with all hands in a hurricane in the West Indies), Elizabeth (1767–1771), Joseph (1768–1768), George (1772–1772) and Hugh (1776–1793, who died of scarlet fever while a student at Christ's College, Cambridge). When not at sea, Cook lived in the East End of London. He attended St Paul's Church, Shadwell, where his son James was baptised. Cook has no direct descendants – all of his children died before having children of their own.
Cook's first posting was with HMS Eagle, serving as able seaman and master's mate under Captain Joseph Hamar for his first year aboard, and Captain Hugh Palliser thereafter. In October and November 1755, he took part in Eagle's capture of one French warship and the sinking of another, following which he was promoted to boatswain in addition to his other duties. His first temporary command was in March 1756 when he was briefly master of Cruizer, a small cutter attached to Eagle while on patrol.
In June 1757 Cook formally passed his master's examinations at Trinity House, Deptford, qualifying him to navigate and handle a ship of the King's fleet. He then joined the frigate HMS Solebay as master under Captain Robert Craig.
During the Seven Years' War, Cook served in North America as master aboard the fourth-rate Navy vessel HMS Pembroke. With others in Pembroke's crew, he took part in the major amphibious assault that captured the Fortress of Louisbourg from the French in 1758, and in the siege of Quebec City in 1759. Throughout his service he demonstrated a talent for surveying and cartography and was responsible for mapping much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege, thus allowing General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack during the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
Cook's surveying ability was also put to use in mapping the jagged coast of Newfoundland in the 1760s, aboard HMS Grenville. He surveyed the northwest stretch in 1763 and 1764, the south coast between the Burin Peninsula and Cape Ray in 1765 and 1766, and the west coast in 1767. At this time, Cook employed local pilots to point out the "rocks and hidden dangers" along the south and west coasts. During the 1765 season, four pilots were engaged at a daily pay of 4 shillings each: John Beck for the coast west of "Great St Lawrence", Morgan Snook for Fortune Bay, John Dawson for Connaigre and Hermitage Bay, and John Peck for the "Bay of Despair".
While in Newfoundland, Cook also conducted astronomical observations, in particular of the eclipse of the sun on 5 August 1766. By obtaining an accurate estimate of the time of the start and finish of the eclipse, and comparing these with the timings at a known position in England, it was possible to calculate the longitude of the observation site in Newfoundland. This result was communicated to the Royal Society in 1767.
His five seasons in Newfoundland produced the first large-scale and accurate maps of the island's coasts and were the first scientific, large scale, hydrographic surveys to use precise triangulation to establish land outlines. They also gave Cook his mastery of practical surveying, achieved under often adverse conditions, and brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society at a crucial moment both in his career and in the direction of British overseas discovery. Cook's maps were used into the 20th century, with copies being referenced by those sailing Newfoundland's waters for 200 years.
Following on from his exertions in Newfoundland, Cook wrote that he intended to go not only "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go".
On 25 May 1768, the Admiralty commissioned Cook to command a scientific voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The purpose of the voyage was to observe and record the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun which, when combined with observations from other places, would help to determine the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Cook, at age 39, was promoted to lieutenant to grant him sufficient status to take the command. For its part, the Royal Society agreed that Cook would receive a one hundred guinea gratuity in addition to his Naval pay.
The expedition sailed aboard HMS Endeavour, departing England on 26 August 1768. Cook and his crew rounded Cape Horn and continued westward across the Pacific, arriving at Tahiti on 13 April 1769, where the observations of the transit were made. However, the result of the observations was not as conclusive or accurate as had been hoped. Once the observations were completed, Cook opened the sealed orders, which were additional instructions from the Admiralty for the second part of his voyage: to search the south Pacific for signs of the postulated rich southern continent of Terra Australis.
Cook then sailed to New Zealand where he mapped the complete coastline, making only some minor errors. With the aid of Tupaia, a Tahitian priest who had joined the expedition, Cook was the first European to communicate with the Māori. However, at least eight Māori were killed in violent encounters. Cook then voyaged west, reaching the southeastern coast of Australia near today's Point Hicks on 19 April 1770, and in doing so his expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered its eastern coastline.
On 23 April, he made his first recorded direct observation of Aboriginal Australians at Brush Island near Bawley Point, noting in his journal: "... and were so near the Shore as to distinguish several people upon the Sea beach they appear'd to be of a very dark or black Colour but whether this was the real colour of their skins or the C[l]othes they might have on I know not."
Endeavour continued northwards along the coastline, keeping the land in sight with Cook charting and naming landmarks as he went. On 29 April, Cook and crew made their first landfall on the continent at a beach now known as Silver Beach on Botany Bay (Kamay Botany Bay National Park). Two Gweagal men of the Dharawal / Eora nation opposed their landing and in the confrontation one of them was shot and wounded.
Cook and his crew stayed at Botany Bay for a week, collecting water, timber, fodder and botanical specimens and exploring the surrounding area. Cook sought to establish relations with the Indigenous population without success. At first Cook named the inlet "Sting-Ray Harbour" after the many stingrays found there. This was later changed to "Botanist Bay" and finally Botany Bay after the unique specimens retrieved by the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander. This first landing site was later to be promoted (particularly by Joseph Banks) as a suitable candidate for situating a settlement and British colonial outpost.
After his departure from Botany Bay, he continued northwards. He stopped at Bustard Bay (now known as Seventeen Seventy) on 23 May 1770. On 24 May, Cook and Banks and others went ashore. Continuing north, on 11 June a mishap occurred when Endeavour ran aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef, and then "nursed into a river mouth on 18 June 1770". The ship was badly damaged, and his voyage was delayed almost seven weeks while repairs were carried out on the beach (near the docks of modern Cooktown, Queensland, at the mouth of the Endeavour River). The crew's encounters with the local Aboriginal people were mostly peaceful, although following a dispute over green turtles Cook ordered shots to be fired and one local was lightly wounded.
The voyage then continued and at about midday on 22 August 1770, they reached the northernmost tip of the coast and, without leaving the ship, Cook named it York Cape (now Cape York). Leaving the east coast, Cook turned west and nursed his battered ship through the dangerously shallow waters of Torres Strait. Searching for a vantage point, Cook saw a steep hill on a nearby island from the top of which he hoped to see "a passage into the Indian Seas". Cook named the island Possession Island, where he claimed the entire coastline that he had just explored as British territory.
Cook returned to England via Batavia (modern Jakarta, Indonesia), where many in his crew succumbed to malaria, and then the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at the island of Saint Helena on 30 April 1771. The ship finally returned to England on 12 July 1771, anchoring in The Downs, with Cook going to Deal.
Cook's journals were published upon his return, and he became something of a hero among the scientific community. Among the general public, however, the aristocratic botanist Joseph Banks was a greater hero. Banks even attempted to take command of Cook's second voyage but removed himself from the voyage before it began, and Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg Forster were taken on as scientists for the voyage. Cook's son George was born five days before he left for his second voyage.
Shortly after his return from the first voyage, Cook was promoted in August 1771 to the rank of commander. In 1772, he was commissioned to lead another scientific expedition on behalf of the Royal Society, to search for the hypothetical Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south. Although he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, showing it to be continental in size, the Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Despite this evidence to the contrary, Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that a massive southern continent should exist.
Cook commanded HMS Resolution on this voyage, while Tobias Furneaux commanded its companion ship, HMS Adventure. Cook's expedition circumnavigated the globe at an extreme southern latitude, becoming one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on 17 January 1773. In the Antarctic fog, Resolution and Adventure became separated. Furneaux made his way to New Zealand, where he lost some of his men during an encounter with Māori, and eventually sailed back to Britain, while Cook continued to explore the Antarctic, reaching 71°10'S on 31 January 1774.
Cook almost encountered the mainland of Antarctica but turned towards Tahiti to resupply his ship. He then resumed his southward course in a second fruitless attempt to find the supposed continent. On this leg of the voyage, he brought a young Tahitian named Omai, who proved to be somewhat less knowledgeable about the Pacific than Tupaia had been on the first voyage. On his return voyage to New Zealand in 1774, Cook landed at the Friendly Islands, Easter Island, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu.
Before returning to England, Cook made a final sweep across the South Atlantic from Cape Horn and surveyed, mapped, and took possession for Britain of South Georgia, which had been explored by the English merchant Anthony de la Roché in 1675. Cook also discovered and named Clerke Rocks and the South Sandwich Islands ("Sandwich Land"). He then turned north to South Africa and from there continued back to England. His reports upon his return home put to rest the popular myth of Terra Australis.
Cook's second voyage marked a successful employment of Larcum Kendall's K1 copy of John Harrison's H4 marine chronometer, which enabled Cook to calculate his longitudinal position with much greater accuracy. Cook's log was full of praise for this time-piece which he used to make charts of the southern Pacific Ocean that were so remarkably accurate that copies of them were still in use in the mid-20th century.
Upon his return, Cook was promoted to the rank of post-captain and given an honorary retirement from the Royal Navy, with a posting as an officer of the Greenwich Hospital. He reluctantly accepted, insisting that he be allowed to quit the post if an opportunity for active duty should arise. His fame extended beyond the Admiralty; he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded the Copley Gold Medal for completing his second voyage without losing a man to scurvy. Nathaniel Dance-Holland painted his portrait; he dined with James Boswell; he was described in the House of Lords as "the first navigator in Europe". But he could not be kept away from the sea. A third voyage was planned, and Cook volunteered to find the Northwest Passage. He travelled to the Pacific and hoped to travel east to the Atlantic, while a simultaneous voyage travelled the opposite route.
On his last voyage, Cook again commanded HMS Resolution, while Captain Charles Clerke commanded HMS Discovery. The voyage was ostensibly planned to return the Pacific Islander Omai to Tahiti, or so the public was led to believe. The trip's principal goal was to locate a Northwest Passage around the American continent. After dropping Omai at Tahiti, Cook travelled north and in 1778 became the first European to begin formal contact with the Hawaiian Islands. After his initial landfall in January 1778 at Waimea harbour, Kauai, Cook named the archipelago the "Sandwich Islands" after the fourth Earl of Sandwich—the acting First Lord of the Admiralty.
From the Sandwich Islands, Cook sailed north and then northeast to explore the west coast of North America north of the Spanish settlements in Alta California. He sighted the Oregon coast at approximately 44°30′ north latitude, naming Cape Foulweather, after the bad weather which forced his ships south to about 43° north before they could begin their exploration of the coast northward. He unknowingly sailed past the Strait of Juan de Fuca and soon after entered Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. He anchored near the First Nations village of Yuquot. Cook's two ships remained in Nootka Sound from 29 March to 26 April 1778, in what Cook called Ship Cove, now Resolution Cove, at the south end of Bligh Island. Relations between Cook's crew and the people of Yuquot were cordial but sometimes strained. In trading, the people of Yuquot demanded much more valuable items than the usual trinkets that had been acceptable in Hawaii. Metal objects were much desired, but the lead, pewter, and tin traded at first soon fell into disrepute. The most valuable items which the British received in trade were sea otter pelts. During the stay, the Yuquot "hosts" essentially controlled the trade with the British vessels; the natives usually visited the British vessels at Resolution Cove instead of the British visiting the village of Yuquot at Friendly Cove.
After leaving Nootka Sound in search of the Northwest Passage, Cook explored and mapped the coast all the way to the Bering Strait, on the way identifying what came to be known as Cook Inlet in Alaska. In a single visit, Cook charted the majority of the North American northwest coastline on world maps for the first time, determined the extent of Alaska, and closed the gaps in Russian (from the west) and Spanish (from the south) exploratory probes of the northern limits of the Pacific.
By the second week of August 1778, Cook was through the Bering Strait, sailing into the Chukchi Sea. He headed northeast up the coast of Alaska until he was blocked by sea ice at a latitude of 70°44′ north. Cook then sailed west to the Siberian coast, and then southeast down the Siberian coast back to the Bering Strait. By early September 1778 he was back in the Bering Sea to begin the trip to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. He became increasingly frustrated on this voyage and perhaps began to suffer from a stomach ailment; it has been speculated that this led to irrational behaviour towards his crew, such as forcing them to eat walrus meat, which they had pronounced inedible.
Cook returned to Hawaii in 1779. After sailing around the archipelago for some eight weeks, he made landfall at Kealakekua Bay on Hawai'i Island, largest island in the Hawaiian Archipelago. Cook's arrival coincided with the Makahiki, a Hawaiian harvest festival of worship for the Polynesian god Lono. Coincidentally the form of Cook's ship, HMS Resolution, or more particularly the mast formation, sails and rigging, resembled certain significant artefacts that formed part of the season of worship. Similarly, Cook's clockwise route around the island of Hawaii before making landfall resembled the processions that took place in a clockwise direction around the island during the Lono festivals. It has been argued (most extensively by Marshall Sahlins) that such coincidences were the reasons for Cook's (and to a limited extent, his crew's) initial deification by some Hawaiians who treated Cook as an incarnation of Lono. Though this view was first suggested by members of Cook's expedition, the idea that any Hawaiians understood Cook to be Lono, and the evidence presented in support of it, were challenged in 1992.
After a month's stay, Cook attempted to resume his exploration of the northern Pacific. Shortly after leaving Hawaii Island, however, Resolution's foremast broke, so the ships returned to Kealakekua Bay for repairs.
Tensions rose, and quarrels broke out between the Europeans and Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay, including the theft of wood from a burial ground under Cook's orders. On 13 February 1779, an unknown group of Hawaiians stole one of Cook's longboats. By then the Hawaiian people had become "insolent", even with threats to fire upon them. Cook responded to the theft by attempting to kidnap and ransom the King of Hawaiʻi, Kalaniʻōpuʻu.
The following day, 14 February 1779, Cook marched through the village to retrieve the king. Cook took the king (aliʻi nui) by his own hand and led him away. One of Kalaniʻōpuʻu's favourite wives, Kanekapolei, and two chiefs approached the group as they were heading to the boats. They pleaded with the king not to go. An old kahuna (priest), chanting rapidly while holding out a coconut, attempted to distract Cook and his men as a large crowd began to form at the shore. At this point, the king began to understand that Cook was his enemy. As Cook turned his back to help launch the boats, he was struck on the head by the villagers and then stabbed to death as he fell on his face in the surf. He was first struck on the head with a club by a chief named Kalaimanokahoʻowaha or Kanaʻina (namesake of Charles Kana'ina) and then stabbed by one of the king's attendants, Nuaa. The Hawaiians carried his body away towards the back of the town, still visible to the ship through their spyglass. Four marines, Corporal James Thomas, Private Theophilus Hinks, Private Thomas Fatchett and Private John Allen, were also killed and two others were wounded in the confrontation.
The esteem which the islanders nevertheless held for Cook caused them to retain his body. Following their practice of the time, they prepared his body with funerary rituals usually reserved for the chiefs and highest elders of the society. The body was disembowelled and baked to facilitate removal of the flesh, and the bones were carefully cleaned for preservation as religious icons in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of the treatment of European saints in the Middle Ages. Some of Cook's remains, thus preserved, were eventually returned to his crew for a formal burial at sea.
Clerke assumed leadership of the expedition and made a final attempt to pass through the Bering Strait. He died of tuberculosis on 22 August 1779 and John Gore, a veteran of Cook's first voyage, took command of Resolution and of the expedition. James King replaced Gore in command of Discovery. The expedition returned home, reaching England in October 1780. After their arrival in England, King completed Cook's account of the voyage.
The Australian Museum acquired its "Cook Collection" in 1894 from the Government of New South Wales. At that time the collection consisted of 115 artefacts collected on Cook's three voyages throughout the Pacific Ocean, during the period 1768–1780, along with documents and memorabilia related to these voyages. Many of the ethnographic artefacts were collected at a time of first contact between Pacific Peoples and Europeans. In 1935 most of the documents and memorabilia were transferred to the Mitchell Library in the State Library of New South Wales. The provenance of the collection shows that the objects remained in the hands of Cook's widow Elizabeth Cook, and her descendants, until 1886. In this year John Mackrell, the great-nephew of Isaac Smith, Elizabeth Cook's cousin, organised the display of this collection at the request of the NSW Government at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. In 1887 the London-based Agent-General for the New South Wales Government, Saul Samuel, bought John Mackrell's items and also acquired items belonging to the other relatives Reverend Canon Frederick Bennett, Mrs Thomas Langton, H.M.C. Alexander, and William Adams. The collection remained with the Colonial Secretary of NSW until 1894, when it was transferred to the Australian Museum.
Cook's 12 years sailing around the Pacific Ocean contributed much to Europeans' knowledge of the area. Several islands, such as the Hawaiian group, were encountered for the first time by Europeans, and his more accurate navigational charting of large areas of the Pacific was a major achievement. To create accurate maps, latitude and longitude must be accurately determined. Navigators had been able to work out latitude accurately for centuries by measuring the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon with an instrument such as a backstaff or quadrant. Longitude was more difficult to measure accurately because it requires precise knowledge of the time difference between points on the surface of the Earth. The Earth turns a full 360 degrees relative to the Sun each day. Thus longitude corresponds to time: 15 degrees every hour, or 1 degree every 4 minutes. Cook gathered accurate longitude measurements during his first voyage from his navigational skills, with the help of astronomer Charles Green, and by using the newly published Nautical Almanac tables, via the lunar distance method – measuring the angular distance from the Moon to either the Sun during daytime or one of eight bright stars during night-time to determine the time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and comparing that to his local time determined via the altitude of the Sun, Moon, or stars.
On his second voyage, Cook used the K1 chronometer made by Larcum Kendall, which was the shape of a large pocket watch, 5 inches (13 cm) in diameter. It was a copy of the H4 clock made by John Harrison, which proved to be the first to keep accurate time at sea when used on the ship Deptford's journey to Jamaica in 1761–62. He succeeded in circumnavigating the world on his first voyage without losing a single man to scurvy, an unusual accomplishment at the time. He tested several preventive measures, most importantly the frequent replenishment of fresh food. For presenting a paper on this aspect of the voyage to the Royal Society he was presented with the Copley Medal in 1776. Cook became the first European to have extensive contact with various people of the Pacific. He correctly postulated a link among all the Pacific peoples, despite their being separated by great ocean stretches (see Malayo-Polynesian languages). Cook theorised that Polynesians originated from Asia, which scientist Bryan Sykes later verified. In New Zealand the coming of Cook is often used to signify the onset of the colonisation which officially started more than 70 years after his crew became the second group of Europeans to visit that archipelago.
Cook carried several scientists on his voyages; they made significant observations and discoveries. Two botanists, Joseph Banks and the Swede Daniel Solander, sailed on the first voyage. The two collected over 3,000 plant species. Banks subsequently strongly promoted British settlement of Australia, leading to the establishment of New South Wales as a penal settlement in 1788. Artists also sailed on Cook's first voyage. Sydney Parkinson was heavily involved in documenting the botanists' findings, completing 264 drawings before his death near the end of the voyage. They were of immense scientific value to British botanists. Cook's second expedition included William Hodges, who produced notable landscape paintings of Tahiti, Easter Island, and other locations. Several officers who served under Cook went on to distinctive accomplishments. William Bligh, Cook's sailing master, was given command of HMS Bounty in 1787 to sail to Tahiti and return with breadfruit. Bligh became known for the mutiny of his crew, which resulted in his being set adrift in 1789. He later became Governor of New South Wales, where he was the subject of another mutiny—the 1808 Rum Rebellion. George Vancouver, one of Cook's midshipmen, led a voyage of exploration to the Pacific Coast of North America from 1791 to 1794. In honour of Vancouver's former commander, his ship was named Discovery. George Dixon, who sailed under Cook on his third expedition, later commanded his own. Henry Roberts, a lieutenant under Cook, spent many years after that voyage preparing the detailed charts that went into Cook's posthumous atlas, published around 1784.
Cook's contributions to knowledge gained international recognition during his lifetime. In 1779, while the American colonies were fighting Britain for their independence, Benjamin Franklin wrote to captains of colonial warships at sea, recommending that if they came into contact with Cook's vessel, they were to "not consider her an enemy, nor suffer any plunder to be made of the effects contained in her, nor obstruct her immediate return to England by detaining her or sending her into any other part of Europe or to America; but that you treat the said Captain Cook and his people with all civility and kindness ... as common friends to mankind."
A U.S. coin, the 1928 Hawaii Sesquicentennial half-dollar, carries Cook's image. Minted for the 150th anniversary of his discovery of the islands, its low mintage (10,008) has made this example of an early United States commemorative coin both scarce and expensive. The site where he was killed in Hawaii was marked in 1874 by a white obelisk. This land, although in Hawaii, was deeded to the United Kingdom by Princess Likelike and her husband, Archibald Scott Cleghorn, to the British Consul to Hawaii, James Hay Wodehouse, in 1877. A nearby town is named Captain Cook, Hawaii; several Hawaiian businesses also carry his name. The Apollo 15 Command/Service Module Endeavour was named after Cook's ship, HMS Endeavour, as was the Space Shuttle Endeavour. In addition, the first Crew Dragon capsule flown by SpaceX was named for Endeavour. Another shuttle, Discovery, was named after Cook's HMS Discovery.
Cooks' Cottage, his parents' last home, which he is likely to have visited, is now in Melbourne, Australia, having been moved from England at the behest of the Australian philanthropist Sir Russell Grimwade in 1934. The first institution of higher education in North Queensland, Australia, was named after him, with James Cook University opening in Townsville in 1970. Numerous institutions, landmarks and place names reflect the importance of Cook's contributions, including the Cook Islands, Cook Strait, Cook Inlet and the Cook crater on the Moon. Aoraki / Mount Cook, the highest summit in New Zealand, is named for him. Another Mount Cook is on the border between the U.S. state of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon territory, and is designated Boundary Peak 182 as one of the official Boundary Peaks of the Hay–Herbert Treaty. A larger-than-life statue of Cook upon a column stands in Hyde Park located in the centre of Sydney. A large aquatic monument was in 2018 planned for Cook's landing place at Botany Bay, Sydney.
One of the earliest monuments to Cook in the United Kingdom is located at The Vache, erected in 1780 by Admiral Hugh Palliser, a contemporary of Cook and one-time owner of the estate. A large obelisk was built in 1827 as a monument to Cook on Easby Moor overlooking his boyhood village of Great Ayton, along with a smaller monument at the former location of Cook's cottage. There is also a monument to Cook in the church of St Andrew the Great, St Andrew's Street, Cambridge, where his sons Hugh, a student at Christ's College, and James were buried. Cook's widow Elizabeth was also buried in the church and in her will left money for the memorial's upkeep. The 250th anniversary of Cook's birth was marked at the site of his birthplace in Marton by the opening of the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, located within Stewart Park (1978). A granite vase just to the south of the museum marks the approximate spot where he was born. Tributes also abound in post-industrial Middlesbrough, including a primary school, shopping square and the Bottle 'O Notes, a public artwork by Claes Oldenburg, that was erected in the town's Central Gardens in 1993. Also named after Cook is James Cook University Hospital, a major teaching hospital which opened in 2003 with a railway station serving it called James Cook opening in 2014. The Royal Research Ship RRS James Cook was built in 2006 to replace the RRS Charles Darwin in the UK's Royal Research Fleet, and Stepney Historical Trust placed a plaque on Free Trade Wharf in the Highway, Shadwell to commemorate his life in the East End of London. A statue erected in his honour can be viewed near Admiralty Arch on the south side of The Mall in London. In 2002, Cook was placed at number 12 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.
In 1959, the Cooktown Re-enactment Association first performed a re-enactment of Cook's 1770 landing at the site of modern Cooktown, Australia, and have continued the tradition each year, with the support and participation of many of the local Guugu Yimithirr people. They celebrate the first act of reconciliation between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous people, when a Guugu Yimithirr elder stepped in after some of Cook's men had violated custom by taking green turtles from the river and not sharing with the local people. He presented Cook with a broken-tipped spear as a peace offering, thus preventing possible bloodshed. Cook recorded the incident in his journal.
Cook was a subject in many literary creations.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon, a popular poet known for her sentimental romantic poetry, published a poetical illustration to a portrait of Captain Cook in 1837.
In 1931, Kenneth Slessor's poem "Five Visions of Captain Cook" was the "most dramatic break-through" in Australian poetry of the 20th century according to poet Douglas Stewart.
The Australian slang phrase "Have a Captain Cook" means to have a look or conduct a brief inspection.
Cook appears as a symbolic and generic figure in several Aboriginal myths, often from regions where Cook did not encounter Aboriginal people. Maddock states that Cook is usually portrayed as the bringer of Western colonialism to Australia and is presented as a villain who brings immense social change.
The period 2018 to 2021 marked the 250th anniversary of Cook's first voyage of exploration. Several countries, including Australia and New Zealand, arranged official events to commemorate the voyage, leading to widespread public debate about Cook's legacy and the violence associated with his contacts with Indigenous peoples. In the lead-up to the commemorations, various memorials to Cook in Australia and New Zealand were vandalised, and there were public calls for their removal or modification due to their alleged promotion of colonialist narratives. On 1 July 2021, a statue of James Cook in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, was torn down following an earlier peaceful protest about the deaths of Indigenous residential school children in Canada. There were also campaigns for the return of Indigenous artefacts taken during Cook's voyages (see Gweagal shield).
Alice Proctor argues that the controversies over public representations of Cook and the display of Indigenous artefacts from his voyages are part of a broader debate over the decolonisation of museums and public spaces and resistance to colonialist narratives. While a number of commentators argue that Cook was an enabler of British colonialism in the Pacific, Geoffrey Blainey, among others, notes that it was Banks who promoted Botany Bay as a site for colonisation after Cook's death. Robert Tombs defended Cook, arguing "He epitomized the Age of Enlightenment in which he lived," and in conducting his first voyage "was carrying out an enlightened mission, with instructions from the Royal Society to show ‘patience and forbearance’ towards native peoples". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Captain James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In these voyages, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. He surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1779, during Cook's third exploratory voyage in the Pacific, tensions escalated between his men and the natives of Hawaii, and an attempt to kidnap chief Kalaniʻōpuʻu led to the death of Cook. There is controversy over Cook's role as an enabler of British colonialism and the violence associated with some of his contacts with indigenous peoples. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "James Cook was born on 7 November 1728 (NS) in the village of Marton in the North Riding of Yorkshire and baptised on 14 November (N.S.) in the parish church of St Cuthbert, where his name can be seen in the church register. He was the second of eight children of James Cook (1693–1779), a Scottish farm labourer from Ednam in Roxburghshire, and his locally born wife, Grace Pace (1702–1765), from Thornaby-on-Tees. In 1736, his family moved to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton, where his father's employer, Thomas Skottowe, paid for him to attend the local school. In 1741, after five years' schooling, he began work for his father, who had been promoted to farm manager. Despite not being formally educated, he became capable in mathematics, astronomy and charting by the time of his Endeavour voyage. For leisure, he would climb a nearby hill, Roseberry Topping, enjoying the opportunity for solitude.",
"title": "Early life and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1745, when he was 16, Cook moved 20 miles (32 km) to the fishing village of Staithes, to be apprenticed as a shop boy to grocer and haberdasher William Sanderson. Historians have speculated that this is where Cook first felt the lure of the sea while gazing out of the shop window.",
"title": "Early life and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After 18 months, not proving suited for shop work, Cook travelled to the nearby port town of Whitby to be introduced to Sanderson's friends John and Henry Walker. The Walkers, who were Quakers, were prominent local ship-owners in the coal trade. Their house is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in their small fleet of vessels, plying coal along the English coast. His first assignment was aboard the collier Freelove, and he spent several years on this and various other coasters, sailing between the Tyne and London. As part of his apprenticeship, Cook applied himself to the study of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, navigation and astronomy – all skills he would need one day to command his own ship.",
"title": "Early life and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "His three-year apprenticeship completed, Cook began working on trading ships in the Baltic Sea. After passing his examinations in 1752, he soon progressed through the merchant navy ranks, starting with his promotion in that year to mate aboard the collier brig Friendship. In 1755, within a month of being offered command of this vessel, he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy, when Britain was re-arming for what was to become the Seven Years' War. Despite the need to start back at the bottom of the naval hierarchy, Cook realised his career would advance more quickly in military service and entered the Navy at Wapping on 17 June 1755.",
"title": "Early life and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Cook married Elizabeth Batts, the daughter of Samuel Batts, keeper of the Bell Inn in Wapping and one of his mentors, on 21 December 1762 at St Margaret's Church, Barking, Essex. The couple had six children: James (1763–1794), Nathaniel (1764–1780, lost aboard HMS Thunderer which foundered with all hands in a hurricane in the West Indies), Elizabeth (1767–1771), Joseph (1768–1768), George (1772–1772) and Hugh (1776–1793, who died of scarlet fever while a student at Christ's College, Cambridge). When not at sea, Cook lived in the East End of London. He attended St Paul's Church, Shadwell, where his son James was baptised. Cook has no direct descendants – all of his children died before having children of their own.",
"title": "Early life and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Cook's first posting was with HMS Eagle, serving as able seaman and master's mate under Captain Joseph Hamar for his first year aboard, and Captain Hugh Palliser thereafter. In October and November 1755, he took part in Eagle's capture of one French warship and the sinking of another, following which he was promoted to boatswain in addition to his other duties. His first temporary command was in March 1756 when he was briefly master of Cruizer, a small cutter attached to Eagle while on patrol.",
"title": "Start of Royal Navy career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In June 1757 Cook formally passed his master's examinations at Trinity House, Deptford, qualifying him to navigate and handle a ship of the King's fleet. He then joined the frigate HMS Solebay as master under Captain Robert Craig.",
"title": "Start of Royal Navy career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "During the Seven Years' War, Cook served in North America as master aboard the fourth-rate Navy vessel HMS Pembroke. With others in Pembroke's crew, he took part in the major amphibious assault that captured the Fortress of Louisbourg from the French in 1758, and in the siege of Quebec City in 1759. Throughout his service he demonstrated a talent for surveying and cartography and was responsible for mapping much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege, thus allowing General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack during the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham.",
"title": "Start of Royal Navy career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Cook's surveying ability was also put to use in mapping the jagged coast of Newfoundland in the 1760s, aboard HMS Grenville. He surveyed the northwest stretch in 1763 and 1764, the south coast between the Burin Peninsula and Cape Ray in 1765 and 1766, and the west coast in 1767. At this time, Cook employed local pilots to point out the \"rocks and hidden dangers\" along the south and west coasts. During the 1765 season, four pilots were engaged at a daily pay of 4 shillings each: John Beck for the coast west of \"Great St Lawrence\", Morgan Snook for Fortune Bay, John Dawson for Connaigre and Hermitage Bay, and John Peck for the \"Bay of Despair\".",
"title": "Start of Royal Navy career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "While in Newfoundland, Cook also conducted astronomical observations, in particular of the eclipse of the sun on 5 August 1766. By obtaining an accurate estimate of the time of the start and finish of the eclipse, and comparing these with the timings at a known position in England, it was possible to calculate the longitude of the observation site in Newfoundland. This result was communicated to the Royal Society in 1767.",
"title": "Start of Royal Navy career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "His five seasons in Newfoundland produced the first large-scale and accurate maps of the island's coasts and were the first scientific, large scale, hydrographic surveys to use precise triangulation to establish land outlines. They also gave Cook his mastery of practical surveying, achieved under often adverse conditions, and brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society at a crucial moment both in his career and in the direction of British overseas discovery. Cook's maps were used into the 20th century, with copies being referenced by those sailing Newfoundland's waters for 200 years.",
"title": "Start of Royal Navy career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Following on from his exertions in Newfoundland, Cook wrote that he intended to go not only \"farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go\".",
"title": "Start of Royal Navy career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On 25 May 1768, the Admiralty commissioned Cook to command a scientific voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The purpose of the voyage was to observe and record the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun which, when combined with observations from other places, would help to determine the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Cook, at age 39, was promoted to lieutenant to grant him sufficient status to take the command. For its part, the Royal Society agreed that Cook would receive a one hundred guinea gratuity in addition to his Naval pay.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The expedition sailed aboard HMS Endeavour, departing England on 26 August 1768. Cook and his crew rounded Cape Horn and continued westward across the Pacific, arriving at Tahiti on 13 April 1769, where the observations of the transit were made. However, the result of the observations was not as conclusive or accurate as had been hoped. Once the observations were completed, Cook opened the sealed orders, which were additional instructions from the Admiralty for the second part of his voyage: to search the south Pacific for signs of the postulated rich southern continent of Terra Australis.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Cook then sailed to New Zealand where he mapped the complete coastline, making only some minor errors. With the aid of Tupaia, a Tahitian priest who had joined the expedition, Cook was the first European to communicate with the Māori. However, at least eight Māori were killed in violent encounters. Cook then voyaged west, reaching the southeastern coast of Australia near today's Point Hicks on 19 April 1770, and in doing so his expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered its eastern coastline.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On 23 April, he made his first recorded direct observation of Aboriginal Australians at Brush Island near Bawley Point, noting in his journal: \"... and were so near the Shore as to distinguish several people upon the Sea beach they appear'd to be of a very dark or black Colour but whether this was the real colour of their skins or the C[l]othes they might have on I know not.\"",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Endeavour continued northwards along the coastline, keeping the land in sight with Cook charting and naming landmarks as he went. On 29 April, Cook and crew made their first landfall on the continent at a beach now known as Silver Beach on Botany Bay (Kamay Botany Bay National Park). Two Gweagal men of the Dharawal / Eora nation opposed their landing and in the confrontation one of them was shot and wounded.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Cook and his crew stayed at Botany Bay for a week, collecting water, timber, fodder and botanical specimens and exploring the surrounding area. Cook sought to establish relations with the Indigenous population without success. At first Cook named the inlet \"Sting-Ray Harbour\" after the many stingrays found there. This was later changed to \"Botanist Bay\" and finally Botany Bay after the unique specimens retrieved by the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander. This first landing site was later to be promoted (particularly by Joseph Banks) as a suitable candidate for situating a settlement and British colonial outpost.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "After his departure from Botany Bay, he continued northwards. He stopped at Bustard Bay (now known as Seventeen Seventy) on 23 May 1770. On 24 May, Cook and Banks and others went ashore. Continuing north, on 11 June a mishap occurred when Endeavour ran aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef, and then \"nursed into a river mouth on 18 June 1770\". The ship was badly damaged, and his voyage was delayed almost seven weeks while repairs were carried out on the beach (near the docks of modern Cooktown, Queensland, at the mouth of the Endeavour River). The crew's encounters with the local Aboriginal people were mostly peaceful, although following a dispute over green turtles Cook ordered shots to be fired and one local was lightly wounded.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The voyage then continued and at about midday on 22 August 1770, they reached the northernmost tip of the coast and, without leaving the ship, Cook named it York Cape (now Cape York). Leaving the east coast, Cook turned west and nursed his battered ship through the dangerously shallow waters of Torres Strait. Searching for a vantage point, Cook saw a steep hill on a nearby island from the top of which he hoped to see \"a passage into the Indian Seas\". Cook named the island Possession Island, where he claimed the entire coastline that he had just explored as British territory.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Cook returned to England via Batavia (modern Jakarta, Indonesia), where many in his crew succumbed to malaria, and then the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at the island of Saint Helena on 30 April 1771. The ship finally returned to England on 12 July 1771, anchoring in The Downs, with Cook going to Deal.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Cook's journals were published upon his return, and he became something of a hero among the scientific community. Among the general public, however, the aristocratic botanist Joseph Banks was a greater hero. Banks even attempted to take command of Cook's second voyage but removed himself from the voyage before it began, and Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg Forster were taken on as scientists for the voyage. Cook's son George was born five days before he left for his second voyage.",
"title": "First voyage (1768–1771)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Shortly after his return from the first voyage, Cook was promoted in August 1771 to the rank of commander. In 1772, he was commissioned to lead another scientific expedition on behalf of the Royal Society, to search for the hypothetical Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south. Although he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, showing it to be continental in size, the Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Despite this evidence to the contrary, Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that a massive southern continent should exist.",
"title": "Second voyage (1772–1775)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Cook commanded HMS Resolution on this voyage, while Tobias Furneaux commanded its companion ship, HMS Adventure. Cook's expedition circumnavigated the globe at an extreme southern latitude, becoming one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on 17 January 1773. In the Antarctic fog, Resolution and Adventure became separated. Furneaux made his way to New Zealand, where he lost some of his men during an encounter with Māori, and eventually sailed back to Britain, while Cook continued to explore the Antarctic, reaching 71°10'S on 31 January 1774.",
"title": "Second voyage (1772–1775)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Cook almost encountered the mainland of Antarctica but turned towards Tahiti to resupply his ship. He then resumed his southward course in a second fruitless attempt to find the supposed continent. On this leg of the voyage, he brought a young Tahitian named Omai, who proved to be somewhat less knowledgeable about the Pacific than Tupaia had been on the first voyage. On his return voyage to New Zealand in 1774, Cook landed at the Friendly Islands, Easter Island, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu.",
"title": "Second voyage (1772–1775)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Before returning to England, Cook made a final sweep across the South Atlantic from Cape Horn and surveyed, mapped, and took possession for Britain of South Georgia, which had been explored by the English merchant Anthony de la Roché in 1675. Cook also discovered and named Clerke Rocks and the South Sandwich Islands (\"Sandwich Land\"). He then turned north to South Africa and from there continued back to England. His reports upon his return home put to rest the popular myth of Terra Australis.",
"title": "Second voyage (1772–1775)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Cook's second voyage marked a successful employment of Larcum Kendall's K1 copy of John Harrison's H4 marine chronometer, which enabled Cook to calculate his longitudinal position with much greater accuracy. Cook's log was full of praise for this time-piece which he used to make charts of the southern Pacific Ocean that were so remarkably accurate that copies of them were still in use in the mid-20th century.",
"title": "Second voyage (1772–1775)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Upon his return, Cook was promoted to the rank of post-captain and given an honorary retirement from the Royal Navy, with a posting as an officer of the Greenwich Hospital. He reluctantly accepted, insisting that he be allowed to quit the post if an opportunity for active duty should arise. His fame extended beyond the Admiralty; he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded the Copley Gold Medal for completing his second voyage without losing a man to scurvy. Nathaniel Dance-Holland painted his portrait; he dined with James Boswell; he was described in the House of Lords as \"the first navigator in Europe\". But he could not be kept away from the sea. A third voyage was planned, and Cook volunteered to find the Northwest Passage. He travelled to the Pacific and hoped to travel east to the Atlantic, while a simultaneous voyage travelled the opposite route.",
"title": "Second voyage (1772–1775)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On his last voyage, Cook again commanded HMS Resolution, while Captain Charles Clerke commanded HMS Discovery. The voyage was ostensibly planned to return the Pacific Islander Omai to Tahiti, or so the public was led to believe. The trip's principal goal was to locate a Northwest Passage around the American continent. After dropping Omai at Tahiti, Cook travelled north and in 1778 became the first European to begin formal contact with the Hawaiian Islands. After his initial landfall in January 1778 at Waimea harbour, Kauai, Cook named the archipelago the \"Sandwich Islands\" after the fourth Earl of Sandwich—the acting First Lord of the Admiralty.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "From the Sandwich Islands, Cook sailed north and then northeast to explore the west coast of North America north of the Spanish settlements in Alta California. He sighted the Oregon coast at approximately 44°30′ north latitude, naming Cape Foulweather, after the bad weather which forced his ships south to about 43° north before they could begin their exploration of the coast northward. He unknowingly sailed past the Strait of Juan de Fuca and soon after entered Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. He anchored near the First Nations village of Yuquot. Cook's two ships remained in Nootka Sound from 29 March to 26 April 1778, in what Cook called Ship Cove, now Resolution Cove, at the south end of Bligh Island. Relations between Cook's crew and the people of Yuquot were cordial but sometimes strained. In trading, the people of Yuquot demanded much more valuable items than the usual trinkets that had been acceptable in Hawaii. Metal objects were much desired, but the lead, pewter, and tin traded at first soon fell into disrepute. The most valuable items which the British received in trade were sea otter pelts. During the stay, the Yuquot \"hosts\" essentially controlled the trade with the British vessels; the natives usually visited the British vessels at Resolution Cove instead of the British visiting the village of Yuquot at Friendly Cove.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "After leaving Nootka Sound in search of the Northwest Passage, Cook explored and mapped the coast all the way to the Bering Strait, on the way identifying what came to be known as Cook Inlet in Alaska. In a single visit, Cook charted the majority of the North American northwest coastline on world maps for the first time, determined the extent of Alaska, and closed the gaps in Russian (from the west) and Spanish (from the south) exploratory probes of the northern limits of the Pacific.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "By the second week of August 1778, Cook was through the Bering Strait, sailing into the Chukchi Sea. He headed northeast up the coast of Alaska until he was blocked by sea ice at a latitude of 70°44′ north. Cook then sailed west to the Siberian coast, and then southeast down the Siberian coast back to the Bering Strait. By early September 1778 he was back in the Bering Sea to begin the trip to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. He became increasingly frustrated on this voyage and perhaps began to suffer from a stomach ailment; it has been speculated that this led to irrational behaviour towards his crew, such as forcing them to eat walrus meat, which they had pronounced inedible.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Cook returned to Hawaii in 1779. After sailing around the archipelago for some eight weeks, he made landfall at Kealakekua Bay on Hawai'i Island, largest island in the Hawaiian Archipelago. Cook's arrival coincided with the Makahiki, a Hawaiian harvest festival of worship for the Polynesian god Lono. Coincidentally the form of Cook's ship, HMS Resolution, or more particularly the mast formation, sails and rigging, resembled certain significant artefacts that formed part of the season of worship. Similarly, Cook's clockwise route around the island of Hawaii before making landfall resembled the processions that took place in a clockwise direction around the island during the Lono festivals. It has been argued (most extensively by Marshall Sahlins) that such coincidences were the reasons for Cook's (and to a limited extent, his crew's) initial deification by some Hawaiians who treated Cook as an incarnation of Lono. Though this view was first suggested by members of Cook's expedition, the idea that any Hawaiians understood Cook to be Lono, and the evidence presented in support of it, were challenged in 1992.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "After a month's stay, Cook attempted to resume his exploration of the northern Pacific. Shortly after leaving Hawaii Island, however, Resolution's foremast broke, so the ships returned to Kealakekua Bay for repairs.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Tensions rose, and quarrels broke out between the Europeans and Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay, including the theft of wood from a burial ground under Cook's orders. On 13 February 1779, an unknown group of Hawaiians stole one of Cook's longboats. By then the Hawaiian people had become \"insolent\", even with threats to fire upon them. Cook responded to the theft by attempting to kidnap and ransom the King of Hawaiʻi, Kalaniʻōpuʻu.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The following day, 14 February 1779, Cook marched through the village to retrieve the king. Cook took the king (aliʻi nui) by his own hand and led him away. One of Kalaniʻōpuʻu's favourite wives, Kanekapolei, and two chiefs approached the group as they were heading to the boats. They pleaded with the king not to go. An old kahuna (priest), chanting rapidly while holding out a coconut, attempted to distract Cook and his men as a large crowd began to form at the shore. At this point, the king began to understand that Cook was his enemy. As Cook turned his back to help launch the boats, he was struck on the head by the villagers and then stabbed to death as he fell on his face in the surf. He was first struck on the head with a club by a chief named Kalaimanokahoʻowaha or Kanaʻina (namesake of Charles Kana'ina) and then stabbed by one of the king's attendants, Nuaa. The Hawaiians carried his body away towards the back of the town, still visible to the ship through their spyglass. Four marines, Corporal James Thomas, Private Theophilus Hinks, Private Thomas Fatchett and Private John Allen, were also killed and two others were wounded in the confrontation.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The esteem which the islanders nevertheless held for Cook caused them to retain his body. Following their practice of the time, they prepared his body with funerary rituals usually reserved for the chiefs and highest elders of the society. The body was disembowelled and baked to facilitate removal of the flesh, and the bones were carefully cleaned for preservation as religious icons in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of the treatment of European saints in the Middle Ages. Some of Cook's remains, thus preserved, were eventually returned to his crew for a formal burial at sea.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Clerke assumed leadership of the expedition and made a final attempt to pass through the Bering Strait. He died of tuberculosis on 22 August 1779 and John Gore, a veteran of Cook's first voyage, took command of Resolution and of the expedition. James King replaced Gore in command of Discovery. The expedition returned home, reaching England in October 1780. After their arrival in England, King completed Cook's account of the voyage.",
"title": "Third voyage (1776–1779)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Australian Museum acquired its \"Cook Collection\" in 1894 from the Government of New South Wales. At that time the collection consisted of 115 artefacts collected on Cook's three voyages throughout the Pacific Ocean, during the period 1768–1780, along with documents and memorabilia related to these voyages. Many of the ethnographic artefacts were collected at a time of first contact between Pacific Peoples and Europeans. In 1935 most of the documents and memorabilia were transferred to the Mitchell Library in the State Library of New South Wales. The provenance of the collection shows that the objects remained in the hands of Cook's widow Elizabeth Cook, and her descendants, until 1886. In this year John Mackrell, the great-nephew of Isaac Smith, Elizabeth Cook's cousin, organised the display of this collection at the request of the NSW Government at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. In 1887 the London-based Agent-General for the New South Wales Government, Saul Samuel, bought John Mackrell's items and also acquired items belonging to the other relatives Reverend Canon Frederick Bennett, Mrs Thomas Langton, H.M.C. Alexander, and William Adams. The collection remained with the Colonial Secretary of NSW until 1894, when it was transferred to the Australian Museum.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Cook's 12 years sailing around the Pacific Ocean contributed much to Europeans' knowledge of the area. Several islands, such as the Hawaiian group, were encountered for the first time by Europeans, and his more accurate navigational charting of large areas of the Pacific was a major achievement. To create accurate maps, latitude and longitude must be accurately determined. Navigators had been able to work out latitude accurately for centuries by measuring the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon with an instrument such as a backstaff or quadrant. Longitude was more difficult to measure accurately because it requires precise knowledge of the time difference between points on the surface of the Earth. The Earth turns a full 360 degrees relative to the Sun each day. Thus longitude corresponds to time: 15 degrees every hour, or 1 degree every 4 minutes. Cook gathered accurate longitude measurements during his first voyage from his navigational skills, with the help of astronomer Charles Green, and by using the newly published Nautical Almanac tables, via the lunar distance method – measuring the angular distance from the Moon to either the Sun during daytime or one of eight bright stars during night-time to determine the time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and comparing that to his local time determined via the altitude of the Sun, Moon, or stars.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "On his second voyage, Cook used the K1 chronometer made by Larcum Kendall, which was the shape of a large pocket watch, 5 inches (13 cm) in diameter. It was a copy of the H4 clock made by John Harrison, which proved to be the first to keep accurate time at sea when used on the ship Deptford's journey to Jamaica in 1761–62. He succeeded in circumnavigating the world on his first voyage without losing a single man to scurvy, an unusual accomplishment at the time. He tested several preventive measures, most importantly the frequent replenishment of fresh food. For presenting a paper on this aspect of the voyage to the Royal Society he was presented with the Copley Medal in 1776. Cook became the first European to have extensive contact with various people of the Pacific. He correctly postulated a link among all the Pacific peoples, despite their being separated by great ocean stretches (see Malayo-Polynesian languages). Cook theorised that Polynesians originated from Asia, which scientist Bryan Sykes later verified. In New Zealand the coming of Cook is often used to signify the onset of the colonisation which officially started more than 70 years after his crew became the second group of Europeans to visit that archipelago.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Cook carried several scientists on his voyages; they made significant observations and discoveries. Two botanists, Joseph Banks and the Swede Daniel Solander, sailed on the first voyage. The two collected over 3,000 plant species. Banks subsequently strongly promoted British settlement of Australia, leading to the establishment of New South Wales as a penal settlement in 1788. Artists also sailed on Cook's first voyage. Sydney Parkinson was heavily involved in documenting the botanists' findings, completing 264 drawings before his death near the end of the voyage. They were of immense scientific value to British botanists. Cook's second expedition included William Hodges, who produced notable landscape paintings of Tahiti, Easter Island, and other locations. Several officers who served under Cook went on to distinctive accomplishments. William Bligh, Cook's sailing master, was given command of HMS Bounty in 1787 to sail to Tahiti and return with breadfruit. Bligh became known for the mutiny of his crew, which resulted in his being set adrift in 1789. He later became Governor of New South Wales, where he was the subject of another mutiny—the 1808 Rum Rebellion. George Vancouver, one of Cook's midshipmen, led a voyage of exploration to the Pacific Coast of North America from 1791 to 1794. In honour of Vancouver's former commander, his ship was named Discovery. George Dixon, who sailed under Cook on his third expedition, later commanded his own. Henry Roberts, a lieutenant under Cook, spent many years after that voyage preparing the detailed charts that went into Cook's posthumous atlas, published around 1784.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Cook's contributions to knowledge gained international recognition during his lifetime. In 1779, while the American colonies were fighting Britain for their independence, Benjamin Franklin wrote to captains of colonial warships at sea, recommending that if they came into contact with Cook's vessel, they were to \"not consider her an enemy, nor suffer any plunder to be made of the effects contained in her, nor obstruct her immediate return to England by detaining her or sending her into any other part of Europe or to America; but that you treat the said Captain Cook and his people with all civility and kindness ... as common friends to mankind.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "A U.S. coin, the 1928 Hawaii Sesquicentennial half-dollar, carries Cook's image. Minted for the 150th anniversary of his discovery of the islands, its low mintage (10,008) has made this example of an early United States commemorative coin both scarce and expensive. The site where he was killed in Hawaii was marked in 1874 by a white obelisk. This land, although in Hawaii, was deeded to the United Kingdom by Princess Likelike and her husband, Archibald Scott Cleghorn, to the British Consul to Hawaii, James Hay Wodehouse, in 1877. A nearby town is named Captain Cook, Hawaii; several Hawaiian businesses also carry his name. The Apollo 15 Command/Service Module Endeavour was named after Cook's ship, HMS Endeavour, as was the Space Shuttle Endeavour. In addition, the first Crew Dragon capsule flown by SpaceX was named for Endeavour. Another shuttle, Discovery, was named after Cook's HMS Discovery.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Cooks' Cottage, his parents' last home, which he is likely to have visited, is now in Melbourne, Australia, having been moved from England at the behest of the Australian philanthropist Sir Russell Grimwade in 1934. The first institution of higher education in North Queensland, Australia, was named after him, with James Cook University opening in Townsville in 1970. Numerous institutions, landmarks and place names reflect the importance of Cook's contributions, including the Cook Islands, Cook Strait, Cook Inlet and the Cook crater on the Moon. Aoraki / Mount Cook, the highest summit in New Zealand, is named for him. Another Mount Cook is on the border between the U.S. state of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon territory, and is designated Boundary Peak 182 as one of the official Boundary Peaks of the Hay–Herbert Treaty. A larger-than-life statue of Cook upon a column stands in Hyde Park located in the centre of Sydney. A large aquatic monument was in 2018 planned for Cook's landing place at Botany Bay, Sydney.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "One of the earliest monuments to Cook in the United Kingdom is located at The Vache, erected in 1780 by Admiral Hugh Palliser, a contemporary of Cook and one-time owner of the estate. A large obelisk was built in 1827 as a monument to Cook on Easby Moor overlooking his boyhood village of Great Ayton, along with a smaller monument at the former location of Cook's cottage. There is also a monument to Cook in the church of St Andrew the Great, St Andrew's Street, Cambridge, where his sons Hugh, a student at Christ's College, and James were buried. Cook's widow Elizabeth was also buried in the church and in her will left money for the memorial's upkeep. The 250th anniversary of Cook's birth was marked at the site of his birthplace in Marton by the opening of the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, located within Stewart Park (1978). A granite vase just to the south of the museum marks the approximate spot where he was born. Tributes also abound in post-industrial Middlesbrough, including a primary school, shopping square and the Bottle 'O Notes, a public artwork by Claes Oldenburg, that was erected in the town's Central Gardens in 1993. Also named after Cook is James Cook University Hospital, a major teaching hospital which opened in 2003 with a railway station serving it called James Cook opening in 2014. The Royal Research Ship RRS James Cook was built in 2006 to replace the RRS Charles Darwin in the UK's Royal Research Fleet, and Stepney Historical Trust placed a plaque on Free Trade Wharf in the Highway, Shadwell to commemorate his life in the East End of London. A statue erected in his honour can be viewed near Admiralty Arch on the south side of The Mall in London. In 2002, Cook was placed at number 12 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In 1959, the Cooktown Re-enactment Association first performed a re-enactment of Cook's 1770 landing at the site of modern Cooktown, Australia, and have continued the tradition each year, with the support and participation of many of the local Guugu Yimithirr people. They celebrate the first act of reconciliation between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous people, when a Guugu Yimithirr elder stepped in after some of Cook's men had violated custom by taking green turtles from the river and not sharing with the local people. He presented Cook with a broken-tipped spear as a peace offering, thus preventing possible bloodshed. Cook recorded the incident in his journal.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Cook was a subject in many literary creations.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Letitia Elizabeth Landon, a popular poet known for her sentimental romantic poetry, published a poetical illustration to a portrait of Captain Cook in 1837.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 1931, Kenneth Slessor's poem \"Five Visions of Captain Cook\" was the \"most dramatic break-through\" in Australian poetry of the 20th century according to poet Douglas Stewart.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The Australian slang phrase \"Have a Captain Cook\" means to have a look or conduct a brief inspection.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Cook appears as a symbolic and generic figure in several Aboriginal myths, often from regions where Cook did not encounter Aboriginal people. Maddock states that Cook is usually portrayed as the bringer of Western colonialism to Australia and is presented as a villain who brings immense social change.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The period 2018 to 2021 marked the 250th anniversary of Cook's first voyage of exploration. Several countries, including Australia and New Zealand, arranged official events to commemorate the voyage, leading to widespread public debate about Cook's legacy and the violence associated with his contacts with Indigenous peoples. In the lead-up to the commemorations, various memorials to Cook in Australia and New Zealand were vandalised, and there were public calls for their removal or modification due to their alleged promotion of colonialist narratives. On 1 July 2021, a statue of James Cook in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, was torn down following an earlier peaceful protest about the deaths of Indigenous residential school children in Canada. There were also campaigns for the return of Indigenous artefacts taken during Cook's voyages (see Gweagal shield).",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Alice Proctor argues that the controversies over public representations of Cook and the display of Indigenous artefacts from his voyages are part of a broader debate over the decolonisation of museums and public spaces and resistance to colonialist narratives. While a number of commentators argue that Cook was an enabler of British colonialism in the Pacific, Geoffrey Blainey, among others, notes that it was Banks who promoted Botany Bay as a site for colonisation after Cook's death. Robert Tombs defended Cook, arguing \"He epitomized the Age of Enlightenment in which he lived,\" and in conducting his first voyage \"was carrying out an enlightened mission, with instructions from the Royal Society to show ‘patience and forbearance’ towards native peoples\".",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Captain James Cook was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. In these voyages, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. He surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions. In 1779, during Cook's third exploratory voyage in the Pacific, tensions escalated between his men and the natives of Hawaii, and an attempt to kidnap chief Kalaniʻōpuʻu led to the death of Cook. There is controversy over Cook's role as an enabler of British colonialism and the violence associated with some of his contacts with indigenous peoples. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him. | 2001-03-28T18:04:51Z | 2023-12-31T19:57:09Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook |
15,632 | John Baskerville | John Baskerville (baptised 28 January 1707 – 8 January 1775) was an English businessman, in areas including japanning and papier-mâché, but he is best remembered as a printer and type designer. He was also responsible for inventing "wove paper", which was considerably smoother than "laid paper", allowing for sharper printing results.
Baskerville was born in the village of Wolverley, near Kidderminster in Worcestershire and baptised on 28 January 1706 OS (1707 NS) at Wolverley church. Baskerville established an early career teaching handwriting and is known to have offered his services cutting gravestones (a demonstration slab by him survives in the Library of Birmingham) before making a considerable fortune from the manufacture of lacquerwork items (japanning).
He practised as a printer in Birmingham, England. Baskerville was a member of the Royal Society of Arts, and an associate of some of the members of the Lunar Society.
Baskerville directed his punchcutter, John Handy, in the design of many typefaces of broadly similar appearance. His typefaces were greatly admired by Benjamin Franklin, a fellow printer, but were criticised by jealous competitors and soon fell out of favour. He also pioneered a completely new style of typography, adding wide margins and leading between each line.
In 1757, Baskerville published a remarkable quarto edition of Virgil on wove paper, using his own type. It took three years to complete, but it made such an impact that he was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge the following year. An atheist, he nonetheless printed The Book of Common Prayer in 1762 and a splendid folio Bible in 1763.
Baskerville innovated in printing, paper, and ink production. He worked with paper maker James Whatman to produce a smoother whiter paper, sometimes called "wove paper", which showcased his strong black type.
Baskerville died in January 1775 at his home, Easy Hill. He requested that his body be placed
in a Conical Building in my own premises Hearetofore used as a mill which I have lately Raised Higher and painted and in a vault which I have prepared for It. This Doubtless to many may appear a Whim perhaps It is so—But it is a whim for many years Resolve'd upon, as I have a Hearty Contempt for all Superstition the Farce of a Consecrated Ground the Irish Barbarism of Sure and Certain Hopes &c I also consider Revelation as it is call'd Exclusive of the Scraps of Morality casually Intermixt with It to be the most Impudent Abuse of Common Sense which Ever was Invented to Befool Mankind.
However, in 1821 a canal was built through the land and his body was placed on show by the landowner until Baskerville's family and friends arranged to have it moved to the crypt of Christ Church, Birmingham. Christ Church was demolished in 1897 so his remains were then moved, with other bodies from the crypt, to consecrated catacombs at Warstone Lane Cemetery. In 1963 a petition was presented to Birmingham City Council requesting that he be reburied in unconsecrated ground, according to his wishes.
The 20th century renewed interest in and appreciation for Baskerville's typefaces. His most notable typeface, Baskerville, is held to represent the peak of transitional type face and a bridge between Old Style and Modern type design. Since the 1920s, many fonts based on his work—mostly called 'Baskerville'— have been released by Linotype, Monotype, and other type foundries. In 1996, Emigre released a popular revival of this typeface called Mrs Eaves after Baskerville's wife, Sarah Eaves.
In the 1930s, Baskerville House was built on the grounds of Easy Hill.
In 1947, BBC radio broadcast a radio play about his burial, named Hic Jacet: or The Corpse in the Crescent by Neville Brandon Watts. The original recording was not preserved but a performance was staged by students at the Birmingham School of Acting in 2013 at the Typographic Hub Centre of Birmingham City University. A copy of the script is in the Norman Painting Archives at the University of Birmingham.
A Portland stone sculpture of the Baskerville typeface, Industry and Genius, in his honour stands in front of Baskerville House in Centenary Square, Birmingham. It was created by local artist David Patten in 1990.
Some examples of volumes published by Baskerville. | [
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"text": "Baskerville was born in the village of Wolverley, near Kidderminster in Worcestershire and baptised on 28 January 1706 OS (1707 NS) at Wolverley church. Baskerville established an early career teaching handwriting and is known to have offered his services cutting gravestones (a demonstration slab by him survives in the Library of Birmingham) before making a considerable fortune from the manufacture of lacquerwork items (japanning).",
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"text": "He practised as a printer in Birmingham, England. Baskerville was a member of the Royal Society of Arts, and an associate of some of the members of the Lunar Society.",
"title": "Life"
},
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"text": "Baskerville directed his punchcutter, John Handy, in the design of many typefaces of broadly similar appearance. His typefaces were greatly admired by Benjamin Franklin, a fellow printer, but were criticised by jealous competitors and soon fell out of favour. He also pioneered a completely new style of typography, adding wide margins and leading between each line.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1757, Baskerville published a remarkable quarto edition of Virgil on wove paper, using his own type. It took three years to complete, but it made such an impact that he was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge the following year. An atheist, he nonetheless printed The Book of Common Prayer in 1762 and a splendid folio Bible in 1763.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Baskerville innovated in printing, paper, and ink production. He worked with paper maker James Whatman to produce a smoother whiter paper, sometimes called \"wove paper\", which showcased his strong black type.",
"title": "Life"
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{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Baskerville died in January 1775 at his home, Easy Hill. He requested that his body be placed",
"title": "Death and interments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "in a Conical Building in my own premises Hearetofore used as a mill which I have lately Raised Higher and painted and in a vault which I have prepared for It. This Doubtless to many may appear a Whim perhaps It is so—But it is a whim for many years Resolve'd upon, as I have a Hearty Contempt for all Superstition the Farce of a Consecrated Ground the Irish Barbarism of Sure and Certain Hopes &c I also consider Revelation as it is call'd Exclusive of the Scraps of Morality casually Intermixt with It to be the most Impudent Abuse of Common Sense which Ever was Invented to Befool Mankind.",
"title": "Death and interments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "However, in 1821 a canal was built through the land and his body was placed on show by the landowner until Baskerville's family and friends arranged to have it moved to the crypt of Christ Church, Birmingham. Christ Church was demolished in 1897 so his remains were then moved, with other bodies from the crypt, to consecrated catacombs at Warstone Lane Cemetery. In 1963 a petition was presented to Birmingham City Council requesting that he be reburied in unconsecrated ground, according to his wishes.",
"title": "Death and interments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The 20th century renewed interest in and appreciation for Baskerville's typefaces. His most notable typeface, Baskerville, is held to represent the peak of transitional type face and a bridge between Old Style and Modern type design. Since the 1920s, many fonts based on his work—mostly called 'Baskerville'— have been released by Linotype, Monotype, and other type foundries. In 1996, Emigre released a popular revival of this typeface called Mrs Eaves after Baskerville's wife, Sarah Eaves.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the 1930s, Baskerville House was built on the grounds of Easy Hill.",
"title": "Commemoration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1947, BBC radio broadcast a radio play about his burial, named Hic Jacet: or The Corpse in the Crescent by Neville Brandon Watts. The original recording was not preserved but a performance was staged by students at the Birmingham School of Acting in 2013 at the Typographic Hub Centre of Birmingham City University. A copy of the script is in the Norman Painting Archives at the University of Birmingham.",
"title": "Commemoration"
},
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"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A Portland stone sculpture of the Baskerville typeface, Industry and Genius, in his honour stands in front of Baskerville House in Centenary Square, Birmingham. It was created by local artist David Patten in 1990.",
"title": "Commemoration"
},
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"text": "Some examples of volumes published by Baskerville.",
"title": "Gallery"
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| John Baskerville was an English businessman, in areas including japanning and papier-mâché, but he is best remembered as a printer and type designer. He was also responsible for inventing "wove paper", which was considerably smoother than "laid paper", allowing for sharper printing results. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-21T00:58:26Z | [
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15,640 | John Young | John Young most commonly refers to:
John Young may also refer to: | [
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| John Young most commonly refers to: John Young (astronaut) (1930–2018), American astronaut
John Young, 1st Baron Lisgar (1807–1876), British diplomat and politician John Young may also refer to: | 2001-04-02T09:38:11Z | 2023-11-07T08:31:21Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Young |
15,641 | Joseph Stalin | Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism.
Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution and created a one-party state under the new Communist Party in 1917, Stalin joined its governing Politburo. Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924. Under Stalin, socialism in one country became a central tenet of the party's ideology. As a result of his Five-Year Plans, the country underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a centralised command economy. Severe disruptions to food production contributed to the famine of 1930–33, including the Asharshylyk in Kazakhstan and the Holodomor in Ukraine. To eradicate accused "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the Great Purge, in which over a million were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. By 1937, he had absolute control over the party and government.
Stalin promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, his regime signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial catastrophes, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. Amid the war, the Soviets annexed the Baltic states and Bessarabia and North Bukovina, subsequently establishing Soviet-aligned governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe and in parts of East Asia. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as global superpowers and entered a period of tension, the Cold War. Stalin presided over the Soviet post-war reconstruction and its development of an atomic bomb in 1949. During these years, the country experienced another major famine and an antisemitic campaign that culminated in the doctors' plot. After Stalin's death in 1953, he was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who subsequently denounced his rule and initiated the de-Stalinisation of Soviet society.
Widely considered to be one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of the working class and socialism. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a leading world power. Conversely, his totalitarian regime has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repression, ethnic cleansing, wide-scale deportation, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions.
Stalin was born in Georgia in the town of Gori, then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire and home to a mix of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Russians, and Jews. He was born on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 and baptised on 29 December. His birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, and he was nicknamed "Soso", a diminutive of "Ioseb". His parents were Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze. He was their only child to survive past infancy.
Besarion was a cobbler who was employed in a workshop owned by another man; it was initially a financial success but later fell into decline, and the family found itself living in poverty. Besarion became an alcoholic and drunkenly beat his wife and son. Ekaterine and Stalin left the home by 1883 and began a wandering life, moving through nine different rented rooms over the next decade. In 1886, they moved into the house of a family friend, Father Christopher Charkviani. Ekaterine worked as a house cleaner and launderer and was determined to send her son to school. In September 1888, Stalin enrolled at the Orthodox Gori Church School, a place secured by Charkviani. Although he got into many fights, Stalin excelled academically, displaying talent in painting and drama classes, writing his own poetry, and singing as a choirboy. Stalin faced several severe health problems: An 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars; and at age 12 he was seriously injured when he was hit by a phaeton, probably the cause of a lifelong disability in his left arm.
In August 1894, Stalin enrolled in the Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis, enabled by a scholarship that allowed him to study at a reduced rate. He joined 600 trainee priests who boarded there, and he achieved high grades. He continued writing poetry; five of his poems, on themes such as nature, land and patriotism, were published under the pseudonym of "Soselo" in Ilia Chavchavadze's newspaper Iveria (Georgia). According to Stalin's biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore, they became "minor Georgian classics" and were included in various anthologies of Georgian poetry over the coming years. As he grew older, Stalin lost interest in priestly studies, his grades dropped, and he was repeatedly confined to a cell for his rebellious behaviour. The seminary's journal noted that he declared himself an atheist, stalked out of prayers and refused to doff his hat to monks.
Stalin joined a forbidden book club at the school; he was particularly influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is To Be Done? Another influential text was Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Stalin adopting the nickname "Koba" from that of the book's bandit protagonist. The pseudonym may also have been a tribute to his wealthy benefactor, Yakobi "Koba" Egnatashvili, who paid for his schooling at the Tiflis seminary. ("Koba" is the Georgian diminutive of Yakobi, or Jacob, and Stalin later named his first-born son in Egnatashvili's honour.) He also read Das Kapital, the 1867 book by German sociological theorist Karl Marx. Stalin devoted himself to Marx's socio-political theory, Marxism, which was then on the rise in Georgia, one of various forms of socialism opposed to the Tsarist empire's authorities. At night, he attended secret workers' meetings and was introduced to Silibistro "Silva" Jibladze, the Marxist founder of Mesame Dasi ("Third Group"), a Georgian socialist group. Stalin left the seminary in April 1899 and never returned.
In October 1899, Stalin began work as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory. He had a light workload and therefore had plenty of time for revolutionary activity. He attracted a group of supporters through his classes in socialist theory and co-organised a secret workers' mass meeting for May Day 1900, at which he successfully encouraged many of the men to take strike action. By this point, the empire's secret police, the Okhrana, were aware of Stalin's activities in Tiflis' revolutionary milieu. They attempted to arrest him in March 1901, but he escaped and went into hiding, living off the donations of friends and sympathisers. Remaining underground, he helped plan a demonstration for May Day 1901, in which 3,000 marchers clashed with the authorities. He continued to evade arrest by using aliases and sleeping in different apartments. In November 1901, he was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Marxist party founded in 1898.
That month, Stalin travelled to the port city of Batumi. His militant rhetoric proved divisive among the city's Marxists, some of whom suspected that he might be an agent provocateur working for the government. He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes. After several strike leaders were arrested, he co-organised a mass public demonstration which led to the storming of the prison; troops fired upon the demonstrators, 13 of whom were killed. Stalin organised another mass demonstration on the day of their funeral, before being arrested in April 1902. Held first in Batumi Prison and then Kutaisi Prison, in mid-1903 he was sentenced to three years of exile in eastern Siberia.
Stalin left Batumi in October, arriving at the small Siberian town of Novaya Uda in late November 1903. There, he lived in a two-room peasant's house, sleeping in the building's larder. He made two escape attempts: On the first, he made it to Balagansk before returning due to frostbite. His second attempt, in January 1904, was successful and he made it to Tiflis. There, he co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola ("Proletarian Struggle"), with Filipp Makharadze. He called for the Georgian Marxist movement to split from its Russian counterpart, resulting in several RSDLP members accusing him of holding views contrary to the ethos of Marxist internationalism and calling for his expulsion from the party; he soon recanted his opinions. During his exile, the RSDLP had split between Vladimir Lenin's "Bolsheviks" and Julius Martov's "Mensheviks". Stalin detested many of the Mensheviks in Georgia and aligned himself with the Bolsheviks. Although he established a Bolshevik stronghold in the mining town of Chiatura, Bolshevism remained a minority force in the Menshevik-dominated Georgian revolutionary scene.
In January 1905, government troops massacred protesters in Saint Petersburg. Unrest soon spread across the Russian Empire in what came to be known as the Revolution of 1905. Georgia was particularly affected. Stalin was in Baku in February when ethnic violence broke out between Armenians and Azeris; at least 2,000 were killed. He publicly lambasted the "pogroms against Jews and Armenians" as being part of Tsar Nicholas II's attempts to "buttress his despicable throne". Stalin formed a Bolshevik Battle Squad which he used to try to keep Baku's warring ethnic factions apart; he also used the unrest as a cover for stealing printing equipment. Amid the growing violence throughout Georgia he formed further Battle Squads, with the Mensheviks doing the same. Stalin's squads disarmed local police and troops, raided government arsenals, and raised funds through protection rackets on large local businesses and mines. They launched attacks on the government's Cossack troops and pro-Tsarist Black Hundreds, co-ordinating some of their operations with the Menshevik militia.
In November 1905, the Georgian Bolsheviks elected Stalin as one of their delegates to a Bolshevik conference in Saint Petersburg. On arrival, he met Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, who informed him that the venue had been moved to Tampere in the Grand Duchy of Finland. At the conference Stalin met Lenin for the first time. Although Stalin held Lenin in deep respect, he was vocal in his disagreement with Lenin's view that the Bolsheviks should field candidates for the forthcoming election to the State Duma; Stalin saw the parliamentary process as a waste of time. In April 1906, Stalin attended the RSDLP Fourth Congress in Stockholm; this was his first trip outside the Russian Empire. At the conference, the RSDLP — then led by its Menshevik majority — agreed that it would not raise funds using armed robbery. Lenin and Stalin disagreed with this decision and later privately discussed how they could continue the robberies for the Bolshevik cause.
Stalin married Kato Svanidze in an Orthodox church ceremony at Senaki in July 1906. In March 1907 she bore a son, Yakov. By that year — according to the historian Robert Service — Stalin had established himself as "Georgia's leading Bolshevik". He attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress, held at the Brotherhood Church in London in May–June 1907. After returning to Tiflis, Stalin organised the robbing of a large delivery of money to the Imperial Bank in June 1907. His gang ambushed the armed convoy in Erivansky Square with gunfire and home-made bombs. Around 40 people were killed, but all of his gang escaped alive. After the heist, Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son. There, Mensheviks confronted Stalin about the robbery and voted to expel him from the RSDLP, but he took no notice of them.
In Baku, Stalin secured Bolshevik domination of the local RSDLP branch and edited two Bolshevik newspapers, Bakinsky Proletary and Gudok ("Whistle"). In August 1907, he attended the Seventh Congress of the Second International — an international socialist organisation — in Stuttgart, German Empire. In November 1907, his wife died of typhus, and he left his son with her family in Tiflis. In Baku he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit, which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. They also kidnapped the children of several wealthy figures to extract ransom money. In early 1908, he travelled to the Swiss city of Geneva to meet with Lenin and the prominent Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, although the latter exasperated him.
In March 1908, Stalin was arrested and interned in Bailov Prison in Baku. There he led the imprisoned Bolsheviks, organised discussion groups, and ordered the killing of suspected informants. He was eventually sentenced to two years exile in the village of Solvychegodsk, Vologda Province, arriving there in February 1909. In June, he escaped the village and made it to Kotlas disguised as a woman and from there to Saint Petersburg. In March 1910, he was arrested again and sent back to Solvychegodsk. There he had affairs with at least two women; his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, later gave birth to his second son, Konstantin. In June 1911, Stalin was given permission to move to Vologda, where he stayed for two months, having a relationship with Pelageya Onufrieva. He escaped to Saint Petersburg, where he was arrested in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three-year exile in Vologda.
In January 1912, while Stalin was in exile, the first Bolshevik Central Committee was elected at the Prague Conference. Shortly after the conference, Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev decided to co-opt Stalin to the committee. Still in Vologda, Stalin agreed, remaining a Central Committee member for the rest of his life. Lenin believed that Stalin, as a Georgian, would help secure support for the Bolsheviks from the empire's minority ethnicities. In February 1912, Stalin again escaped to Saint Petersburg, tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, Zvezda ("Star") into a daily, Pravda ("Truth"). The new newspaper was launched in April 1912, although Stalin's role as editor was kept secret.
In May 1912, he was arrested again and imprisoned in the Shpalerhy Prison, before being sentenced to three years exile in Siberia. In July, he arrived at the Siberian village of Narym, where he shared a room with a fellow Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov. After two months, Stalin and Sverdlov escaped back to Saint Petersburg. During a brief period back in Tiflis, Stalin and the Outfit planned the ambush of a mail coach, during which most of the group — although not Stalin — were apprehended by the authorities. Stalin returned to Saint Petersburg, where he continued editing and writing articles for Pravda.
After the October 1912 Duma elections, where six Bolsheviks and six Mensheviks were elected, Stalin wrote articles calling for reconciliation between the two Marxist factions, for which Lenin criticised him. In late 1912, Stalin twice crossed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire to visit Lenin in Cracow, eventually bowing to Lenin's opposition to reunification with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Stalin travelled to Vienna, where he researched the "national question" of how the Bolsheviks should deal with the Russian Empire's national and ethnic minorities. Lenin, who encouraged Stalin to write an article on the subject, wanted to attract those groups to the Bolshevik cause by offering them the right of secession from the Russian state, but also hoped they would remain part of a future Bolshevik-governed Russia.
Stalin's article Marxism and the National Question was first published in the March, April, and May 1913 issues of the Bolshevik journal Prosveshcheniye; Lenin was pleased with it. According to Montefiore, this was "Stalin's most famous work". The article was published under the pseudonym "K. Stalin", a name he had used since 1912. Derived from the Russian word for steel (stal), this has been translated as "Man of Steel"; Stalin may have intended it to imitate Lenin's pseudonym. Stalin retained the name for the rest of his life, possibly because it was used on the article that established his reputation among the Bolsheviks.
In February 1913, Stalin was arrested while back in Saint Petersburg. He was sentenced to four years exile in Turukhansk, a remote part of Siberia from which escape was particularly difficult. In August, he arrived in the village of Monastyrskoe, although after four weeks was relocated to the hamlet of Kostino. In March 1914, concerned over a potential escape attempt, the authorities moved Stalin to the hamlet of Kureika on the edge of the Arctic Circle. In the hamlet, Stalin had a relationship with Lidia Pereprygina, who was fourteen at the time but within the legal age of consent in Tsarist Russia. In or about December 1914, their child was born but the infant soon died. Their second child, Alexander, was born circa April 1917.
In Kureika, Stalin lived among the indigenous Tunguses and Ostyak peoples, and spent much of his time fishing.
While Stalin was in exile, Russia entered the First World War, and in October 1916 Stalin and other exiled Bolsheviks were conscripted into the Russian Army, leaving for Monastyrskoe. They arrived in Krasnoyarsk in February 1917, where a medical examiner ruled Stalin unfit for military service because of his crippled arm. Stalin was required to serve four more months of his exile, and he successfully requested that he serve it in nearby Achinsk. Stalin was in the city when the February Revolution took place; uprisings broke out in Petrograd — as Saint Petersburg had been renamed — and Tsar Nicholas II abdicated to escape being violently overthrown. The Russian Empire became a de facto republic, headed by a Provisional Government dominated by liberals. In a celebratory mood, Stalin travelled by train to Petrograd in March. There, Stalin and a fellow Bolshevik Lev Kamenev assumed control of Pravda, and Stalin was appointed the Bolshevik representative to the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, an influential council of the city's workers. In April, Stalin came third in the Bolshevik elections for the party's Central Committee; Lenin came first and Zinoviev came second. This reflected his senior standing in the party at the time.
The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants.The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.
— Stalin's editorial in Pravda, October 1917
Stalin helped organise the July Days uprising, an armed display of strength by Bolshevik supporters. After the demonstration was suppressed, the Provisional Government initiated a crackdown on the Bolsheviks, raiding Pravda. During this raid, Stalin smuggled Lenin out of the newspaper's office and took charge of the Bolshevik leader's safety, moving him between Petrograd safe houses before smuggling him to Razliv. In Lenin's absence, Stalin continued editing Pravda and served as acting leader of the Bolsheviks, overseeing the party's Sixth Congress, which was held covertly. Lenin began calling for the Bolsheviks to seize power by toppling the Provisional Government in a coup d'état. Stalin and a fellow senior Bolshevik Leon Trotsky both endorsed Lenin's plan of action, but it was initially opposed by Kamenev and other party members. Lenin returned to Petrograd and secured a majority in favour of a coup at a meeting of the Central Committee on 10 October.
On 24 October, police raided the Bolshevik newspaper offices, smashing machinery and presses; Stalin salvaged some of this equipment to continue his activities. In the early hours of 25 October, Stalin joined Lenin in a Central Committee meeting in the Smolny Institute, from where the Bolshevik coup — the October Revolution — was directed. Bolshevik militia seized Petrograd's electric power station, main post office, state bank, telephone exchange, and several bridges. A Bolshevik-controlled ship, the Aurora, opened fire on the Winter Palace; the Provisional Government's assembled delegates surrendered and were arrested by the Bolsheviks. Although he had been tasked with briefing the Bolshevik delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets about the developing situation, Stalin's role in the coup had not been publicly visible. Trotsky and other later Bolshevik opponents of Stalin used this as evidence that his role in the coup had been insignificant, although later historians reject this. According to the historian Oleg Khlevniuk, Stalin "filled an important role [in the October Revolution]... as a senior Bolshevik, member of the party's Central Committee, and editor of its main newspaper"; the historian Stephen Kotkin similarly noted that Stalin had been "in the thick of events" in the build-up to the coup.
On 26 October 1917, Lenin declared himself chairman of a new government, the Council of People's Commissars ("Sovnarkom"). Stalin backed Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Party, although they did form a coalition government with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Stalin became part of an informal foursome leading the government, alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov; of these, Sverdlov was regularly absent and died in March 1919. Stalin's office was based near to Lenin's in the Smolny Institute, and he and Trotsky were the only individuals allowed access to Lenin's study without an appointment. Although not so publicly well known as Lenin or Trotsky, Stalin's importance among the Bolsheviks grew. He co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers, and along with Sverdlov, he chaired the sessions of the committee drafting a constitution for the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He strongly supported Lenin's formation of the Cheka security service and the subsequent Red Terror that it initiated; noting that state violence had proved an effective tool for capitalist powers, he believed that it would prove the same for the Soviet government. Unlike senior Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin never expressed concern about the rapid growth and expansion of the Cheka and Red Terror.
Having dropped his editorship of Pravda, Stalin was appointed the People's Commissar for Nationalities. He took Nadezhda Alliluyeva as his secretary and at some point, married her, although the wedding date is unknown. In November 1917, he signed the Decree on Nationality, according ethnic and national minorities living in Russia the right of secession and self-determination. The decree's purpose was primarily strategic; the Bolsheviks wanted to gain favour among ethnic minorities but hoped that the latter would not actually desire independence. That month, he travelled to Helsingfors to talk with the Finnish Social Democrats, granting Finland's request for independence in December. His department allocated funds for establishment of presses and schools in the languages of various ethnic minorities. Socialist revolutionaries accused Stalin's talk of federalism and national self-determination as a front for Sovnarkom's centralising and imperialist policies.
Because of the ongoing First World War, in which Russia was fighting the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Lenin's government relocated from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918. Stalin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, and Lenin lived at the Kremlin. Stalin supported Lenin's desire to sign an armistice with the Central Powers regardless of the cost in territory. Stalin thought it necessary because — unlike Lenin — he was unconvinced that Europe was on the verge of proletarian revolution. Lenin eventually convinced the other senior Bolsheviks of his viewpoint, resulting in the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. The treaty gave vast areas of land and resources to the Central Powers and angered many in Russia; the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the coalition government over the issue. The governing RSDLP party was soon renamed, becoming the Russian Communist Party.
After the Bolsheviks seized power, both right and left-wing armies rallied against them, generating the Russian Civil War. In May 1918, amid a dwindling food supply, Sovnarkom sent Stalin to Tsaritsyn to take charge of food procurement in Southern Russia. Eager to prove himself as a commander, once there he took control of regional military operations. He befriended two military figures, Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, who would form the nucleus of his military and political support base. Believing that victory was assured by numerical superiority, he sent large numbers of Red Army troops into battle against the region's anti-Bolshevik White armies, resulting in heavy losses; Lenin was concerned by this costly tactic. In Tsaritsyn, Stalin commanded the local Cheka branch to execute suspected counterrevolutionaries, sometimes without trial and — in contravention of government orders — purged the military and food collection agencies of middle-class specialists, some of whom he also executed. His use of state violence and terror was at a greater scale than most Bolshevik leaders approved of; for instance, he ordered several villages to be torched to ensure compliance with his food procurement program.
In December 1918, Stalin was sent to Perm to lead an inquiry into how Alexander Kolchak's White forces had been able to decimate Red troops based there. He returned to Moscow between January and March 1919, before being assigned to the Western Front at Petrograd. When the Red Third Regiment defected, he ordered the public execution of captured defectors. In September, he was returned to the Southern Front. During the war, he proved his worth to the Central Committee, displaying decisiveness, determination, and willingness to take on responsibility in conflict situations. At the same time, he disregarded orders and repeatedly threatened to resign when affronted. He was reprimanded by Lenin at the 8th Party Congress for employing tactics which resulted in far too many deaths of Red Army soldiers. In November 1919, the government nonetheless awarded him the Order of the Red Banner for his wartime service.
The Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War by the end of 1919. By that time, Sovnarkom had turned its attention to spreading proletarian revolution abroad, to this end forming the Communist International in March 1919; Stalin attended its inaugural ceremony. Although Stalin did not share Lenin's belief that Europe's proletariat were on the verge of revolution, he acknowledged that as long as it stood alone, Soviet Russia remained vulnerable. In December 1918, he drew up decrees recognising Marxist-governed Soviet republics in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia; during the civil war these Marxist governments were overthrown and the Baltic countries became fully independent of Russia, an act Stalin regarded as illegitimate. In February 1920, he was appointed to head the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate; that same month he was also transferred to the Caucasian Front.
Following earlier clashes between Polish and Russian troops, the Polish–Soviet War broke out in early 1920, with the Poles invading Ukraine and taking Kiev on 7 May. On 26 May, Stalin was moved to Ukraine, on the Southwest Front. The Red Army retook Kiev on 10 June and soon forced the Polish troops back into Poland. On 16 July, the Central Committee decided to take the war into Polish territory. Lenin believed that the Polish proletariat would rise up to support the Russians against Józef Piłsudski's Polish government. Stalin had cautioned against this; he believed that nationalism would lead the Polish working-classes to support their government's war effort. He also believed that the Red Army was ill-prepared to conduct an offensive war and that it would give White armies a chance to resurface in Crimea, potentially reigniting the civil war. Stalin lost the argument, after which he accepted Lenin's decision and supported it. Along the Southwest Front, he became determined to conquer Lvov; in focusing on this goal, he disobeyed orders in early August to transfer his troops to assist Mikhail Tukhachevsky's forces that were attacking Warsaw.
In mid-August 1920, the Poles repulsed the Russian advance, and Stalin returned to Moscow to attend the Politburo meeting. Tukhachevsky blamed Stalin for his defeat at the Battle of Warsaw. In Moscow, Lenin and Trotsky also blamed him for his behaviour in the Polish–Soviet War. Stalin felt humiliated and under-appreciated; on 17 August, he demanded demission from the military, which was granted on 1 September. At the 9th Bolshevik Conference in late September, Trotsky accused Stalin of "strategic mistakes" in his handling of the war. Trotsky claimed that Stalin sabotaged the campaign by disobeying troop transfer orders. Lenin joined Trotsky in criticising him, and nobody spoke on his behalf at the conference. Stalin felt disgraced and his antipathy toward Trotsky increased. The Polish–Soviet War ended on 18 March 1921, when a peace treaty was signed in Riga.
The Soviet government sought to bring neighbouring states under its domination; in February 1921 it invaded the Menshevik-governed Georgia, while in April 1921, Stalin ordered the Red Army into Turkestan to reassert Russian state control. As People's Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin believed that each national and ethnic group should have the right to self-expression, facilitated through "autonomous republics" within the Russian state in which they could oversee various regional affairs. In taking this view, some Marxists accused him of bending too much to bourgeois nationalism, while others accused him of remaining too Russocentric by seeking to retain these nations within the Russian state.
Stalin's native Caucasus posed a particular problem because of its highly multi-ethnic mix. Stalin opposed the idea of separate Georgian, Armenian, and Azeri autonomous republics, arguing that these would likely oppress ethnic minorities within their respective territories; instead, he called for a Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The Georgian Communist Party opposed the idea, resulting in the Georgian affair. In mid-1921, Stalin returned to the South Caucasus, there calling on Georgian communists to avoid the chauvinistic Georgian nationalism which marginalised the Abkhazian, Ossetian, and Adjarian minorities in Georgia. On this trip, Stalin met with his son Yakov, and brought him back to Moscow; Nadezhda had given birth to another of Stalin's sons, Vasily, in March 1921.
After the civil war, workers' strikes and peasant uprisings broke out across Russia, largely in opposition to Sovnarkom's food requisitioning project; as an antidote, Lenin introduced market-oriented reforms: the New Economic Policy (NEP). There was also internal turmoil in the Communist Party, as Trotsky led a faction calling for abolition of trade unions; Lenin opposed this, and Stalin helped rally opposition to Trotsky's position. Stalin also agreed to supervise the Department of Agitation and Propaganda in the Central Committee Secretariat. At the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin as the party's new General Secretary. Although concerns were expressed that adopting this new post on top of his others would overstretch his workload and give him too much power, Stalin was appointed to the position. For Lenin, it was advantageous to have a key ally in this crucial post.
Stalin is too crude, and this defect which is entirely acceptable in our milieu and in relationships among us as communists, becomes unacceptable in the position of General Secretary. I therefore propose to comrades that they should devise a means of removing him from this job and should appoint to this job someone else who is distinguished from comrade Stalin in all other respects only by the single superior aspect that he should be more tolerant, more polite and more attentive towards comrades, less capricious, etc.
— Lenin's Testament, 4 January 1923; this was possibly composed by Krupskaya rather than Lenin himself.
In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed. Residing at his Gorki dacha, Lenin's main connection to Sovnarkom was through Stalin, who was a regular visitor. Lenin twice asked Stalin to procure poison so that he could commit suicide, but Stalin never did so. Despite this comradeship, Lenin disliked what he referred to as Stalin's "Asiatic" manner and told his sister Maria that Stalin was "not intelligent". Lenin and Stalin argued on the issue of foreign trade; Lenin believed that the Soviet state should have a monopoly on foreign trade, but Stalin supported Grigori Sokolnikov's view that doing so was impractical at that stage. Another disagreement came over the Georgian affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one.
They also disagreed on the nature of the Soviet state. Lenin called for establishment of a new federation named the "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia", reflecting his desire for expansion across the two continents and insisted that the Russian state should join this union on equal terms with the other Soviet states. Stalin believed this would encourage independence sentiment among non-Russians, instead arguing that ethnic minorities would be content as "autonomous republics" within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Lenin accused Stalin of "Great Russian chauvinism"; Stalin accused Lenin of "national liberalism". A compromise was reached, in which the federation would be renamed the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR). The USSR's formation was ratified in December 1922; although officially a federal system, all major decisions were taken by the governing Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow.
Their differences also became personal; Lenin was particularly angered when Stalin was rude to his wife Krupskaya during a telephone conversation. In the final years of his life, Krupskaya provided governing figures with Lenin's Testament, a series of increasingly disparaging notes about Stalin. These criticised Stalin's rude manners and excessive power, suggesting that Stalin should be removed from the position of general secretary. Some historians have questioned whether Lenin ever produced these, suggesting instead that they may have been written by Krupskaya, who had personal differences with Stalin; Stalin, however, never publicly voiced concerns about their authenticity. Most historians consider the document to be an accurate reflection of Lenin's views. According to Stalin's secretary, Boris Bazhanov, Lenin "in general leaned towards a collegial leadership, with Trotsky in the first position".
Lenin died in January 1924. Stalin took charge of the funeral and was one of its pallbearers; against the wishes of Lenin's widow, the Politburo embalmed his corpse and placed it within a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square. It was incorporated into a growing personality cult devoted to Lenin, with Petrograd being renamed "Leningrad" that year. To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist, Stalin gave nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the Foundations of Leninism, later published in book form. During the 13th Party Congress in May 1924, Lenin's Testament was read only to the leaders of the provincial delegations. Embarrassed by its contents, Stalin offered his resignation as General Secretary; this act of humility saved him, and he was retained in the position. According to Stalin's secretary, Boris Bazhanov, Stalin was jubilant over Lenin's death while "publicly putting on the mask of grief".
As General Secretary, Stalin had a free hand in making appointments to his own staff, implanting his loyalists throughout the party and administration. Favouring new Communist Party members from proletarian backgrounds to the "Old Bolsheviks" who tended to be middle class university graduates, he ensured he had loyalists dispersed across the country's regions. Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries, and the desire for promotion led many provincial figures to seek to impress Stalin and gain his favour. Stalin also developed close relations with the trio at the heart of the secret police (first the Cheka and then its replacement, the State Political Directorate): Felix Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. In his private life, he divided his time between his Kremlin apartment and a dacha at Zubalova; his wife gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.
In the wake of Lenin's death, various protagonists emerged in the struggle to become his successor: alongside Stalin was Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky. Stalin saw Trotsky — whom he personally despised — as the main obstacle to his dominance within the party. While Lenin had been ill Stalin with Kamenev and Zinoviev had formed an unofficial Triumvirate (also known by its Russian name Troika), a political alliance aimed at Trotsky. Although Zinoviev was concerned about Stalin's growing authority, he rallied behind him at the 13th Congress as a counterweight to Trotsky, who now led a party faction known as the Left Opposition. The Left Opposition believed the NEP conceded too much to capitalism; Stalin was called a "rightist" for his support of the policy. Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters in the Central Committee, while the Left Opposition were gradually removed from their positions of influence. He was supported in this by Bukharin, who, like Stalin, believed that the Left Opposition's proposals would plunge the Soviet Union into instability.
In late 1924, Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions. In 1925, the two moved into open opposition to Stalin and Bukharin. At the 14th Party Congress in December, they launched an attack against Stalin's faction, but it was unsuccessful. Stalin in turn accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism — and thus instability — into the party. In mid-1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with Trotsky's supporters to form the United Opposition against Stalin; in October they agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views under Stalin's command. The factionalist arguments continued, with Stalin threatening to resign in October and then December 1926 and again in December 1927. In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were removed from the Central Committee; the latter was exiled to Kazakhstan and later deported from the country in 1929. Some of those United Opposition members who were repentant were later rehabilitated and returned to government.
Stalin was now the party's supreme leader, although he was not the head of government, a task he entrusted to his key ally Vyacheslav Molotov. Other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, with Stalin ensuring his allies ran the various state institutions. According to Montefiore, at this point "Stalin was the leader of the oligarchs but he was far from a dictator". His growing influence was reflected in naming of various locations after him; in June 1924 the Ukrainian mining town of Yuzovka became Stalino, and in April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad on the order of Mikhail Kalinin and Avel Enukidze.
In 1926, Stalin published On Questions of Leninism. Here, he argued for the concept of "socialism in one country", which he presented as an orthodox Leninist perspective. It nevertheless clashed with established Bolshevik views that socialism could not be established in one country but could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution.
We have fallen behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. We must close that gap in ten years. Either we do this or we'll be crushed.
This is what our obligations before the workers and peasants of the USSR dictate to us.
— Stalin, February 1931
The Soviet Union lagged behind the industrial development of Western countries, and there had been a shortfall of grain; 1927 produced only 70% of grain produced in 1926. Stalin's government feared attack from Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Romania. Many communists, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach; they had concerns about those who profited from the policy: affluent peasants known as "kulaks" and small business owners or "NEPmen". At this point, Stalin turned against the NEP, which put him on a course to the "left" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev.
In early 1928, Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, where he alleged that kulaks were hoarding their grain and ordered that the kulaks be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the area's grain back to Moscow with him in February. At his command, grain procurement squads surfaced across Western Siberia and the Urals, with violence breaking out between these squads and the peasantry. Stalin announced that both kulaks and the "middle peasants" must be coerced into releasing their harvest. Bukharin and several other Central Committee members were angry that they had not been consulted about this measure, which they deemed rash. In January 1930, the Politburo approved the liquidation of the kulak class; accused kulaks were rounded up and exiled to other parts of the country or to concentration camps. Large numbers died during the journey. By July 1930, over 320,000 households had been affected by the de-kulakisation policy. According to Stalin biographer Dmitri Volkogonov, de-kulakisation was "the first mass terror applied by Stalin in his own country."
In 1929, the Politburo announced the mass collectivisation of agriculture, establishing both kolkhozy collective farms and sovkhoz state farms. Stalin barred kulaks from joining these collectives. Although officially voluntary, many peasants joined the collectives out of fear they would face the fate of the kulaks; others joined amid intimidation and violence from party loyalists. By 1932, about 62% of households involved in agriculture were part of collectives, and by 1936 this had risen to 90%. Many of the collectivised peasants resented the loss of their private farmland, and productivity slumped. Famine broke out in many areas, with the Politburo frequently ordering distribution of emergency food relief to these regions.
Armed peasant uprisings against dekulakisation and collectivisation broke out in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Southern Russia, and Central Asia, reaching their apex in March 1930; these were suppressed by the Red Army. Stalin responded to the uprisings with an article insisting that collectivisation was voluntary and blaming any violence and other excesses on local officials. Although he and Stalin had been close for many years, Bukharin expressed concerns about these policies; he regarded them as a return to Lenin's old "war communism" policy and believed that it would fail. By mid-1928 he was unable to rally sufficient support in the party to oppose the reforms. In November 1929 Stalin removed him from the Politburo.
Officially, the Soviet Union had replaced the "irrationality" and "wastefulness" of a market economy with a planned economy organised along a long-term, precise, and scientific framework; in reality, Soviet economics were based on ad hoc commandments issued from the centre, often to make short-term targets. In 1928, the first five-year plan was launched, its main focus on boosting heavy industry; it was finished a year ahead of schedule, in 1932. The USSR underwent a massive economic transformation. New mines were opened, new cities like Magnitogorsk constructed, and work on the White Sea–Baltic Canal began. Millions of peasants moved to the cities, although urban house building could not keep up with the demand. Large debts were accrued purchasing foreign-made machinery.
Many of major construction projects, including the White Sea–Baltic Canal and the Moscow Metro, were constructed largely through forced labour. The last elements of workers' control over industry were removed, with factory managers increasing their authority and receiving privileges and perks; Stalin defended wage disparity by pointing to Marx's argument that it was necessary during the lower stages of socialism. To promote intensification of labour, a series of medals and awards as well as the Stakhanovite movement were introduced. Stalin's message was that socialism was being established in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling amid the Wall Street crash. His speeches and articles reflected his utopian vision of the Soviet Union rising to unparalleled heights of human development, creating a "new Soviet person".
In 1928, Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed. He warned of a "danger from the right", including in the Communist Party itself. The first major show trial in the USSR was the Shakhty Trial of 1928, in which several middle-class "industrial specialists" were convicted of sabotage. From 1929 to 1930, further show trials were held to intimidate opposition: these included the Industrial Party Trial, Menshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial. Aware that the ethnic Russian majority may have concerns about being ruled by a Georgian, he promoted ethnic Russians throughout the state hierarchy and made the Russian language compulsory throughout schools and offices, albeit to be used in tandem with local languages in areas with non-Russian majorities. Nationalist sentiment among ethnic minorities was suppressed. Conservative social policies were promoted to enhance social discipline and boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units and motherhood, re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions placed on abortion and divorce, and abolition of the Zhenotdel women's department.
Stalin desired a "cultural revolution", entailing both creation of a culture for the "masses" and wider dissemination of previously elite culture. He oversaw proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as advancement of literacy and numeracy. Socialist realism was promoted throughout arts, while Stalin personally wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; for instance, he endorsed research of an agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific. The government's anti-religious campaign was re-intensified, with increased funding given to the League of Militant Atheists. Priests, imams, and Buddhist monks faced persecution. Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets. Religion retained an influence over much of the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents were willing to admit to being religious.
Throughout the 1920s and beyond, Stalin placed a high priority on foreign policy. He personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, both of whom were impressed with him. Through the Communist International, Stalin's government exerted a strong influence over Marxist parties elsewhere in the world; initially, Stalin left the running of the organisation largely to Bukharin. At its 6th Congress in July 1928, Stalin informed delegates that the main threat to socialism came not from the right but from non-Marxist socialists and social democrats, whom he called "social fascists"; Stalin recognised that in many countries, the social democrats were the Marxist-Leninists' main rivals for working-class support. This preoccupation with opposing rival leftists concerned Bukharin, who regarded the growth of fascism and the far right across Europe as a far greater threat. After Bukharin's departure, Stalin placed the Communist International under the administration of Dmitry Manuilsky and Osip Piatnitsky.
Stalin faced problems in his family life. In 1929, his son Yakov unsuccessfully attempted suicide; his failure earned Stalin's contempt. His relationship with Nadezhda was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems. In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself. Publicly, the cause of death was given as appendicitis; Stalin also concealed the real cause of death from his children. Stalin's friends noted that he underwent a significant change following her suicide, becoming emotionally harder.
Within the Soviet Union, there was widespread civic disgruntlement against Stalin's government. Social unrest, previously restricted largely to the countryside, was increasingly evident in urban areas, prompting Stalin to ease on some of his economic policies in 1932. In May 1932, he introduced a system of kolkhoz markets where peasants could trade their surplus produce. At the same time, penal sanctions became more severe; at Stalin's instigation, in August 1932 a decree was introduced wherein the theft of even a handful of grain could be a capital offence. The second five-year plan had its production quotas reduced from that of the first, with the main emphasis now being on improving living conditions. It therefore emphasised the expansion of housing space and the production of consumer goods. Like its predecessor, this plan was repeatedly amended to meet changing situations; there was for instance an increasing emphasis placed on armament production after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933.
The Soviet Union experienced a major famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–33; between five and seven million people died. The worst affected areas were Ukraine and the North Caucasus, although the famine also affected Kazakhstan and several Russian provinces. Historians have long debated whether Stalin's government had intended the famine to occur or not; there are no known documents in which Stalin or his government explicitly called for starvation to be used against the population. The 1931 and 1932 harvests had been poor ones because of weather conditions and had followed several years in which lower productivity had resulted in a gradual decline in output. Government policies—including the focus on rapid industrialisation, the socialisation of livestock, and the emphasis on sown areas over crop rotation—exacerbated the problem; the state had also failed to build reserve grain stocks for such an emergency. Stalin blamed the famine on hostile elements and sabotage within the peasantry; his government provided small amounts of food to famine-struck rural areas, although this was wholly insufficient to deal with the levels of starvation. The Soviet government believed that food supplies should be prioritised for the urban workforce; for Stalin, the fate of Soviet industrialisation was far more important than the lives of the peasantry. Grain exports, which were a major means of Soviet payment for machinery, declined heavily. Stalin would not acknowledge that his policies had contributed to the famine, the existence of which was kept secret from foreign observers.
In 1935–36, Stalin oversaw a new constitution; its dramatic liberal features were designed as propaganda weapons, for all power rested in the hands of Stalin and his Politburo. He declared that "socialism, which is the first phase of communism, has basically been achieved in this country". In 1938, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), colloquially known as the Short Course, was released; biographer Robert Conquest later referred to it as the "central text of Stalinism". A number of authorised Stalin biographies were also published, although Stalin generally wanted to be portrayed as the embodiment of the Communist Party rather than have his life story explored. During the later 1930s, Stalin placed "a few limits on the worship of his own greatness". By 1938, Stalin's inner circle had gained a degree of stability, containing the personalities who would remain there until Stalin's death.
Seeking improved international relations, in 1934 the Soviet Union secured membership of the League of Nations, from which it had previously been excluded. Stalin initiated confidential communications with Hitler in October 1933, shortly after the latter came to power in Germany. Stalin admired Hitler, particularly his manoeuvres to remove rivals within the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives. Stalin nevertheless recognised the threat posed by fascism and sought to establish better links with the liberal democracies of Western Europe; in May 1935, the Soviets signed a treaty of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia. At the Communist International's 7th Congress, held in July–August 1935, the Soviet government encouraged Marxist-Leninists to unite with other leftists as part of a popular front against fascism. In turn, the anti-communist governments of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, the Soviets sent 648 aircraft and 407 tanks to the left-wing Republican faction; these were accompanied by 3,000 Soviet troops and 42,000 members of the International Brigades set up by the Communist International. Stalin took a strong personal involvement in the Spanish situation. Germany and Italy backed the Nationalist faction, which was ultimately victorious in March 1939. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the Soviet Union and China signed a non-aggression pact the following August. Stalin aided the Chinese Communist Party as they had suspended their civil war with the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists and formed the desired United Front against Japanese aggression.
Stalin often gave conflicting signals regarding state repression. In May 1933, he released from prison many convicted of minor offences, ordering the security services not to enact further mass arrests and deportations. In September 1934, he launched a commission to investigate false imprisonments; that same month he called for the execution of workers at the Stalin Metallurgical Factory accused of spying for Japan. This mixed approach began to change in December 1934, after prominent party member Sergey Kirov was murdered. After the murder, Stalin became increasingly concerned by the threat of assassination, improved his personal security, and rarely went out in public. State repression intensified after Kirov's death; Stalin instigated this, reflecting his prioritisation of security above other considerations. Stalin issued a decree establishing NKVD troikas which could mete out rulings without involving the courts. In 1935, he ordered the NKVD to expel suspected counterrevolutionaries from urban areas; in early 1935, over 11,000 were expelled from Leningrad. In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov became head of the NKVD.
Stalin orchestrated the arrest of many former opponents in the Communist Party as well as sitting members of the Central Committee: denounced as Western-backed mercenaries, many were imprisoned or exiled internally. The first Moscow Trial took place in August 1936; Kamenev and Zinoviev were among those accused of plotting assassinations, found guilty in a show trial, and executed. The second Moscow Show Trial took place in January 1937, and the third in March 1938, in which Bukharin and Rykov were accused of involvement in the alleged Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist plot and sentenced to death. By late 1937, all remnants of collective leadership were gone from the Politburo, which was controlled entirely by Stalin. There were mass expulsions from the party, with Stalin commanding foreign communist parties to also purge anti-Stalinist elements.
Repressions further intensified in December 1936 and remained at a high level until November 1938, a period known as the Great Purge. In May 1937, this was followed by the arrest of most members of the military Supreme Command and mass arrests throughout the military, often on fabricated charges. By the latter part of 1937, the purges had moved beyond the party and were affecting the wider population. In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of "anti-Soviet elements" in society, targeting anti-Stalin Bolsheviks, former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, ex-White Army soldiers, and common criminals. That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. 00447, listing 268,950 people for arrest, of whom 75,950 were executed. He also initiated "national operations", the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groups—among them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese—through internal or external exile. During these years, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture.
During the 1930s and 1940s, NKVD groups assassinated defectors and opponents abroad; in August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, eliminating the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. These purges replaced most of the party's old guard with younger officials who did not remember a time before Stalin's leadership and who were regarded as more personally loyal to him. Party functionaries readily carried out their commands and sought to ingratiate themselves with Stalin to avoid becoming the victim of the purge. Such functionaries often carried out a greater number of arrests and executions than their quotas set by Stalin's central government.
Stalin initiated all key decisions during the Terror, personally directing many of its operations and taking an interest in their implementation. His motives in doing so have been much debated by historians. His personal writings from the period were — according to Khlevniuk — "unusually convoluted and incoherent", filled with claims about enemies encircling him. He was particularly concerned at the success that right-wing forces had in overthrowing the leftist Spanish government, fearing a domestic fifth column in the event of future war with Japan and Germany. The Great Terror ended when Yezhov was removed as the head of the NKVD, to be replaced by Lavrentiy Beria, a man totally devoted to Stalin. Yezhov was arrested in April 1939 and executed in 1940. The Terror damaged the Soviet Union's reputation abroad, particularly among sympathetic leftists. As it wound down, Stalin sought to deflect responsibility from himself, blaming its "excesses" and "violations of law" on Yezhov. According to historian James Harris, contemporary archival research shows that the motivation behind the purges was not Stalin attempting to establish his own personal dictatorship; evidence suggests he was committed to building the socialist state envisioned by Lenin. The real motivation for the terror, according to Harris, was an excessive fear of counterrevolution.
As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin considered conflict between competing capitalist powers inevitable; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he recognised a war was looming. He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and Britain would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe. Militarily, the Soviets also faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with the expansionist Japanese in the latter part of the 1930s. Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in its haste to expand many of its officers were poorly trained. Between 1940 and 1941 he also purged the military, leaving it with a severe shortage of trained officers when war broke out.
As Britain and France seemed unwilling to commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin saw a better deal with the Germans. On 3 May 1939, Stalin replaced his western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. Germany began negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers. Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany. In August 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact with Germany, a non-aggression pact negotiated by Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. A week later, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the UK and France to declare war on Germany. On 17 September, the Red Army entered eastern Poland, officially to restore order amid the collapse of the Polish state. On 28 September, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged some of their newly conquered territories; Germany gained the linguistically Polish-dominated areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province while the Soviets gained Lithuania. A German–Soviet Frontier Treaty was signed shortly after, in Stalin's presence. The two states continued trading, undermining the British blockade of Germany.
The Soviets further demanded parts of eastern Finland, but the Finnish government refused. The Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, yet despite numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay. International opinion backed Finland, with the Soviets being expelled from the League of Nations. Embarrassed by their inability to defeat the Finns, the Soviets signed an interim peace treaty, in which they received territorial concessions from Finland. In June 1940, the Red Army occupied the Baltic states, which were forcibly merged into the Soviet Union in August; they also invaded and annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, parts of Romania. The Soviets sought to forestall dissent in these new East European territories with mass repressions. One of the most noted instances was the Katyn massacre of April and May 1940, in which around 22,000 members of the Polish armed forces, police, and intelligentsia were executed.
The speed of the German victory over and occupation of France in mid-1940 took Stalin by surprise. He increasingly focused on appeasement with the Germans to delay any conflict with them. After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan, and Italy in October 1940, Stalin proposed that the USSR also join the Axis alliance. To demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, in April 1941 the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan. Although de facto head of government for a decade and a half, Stalin concluded that relations with Germany had deteriorated to such an extent that he needed to deal with the problem as de jure head of government as well: on 6 May, Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier of the Soviet Union.
In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, initiating the war on the Eastern Front. Despite intelligence agencies repeatedly warning him of Germany's intentions, Stalin was taken by surprise. He formed a State Defense Committee, which he headed as Supreme Commander, as well as a military Supreme Command (Stavka), with Georgy Zhukov as its Chief of Staff. The German tactic of blitzkrieg was initially highly effective; the Soviet air force in the western borderlands was destroyed within two days. The German Wehrmacht pushed deep into Soviet territory; soon, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic states were under German occupation, and Leningrad was under siege; and Soviet refugees were flooding into Moscow and surrounding cities. By July, Germany's Luftwaffe was bombing Moscow, and by October the Wehrmacht was amassing for a full assault on the capital. Plans were made for the Soviet government to evacuate to Kuibyshev, although Stalin decided to remain in Moscow, believing his flight would damage troop morale. The German advance on Moscow was halted after two months of battle in increasingly harsh weather conditions.
Going against the advice of Zhukov and other generals, Stalin emphasised attack over defence. In June 1941, he ordered a scorched earth policy of destroying infrastructure and food supplies before the Germans could seize them, also commanding the NKVD to kill around 100,000 political prisoners in areas the Wehrmacht approached. He purged the military command; several high-ranking figures were demoted or reassigned and others were arrested and executed. With Order No. 270, Stalin commanded soldiers risking capture to fight to the death describing the captured as traitors; among those taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans was Stalin's son Yakov, who died in their custody. Stalin issued Order No. 227 in July 1942, which directed that those retreating unauthorised would be placed in "penal battalions" used as cannon fodder on the front lines. Amid the fighting, both the German and Soviet armies disregarded the law of war set forth in the Geneva Conventions; the Soviets heavily publicised Nazi massacres of communists, Jews, and Romani. Stalin exploited Nazi anti-Semitism, and in April 1942 he sponsored the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) to garner global Jewish support for the Soviet war effort.
The Soviets allied with the United Kingdom and United States; although the U.S. joined the war against Germany in 1941, little direct American assistance reached the Soviets until late 1942. Responding to the invasion, the Soviets intensified their industrial enterprises in central Russia, focusing almost entirely on production for the military. They achieved high levels of industrial productivity, outstripping that of Germany. During the war, Stalin was more tolerant of the Russian Orthodox Church, allowing it to resume some of its activities and meeting with Patriarch Sergius in September 1943. He also permitted a wider range of cultural expression, notably permitting formerly suppressed writers and artists like Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich to disperse their work more widely. The Internationale was dropped as the country's national anthem, to be replaced with a more patriotic song. The government increasingly promoted Pan-Slavist sentiment, while encouraging increased criticism of cosmopolitanism, particularly the idea of "rootless cosmopolitanism", an approach with particular repercussions for Soviet Jews. Comintern was dissolved in 1943, and Stalin encouraged foreign Marxist–Leninist parties to emphasise nationalism over internationalism to broaden their domestic appeal.
In April 1942, Stalin overrode Stavka by ordering the Soviets' first serious counter-attack, an attempt to seize German-held Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. This attack proved unsuccessful. That year, Hitler shifted his primary goal from an overall victory on the Eastern Front to the goal of securing the oil fields in the southern Soviet Union crucial to a long-term German war effort. While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift efforts south, Stalin considered this to be a flanking move in a renewed effort to take Moscow. In June 1942, the German Army began a major offensive in Southern Russia, threatening Stalingrad; Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold the city at all costs. This resulted in the protracted Battle of Stalingrad. In December 1942, he placed Konstantin Rokossovski in charge of holding the city. In February 1943, the German troops attacking Stalingrad surrendered. The Soviet victory there marked a major turning point in the war; in commemoration, Stalin declared himself Marshal of the Soviet Union.
By November 1942, the Soviets had begun to repulse the important German strategic southern campaign and, although there were 2.5 million Soviet casualties in that effort, it permitted the Soviets to take the offensive for most of the rest of the war on the Eastern Front. Germany attempted an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets. By the end of 1943, the Soviets occupied half of the territory taken by the Germans from 1941 to 1942. Soviet military industrial output also had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well to the east of the front, safe from German invasion and aerial assault.
In Allied countries, Stalin was increasingly depicted in a positive light over the course of the war. In 1941, the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed a concert to celebrate his birthday, and in 1942, Time magazine named him "Man of the Year". When Stalin learned that people in Western countries affectionately called him "Uncle Joe" he was initially offended, regarding it as undignified. There remained mutual suspicions between Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who were together known as the "Big Three". Churchill flew to Moscow to visit Stalin in August 1942 and again in October 1944. Stalin scarcely left Moscow throughout the war, with Roosevelt and Churchill frustrated with his reluctance to travel to meet them.
In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran, a location of Stalin's choosing. There, Stalin and Roosevelt got on well, with both desiring the post-war dismantling of the British Empire. At Tehran, the trio agreed that to prevent Germany rising to military prowess yet again, the German state should be broken up. Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed to Stalin's demand that the German city of Königsberg be declared Soviet territory. Stalin was impatient for the UK and U.S. to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off of the East; they eventually did so in mid-1944. Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, which Churchill opposed. Discussing the fate of the Balkans, later in 1944 Churchill agreed to Stalin's suggestion that after the war, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia would come under the Soviet sphere of influence while Greece would come under that of the West.
In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany, including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in the Byelorussian SSR against the German Army Group Centre. In 1944, the German armies were pushed out of the Baltic states (with the exception of the Ostland), which were then re-annexed into the Soviet Union. As the Red Army reconquered the Caucasus and Crimea, various ethnic groups living in the region—the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars—were accused of having collaborated with the Germans. Using the idea of collective responsibility as a basis, Stalin's government abolished their autonomous republics and between late 1943 and 1944 deported the majority of their populations to Central Asia and Siberia. Over one million people were deported as a result of the policy.
In February 1945, the three leaders met at the Yalta Conference. Roosevelt and Churchill conceded to Stalin's demand that Germany pay the Soviet Union 20 billion dollars in reparations, and that his country be permitted to annex Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in exchange for entering the war against Japan. An agreement was also made that a post-war Polish government should be a coalition consisting of both communist and conservative elements. Privately, Stalin sought to ensure that Poland would come fully under Soviet influence. The Red Army withheld assistance to Polish resistance fighters battling the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, with Stalin believing that any victorious Polish militants could interfere with his aspirations to dominate Poland through a future Marxist government. Although concealing his desires from the other Allied leaders, Stalin placed great emphasis on capturing Berlin first, believing that this would enable him to bring more of Europe under long-term Soviet control. Churchill was concerned that this was the case and unsuccessfully tried to convince the U.S. that the Western Allies should pursue the same goal.
In April 1945, the Red Army seized Berlin, Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered in May. Stalin had wanted Hitler captured alive; he had his remains brought to Moscow to prevent them becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers. As the Red Army had conquered German territory, they discovered the extermination camps that the Nazi administration had run. Many Soviet soldiers engaged in looting, pillaging, and rape, both in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe. Stalin refused to punish the offenders. After receiving a complaint about this from Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, Stalin asked how after experiencing the traumas of war a soldier could "react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors?"
With Germany defeated, Stalin switched focus to the war with Japan, transferring half a million troops to the Far East. Stalin was pressed by his allies to enter the war and wanted to cement the Soviet Union's strategic position in Asia. On 8 August, in between the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet army invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and defeated the Kwantung Army. These events led to the Japanese surrender and the war's end. Soviet forces continued to expand until they occupied all their territorial concessions, but the U.S. rebuffed Stalin's desire for the Red Army to take a role in the Allied occupation of Japan.
Stalin attended the Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945, alongside his new British and U.S. counterparts, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and President Harry Truman. At the conference, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from a "Sovietization" of Eastern Europe. Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' survival, which worried Truman and Churchill who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for Western powers. He also pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. Germany was divided into four zones: Soviet, U.S., British, and French, with Berlin itself—located within the Soviet area—also subdivided thusly.
After the war, Stalin was—according to Service—at the "apex of his career". Within the Soviet Union he was widely regarded as the embodiment of victory and patriotism. His armies controlled Central and Eastern Europe up to the River Elbe. In June 1945, Stalin adopted the title of Generalissimus, and stood atop Lenin's Mausoleum to watch a celebratory parade led by Zhukov through Red Square. At a banquet held for army commanders, he described the Russian people as "the outstanding nation" and "leading force" within the Soviet Union, the first time that he had unequivocally endorsed the Russians over other Soviet nationalities. In 1946, the state published Stalin's Collected Works. In 1947, it brought out a second edition of his official biography, which eulogised him to a greater extent than its predecessor. He was quoted in Pravda on a daily basis and pictures of him remained pervasive on the walls of workplaces and homes.
Despite his strengthened international position, Stalin was cautious about internal dissent and desire for change among the population. He was also concerned about his returning armies, who had been exposed to a wide range of consumer goods in Germany, much of which they had looted and brought back with them. In this he recalled the 1825 Decembrist Revolt by Russian soldiers returning from having defeated France in the Napoleonic Wars. He ensured that returning Soviet prisoners of war went through "filtration" camps as they arrived in the Soviet Union, in which 2,775,700 were interrogated to determine if they were traitors. About half were then imprisoned in labour camps. In the Baltic states, where there was much opposition to Soviet rule, de-kulakisation and de-clericalisation programs were initiated, resulting in 142,000 deportations between 1945 and 1949. The Gulag system of forced labour camps was expanded further. By January 1953, three per cent of the Soviet population was imprisoned or in internal exile, with 2.8 million in "special settlements" in isolated areas and another 2.5 million in camps, penal colonies, and prisons.
The NKVD were ordered to catalogue the scale of destruction during the war. It was established that 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed. The NKVD recorded that between 26 and 27 million Soviet citizens had been killed, with millions more being wounded, malnourished, or orphaned. In the war's aftermath, some of Stalin's associates suggested modifications to government policy. Post-war Soviet society was more tolerant than its pre-war phase in various respects. Stalin allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to retain the churches it had opened during the war. Academia and the arts were also allowed greater freedom than they had prior to 1941. Recognising the need for drastic steps to be taken to combat inflation and promote economic regeneration, in December 1947 Stalin's government devalued the rouble and abolished the ration-book system. Capital punishment was abolished in 1947 but re-instituted in 1950.
Stalin's health was deteriorating, and heart problems forced a two-month vacation in the latter part of 1945. He grew increasingly concerned that senior political and military figures might try to oust him; he prevented any of them from becoming powerful enough to rival him and had their apartments bugged with listening devices. He demoted Molotov, and increasingly favoured Beria and Malenkov for key positions. In 1949, he brought Nikita Khrushchev from Ukraine to Moscow, appointing him a Central Committee secretary and the head of the city's party branch. In the Leningrad Affair, the city's leadership was purged amid accusations of treachery; executions of many of the accused took place in 1950.
In the post-war period there were often food shortages in Soviet cities, and the USSR experienced a major famine from 1946 to 1947. Sparked by a drought and ensuing bad harvest in 1946, it was exacerbated by government policy towards food procurement, including the state's decision to build up stocks and export food internationally rather than distributing it to famine-hit areas. Current estimates indicate that between one million and 1.5 million people died from malnutrition or disease as a result. While agricultural production stagnated, Stalin focused on a series of major infrastructure projects, including the construction of hydroelectric plants, canals, and railway lines running to the polar north. Much of this was constructed by prison labour.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British Empire declined, leaving the U.S. and USSR as the dominant world powers. Tensions among these former Allies grew, resulting in the Cold War. Although Stalin publicly described the British and U.S. governments as aggressive, he thought it unlikely that a war with them would be imminent, believing that several decades of peace was likely. He nevertheless secretly intensified Soviet research into nuclear weaponry, intent on creating an atom bomb. Still, Stalin foresaw the undesirability of a nuclear conflict, saying in 1949 that "atomic weapons can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world." He personally took a keen interest in the development of the weapon. In August 1949, the bomb was successfully tested in the deserts outside Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Stalin also initiated a new military build-up; the Soviet army was expanded from 2.9 million soldiers, as it stood in 1949, to 5.8 million by 1953.
The U.S. began pushing its interests on every continent, acquiring air force bases in Africa and Asia and ensuring pro-U.S. regimes took power across Latin America. It launched the Marshall Plan in June 1947, with which it sought to undermine Soviet hegemony throughout Eastern Europe. The U.S. also offered financial assistance to countries as part of the Marshall Plan on the condition that they opened their markets to trade, aware that the Soviets would never agree. The Allies demanded that Stalin withdraw the Red Army from northern Iran. He initially refused, leading to an international crisis in 1946, but one year later Stalin finally relented and moved the Soviet troops out. Stalin also tried to maximise Soviet influence on the world stage, unsuccessfully pushing for Libya—recently liberated from Italian occupation—to become a Soviet protectorate. He sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets have a place on the Security Council. In April 1949, the Western powers established the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an international military alliance of capitalist countries. Within Western countries, Stalin was increasingly portrayed as the "most evil dictator alive" and compared to Hitler. According to his daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva she "remembered her father saying after [the war]: Together with the Germans we would have been invincible"
In 1948, Stalin edited and rewrote sections of Falsifiers of History, published as a series of Pravda articles in February 1948 and then in book form. Written in response to public revelations of the 1939 Soviet alliance with Germany, it focused on blaming the Western powers for the war. He also erroneously claimed that the initial German advance in the early part of the war, during Operation Barbarossa, was not a result of Soviet military weakness, but rather a deliberate Soviet strategic retreat. In 1949, celebrations took place to mark Stalin's seventieth birthday (although he was 71 at the time,) at which Stalin attended an event in the Bolshoi Theatre alongside Marxist–Leninist leaders from across Europe and Asia.
After the war, Stalin sought to retain Soviet dominance across Eastern Europe while expanding its influence in Asia. Cautiously regarding the responses from the Western Allies, Stalin avoided immediately installing Communist Party governments across Eastern Europe, instead initially ensuring that Marxist-Leninists were placed in coalition ministries. In contrast to his approach to the Baltic states, he rejected the proposal of merging the new communist states into the Soviet Union, rather recognising them as independent nation-states. He was faced with the problem that there were few Marxists left in Eastern Europe, with most having been killed by the Nazis. He demanded that war reparations be paid by Germany and its Axis allies Hungary, Romania, and the Slovak Republic. Aware that these countries had been pushed toward socialism through invasion rather than by proletarian revolution, Stalin referred to them not as "dictatorships of the proletariat" but as "people's democracies", suggesting that in these countries there was a pro-socialist alliance combining the proletariat, peasantry, and lower middle-class.
Churchill observed that an "Iron Curtain" had been drawn across Europe, separating the east from the west. In September 1947, a meeting of East European communist leaders was held in Szklarska Poręba, Poland, from which was formed Cominform to co-ordinate the Communist Parties across Eastern Europe and also in France and Italy. Stalin did not personally attend the meeting, sending Zhdanov in his place. Various East European communists also visited Stalin in Moscow. There, he offered advice on their ideas; for instance, he cautioned against the Yugoslav idea for a Balkan Federation incorporating Bulgaria and Albania. Stalin had a particularly strained relationship with Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito due to the latter's continued calls for a Balkan federation and for Soviet aid for the communist forces in the ongoing Greek Civil War. In March 1948, Stalin launched an anti-Tito campaign, accusing the Yugoslav communists of adventurism and deviating from Marxist–Leninist doctrine. At the second Cominform conference, held in Bucharest in June 1948, East European communist leaders all denounced Tito's government, accusing them of being fascists and agents of Western capitalism. Stalin ordered several assassination attempts on Tito's life and even contemplated an invasion of Yugoslavia itself.
Stalin suggested that a unified, but demilitarised, German state be established, hoping that it would either come under Soviet influence or remain neutral. When the U.S. and UK remained opposed to this, Stalin sought to force their hand by blockading Berlin in June 1948. He gambled that the Western powers would not risk war, but they airlifted supplies into West Berlin until May 1949, when Stalin relented and ended the blockade. In September 1949 the Western powers transformed Western Germany into an independent Federal Republic of Germany; in response the Soviets formed East Germany into the German Democratic Republic in October. In accordance with their earlier agreements, the Western powers expected Poland to become an independent state with free democratic elections. In Poland, the Soviets merged various socialist parties into the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), and vote rigging was used to ensure that the PZPR secured office. The 1947 Hungarian elections were also rigged by Stalin, with the Hungarian Working People's Party taking control. In Czechoslovakia, where the communists did have a level of popular support, they were elected the largest party in 1946. Monarchy was abolished in Bulgaria and Romania. Across Eastern Europe, the Soviet model was enforced, with a termination of political pluralism, agricultural collectivisation, and investment in heavy industry. It was aimed at establishing economic autarky within the Eastern Bloc.
In October 1949, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong took power in China. With this accomplished, Marxist governments now controlled a third of the world's land mass. Privately, Stalin revealed that he had underestimated the Chinese Communists and their ability to win the civil war, instead encouraging them to make another peace with the KMT. In December 1949, Mao visited Stalin. Initially Stalin refused to repeal the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1945, which significantly benefited the Soviet Union over China, although in January 1950 he relented and agreed to sign a new treaty between the two countries. Stalin was concerned that Mao might follow Tito's example by pursuing a course independent of Soviet influence, and made it known that if displeased he would withdraw assistance from China; the Chinese desperately needed said assistance after decades of civil war.
At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the United States divided up the Korean Peninsula, formerly a Japanese colonial possession, along the 38th parallel, setting up a communist government in the north and a pro-Western, anti-communist government in the south. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung visited Stalin in March 1949 and again in March 1950; he wanted to invade the south and although Stalin was initially reluctant to provide support, he eventually agreed by May 1950. The North Korean Army launched the Korean War by invading South Korea in June 1950, making swift gains and capturing Seoul. Both Stalin and Mao believed that a swift victory would ensue. The U.S. went to the UN Security Council—which the Soviets were boycotting over its refusal to recognise Mao's government—and secured international military support for the South Koreans. U.S. led forces pushed the North Koreans back. Stalin wanted to avoid direct Soviet conflict with the U.S., convincing the Chinese to aid the North.
The Soviet Union was one of the first nations to extend diplomatic recognition to the newly created state of Israel in 1948, in hopes of obtaining an ally in the Middle East. When the Israeli ambassador Golda Meir arrived in the USSR, Stalin was angered by the Jewish crowds who gathered to greet her. He was further angered by Israel's growing alliance with the U.S. After Stalin fell out with Israel, he launched an anti-Jewish campaign within the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. In November 1948, he abolished the JAC, and show trials took place for some of its members. The Soviet press engaged in vituperative attacks on Zionism, Jewish culture, and "rootless cosmopolitanism", with growing levels of anti-Semitism being expressed across Soviet society. Stalin's increasing tolerance of anti-Semitism may have stemmed from his increasing Russian nationalism or from the recognition that anti-Semitism had proved a useful mobilising tool for Hitler and that he could do the same; he may have increasingly viewed the Jewish people as a "counter-revolutionary" nation whose members were loyal to the U.S. There were rumours, although they have never been substantiated, that Stalin was planning on deporting all Soviet Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan, eastern Siberia.
In his later years, Stalin was in poor health. He took increasingly long holidays; in 1950 and again in 1951 he spent almost five months on holiday at his Abkhazian dacha. Stalin nevertheless mistrusted his doctors; in January 1952 he had one imprisoned after they suggested that he should retire to improve his health. In September 1952, several Kremlin doctors were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill senior politicians in what came to be known as the doctors' plot; the majority of the accused were Jewish. He instructed the arrested doctors to be tortured to ensure confession. In November, the Slánský trial took place in Czechoslovakia as 13 senior Communist Party figures, 11 of them Jewish, were accused and convicted of being part of a vast Zionist-American conspiracy to subvert Eastern Bloc governments. That same month, a much publicised trial of accused Jewish industrial wreckers took place in Ukraine. In 1951, he initiated the Mingrelian affair, a purge of the Georgian branch of the Communist Party which resulted in over 11,000 deportations.
From 1946 until his death, Stalin only gave three public speeches, two of which lasted only a few minutes. The amount of written material that he produced also declined. In 1950, Stalin issued the article "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood. In 1952, Stalin's last book, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, was published. It sought to provide a guide to leading the country after his death. In October 1952, Stalin gave an hour and a half speech at the Central Committee plenum. There, he emphasised what he regarded as leadership qualities necessary in the future and highlighted the weaknesses of various potential successors, particularly Molotov and Mikoyan. In 1952, he also eliminated the Politburo and replaced it with a larger version which he called the Presidium.
On 1 March 1953, Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Kuntsevo Dacha. He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. He was moved onto a couch and remained there for three days. He was hand-fed using a spoon, given various medicines and injections, and leeches were applied to him. Svetlana and Vasily were called to the dacha on 2 March; the latter was drunk and angrily shouted at the doctors, as a result of which he was sent home. Stalin died on 5 March 1953. According to Svetlana, it had been "a difficult and terrible death". An autopsy revealed that he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage and also that his cerebral arteries were severely damaged by atherosclerosis. It has been conjectured that Stalin was murdered; Beria has been suspected of murdering him, but no firm evidence has ever appeared. According to a report published in The New York Times, Stalin was poisoned with warfarin by his own Politburo members.
Stalin's death was announced on 6 March. His body was embalmed, and then placed on display in Moscow's House of Unions for three days. The crowds of people coming to view the body were so large and disorganised that many people were killed in a crowd crush. At the funeral on 9 March, Stalin's body was laid to rest in Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square; hundreds of thousands attended. That month featured a surge in arrests for "anti-Soviet agitation", as those celebrating Stalin's death came to police attention. The Chinese government instituted a period of official mourning for Stalin's death. A memorial service in his honour was also held at St George the Martyr, Holborn in London.
Stalin left neither a designated successor nor a framework within which a peaceful transfer of power could take place. The Central Committee met on the day of his death, after which Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev emerged as the party's dominant figures. The system of collective leadership was restored, and measures introduced to prevent any one member from attaining autocratic domination. The collective leadership included the following eight senior members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, listed according to the order of precedence presented formally on 5 March 1953: Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich and Anastas Mikoyan. Reforms to the Soviet system were immediately implemented. Economic reform scaled back the mass construction projects, placed a new emphasis on house building, and eased the levels of taxation on the peasantry to stimulate production. The new leaders sought rapprochement with Yugoslavia and a less hostile relationship with the U.S., pursuing a negotiated end to the Korean War in July 1953. The doctors who had been imprisoned were released and the anti-Semitic purges ceased. A mass amnesty for certain categories of convicts was issued, halving the country's inmate population, while the state security and Gulag systems were reformed, with torture being banned in April 1953.
Stalin claimed to have embraced Marxism at the age of fifteen, and it served as the guiding philosophy throughout his adult life; according to Kotkin, Stalin held "zealous Marxist convictions", while Montefiore suggested that Marxism held a "quasi-religious" value for Stalin. Although he never became a Georgian nationalist, during his early life elements from Georgian nationalist thought blended with Marxism in his outlook. The historian Alfred J. Rieber noted that he had been raised in "a society where rebellion was deeply rooted in folklore and popular rituals". Stalin believed in the need to adapt Marxism to changing circumstances; in 1917, he declared that "there is dogmatic Marxism and there is creative Marxism. I stand on the ground of the latter". Volkogonov believed that Stalin's Marxism was shaped by his "dogmatic turn of mind", suggesting that this had been instilled in the Soviet leader during his education in religious institutions. According to scholar Robert Service, Stalin's "few innovations in ideology were crude, dubious developments of Marxism". Some of these derived from political expediency rather than any sincere intellectual commitment; Stalin would often turn to ideology post hoc to justify his decisions. Stalin referred to himself as a praktik, meaning that he was more of a practical revolutionary than a theoretician.
As a Marxist and an anti-capitalist, Stalin believed in an inevitable "class war" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoisie. He believed that the working classes would prove successful in this struggle and would establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, regarding the Soviet Union as an example of such a state. He also believed that this proletarian state would need to introduce repressive measures against foreign and domestic "enemies" to ensure the full crushing of the propertied classes, and thus the class war would intensify with the advance of socialism. As a propaganda tool, the shaming of "enemies" explained all inadequate economic and political outcomes, the hardships endured by the populace, and military failures. The new state would then be able to ensure that all citizens had access to work, food, shelter, healthcare, and education, with the wastefulness of capitalism eliminated by a new, standardised economic system. According to Sandle, Stalin was "committed to the creation of a society that was industrialised, collectivised, centrally planned and technologically advanced."
Stalin adhered to the Leninist variant of Marxism. In his book, Foundations of Leninism, he stated that "Leninism is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution". He claimed to be a loyal Leninist, although was—according to Service—"not a blindly obedient Leninist". Stalin respected Lenin, but not uncritically, and spoke out when he believed that Lenin was wrong. During the period of his revolutionary activity, Stalin regarded some of Lenin's views and actions as being the self-indulgent activities of a spoiled émigré, deeming them counterproductive for those Bolshevik activists based within the Russian Empire itself. After the October Revolution, they continued to have differences. Whereas Lenin believed that all countries across Europe and Asia would readily unite as a single state following proletariat revolution, Stalin argued that national pride would prevent this, and that different socialist states would have to be formed; in his view, a country like Germany would not readily submit to being part of a Russian-dominated federal state. Khlevniuk nevertheless believed that the pair developed a "strong bond" over the years, while Kotkin suggested that Stalin's friendship with Lenin was "the single most important relationship in Stalin's life". After Lenin's death, Stalin relied heavily on Lenin's writings—far more so than those of Marx and Engels—to guide him in the affairs of state. Stalin adopted the Leninist view on the need for a revolutionary vanguard who could lead the proletariat rather than being led by them. Leading this vanguard, he believed that the Soviet peoples needed a strong, central figure—akin to a Tsar—whom they could rally around. In his words, "the people need a Tsar, whom they can worship and for whom they can live and work". He read about, and admired, two Tsars in particular: Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. In the personality cult constructed around him, he was known as the vozhd, an equivalent to the Italian duce and German führer.
Stalinism was a development of Leninism, and while Stalin avoided using the term "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism", he allowed others to do so. Following Lenin's death, Stalin contributed to the theoretical debates within the Communist Party, namely by developing the idea of "Socialism in One Country". This concept was intricately linked to factional struggles within the party, particularly against Trotsky. He first developed the idea in December 1924 and elaborated upon in his writings of 1925–26. Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory could not be guaranteed because of the threat from capitalist intervention. For this reason, he retained the Leninist view that world revolution was still a necessity to ensure the ultimate victory of socialism. Although retaining the Marxist belief that the state would wither away as socialism transformed into pure communism, he believed that the Soviet state would remain until the final defeat of international capitalism. This concept synthesised Marxist and Leninist ideas with nationalist ideals, and served to discredit Trotsky—who promoted the idea of "permanent revolution"—by presenting the latter as a defeatist with little faith in Russian workers' abilities to construct socialism.
Stalin viewed nations as contingent entities which were formed by capitalism and could merge into others. Ultimately, he believed that all nations would merge into a single, global human community, and regarded all nations as inherently equal. In his work, he stated that "the right of secession" should be offered to the ethnic minorities of the Russian Empire, but that they should not be encouraged to take that option. He was of the view that if they became fully autonomous, then they would end up being controlled by the most reactionary elements of their community; as an example, he cited the largely illiterate Tatars, whom he claimed would end up dominated by their mullahs. Stalin argued that the Jews possessed a "national character" but were not a "nation" and were thus unassimilable. He argued that Jewish nationalism, particularly Zionism, was hostile to socialism. According to Khlevniuk, Stalin reconciled Marxism with great-power imperialism and therefore expansion of the empire makes him a worthy to the Russian tsars. Service argued that Stalin's Marxism was imbued with a great deal of Russian nationalism. According to Montefiore, Stalin's embrace of the Russian nation was pragmatic, as the Russians were the core of the population of the USSR; it was not a rejection of his Georgian origins. Stalin's push for Soviet westward expansion into eastern Europe resulted in accusations of Russian imperialism.
Ethnically Georgian, Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language, and did not begin learning Russian until the age of eight or nine. It has been argued that his ancestry was Ossetian, because his genetic haplotype (G2a-Z6653) is considered typical of the Ossetians, but he never acknowledged an Ossetian identity. He remained proud of his Georgian identity, and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian. According to Montefiore, despite Stalin's affinity for Russia and Russians, he remained profoundly Georgian in his lifestyle and personality. Some of Stalin's colleagues described him as "Asiatic", and he supposedly once told a Japanese journalist that "I am not a European man, but an Asian, a Russified Georgian". Service also noted that Stalin "would never be Russian", could not credibly pass as one, and never tried to pretend that he was. Montefiore was of the view that "after 1917, [Stalin] became quadri-national: Georgian by nationality, Russian by loyalty, internationalist by ideology, Soviet by citizenship."
Stalin had a soft voice, and when speaking Russian did so slowly, carefully choosing his phrasing. In private he often used coarse language and profanity, although avoided doing so in public. Described as a poor orator, according to Volkogonov, Stalin's speaking style was "simple and clear, without flights of fancy, catchy phrases or platform histrionics". He rarely spoke before large audiences and preferred to express himself in written form. His writing style was similar, being characterised by its simplicity, clarity, and conciseness. Throughout his life, he used various nicknames and pseudonyms, including "Koba", "Soselo", and "Ivanov", adopting "Stalin" in 1912; it was based on the Russian word for "steel" and has often been translated as "Man of Steel".
In adulthood, Stalin measured 1.70 m (5 feet 7 inches). His mustached face was pock-marked from smallpox during childhood; this was airbrushed from published photographs. He was born with a webbed left foot, and his left arm had been permanently injured in childhood which left it shorter than his right and lacking in flexibility, which was probably the result of being hit, at the age of 12, by a horse-drawn carriage.
During his youth, Stalin cultivated a scruffy appearance in rejection of middle-class aesthetic values. By 1907, he grew his hair long and often wore a beard; for clothing, he often wore a traditional Georgian chokha or a red satin shirt with a grey coat and black fedora. From mid-1918 until his death he favoured military-style clothing, in particular long black boots, light-coloured collarless tunics, and a gun. He was a lifelong smoker, who smoked both a pipe and cigarettes. Publicly at least, Stalin had a minimalist lust and lived relatively plainly, with simple and inexpensive clothing and furniture; his dominant interest was the accumulation of power.
As leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin typically awoke around 11 am, with lunch being served between 3 and 5 pm and dinner no earlier than 9 pm; he then worked late into the evening. He often dined with other Politburo members and their families. As leader, he rarely left Moscow unless to go to one of his dachas for holiday; he disliked travel, and refused to travel by plane. His choice of favoured holiday house changed over the years, although he holidayed in southern parts of the USSR every year from 1925 to 1936 and again from 1945 to 1951. Along with other senior figures, he had a dacha at Zubalova, 35 km outside Moscow, although ceased using it after Nadezhda's 1932 suicide. After 1932, he favoured holidays in Abkhazia, being a friend of its leader, Nestor Lakoba. In 1934, his new Kuntsevo Dacha was built; 9 km from the Kremlin, it became his primary residence. In 1935, he began using a new dacha provided for him by Lakoba at Novy Afon; in 1936, he had the Kholodnaya Rechka dacha built on the Abkhazian coast, designed by Miron Merzhanov.
Trotsky and several other Soviet figures promoted the idea that Stalin was a mediocrity. This gained widespread acceptance outside the Soviet Union during his lifetime but was misleading. According to Montefiore, "it is clear from hostile and friendly witnesses alike that Stalin was always exceptional, even from childhood". Stalin had a complex mind, great self-control, and an excellent memory. He was a hard worker, and displayed a keen desire to learn; when in power, he scrutinised many details of Soviet life, from film scripts to architectural plans and military hardware. According to Volkogonov, "Stalin's private life and working life were one and the same"; he did not take days off from political activities. Although, Bazhanov described Stalin as having little education and making limited contributions to various matters of state which were discussed at Politburo sessions. Similarly, historian Robert William Davies viewed Stalin as being liable to fall under the sway of persuasive charlatans such as the pseudo-scientific, agronomist Trofim Lysenko due in part to his lack of education. According to Lenin's sister, Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova, Lenin stated that "Stalin is not intelligent at all", but "valued Stalin as a practical type".
Stalin could play different roles to different audiences, and was adept at deception, often deceiving others as to his true motives and aims. According to Bolshevik historian, Vladimir Nevsky, Stalin was appointed the General Secretary because he used false rumours to convince Lenin that the party faced a split. Nevsky also claimed that Lenin would later deeply regret trusting Stalin and strove to correct this mistake with his "Testament". Several historians have seen it as appropriate to follow Lazar Kaganovich's description of there being "several Stalins" as a means of understanding his multi-faceted personality. He was a good organiser, with a strategic mind, and judged others according to their inner strength, practicality, and cleverness. He acknowledged that he could be rude and insulting, but he rarely raised his voice in anger; as his health deteriorated in later life he became increasingly unpredictable and bad-tempered. Despite his tough-talking attitude, he could be very charming; when relaxed, he cracked jokes and mimicked others. Montefiore suggested that this charm was "the foundation of Stalin's power in the Party". According to Service he was "decisive, competent, confident, and ambitious".
Stalin was ruthless, temperamentally cruel, and had a propensity for violence high even among the Bolsheviks. He lacked compassion, something Volkogonov suggested might have been accentuated by his many years in prison and exile, although he was capable of acts of kindness to strangers, even amid the Great Terror. He was capable of self-righteous indignation, and was resentful, and vindictive, holding on to grudges for many years. By the 1920s, he was also suspicious and conspiratorial, prone to believing that people were plotting against him and that there were vast international conspiracies behind acts of dissent. He never attended torture sessions or executions, although Service thought Stalin "derived deep satisfaction" from degrading and humiliating people and enjoyed keeping even close associates in a state of "unrelieved fear". Montefiore thought Stalin's brutality marked him out as a "natural extremist"; Service suggested he had tendencies toward a paranoid and sociopathic personality disorder. According to historian Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin wasn't a psychopath. He was instead an emotionally intelligent and feeling intellectual. Other historians linked his brutality not to any personality trait, but to his unwavering commitment to the survival of the Soviet Union and the international Marxist–Leninist cause. Conversely, historian E.A. Rees believed that there was a strong argument in the case of Stalin "that it was psychopathy that breed tyranny". Rees cited a diagnosis performed by neuropathologist Vladimir Bekhterev on Stalin in 1927 and who had described him as a "typical case of severe paranoia".
Keenly interested in the arts, Stalin admired artistic talent. He protected several Soviet writers from arrest and prosecution, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, even when their work was labelled harmful to his regime. He enjoyed listening to classical music, owning around 2,700 records, and frequently attending the Bolshoi Theatre during the 1930s and 1940s. His taste in music and theatre was conservative, favouring classical drama, opera, and ballet over what he dismissed as experimental "formalism". He also favoured classical forms in the visual arts, disliking avant-garde styles like cubism and futurism. He was a voracious reader and kept a personal library of over 20,000 books. Little of this was fiction, although he could cite passages from Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Nekrasov, and Walt Whitman by heart. Stalin's favourite subject was history, closely followed by Marxist theory and then fiction. Stalin knew Marxist theory well and according to Bullock was an "effective debater" who would quote Marx and Engels in his arguments. He favoured historical studies, keeping up with debates in the study of Russian, Mesopotamian, ancient Roman, and Byzantine history. He was very interested in the reigns of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. An autodidact, he claimed to read as many as 500 pages a day, with Montefiore regarding him as an intellectual. Lenin was his favourite author but he also read, and sometimes appreciated, a great deal of writing by Leon Trotsky and other archenemies. Like all Bolshevik leaders, Stalin believed that reading could help transform not just people's ideas and consciousness, but human nature itself. Stalin also enjoyed watching films late at night at cinemas installed in the Kremlin and his dachas. He liked the Western genre, although his favourite films were Volga Volga and Circus (both directed by Grigori Alexandrov and starring Lyubov Orlova).
Stalin was a keen and accomplished billiards player, and collected watches. He also enjoyed practical jokes; for instance, he would place a tomato on the chairs of Politburo members and wait for them to sit on it. When at social events, he encouraged singing, as well as alcohol consumption; he hoped that others would drunkenly reveal their secrets to him. As an infant, Stalin displayed a love of flowers, and later in life he became a keen gardener. His Volynskoe suburb had a 20-hectare (50-acre) park, with Stalin devoting much attention to its agricultural activities.
Stalin publicly condemned anti-Semitism, although he was repeatedly accused of it. People who knew him, such as Khrushchev, suggested he long harboured negative sentiments toward Jews, and it has been argued that anti-Semitic trends in his policies were further fuelled by Stalin's struggle against Trotsky. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev claimed that Stalin encouraged him to incite anti-Semitism in Ukraine, allegedly telling him that "the good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews." In 1946, Stalin allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy". Conquest stated that although Stalin had Jewish associates, he promoted anti-Semitism. Service cautioned that there was "no irrefutable evidence" of anti-Semitism in Stalin's published work, although his private statements and public actions were "undeniably reminiscent of crude antagonism towards Jews"; he added that throughout Stalin's lifetime, the Georgian "would be the friend, associate or leader of countless individual Jews". Additionally, according to Beria, Stalin had affairs with several Jewish women.
His ability to assume absolute power has remained a subject of historical debate. Some historians have attributed his success to his personal qualities. Contrarily, certain political theorists such as Trotsky have emphasised the role of external conditions in facilitating the growth of a Soviet bureaucracy which served as a power base for Stalin. Other historians have regarded the premature deaths of prominent Bolsheviks such as Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov to have been key factors in his elevation to the position of leadership in the Soviet Union. In part, because Sverdlov served as the original chairman of the party secretariat and was considered a natural candidate for the position of General Secretary. Historian Peter Kenez believed that Trotsky could probably have removed Stalin with the use of Lenin's testament, but he acquiesced to the collective decision not to publish the document.
Friendship was important to Stalin, and he used it to gain and maintain power. Kotkin observed that Stalin "generally gravitated to people like himself: parvenu intelligentsia of humble background". He gave nicknames to his favourites, for instance referring to Yezhov as "my blackberry". Stalin was sociable and enjoyed a joke. According to Montefiore, Stalin's friendships "meandered between love, admiration, and venomous jealousy". While head of the Soviet Union he remained in contact with many of his old friends in Georgia, sending them letters and gifts of money.
Stalin was not a womaniser. According to Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's one-time secretary, "Women didn't interest him. His own woman [Alliluyeva] was enough for him, and he paid scant attention to her." However, Montefiore noted that in his early life Stalin "rarely seems to have been without a girlfriend". Montefiore described Stalin's favoured types as "young, malleable teenagers or buxom peasant women", who would be supportive and unchallenging toward him. According to Service, Stalin "regarded women as a resource for sexual gratification and domestic comfort". Stalin married twice and had several children.
Stalin married his first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, in 1906. According to Montefiore, theirs was "a true love match"; Volkogonov suggested that she was "probably the one human being he had really loved". When she died, Stalin allegedly said: "This creature softened my heart of stone." However, Russian historian Anton Antonov-Ovseenko wrote that Stalin was physically abusive to her in Baku. They had a son, Yakov, who often frustrated and annoyed Stalin. Yakov had a daughter, Galina, before fighting for the Red Army in the Second World War. He was captured by the German Army and then committed suicide.
In 1914, Stalin, circa age 35, had a relationship with Lidia Pereprygina, then 14-years-old, who subsequently became pregnant with Stalin's child. Circa December 1914, Pereprygia gave birth to Stalin's child, although the infant died soon after. In 1916, Lidia – now 15-years-old – was pregnant again. She gave birth to a son, named Alexander Davydov, in around April 1917. Stalin, then absent, later came to know of the child's existence but showed no apparent interest in him.
Stalin's second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva; theirs was not an easy relationship, and they often fought. They had two biological children—a son, Vasily, and a daughter, Svetlana, and adopted another son, Artyom Sergeev, in 1921. It is unclear if Stalin ever had a mistress during or after his marriage to Alliluyeva. In any event, she suspected that he was unfaithful with other women, and committed suicide in 1932. Stalin regarded Vasily as spoiled and often chastised his behaviour; as Stalin's son, Vasily nevertheless was swiftly promoted through the ranks of the Red Army and allowed a lavish lifestyle. Conversely, Stalin had an affectionate relationship with Svetlana during her childhood, and was also very fond of Artyom. In later life, he disapproved of Svetlana's various suitors and husbands, putting a strain on his relationship with her. After the Second World War, he made little time for his children and his family played a decreasingly important role in his life. After Stalin's death, Svetlana changed her surname from Stalin to Alliluyeva, and defected to the U.S.
After Nadezhda's death, Stalin became increasingly close to his sister-in-law Zhenya Alliluyeva; Montefiore believed that they were lovers. There are unproven rumours that from 1934 onward he had a relationship with his housekeeper Valentina Istomina. Montefiore also claimed that Stalin had at least two illegitimate children, although he never recognised them as being his. One of them, Konstantin Kuzakov, later taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, but never met Stalin. The other, Alexander, was the son of Lidia Pereprygina; he was raised as the son of a peasant fisherman and the Soviet authorities made him swear never to reveal that Stalin was his biological father. Stalin was also complicit with the persecution of several relatives of his former wives such as Maria and Alexander Svanidze who were arrested and eliminated during the Great Purge.
The historian Robert Conquest stated that Stalin perhaps "determined the course of the twentieth century" more than any other individual. Biographers like Service and Volkogonov have considered him an outstanding and exceptional politician; Montefiore labelled Stalin as "that rare combination: both 'intellectual' and killer", a man who was "the ultimate politician" and "the most elusive and fascinating of the twentieth-century titans". According to historian Kevin McDermott, interpretations of Stalin range from "the sycophantic and adulatory to the vitriolic and condemnatory." For most Westerners and anti-communist Russians, he is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a mass murderer; for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder.
According to Service, Stalin strengthened and stabilised the Soviet Union. Service suggested that the country might have collapsed long before 1991 without Stalin. In under three decades, Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a major industrial world power, one which could "claim impressive achievements" in terms of urbanisation, military strength, education and Soviet pride. Under his rule, the average Soviet life expectancy grew due to improved living conditions, nutrition and medical care as mortality rates also declined. Although millions of Soviet citizens despised him, support for Stalin was nevertheless widespread throughout Soviet society. Conversely, the historian Vadim Rogovin argued that the Great Terror which had gained traction in 1937 "caused losses to the communist movement both in the USSR and throughout the world from which the movement has not recovered to this very day". Similarly, Khrushchev believed his widespread purges of the "most advanced nucleus of people" among the Old Bolsheviks and leading figures in the military and scientific fields had "undoubtedly" weakened the nation.
Stalin's necessity for the Soviet Union's economic development has been questioned, and it has been argued that Stalin's policies from 1928 onwards may have only been a limiting factor. Stalin's Soviet Union has been characterised as a totalitarian state, with Stalin its authoritarian leader. Various biographers have described him as a dictator, an autocrat, or accused him of practising Caesarism. Montefiore argued that while Stalin initially ruled as part of a Communist Party oligarchy, the Soviet government transformed from this oligarchy into a personal dictatorship in 1934, with Stalin only becoming "absolute dictator" between March and June 1937, when senior military and NKVD figures were eliminated. According to Kotkin, Stalin "built a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship." In both the Soviet Union and elsewhere he came to be portrayed as an "Oriental despot". Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as "one of the most powerful figures in human history." McDermott stated that Stalin had "concentrated unprecedented political authority in his hands." Service stated that Stalin "had come closer to personal despotism than almost any monarch in history" by the late 1930s.
McDermott nevertheless cautioned against "over-simplistic stereotypes"—promoted in the fiction of writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and Anatoly Rybakov—that portrayed Stalin as an omnipotent and omnipresent tyrant who controlled every aspect of Soviet life through repression and totalitarianism. Service similarly warned of the portrayal of Stalin as an "unimpeded despot", noting that "powerful though he was, his powers were not limitless", and his rule depended on his willingness to conserve the Soviet structure he had inherited. Kotkin observed that Stalin's ability to remain in power relied on him having a majority in the Politburo at all times. Khlevniuk noted that at various points, particularly when Stalin was old and frail, there were "periodic manifestations" in which the party oligarchy threatened his autocratic control. Stalin denied to foreign visitors that he was a dictator, stating that those who labelled him such did not understand the Soviet governance structure.
A vast literature devoted to Stalin has been produced. During Stalin's lifetime, his approved biographies were largely hagiographic in content. Stalin ensured that these works gave very little attention to his early life, particularly because he did not wish to emphasise his Georgian origins in a state numerically dominated by Russians. Since his death many more biographies have been written, although until the 1980s these relied largely on the same sources of information. Under Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet administration various previously classified files on Stalin's life were made available to historians, at which point Stalin became "one of the most urgent and vital issues on the public agenda" in the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Union in 1991, the rest of the archives were opened to historians, resulting in much new information about Stalin coming to light, and producing a flood of new research.
Leninists remain divided in their views on Stalin; some view him as Lenin's authentic successor, while others believe he betrayed Lenin's ideas by deviating from them. The socio-economic nature of Stalin's Soviet Union has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of state socialism, state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, or a totally unique mode of production. Socialist writers like Volkogonov have acknowledged that Stalin's actions damaged "the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution".
With a high number of excess deaths occurring under his rule, Stalin has been labelled "one of the most notorious figures in history". These deaths occurred as a result of collectivisation, famine, terror campaigns, disease, war and mortality rates in the Gulag. As the majority of excess deaths under Stalin were not direct killings, the exact number of victims of Stalinism is difficult to calculate due to lack of consensus among scholars on which deaths can be attributed to the regime. Stalin has also been accused of genocide in the cases of forced population transfer of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and the famine in Ukraine.
Official records reveal 799,455 documented executions in the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953; 681,692 of these were carried out between 1937 and 1938, the years of the Great Purge. According to Michael Ellman, the best modern estimate for the number of repression deaths during the Great Purge is 950,000–1.2 million, which includes executions, deaths in detention, or soon after their release. In addition, while archival data shows that 1,053,829 perished in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953, the current historical consensus is that of the 18 million people who passed through the Gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7 million died as a result of their incarceration. Historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft and Michael Ellman attribute roughly 3 million deaths to the Stalinist regime, including executions and deaths from criminal negligence. Wheatcroft and historian R. W. Davies estimate famine deaths at 5.5–6.5 million while scholar Steven Rosefielde gives a number of 8.7 million.
In 2011, historian Timothy D. Snyder summarised modern data made after the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s and states that Stalin's regime was responsible for 9 million deaths, with 6 million of these being deliberate killings. He further states that estimates of 20 million or above, which were made before access to the archives, are not credible. According to Rogovin, 80–90% of the members of the Central Committee elected at the Sixth through to the Seventeenth Congresses were physically annihilated.
Shortly after his death, the Soviet Union went through a period of de-Stalinization. Malenkov denounced the Stalin personality cult, which was subsequently criticised in Pravda. In 1956, Khrushchev gave his "Secret Speech", titled "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", to a closed session of the Party's 20th Congress. There, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for both his mass repression and his personality cult. He repeated these denunciations at the 22nd Party Congress in October 1962. In October 1961, Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, the location marked by a bust. Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.
Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation process in Soviet society ended when he was replaced as leader by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964; the latter introduced a level of re-Stalinisation within the Soviet Union. In 1969 and again in 1979, plans were proposed for a full rehabilitation of Stalin's legacy but on both occasions were halted due to fears of damaging the USSR's public image. Gorbachev saw the total denunciation of Stalin as necessary for the regeneration of Soviet society. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the first president of the new Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, continued Gorbachev's denunciation of Stalin but added to it a denunciation of Lenin. His successor Vladimir Putin did not seek to rehabilitate Stalin but emphasised the celebration of Soviet achievements under Stalin's leadership rather than the Stalinist repressions. In October 2017, Putin opened the Wall of Grief memorial in Moscow, noting that the "terrible past" would neither be "justified by anything" nor "erased from the national memory". In a 2017 interview, Putin added that while "we should not forget the horrors of Stalinism", the excessive demonization of Stalin "is a means to attack [the] Soviet Union and Russia". In recent years, the government and general public of Russia has been accused of rehabilitating Stalin.
Amid the social and economic turmoil of the post-Soviet period, many Russians viewed Stalin as having overseen an era of order, predictability, and pride. He remains a revered figure among many Russian nationalists, who feel nostalgic about the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, and he is regularly invoked approvingly within both Russia's far-left and far-right.
Polling by the Levada Center suggest Stalin's popularity has grown since 2015, with 46% of Russians expressing a favourable view of him in 2017 and 51% in 2019. In a 2021 poll, a record 70% of Russians indicated they had a mostly/very favourable view of Stalin. The same year, a survey by the Center showed that Joseph Stalin was named by 39% of Russians as the "most outstanding national figure of all time" and, while nobody received an absolute majority, Stalin was very clearly in first place, followed by another Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin with 30% and Russian poet Alexander Pushkin with 23%. At the same time, there was a growth in pro-Stalinist literature in Russia, much relying upon the misrepresentation or fabrication of source material. In this literature, Stalin's repressions are regarded either as a necessary measure to defeat "enemies of the people" or the result of lower-level officials acting without Stalin's knowledge.
The only other part of the former Soviet Union other than Russia where admiration for Stalin has remained consistently widespread is Georgia, although Georgian attitudes have been very divided. A number of Georgians resent criticism of Stalin, the most famous figure from their nation's modern history. A 2013 survey by Tbilisi State University found 45% of Georgians expressing "a positive attitude" to him. A 2017 Pew Research survey had 57% of Georgians saying he played a positive role in history, compared to 18% of those expressing the same for Mikhail Gorbachev.
Some positive sentiment can also be found elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. A 2012 survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found 38% of Armenians concurring that their country "will always have need of a leader like Stalin". In early 2010, a new monument to Stalin was erected in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. In December 2010, unknown persons decapitated it and it was destroyed in a bomb attack in 2011. In a 2016 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll, 38% of respondents had a negative attitude to Stalin, 26% a neutral one and 17% a positive, with 19% refusing to answer. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution and created a one-party state under the new Communist Party in 1917, Stalin joined its governing Politburo. Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924. Under Stalin, socialism in one country became a central tenet of the party's ideology. As a result of his Five-Year Plans, the country underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a centralised command economy. Severe disruptions to food production contributed to the famine of 1930–33, including the Asharshylyk in Kazakhstan and the Holodomor in Ukraine. To eradicate accused \"enemies of the working class\", Stalin instituted the Great Purge, in which over a million were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. By 1937, he had absolute control over the party and government.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Stalin promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, his regime signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial catastrophes, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. Amid the war, the Soviets annexed the Baltic states and Bessarabia and North Bukovina, subsequently establishing Soviet-aligned governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe and in parts of East Asia. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as global superpowers and entered a period of tension, the Cold War. Stalin presided over the Soviet post-war reconstruction and its development of an atomic bomb in 1949. During these years, the country experienced another major famine and an antisemitic campaign that culminated in the doctors' plot. After Stalin's death in 1953, he was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who subsequently denounced his rule and initiated the de-Stalinisation of Soviet society.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Widely considered to be one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of the working class and socialism. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a leading world power. Conversely, his totalitarian regime has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repression, ethnic cleansing, wide-scale deportation, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Stalin was born in Georgia in the town of Gori, then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire and home to a mix of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Russians, and Jews. He was born on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 and baptised on 29 December. His birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, and he was nicknamed \"Soso\", a diminutive of \"Ioseb\". His parents were Besarion Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze. He was their only child to survive past infancy.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Besarion was a cobbler who was employed in a workshop owned by another man; it was initially a financial success but later fell into decline, and the family found itself living in poverty. Besarion became an alcoholic and drunkenly beat his wife and son. Ekaterine and Stalin left the home by 1883 and began a wandering life, moving through nine different rented rooms over the next decade. In 1886, they moved into the house of a family friend, Father Christopher Charkviani. Ekaterine worked as a house cleaner and launderer and was determined to send her son to school. In September 1888, Stalin enrolled at the Orthodox Gori Church School, a place secured by Charkviani. Although he got into many fights, Stalin excelled academically, displaying talent in painting and drama classes, writing his own poetry, and singing as a choirboy. Stalin faced several severe health problems: An 1884 smallpox infection left him with facial scars; and at age 12 he was seriously injured when he was hit by a phaeton, probably the cause of a lifelong disability in his left arm.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In August 1894, Stalin enrolled in the Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis, enabled by a scholarship that allowed him to study at a reduced rate. He joined 600 trainee priests who boarded there, and he achieved high grades. He continued writing poetry; five of his poems, on themes such as nature, land and patriotism, were published under the pseudonym of \"Soselo\" in Ilia Chavchavadze's newspaper Iveria (Georgia). According to Stalin's biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore, they became \"minor Georgian classics\" and were included in various anthologies of Georgian poetry over the coming years. As he grew older, Stalin lost interest in priestly studies, his grades dropped, and he was repeatedly confined to a cell for his rebellious behaviour. The seminary's journal noted that he declared himself an atheist, stalked out of prayers and refused to doff his hat to monks.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Stalin joined a forbidden book club at the school; he was particularly influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is To Be Done? Another influential text was Alexander Kazbegi's The Patricide, with Stalin adopting the nickname \"Koba\" from that of the book's bandit protagonist. The pseudonym may also have been a tribute to his wealthy benefactor, Yakobi \"Koba\" Egnatashvili, who paid for his schooling at the Tiflis seminary. (\"Koba\" is the Georgian diminutive of Yakobi, or Jacob, and Stalin later named his first-born son in Egnatashvili's honour.) He also read Das Kapital, the 1867 book by German sociological theorist Karl Marx. Stalin devoted himself to Marx's socio-political theory, Marxism, which was then on the rise in Georgia, one of various forms of socialism opposed to the Tsarist empire's authorities. At night, he attended secret workers' meetings and was introduced to Silibistro \"Silva\" Jibladze, the Marxist founder of Mesame Dasi (\"Third Group\"), a Georgian socialist group. Stalin left the seminary in April 1899 and never returned.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In October 1899, Stalin began work as a meteorologist at the Tiflis observatory. He had a light workload and therefore had plenty of time for revolutionary activity. He attracted a group of supporters through his classes in socialist theory and co-organised a secret workers' mass meeting for May Day 1900, at which he successfully encouraged many of the men to take strike action. By this point, the empire's secret police, the Okhrana, were aware of Stalin's activities in Tiflis' revolutionary milieu. They attempted to arrest him in March 1901, but he escaped and went into hiding, living off the donations of friends and sympathisers. Remaining underground, he helped plan a demonstration for May Day 1901, in which 3,000 marchers clashed with the authorities. He continued to evade arrest by using aliases and sleeping in different apartments. In November 1901, he was elected to the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Marxist party founded in 1898.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "That month, Stalin travelled to the port city of Batumi. His militant rhetoric proved divisive among the city's Marxists, some of whom suspected that he might be an agent provocateur working for the government. He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes. After several strike leaders were arrested, he co-organised a mass public demonstration which led to the storming of the prison; troops fired upon the demonstrators, 13 of whom were killed. Stalin organised another mass demonstration on the day of their funeral, before being arrested in April 1902. Held first in Batumi Prison and then Kutaisi Prison, in mid-1903 he was sentenced to three years of exile in eastern Siberia.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Stalin left Batumi in October, arriving at the small Siberian town of Novaya Uda in late November 1903. There, he lived in a two-room peasant's house, sleeping in the building's larder. He made two escape attempts: On the first, he made it to Balagansk before returning due to frostbite. His second attempt, in January 1904, was successful and he made it to Tiflis. There, he co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola (\"Proletarian Struggle\"), with Filipp Makharadze. He called for the Georgian Marxist movement to split from its Russian counterpart, resulting in several RSDLP members accusing him of holding views contrary to the ethos of Marxist internationalism and calling for his expulsion from the party; he soon recanted his opinions. During his exile, the RSDLP had split between Vladimir Lenin's \"Bolsheviks\" and Julius Martov's \"Mensheviks\". Stalin detested many of the Mensheviks in Georgia and aligned himself with the Bolsheviks. Although he established a Bolshevik stronghold in the mining town of Chiatura, Bolshevism remained a minority force in the Menshevik-dominated Georgian revolutionary scene.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In January 1905, government troops massacred protesters in Saint Petersburg. Unrest soon spread across the Russian Empire in what came to be known as the Revolution of 1905. Georgia was particularly affected. Stalin was in Baku in February when ethnic violence broke out between Armenians and Azeris; at least 2,000 were killed. He publicly lambasted the \"pogroms against Jews and Armenians\" as being part of Tsar Nicholas II's attempts to \"buttress his despicable throne\". Stalin formed a Bolshevik Battle Squad which he used to try to keep Baku's warring ethnic factions apart; he also used the unrest as a cover for stealing printing equipment. Amid the growing violence throughout Georgia he formed further Battle Squads, with the Mensheviks doing the same. Stalin's squads disarmed local police and troops, raided government arsenals, and raised funds through protection rackets on large local businesses and mines. They launched attacks on the government's Cossack troops and pro-Tsarist Black Hundreds, co-ordinating some of their operations with the Menshevik militia.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In November 1905, the Georgian Bolsheviks elected Stalin as one of their delegates to a Bolshevik conference in Saint Petersburg. On arrival, he met Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, who informed him that the venue had been moved to Tampere in the Grand Duchy of Finland. At the conference Stalin met Lenin for the first time. Although Stalin held Lenin in deep respect, he was vocal in his disagreement with Lenin's view that the Bolsheviks should field candidates for the forthcoming election to the State Duma; Stalin saw the parliamentary process as a waste of time. In April 1906, Stalin attended the RSDLP Fourth Congress in Stockholm; this was his first trip outside the Russian Empire. At the conference, the RSDLP — then led by its Menshevik majority — agreed that it would not raise funds using armed robbery. Lenin and Stalin disagreed with this decision and later privately discussed how they could continue the robberies for the Bolshevik cause.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Stalin married Kato Svanidze in an Orthodox church ceremony at Senaki in July 1906. In March 1907 she bore a son, Yakov. By that year — according to the historian Robert Service — Stalin had established himself as \"Georgia's leading Bolshevik\". He attended the Fifth RSDLP Congress, held at the Brotherhood Church in London in May–June 1907. After returning to Tiflis, Stalin organised the robbing of a large delivery of money to the Imperial Bank in June 1907. His gang ambushed the armed convoy in Erivansky Square with gunfire and home-made bombs. Around 40 people were killed, but all of his gang escaped alive. After the heist, Stalin settled in Baku with his wife and son. There, Mensheviks confronted Stalin about the robbery and voted to expel him from the RSDLP, but he took no notice of them.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In Baku, Stalin secured Bolshevik domination of the local RSDLP branch and edited two Bolshevik newspapers, Bakinsky Proletary and Gudok (\"Whistle\"). In August 1907, he attended the Seventh Congress of the Second International — an international socialist organisation — in Stuttgart, German Empire. In November 1907, his wife died of typhus, and he left his son with her family in Tiflis. In Baku he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit, which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. They also kidnapped the children of several wealthy figures to extract ransom money. In early 1908, he travelled to the Swiss city of Geneva to meet with Lenin and the prominent Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, although the latter exasperated him.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In March 1908, Stalin was arrested and interned in Bailov Prison in Baku. There he led the imprisoned Bolsheviks, organised discussion groups, and ordered the killing of suspected informants. He was eventually sentenced to two years exile in the village of Solvychegodsk, Vologda Province, arriving there in February 1909. In June, he escaped the village and made it to Kotlas disguised as a woman and from there to Saint Petersburg. In March 1910, he was arrested again and sent back to Solvychegodsk. There he had affairs with at least two women; his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, later gave birth to his second son, Konstantin. In June 1911, Stalin was given permission to move to Vologda, where he stayed for two months, having a relationship with Pelageya Onufrieva. He escaped to Saint Petersburg, where he was arrested in September 1911 and sentenced to a further three-year exile in Vologda.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In January 1912, while Stalin was in exile, the first Bolshevik Central Committee was elected at the Prague Conference. Shortly after the conference, Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev decided to co-opt Stalin to the committee. Still in Vologda, Stalin agreed, remaining a Central Committee member for the rest of his life. Lenin believed that Stalin, as a Georgian, would help secure support for the Bolsheviks from the empire's minority ethnicities. In February 1912, Stalin again escaped to Saint Petersburg, tasked with converting the Bolshevik weekly newspaper, Zvezda (\"Star\") into a daily, Pravda (\"Truth\"). The new newspaper was launched in April 1912, although Stalin's role as editor was kept secret.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In May 1912, he was arrested again and imprisoned in the Shpalerhy Prison, before being sentenced to three years exile in Siberia. In July, he arrived at the Siberian village of Narym, where he shared a room with a fellow Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov. After two months, Stalin and Sverdlov escaped back to Saint Petersburg. During a brief period back in Tiflis, Stalin and the Outfit planned the ambush of a mail coach, during which most of the group — although not Stalin — were apprehended by the authorities. Stalin returned to Saint Petersburg, where he continued editing and writing articles for Pravda.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After the October 1912 Duma elections, where six Bolsheviks and six Mensheviks were elected, Stalin wrote articles calling for reconciliation between the two Marxist factions, for which Lenin criticised him. In late 1912, Stalin twice crossed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire to visit Lenin in Cracow, eventually bowing to Lenin's opposition to reunification with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Stalin travelled to Vienna, where he researched the \"national question\" of how the Bolsheviks should deal with the Russian Empire's national and ethnic minorities. Lenin, who encouraged Stalin to write an article on the subject, wanted to attract those groups to the Bolshevik cause by offering them the right of secession from the Russian state, but also hoped they would remain part of a future Bolshevik-governed Russia.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Stalin's article Marxism and the National Question was first published in the March, April, and May 1913 issues of the Bolshevik journal Prosveshcheniye; Lenin was pleased with it. According to Montefiore, this was \"Stalin's most famous work\". The article was published under the pseudonym \"K. Stalin\", a name he had used since 1912. Derived from the Russian word for steel (stal), this has been translated as \"Man of Steel\"; Stalin may have intended it to imitate Lenin's pseudonym. Stalin retained the name for the rest of his life, possibly because it was used on the article that established his reputation among the Bolsheviks.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In February 1913, Stalin was arrested while back in Saint Petersburg. He was sentenced to four years exile in Turukhansk, a remote part of Siberia from which escape was particularly difficult. In August, he arrived in the village of Monastyrskoe, although after four weeks was relocated to the hamlet of Kostino. In March 1914, concerned over a potential escape attempt, the authorities moved Stalin to the hamlet of Kureika on the edge of the Arctic Circle. In the hamlet, Stalin had a relationship with Lidia Pereprygina, who was fourteen at the time but within the legal age of consent in Tsarist Russia. In or about December 1914, their child was born but the infant soon died. Their second child, Alexander, was born circa April 1917.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In Kureika, Stalin lived among the indigenous Tunguses and Ostyak peoples, and spent much of his time fishing.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "While Stalin was in exile, Russia entered the First World War, and in October 1916 Stalin and other exiled Bolsheviks were conscripted into the Russian Army, leaving for Monastyrskoe. They arrived in Krasnoyarsk in February 1917, where a medical examiner ruled Stalin unfit for military service because of his crippled arm. Stalin was required to serve four more months of his exile, and he successfully requested that he serve it in nearby Achinsk. Stalin was in the city when the February Revolution took place; uprisings broke out in Petrograd — as Saint Petersburg had been renamed — and Tsar Nicholas II abdicated to escape being violently overthrown. The Russian Empire became a de facto republic, headed by a Provisional Government dominated by liberals. In a celebratory mood, Stalin travelled by train to Petrograd in March. There, Stalin and a fellow Bolshevik Lev Kamenev assumed control of Pravda, and Stalin was appointed the Bolshevik representative to the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, an influential council of the city's workers. In April, Stalin came third in the Bolshevik elections for the party's Central Committee; Lenin came first and Zinoviev came second. This reflected his senior standing in the party at the time.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants.The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "— Stalin's editorial in Pravda, October 1917",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Stalin helped organise the July Days uprising, an armed display of strength by Bolshevik supporters. After the demonstration was suppressed, the Provisional Government initiated a crackdown on the Bolsheviks, raiding Pravda. During this raid, Stalin smuggled Lenin out of the newspaper's office and took charge of the Bolshevik leader's safety, moving him between Petrograd safe houses before smuggling him to Razliv. In Lenin's absence, Stalin continued editing Pravda and served as acting leader of the Bolsheviks, overseeing the party's Sixth Congress, which was held covertly. Lenin began calling for the Bolsheviks to seize power by toppling the Provisional Government in a coup d'état. Stalin and a fellow senior Bolshevik Leon Trotsky both endorsed Lenin's plan of action, but it was initially opposed by Kamenev and other party members. Lenin returned to Petrograd and secured a majority in favour of a coup at a meeting of the Central Committee on 10 October.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "On 24 October, police raided the Bolshevik newspaper offices, smashing machinery and presses; Stalin salvaged some of this equipment to continue his activities. In the early hours of 25 October, Stalin joined Lenin in a Central Committee meeting in the Smolny Institute, from where the Bolshevik coup — the October Revolution — was directed. Bolshevik militia seized Petrograd's electric power station, main post office, state bank, telephone exchange, and several bridges. A Bolshevik-controlled ship, the Aurora, opened fire on the Winter Palace; the Provisional Government's assembled delegates surrendered and were arrested by the Bolsheviks. Although he had been tasked with briefing the Bolshevik delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets about the developing situation, Stalin's role in the coup had not been publicly visible. Trotsky and other later Bolshevik opponents of Stalin used this as evidence that his role in the coup had been insignificant, although later historians reject this. According to the historian Oleg Khlevniuk, Stalin \"filled an important role [in the October Revolution]... as a senior Bolshevik, member of the party's Central Committee, and editor of its main newspaper\"; the historian Stephen Kotkin similarly noted that Stalin had been \"in the thick of events\" in the build-up to the coup.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On 26 October 1917, Lenin declared himself chairman of a new government, the Council of People's Commissars (\"Sovnarkom\"). Stalin backed Lenin's decision not to form a coalition with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Party, although they did form a coalition government with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Stalin became part of an informal foursome leading the government, alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Sverdlov; of these, Sverdlov was regularly absent and died in March 1919. Stalin's office was based near to Lenin's in the Smolny Institute, and he and Trotsky were the only individuals allowed access to Lenin's study without an appointment. Although not so publicly well known as Lenin or Trotsky, Stalin's importance among the Bolsheviks grew. He co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers, and along with Sverdlov, he chaired the sessions of the committee drafting a constitution for the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He strongly supported Lenin's formation of the Cheka security service and the subsequent Red Terror that it initiated; noting that state violence had proved an effective tool for capitalist powers, he believed that it would prove the same for the Soviet government. Unlike senior Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin never expressed concern about the rapid growth and expansion of the Cheka and Red Terror.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Having dropped his editorship of Pravda, Stalin was appointed the People's Commissar for Nationalities. He took Nadezhda Alliluyeva as his secretary and at some point, married her, although the wedding date is unknown. In November 1917, he signed the Decree on Nationality, according ethnic and national minorities living in Russia the right of secession and self-determination. The decree's purpose was primarily strategic; the Bolsheviks wanted to gain favour among ethnic minorities but hoped that the latter would not actually desire independence. That month, he travelled to Helsingfors to talk with the Finnish Social Democrats, granting Finland's request for independence in December. His department allocated funds for establishment of presses and schools in the languages of various ethnic minorities. Socialist revolutionaries accused Stalin's talk of federalism and national self-determination as a front for Sovnarkom's centralising and imperialist policies.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Because of the ongoing First World War, in which Russia was fighting the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Lenin's government relocated from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918. Stalin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, and Lenin lived at the Kremlin. Stalin supported Lenin's desire to sign an armistice with the Central Powers regardless of the cost in territory. Stalin thought it necessary because — unlike Lenin — he was unconvinced that Europe was on the verge of proletarian revolution. Lenin eventually convinced the other senior Bolsheviks of his viewpoint, resulting in the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. The treaty gave vast areas of land and resources to the Central Powers and angered many in Russia; the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the coalition government over the issue. The governing RSDLP party was soon renamed, becoming the Russian Communist Party.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "After the Bolsheviks seized power, both right and left-wing armies rallied against them, generating the Russian Civil War. In May 1918, amid a dwindling food supply, Sovnarkom sent Stalin to Tsaritsyn to take charge of food procurement in Southern Russia. Eager to prove himself as a commander, once there he took control of regional military operations. He befriended two military figures, Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, who would form the nucleus of his military and political support base. Believing that victory was assured by numerical superiority, he sent large numbers of Red Army troops into battle against the region's anti-Bolshevik White armies, resulting in heavy losses; Lenin was concerned by this costly tactic. In Tsaritsyn, Stalin commanded the local Cheka branch to execute suspected counterrevolutionaries, sometimes without trial and — in contravention of government orders — purged the military and food collection agencies of middle-class specialists, some of whom he also executed. His use of state violence and terror was at a greater scale than most Bolshevik leaders approved of; for instance, he ordered several villages to be torched to ensure compliance with his food procurement program.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In December 1918, Stalin was sent to Perm to lead an inquiry into how Alexander Kolchak's White forces had been able to decimate Red troops based there. He returned to Moscow between January and March 1919, before being assigned to the Western Front at Petrograd. When the Red Third Regiment defected, he ordered the public execution of captured defectors. In September, he was returned to the Southern Front. During the war, he proved his worth to the Central Committee, displaying decisiveness, determination, and willingness to take on responsibility in conflict situations. At the same time, he disregarded orders and repeatedly threatened to resign when affronted. He was reprimanded by Lenin at the 8th Party Congress for employing tactics which resulted in far too many deaths of Red Army soldiers. In November 1919, the government nonetheless awarded him the Order of the Red Banner for his wartime service.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War by the end of 1919. By that time, Sovnarkom had turned its attention to spreading proletarian revolution abroad, to this end forming the Communist International in March 1919; Stalin attended its inaugural ceremony. Although Stalin did not share Lenin's belief that Europe's proletariat were on the verge of revolution, he acknowledged that as long as it stood alone, Soviet Russia remained vulnerable. In December 1918, he drew up decrees recognising Marxist-governed Soviet republics in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia; during the civil war these Marxist governments were overthrown and the Baltic countries became fully independent of Russia, an act Stalin regarded as illegitimate. In February 1920, he was appointed to head the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate; that same month he was also transferred to the Caucasian Front.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Following earlier clashes between Polish and Russian troops, the Polish–Soviet War broke out in early 1920, with the Poles invading Ukraine and taking Kiev on 7 May. On 26 May, Stalin was moved to Ukraine, on the Southwest Front. The Red Army retook Kiev on 10 June and soon forced the Polish troops back into Poland. On 16 July, the Central Committee decided to take the war into Polish territory. Lenin believed that the Polish proletariat would rise up to support the Russians against Józef Piłsudski's Polish government. Stalin had cautioned against this; he believed that nationalism would lead the Polish working-classes to support their government's war effort. He also believed that the Red Army was ill-prepared to conduct an offensive war and that it would give White armies a chance to resurface in Crimea, potentially reigniting the civil war. Stalin lost the argument, after which he accepted Lenin's decision and supported it. Along the Southwest Front, he became determined to conquer Lvov; in focusing on this goal, he disobeyed orders in early August to transfer his troops to assist Mikhail Tukhachevsky's forces that were attacking Warsaw.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In mid-August 1920, the Poles repulsed the Russian advance, and Stalin returned to Moscow to attend the Politburo meeting. Tukhachevsky blamed Stalin for his defeat at the Battle of Warsaw. In Moscow, Lenin and Trotsky also blamed him for his behaviour in the Polish–Soviet War. Stalin felt humiliated and under-appreciated; on 17 August, he demanded demission from the military, which was granted on 1 September. At the 9th Bolshevik Conference in late September, Trotsky accused Stalin of \"strategic mistakes\" in his handling of the war. Trotsky claimed that Stalin sabotaged the campaign by disobeying troop transfer orders. Lenin joined Trotsky in criticising him, and nobody spoke on his behalf at the conference. Stalin felt disgraced and his antipathy toward Trotsky increased. The Polish–Soviet War ended on 18 March 1921, when a peace treaty was signed in Riga.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Soviet government sought to bring neighbouring states under its domination; in February 1921 it invaded the Menshevik-governed Georgia, while in April 1921, Stalin ordered the Red Army into Turkestan to reassert Russian state control. As People's Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin believed that each national and ethnic group should have the right to self-expression, facilitated through \"autonomous republics\" within the Russian state in which they could oversee various regional affairs. In taking this view, some Marxists accused him of bending too much to bourgeois nationalism, while others accused him of remaining too Russocentric by seeking to retain these nations within the Russian state.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Stalin's native Caucasus posed a particular problem because of its highly multi-ethnic mix. Stalin opposed the idea of separate Georgian, Armenian, and Azeri autonomous republics, arguing that these would likely oppress ethnic minorities within their respective territories; instead, he called for a Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The Georgian Communist Party opposed the idea, resulting in the Georgian affair. In mid-1921, Stalin returned to the South Caucasus, there calling on Georgian communists to avoid the chauvinistic Georgian nationalism which marginalised the Abkhazian, Ossetian, and Adjarian minorities in Georgia. On this trip, Stalin met with his son Yakov, and brought him back to Moscow; Nadezhda had given birth to another of Stalin's sons, Vasily, in March 1921.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "After the civil war, workers' strikes and peasant uprisings broke out across Russia, largely in opposition to Sovnarkom's food requisitioning project; as an antidote, Lenin introduced market-oriented reforms: the New Economic Policy (NEP). There was also internal turmoil in the Communist Party, as Trotsky led a faction calling for abolition of trade unions; Lenin opposed this, and Stalin helped rally opposition to Trotsky's position. Stalin also agreed to supervise the Department of Agitation and Propaganda in the Central Committee Secretariat. At the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin as the party's new General Secretary. Although concerns were expressed that adopting this new post on top of his others would overstretch his workload and give him too much power, Stalin was appointed to the position. For Lenin, it was advantageous to have a key ally in this crucial post.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Stalin is too crude, and this defect which is entirely acceptable in our milieu and in relationships among us as communists, becomes unacceptable in the position of General Secretary. I therefore propose to comrades that they should devise a means of removing him from this job and should appoint to this job someone else who is distinguished from comrade Stalin in all other respects only by the single superior aspect that he should be more tolerant, more polite and more attentive towards comrades, less capricious, etc.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "— Lenin's Testament, 4 January 1923; this was possibly composed by Krupskaya rather than Lenin himself.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed. Residing at his Gorki dacha, Lenin's main connection to Sovnarkom was through Stalin, who was a regular visitor. Lenin twice asked Stalin to procure poison so that he could commit suicide, but Stalin never did so. Despite this comradeship, Lenin disliked what he referred to as Stalin's \"Asiatic\" manner and told his sister Maria that Stalin was \"not intelligent\". Lenin and Stalin argued on the issue of foreign trade; Lenin believed that the Soviet state should have a monopoly on foreign trade, but Stalin supported Grigori Sokolnikov's view that doing so was impractical at that stage. Another disagreement came over the Georgian affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "They also disagreed on the nature of the Soviet state. Lenin called for establishment of a new federation named the \"Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia\", reflecting his desire for expansion across the two continents and insisted that the Russian state should join this union on equal terms with the other Soviet states. Stalin believed this would encourage independence sentiment among non-Russians, instead arguing that ethnic minorities would be content as \"autonomous republics\" within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Lenin accused Stalin of \"Great Russian chauvinism\"; Stalin accused Lenin of \"national liberalism\". A compromise was reached, in which the federation would be renamed the \"Union of Soviet Socialist Republics\" (USSR). The USSR's formation was ratified in December 1922; although officially a federal system, all major decisions were taken by the governing Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow.",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Their differences also became personal; Lenin was particularly angered when Stalin was rude to his wife Krupskaya during a telephone conversation. In the final years of his life, Krupskaya provided governing figures with Lenin's Testament, a series of increasingly disparaging notes about Stalin. These criticised Stalin's rude manners and excessive power, suggesting that Stalin should be removed from the position of general secretary. Some historians have questioned whether Lenin ever produced these, suggesting instead that they may have been written by Krupskaya, who had personal differences with Stalin; Stalin, however, never publicly voiced concerns about their authenticity. Most historians consider the document to be an accurate reflection of Lenin's views. According to Stalin's secretary, Boris Bazhanov, Lenin \"in general leaned towards a collegial leadership, with Trotsky in the first position\".",
"title": "In Lenin's government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Lenin died in January 1924. Stalin took charge of the funeral and was one of its pallbearers; against the wishes of Lenin's widow, the Politburo embalmed his corpse and placed it within a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square. It was incorporated into a growing personality cult devoted to Lenin, with Petrograd being renamed \"Leningrad\" that year. To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist, Stalin gave nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the Foundations of Leninism, later published in book form. During the 13th Party Congress in May 1924, Lenin's Testament was read only to the leaders of the provincial delegations. Embarrassed by its contents, Stalin offered his resignation as General Secretary; this act of humility saved him, and he was retained in the position. According to Stalin's secretary, Boris Bazhanov, Stalin was jubilant over Lenin's death while \"publicly putting on the mask of grief\".",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "As General Secretary, Stalin had a free hand in making appointments to his own staff, implanting his loyalists throughout the party and administration. Favouring new Communist Party members from proletarian backgrounds to the \"Old Bolsheviks\" who tended to be middle class university graduates, he ensured he had loyalists dispersed across the country's regions. Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries, and the desire for promotion led many provincial figures to seek to impress Stalin and gain his favour. Stalin also developed close relations with the trio at the heart of the secret police (first the Cheka and then its replacement, the State Political Directorate): Felix Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. In his private life, he divided his time between his Kremlin apartment and a dacha at Zubalova; his wife gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In the wake of Lenin's death, various protagonists emerged in the struggle to become his successor: alongside Stalin was Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky. Stalin saw Trotsky — whom he personally despised — as the main obstacle to his dominance within the party. While Lenin had been ill Stalin with Kamenev and Zinoviev had formed an unofficial Triumvirate (also known by its Russian name Troika), a political alliance aimed at Trotsky. Although Zinoviev was concerned about Stalin's growing authority, he rallied behind him at the 13th Congress as a counterweight to Trotsky, who now led a party faction known as the Left Opposition. The Left Opposition believed the NEP conceded too much to capitalism; Stalin was called a \"rightist\" for his support of the policy. Stalin built up a retinue of his supporters in the Central Committee, while the Left Opposition were gradually removed from their positions of influence. He was supported in this by Bukharin, who, like Stalin, believed that the Left Opposition's proposals would plunge the Soviet Union into instability.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In late 1924, Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions. In 1925, the two moved into open opposition to Stalin and Bukharin. At the 14th Party Congress in December, they launched an attack against Stalin's faction, but it was unsuccessful. Stalin in turn accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism — and thus instability — into the party. In mid-1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with Trotsky's supporters to form the United Opposition against Stalin; in October they agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views under Stalin's command. The factionalist arguments continued, with Stalin threatening to resign in October and then December 1926 and again in December 1927. In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were removed from the Central Committee; the latter was exiled to Kazakhstan and later deported from the country in 1929. Some of those United Opposition members who were repentant were later rehabilitated and returned to government.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Stalin was now the party's supreme leader, although he was not the head of government, a task he entrusted to his key ally Vyacheslav Molotov. Other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, with Stalin ensuring his allies ran the various state institutions. According to Montefiore, at this point \"Stalin was the leader of the oligarchs but he was far from a dictator\". His growing influence was reflected in naming of various locations after him; in June 1924 the Ukrainian mining town of Yuzovka became Stalino, and in April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad on the order of Mikhail Kalinin and Avel Enukidze.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1926, Stalin published On Questions of Leninism. Here, he argued for the concept of \"socialism in one country\", which he presented as an orthodox Leninist perspective. It nevertheless clashed with established Bolshevik views that socialism could not be established in one country but could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "We have fallen behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. We must close that gap in ten years. Either we do this or we'll be crushed.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "This is what our obligations before the workers and peasants of the USSR dictate to us.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "— Stalin, February 1931",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Soviet Union lagged behind the industrial development of Western countries, and there had been a shortfall of grain; 1927 produced only 70% of grain produced in 1926. Stalin's government feared attack from Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Romania. Many communists, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach; they had concerns about those who profited from the policy: affluent peasants known as \"kulaks\" and small business owners or \"NEPmen\". At this point, Stalin turned against the NEP, which put him on a course to the \"left\" even of Trotsky or Zinoviev.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In early 1928, Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, where he alleged that kulaks were hoarding their grain and ordered that the kulaks be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the area's grain back to Moscow with him in February. At his command, grain procurement squads surfaced across Western Siberia and the Urals, with violence breaking out between these squads and the peasantry. Stalin announced that both kulaks and the \"middle peasants\" must be coerced into releasing their harvest. Bukharin and several other Central Committee members were angry that they had not been consulted about this measure, which they deemed rash. In January 1930, the Politburo approved the liquidation of the kulak class; accused kulaks were rounded up and exiled to other parts of the country or to concentration camps. Large numbers died during the journey. By July 1930, over 320,000 households had been affected by the de-kulakisation policy. According to Stalin biographer Dmitri Volkogonov, de-kulakisation was \"the first mass terror applied by Stalin in his own country.\"",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1929, the Politburo announced the mass collectivisation of agriculture, establishing both kolkhozy collective farms and sovkhoz state farms. Stalin barred kulaks from joining these collectives. Although officially voluntary, many peasants joined the collectives out of fear they would face the fate of the kulaks; others joined amid intimidation and violence from party loyalists. By 1932, about 62% of households involved in agriculture were part of collectives, and by 1936 this had risen to 90%. Many of the collectivised peasants resented the loss of their private farmland, and productivity slumped. Famine broke out in many areas, with the Politburo frequently ordering distribution of emergency food relief to these regions.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Armed peasant uprisings against dekulakisation and collectivisation broke out in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Southern Russia, and Central Asia, reaching their apex in March 1930; these were suppressed by the Red Army. Stalin responded to the uprisings with an article insisting that collectivisation was voluntary and blaming any violence and other excesses on local officials. Although he and Stalin had been close for many years, Bukharin expressed concerns about these policies; he regarded them as a return to Lenin's old \"war communism\" policy and believed that it would fail. By mid-1928 he was unable to rally sufficient support in the party to oppose the reforms. In November 1929 Stalin removed him from the Politburo.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Officially, the Soviet Union had replaced the \"irrationality\" and \"wastefulness\" of a market economy with a planned economy organised along a long-term, precise, and scientific framework; in reality, Soviet economics were based on ad hoc commandments issued from the centre, often to make short-term targets. In 1928, the first five-year plan was launched, its main focus on boosting heavy industry; it was finished a year ahead of schedule, in 1932. The USSR underwent a massive economic transformation. New mines were opened, new cities like Magnitogorsk constructed, and work on the White Sea–Baltic Canal began. Millions of peasants moved to the cities, although urban house building could not keep up with the demand. Large debts were accrued purchasing foreign-made machinery.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Many of major construction projects, including the White Sea–Baltic Canal and the Moscow Metro, were constructed largely through forced labour. The last elements of workers' control over industry were removed, with factory managers increasing their authority and receiving privileges and perks; Stalin defended wage disparity by pointing to Marx's argument that it was necessary during the lower stages of socialism. To promote intensification of labour, a series of medals and awards as well as the Stakhanovite movement were introduced. Stalin's message was that socialism was being established in the USSR while capitalism was crumbling amid the Wall Street crash. His speeches and articles reflected his utopian vision of the Soviet Union rising to unparalleled heights of human development, creating a \"new Soviet person\".",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 1928, Stalin declared that class war between the proletariat and their enemies would intensify as socialism developed. He warned of a \"danger from the right\", including in the Communist Party itself. The first major show trial in the USSR was the Shakhty Trial of 1928, in which several middle-class \"industrial specialists\" were convicted of sabotage. From 1929 to 1930, further show trials were held to intimidate opposition: these included the Industrial Party Trial, Menshevik Trial, and Metro-Vickers Trial. Aware that the ethnic Russian majority may have concerns about being ruled by a Georgian, he promoted ethnic Russians throughout the state hierarchy and made the Russian language compulsory throughout schools and offices, albeit to be used in tandem with local languages in areas with non-Russian majorities. Nationalist sentiment among ethnic minorities was suppressed. Conservative social policies were promoted to enhance social discipline and boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units and motherhood, re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions placed on abortion and divorce, and abolition of the Zhenotdel women's department.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Stalin desired a \"cultural revolution\", entailing both creation of a culture for the \"masses\" and wider dissemination of previously elite culture. He oversaw proliferation of schools, newspapers, and libraries, as well as advancement of literacy and numeracy. Socialist realism was promoted throughout arts, while Stalin personally wooed prominent writers, namely Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; for instance, he endorsed research of an agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific. The government's anti-religious campaign was re-intensified, with increased funding given to the League of Militant Atheists. Priests, imams, and Buddhist monks faced persecution. Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets. Religion retained an influence over much of the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents were willing to admit to being religious.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Throughout the 1920s and beyond, Stalin placed a high priority on foreign policy. He personally met with a range of Western visitors, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, both of whom were impressed with him. Through the Communist International, Stalin's government exerted a strong influence over Marxist parties elsewhere in the world; initially, Stalin left the running of the organisation largely to Bukharin. At its 6th Congress in July 1928, Stalin informed delegates that the main threat to socialism came not from the right but from non-Marxist socialists and social democrats, whom he called \"social fascists\"; Stalin recognised that in many countries, the social democrats were the Marxist-Leninists' main rivals for working-class support. This preoccupation with opposing rival leftists concerned Bukharin, who regarded the growth of fascism and the far right across Europe as a far greater threat. After Bukharin's departure, Stalin placed the Communist International under the administration of Dmitry Manuilsky and Osip Piatnitsky.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Stalin faced problems in his family life. In 1929, his son Yakov unsuccessfully attempted suicide; his failure earned Stalin's contempt. His relationship with Nadezhda was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems. In November 1932, after a group dinner in the Kremlin in which Stalin flirted with other women, Nadezhda shot herself. Publicly, the cause of death was given as appendicitis; Stalin also concealed the real cause of death from his children. Stalin's friends noted that he underwent a significant change following her suicide, becoming emotionally harder.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Within the Soviet Union, there was widespread civic disgruntlement against Stalin's government. Social unrest, previously restricted largely to the countryside, was increasingly evident in urban areas, prompting Stalin to ease on some of his economic policies in 1932. In May 1932, he introduced a system of kolkhoz markets where peasants could trade their surplus produce. At the same time, penal sanctions became more severe; at Stalin's instigation, in August 1932 a decree was introduced wherein the theft of even a handful of grain could be a capital offence. The second five-year plan had its production quotas reduced from that of the first, with the main emphasis now being on improving living conditions. It therefore emphasised the expansion of housing space and the production of consumer goods. Like its predecessor, this plan was repeatedly amended to meet changing situations; there was for instance an increasing emphasis placed on armament production after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Soviet Union experienced a major famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–33; between five and seven million people died. The worst affected areas were Ukraine and the North Caucasus, although the famine also affected Kazakhstan and several Russian provinces. Historians have long debated whether Stalin's government had intended the famine to occur or not; there are no known documents in which Stalin or his government explicitly called for starvation to be used against the population. The 1931 and 1932 harvests had been poor ones because of weather conditions and had followed several years in which lower productivity had resulted in a gradual decline in output. Government policies—including the focus on rapid industrialisation, the socialisation of livestock, and the emphasis on sown areas over crop rotation—exacerbated the problem; the state had also failed to build reserve grain stocks for such an emergency. Stalin blamed the famine on hostile elements and sabotage within the peasantry; his government provided small amounts of food to famine-struck rural areas, although this was wholly insufficient to deal with the levels of starvation. The Soviet government believed that food supplies should be prioritised for the urban workforce; for Stalin, the fate of Soviet industrialisation was far more important than the lives of the peasantry. Grain exports, which were a major means of Soviet payment for machinery, declined heavily. Stalin would not acknowledge that his policies had contributed to the famine, the existence of which was kept secret from foreign observers.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 1935–36, Stalin oversaw a new constitution; its dramatic liberal features were designed as propaganda weapons, for all power rested in the hands of Stalin and his Politburo. He declared that \"socialism, which is the first phase of communism, has basically been achieved in this country\". In 1938, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), colloquially known as the Short Course, was released; biographer Robert Conquest later referred to it as the \"central text of Stalinism\". A number of authorised Stalin biographies were also published, although Stalin generally wanted to be portrayed as the embodiment of the Communist Party rather than have his life story explored. During the later 1930s, Stalin placed \"a few limits on the worship of his own greatness\". By 1938, Stalin's inner circle had gained a degree of stability, containing the personalities who would remain there until Stalin's death.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Seeking improved international relations, in 1934 the Soviet Union secured membership of the League of Nations, from which it had previously been excluded. Stalin initiated confidential communications with Hitler in October 1933, shortly after the latter came to power in Germany. Stalin admired Hitler, particularly his manoeuvres to remove rivals within the Nazi Party in the Night of the Long Knives. Stalin nevertheless recognised the threat posed by fascism and sought to establish better links with the liberal democracies of Western Europe; in May 1935, the Soviets signed a treaty of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia. At the Communist International's 7th Congress, held in July–August 1935, the Soviet government encouraged Marxist-Leninists to unite with other leftists as part of a popular front against fascism. In turn, the anti-communist governments of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, the Soviets sent 648 aircraft and 407 tanks to the left-wing Republican faction; these were accompanied by 3,000 Soviet troops and 42,000 members of the International Brigades set up by the Communist International. Stalin took a strong personal involvement in the Spanish situation. Germany and Italy backed the Nationalist faction, which was ultimately victorious in March 1939. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the Soviet Union and China signed a non-aggression pact the following August. Stalin aided the Chinese Communist Party as they had suspended their civil war with the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists and formed the desired United Front against Japanese aggression.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Stalin often gave conflicting signals regarding state repression. In May 1933, he released from prison many convicted of minor offences, ordering the security services not to enact further mass arrests and deportations. In September 1934, he launched a commission to investigate false imprisonments; that same month he called for the execution of workers at the Stalin Metallurgical Factory accused of spying for Japan. This mixed approach began to change in December 1934, after prominent party member Sergey Kirov was murdered. After the murder, Stalin became increasingly concerned by the threat of assassination, improved his personal security, and rarely went out in public. State repression intensified after Kirov's death; Stalin instigated this, reflecting his prioritisation of security above other considerations. Stalin issued a decree establishing NKVD troikas which could mete out rulings without involving the courts. In 1935, he ordered the NKVD to expel suspected counterrevolutionaries from urban areas; in early 1935, over 11,000 were expelled from Leningrad. In 1936, Nikolai Yezhov became head of the NKVD.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Stalin orchestrated the arrest of many former opponents in the Communist Party as well as sitting members of the Central Committee: denounced as Western-backed mercenaries, many were imprisoned or exiled internally. The first Moscow Trial took place in August 1936; Kamenev and Zinoviev were among those accused of plotting assassinations, found guilty in a show trial, and executed. The second Moscow Show Trial took place in January 1937, and the third in March 1938, in which Bukharin and Rykov were accused of involvement in the alleged Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist plot and sentenced to death. By late 1937, all remnants of collective leadership were gone from the Politburo, which was controlled entirely by Stalin. There were mass expulsions from the party, with Stalin commanding foreign communist parties to also purge anti-Stalinist elements.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Repressions further intensified in December 1936 and remained at a high level until November 1938, a period known as the Great Purge. In May 1937, this was followed by the arrest of most members of the military Supreme Command and mass arrests throughout the military, often on fabricated charges. By the latter part of 1937, the purges had moved beyond the party and were affecting the wider population. In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of \"anti-Soviet elements\" in society, targeting anti-Stalin Bolsheviks, former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, ex-White Army soldiers, and common criminals. That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. 00447, listing 268,950 people for arrest, of whom 75,950 were executed. He also initiated \"national operations\", the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groups—among them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese—through internal or external exile. During these years, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "During the 1930s and 1940s, NKVD groups assassinated defectors and opponents abroad; in August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, eliminating the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. These purges replaced most of the party's old guard with younger officials who did not remember a time before Stalin's leadership and who were regarded as more personally loyal to him. Party functionaries readily carried out their commands and sought to ingratiate themselves with Stalin to avoid becoming the victim of the purge. Such functionaries often carried out a greater number of arrests and executions than their quotas set by Stalin's central government.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Stalin initiated all key decisions during the Terror, personally directing many of its operations and taking an interest in their implementation. His motives in doing so have been much debated by historians. His personal writings from the period were — according to Khlevniuk — \"unusually convoluted and incoherent\", filled with claims about enemies encircling him. He was particularly concerned at the success that right-wing forces had in overthrowing the leftist Spanish government, fearing a domestic fifth column in the event of future war with Japan and Germany. The Great Terror ended when Yezhov was removed as the head of the NKVD, to be replaced by Lavrentiy Beria, a man totally devoted to Stalin. Yezhov was arrested in April 1939 and executed in 1940. The Terror damaged the Soviet Union's reputation abroad, particularly among sympathetic leftists. As it wound down, Stalin sought to deflect responsibility from himself, blaming its \"excesses\" and \"violations of law\" on Yezhov. According to historian James Harris, contemporary archival research shows that the motivation behind the purges was not Stalin attempting to establish his own personal dictatorship; evidence suggests he was committed to building the socialist state envisioned by Lenin. The real motivation for the terror, according to Harris, was an excessive fear of counterrevolution.",
"title": "Consolidation of power"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin considered conflict between competing capitalist powers inevitable; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he recognised a war was looming. He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and Britain would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe. Militarily, the Soviets also faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with the expansionist Japanese in the latter part of the 1930s. Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in its haste to expand many of its officers were poorly trained. Between 1940 and 1941 he also purged the military, leaving it with a severe shortage of trained officers when war broke out.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "As Britain and France seemed unwilling to commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin saw a better deal with the Germans. On 3 May 1939, Stalin replaced his western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. Germany began negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers. Stalin saw this as an opportunity both for territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany. In August 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact with Germany, a non-aggression pact negotiated by Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. A week later, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the UK and France to declare war on Germany. On 17 September, the Red Army entered eastern Poland, officially to restore order amid the collapse of the Polish state. On 28 September, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged some of their newly conquered territories; Germany gained the linguistically Polish-dominated areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province while the Soviets gained Lithuania. A German–Soviet Frontier Treaty was signed shortly after, in Stalin's presence. The two states continued trading, undermining the British blockade of Germany.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Soviets further demanded parts of eastern Finland, but the Finnish government refused. The Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, yet despite numerical inferiority, the Finns kept the Red Army at bay. International opinion backed Finland, with the Soviets being expelled from the League of Nations. Embarrassed by their inability to defeat the Finns, the Soviets signed an interim peace treaty, in which they received territorial concessions from Finland. In June 1940, the Red Army occupied the Baltic states, which were forcibly merged into the Soviet Union in August; they also invaded and annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, parts of Romania. The Soviets sought to forestall dissent in these new East European territories with mass repressions. One of the most noted instances was the Katyn massacre of April and May 1940, in which around 22,000 members of the Polish armed forces, police, and intelligentsia were executed.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The speed of the German victory over and occupation of France in mid-1940 took Stalin by surprise. He increasingly focused on appeasement with the Germans to delay any conflict with them. After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan, and Italy in October 1940, Stalin proposed that the USSR also join the Axis alliance. To demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, in April 1941 the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan. Although de facto head of government for a decade and a half, Stalin concluded that relations with Germany had deteriorated to such an extent that he needed to deal with the problem as de jure head of government as well: on 6 May, Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier of the Soviet Union.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, initiating the war on the Eastern Front. Despite intelligence agencies repeatedly warning him of Germany's intentions, Stalin was taken by surprise. He formed a State Defense Committee, which he headed as Supreme Commander, as well as a military Supreme Command (Stavka), with Georgy Zhukov as its Chief of Staff. The German tactic of blitzkrieg was initially highly effective; the Soviet air force in the western borderlands was destroyed within two days. The German Wehrmacht pushed deep into Soviet territory; soon, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic states were under German occupation, and Leningrad was under siege; and Soviet refugees were flooding into Moscow and surrounding cities. By July, Germany's Luftwaffe was bombing Moscow, and by October the Wehrmacht was amassing for a full assault on the capital. Plans were made for the Soviet government to evacuate to Kuibyshev, although Stalin decided to remain in Moscow, believing his flight would damage troop morale. The German advance on Moscow was halted after two months of battle in increasingly harsh weather conditions.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Going against the advice of Zhukov and other generals, Stalin emphasised attack over defence. In June 1941, he ordered a scorched earth policy of destroying infrastructure and food supplies before the Germans could seize them, also commanding the NKVD to kill around 100,000 political prisoners in areas the Wehrmacht approached. He purged the military command; several high-ranking figures were demoted or reassigned and others were arrested and executed. With Order No. 270, Stalin commanded soldiers risking capture to fight to the death describing the captured as traitors; among those taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans was Stalin's son Yakov, who died in their custody. Stalin issued Order No. 227 in July 1942, which directed that those retreating unauthorised would be placed in \"penal battalions\" used as cannon fodder on the front lines. Amid the fighting, both the German and Soviet armies disregarded the law of war set forth in the Geneva Conventions; the Soviets heavily publicised Nazi massacres of communists, Jews, and Romani. Stalin exploited Nazi anti-Semitism, and in April 1942 he sponsored the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) to garner global Jewish support for the Soviet war effort.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Soviets allied with the United Kingdom and United States; although the U.S. joined the war against Germany in 1941, little direct American assistance reached the Soviets until late 1942. Responding to the invasion, the Soviets intensified their industrial enterprises in central Russia, focusing almost entirely on production for the military. They achieved high levels of industrial productivity, outstripping that of Germany. During the war, Stalin was more tolerant of the Russian Orthodox Church, allowing it to resume some of its activities and meeting with Patriarch Sergius in September 1943. He also permitted a wider range of cultural expression, notably permitting formerly suppressed writers and artists like Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich to disperse their work more widely. The Internationale was dropped as the country's national anthem, to be replaced with a more patriotic song. The government increasingly promoted Pan-Slavist sentiment, while encouraging increased criticism of cosmopolitanism, particularly the idea of \"rootless cosmopolitanism\", an approach with particular repercussions for Soviet Jews. Comintern was dissolved in 1943, and Stalin encouraged foreign Marxist–Leninist parties to emphasise nationalism over internationalism to broaden their domestic appeal.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In April 1942, Stalin overrode Stavka by ordering the Soviets' first serious counter-attack, an attempt to seize German-held Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. This attack proved unsuccessful. That year, Hitler shifted his primary goal from an overall victory on the Eastern Front to the goal of securing the oil fields in the southern Soviet Union crucial to a long-term German war effort. While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift efforts south, Stalin considered this to be a flanking move in a renewed effort to take Moscow. In June 1942, the German Army began a major offensive in Southern Russia, threatening Stalingrad; Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold the city at all costs. This resulted in the protracted Battle of Stalingrad. In December 1942, he placed Konstantin Rokossovski in charge of holding the city. In February 1943, the German troops attacking Stalingrad surrendered. The Soviet victory there marked a major turning point in the war; in commemoration, Stalin declared himself Marshal of the Soviet Union.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "By November 1942, the Soviets had begun to repulse the important German strategic southern campaign and, although there were 2.5 million Soviet casualties in that effort, it permitted the Soviets to take the offensive for most of the rest of the war on the Eastern Front. Germany attempted an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets. By the end of 1943, the Soviets occupied half of the territory taken by the Germans from 1941 to 1942. Soviet military industrial output also had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well to the east of the front, safe from German invasion and aerial assault.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In Allied countries, Stalin was increasingly depicted in a positive light over the course of the war. In 1941, the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed a concert to celebrate his birthday, and in 1942, Time magazine named him \"Man of the Year\". When Stalin learned that people in Western countries affectionately called him \"Uncle Joe\" he was initially offended, regarding it as undignified. There remained mutual suspicions between Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who were together known as the \"Big Three\". Churchill flew to Moscow to visit Stalin in August 1942 and again in October 1944. Stalin scarcely left Moscow throughout the war, with Roosevelt and Churchill frustrated with his reluctance to travel to meet them.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran, a location of Stalin's choosing. There, Stalin and Roosevelt got on well, with both desiring the post-war dismantling of the British Empire. At Tehran, the trio agreed that to prevent Germany rising to military prowess yet again, the German state should be broken up. Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed to Stalin's demand that the German city of Königsberg be declared Soviet territory. Stalin was impatient for the UK and U.S. to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off of the East; they eventually did so in mid-1944. Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, which Churchill opposed. Discussing the fate of the Balkans, later in 1944 Churchill agreed to Stalin's suggestion that after the war, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia would come under the Soviet sphere of influence while Greece would come under that of the West.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany, including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in the Byelorussian SSR against the German Army Group Centre. In 1944, the German armies were pushed out of the Baltic states (with the exception of the Ostland), which were then re-annexed into the Soviet Union. As the Red Army reconquered the Caucasus and Crimea, various ethnic groups living in the region—the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars—were accused of having collaborated with the Germans. Using the idea of collective responsibility as a basis, Stalin's government abolished their autonomous republics and between late 1943 and 1944 deported the majority of their populations to Central Asia and Siberia. Over one million people were deported as a result of the policy.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In February 1945, the three leaders met at the Yalta Conference. Roosevelt and Churchill conceded to Stalin's demand that Germany pay the Soviet Union 20 billion dollars in reparations, and that his country be permitted to annex Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in exchange for entering the war against Japan. An agreement was also made that a post-war Polish government should be a coalition consisting of both communist and conservative elements. Privately, Stalin sought to ensure that Poland would come fully under Soviet influence. The Red Army withheld assistance to Polish resistance fighters battling the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, with Stalin believing that any victorious Polish militants could interfere with his aspirations to dominate Poland through a future Marxist government. Although concealing his desires from the other Allied leaders, Stalin placed great emphasis on capturing Berlin first, believing that this would enable him to bring more of Europe under long-term Soviet control. Churchill was concerned that this was the case and unsuccessfully tried to convince the U.S. that the Western Allies should pursue the same goal.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In April 1945, the Red Army seized Berlin, Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered in May. Stalin had wanted Hitler captured alive; he had his remains brought to Moscow to prevent them becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers. As the Red Army had conquered German territory, they discovered the extermination camps that the Nazi administration had run. Many Soviet soldiers engaged in looting, pillaging, and rape, both in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe. Stalin refused to punish the offenders. After receiving a complaint about this from Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, Stalin asked how after experiencing the traumas of war a soldier could \"react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors?\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "With Germany defeated, Stalin switched focus to the war with Japan, transferring half a million troops to the Far East. Stalin was pressed by his allies to enter the war and wanted to cement the Soviet Union's strategic position in Asia. On 8 August, in between the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet army invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and defeated the Kwantung Army. These events led to the Japanese surrender and the war's end. Soviet forces continued to expand until they occupied all their territorial concessions, but the U.S. rebuffed Stalin's desire for the Red Army to take a role in the Allied occupation of Japan.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Stalin attended the Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945, alongside his new British and U.S. counterparts, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and President Harry Truman. At the conference, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from a \"Sovietization\" of Eastern Europe. Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' survival, which worried Truman and Churchill who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for Western powers. He also pushed for \"war booty\", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. Germany was divided into four zones: Soviet, U.S., British, and French, with Berlin itself—located within the Soviet area—also subdivided thusly.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "After the war, Stalin was—according to Service—at the \"apex of his career\". Within the Soviet Union he was widely regarded as the embodiment of victory and patriotism. His armies controlled Central and Eastern Europe up to the River Elbe. In June 1945, Stalin adopted the title of Generalissimus, and stood atop Lenin's Mausoleum to watch a celebratory parade led by Zhukov through Red Square. At a banquet held for army commanders, he described the Russian people as \"the outstanding nation\" and \"leading force\" within the Soviet Union, the first time that he had unequivocally endorsed the Russians over other Soviet nationalities. In 1946, the state published Stalin's Collected Works. In 1947, it brought out a second edition of his official biography, which eulogised him to a greater extent than its predecessor. He was quoted in Pravda on a daily basis and pictures of him remained pervasive on the walls of workplaces and homes.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Despite his strengthened international position, Stalin was cautious about internal dissent and desire for change among the population. He was also concerned about his returning armies, who had been exposed to a wide range of consumer goods in Germany, much of which they had looted and brought back with them. In this he recalled the 1825 Decembrist Revolt by Russian soldiers returning from having defeated France in the Napoleonic Wars. He ensured that returning Soviet prisoners of war went through \"filtration\" camps as they arrived in the Soviet Union, in which 2,775,700 were interrogated to determine if they were traitors. About half were then imprisoned in labour camps. In the Baltic states, where there was much opposition to Soviet rule, de-kulakisation and de-clericalisation programs were initiated, resulting in 142,000 deportations between 1945 and 1949. The Gulag system of forced labour camps was expanded further. By January 1953, three per cent of the Soviet population was imprisoned or in internal exile, with 2.8 million in \"special settlements\" in isolated areas and another 2.5 million in camps, penal colonies, and prisons.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The NKVD were ordered to catalogue the scale of destruction during the war. It was established that 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed. The NKVD recorded that between 26 and 27 million Soviet citizens had been killed, with millions more being wounded, malnourished, or orphaned. In the war's aftermath, some of Stalin's associates suggested modifications to government policy. Post-war Soviet society was more tolerant than its pre-war phase in various respects. Stalin allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to retain the churches it had opened during the war. Academia and the arts were also allowed greater freedom than they had prior to 1941. Recognising the need for drastic steps to be taken to combat inflation and promote economic regeneration, in December 1947 Stalin's government devalued the rouble and abolished the ration-book system. Capital punishment was abolished in 1947 but re-instituted in 1950.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Stalin's health was deteriorating, and heart problems forced a two-month vacation in the latter part of 1945. He grew increasingly concerned that senior political and military figures might try to oust him; he prevented any of them from becoming powerful enough to rival him and had their apartments bugged with listening devices. He demoted Molotov, and increasingly favoured Beria and Malenkov for key positions. In 1949, he brought Nikita Khrushchev from Ukraine to Moscow, appointing him a Central Committee secretary and the head of the city's party branch. In the Leningrad Affair, the city's leadership was purged amid accusations of treachery; executions of many of the accused took place in 1950.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In the post-war period there were often food shortages in Soviet cities, and the USSR experienced a major famine from 1946 to 1947. Sparked by a drought and ensuing bad harvest in 1946, it was exacerbated by government policy towards food procurement, including the state's decision to build up stocks and export food internationally rather than distributing it to famine-hit areas. Current estimates indicate that between one million and 1.5 million people died from malnutrition or disease as a result. While agricultural production stagnated, Stalin focused on a series of major infrastructure projects, including the construction of hydroelectric plants, canals, and railway lines running to the polar north. Much of this was constructed by prison labour.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British Empire declined, leaving the U.S. and USSR as the dominant world powers. Tensions among these former Allies grew, resulting in the Cold War. Although Stalin publicly described the British and U.S. governments as aggressive, he thought it unlikely that a war with them would be imminent, believing that several decades of peace was likely. He nevertheless secretly intensified Soviet research into nuclear weaponry, intent on creating an atom bomb. Still, Stalin foresaw the undesirability of a nuclear conflict, saying in 1949 that \"atomic weapons can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world.\" He personally took a keen interest in the development of the weapon. In August 1949, the bomb was successfully tested in the deserts outside Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Stalin also initiated a new military build-up; the Soviet army was expanded from 2.9 million soldiers, as it stood in 1949, to 5.8 million by 1953.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The U.S. began pushing its interests on every continent, acquiring air force bases in Africa and Asia and ensuring pro-U.S. regimes took power across Latin America. It launched the Marshall Plan in June 1947, with which it sought to undermine Soviet hegemony throughout Eastern Europe. The U.S. also offered financial assistance to countries as part of the Marshall Plan on the condition that they opened their markets to trade, aware that the Soviets would never agree. The Allies demanded that Stalin withdraw the Red Army from northern Iran. He initially refused, leading to an international crisis in 1946, but one year later Stalin finally relented and moved the Soviet troops out. Stalin also tried to maximise Soviet influence on the world stage, unsuccessfully pushing for Libya—recently liberated from Italian occupation—to become a Soviet protectorate. He sent Molotov as his representative to San Francisco to take part in negotiations to form the United Nations, insisting that the Soviets have a place on the Security Council. In April 1949, the Western powers established the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an international military alliance of capitalist countries. Within Western countries, Stalin was increasingly portrayed as the \"most evil dictator alive\" and compared to Hitler. According to his daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva she \"remembered her father saying after [the war]: Together with the Germans we would have been invincible\"",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In 1948, Stalin edited and rewrote sections of Falsifiers of History, published as a series of Pravda articles in February 1948 and then in book form. Written in response to public revelations of the 1939 Soviet alliance with Germany, it focused on blaming the Western powers for the war. He also erroneously claimed that the initial German advance in the early part of the war, during Operation Barbarossa, was not a result of Soviet military weakness, but rather a deliberate Soviet strategic retreat. In 1949, celebrations took place to mark Stalin's seventieth birthday (although he was 71 at the time,) at which Stalin attended an event in the Bolshoi Theatre alongside Marxist–Leninist leaders from across Europe and Asia.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "After the war, Stalin sought to retain Soviet dominance across Eastern Europe while expanding its influence in Asia. Cautiously regarding the responses from the Western Allies, Stalin avoided immediately installing Communist Party governments across Eastern Europe, instead initially ensuring that Marxist-Leninists were placed in coalition ministries. In contrast to his approach to the Baltic states, he rejected the proposal of merging the new communist states into the Soviet Union, rather recognising them as independent nation-states. He was faced with the problem that there were few Marxists left in Eastern Europe, with most having been killed by the Nazis. He demanded that war reparations be paid by Germany and its Axis allies Hungary, Romania, and the Slovak Republic. Aware that these countries had been pushed toward socialism through invasion rather than by proletarian revolution, Stalin referred to them not as \"dictatorships of the proletariat\" but as \"people's democracies\", suggesting that in these countries there was a pro-socialist alliance combining the proletariat, peasantry, and lower middle-class.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Churchill observed that an \"Iron Curtain\" had been drawn across Europe, separating the east from the west. In September 1947, a meeting of East European communist leaders was held in Szklarska Poręba, Poland, from which was formed Cominform to co-ordinate the Communist Parties across Eastern Europe and also in France and Italy. Stalin did not personally attend the meeting, sending Zhdanov in his place. Various East European communists also visited Stalin in Moscow. There, he offered advice on their ideas; for instance, he cautioned against the Yugoslav idea for a Balkan Federation incorporating Bulgaria and Albania. Stalin had a particularly strained relationship with Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito due to the latter's continued calls for a Balkan federation and for Soviet aid for the communist forces in the ongoing Greek Civil War. In March 1948, Stalin launched an anti-Tito campaign, accusing the Yugoslav communists of adventurism and deviating from Marxist–Leninist doctrine. At the second Cominform conference, held in Bucharest in June 1948, East European communist leaders all denounced Tito's government, accusing them of being fascists and agents of Western capitalism. Stalin ordered several assassination attempts on Tito's life and even contemplated an invasion of Yugoslavia itself.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Stalin suggested that a unified, but demilitarised, German state be established, hoping that it would either come under Soviet influence or remain neutral. When the U.S. and UK remained opposed to this, Stalin sought to force their hand by blockading Berlin in June 1948. He gambled that the Western powers would not risk war, but they airlifted supplies into West Berlin until May 1949, when Stalin relented and ended the blockade. In September 1949 the Western powers transformed Western Germany into an independent Federal Republic of Germany; in response the Soviets formed East Germany into the German Democratic Republic in October. In accordance with their earlier agreements, the Western powers expected Poland to become an independent state with free democratic elections. In Poland, the Soviets merged various socialist parties into the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), and vote rigging was used to ensure that the PZPR secured office. The 1947 Hungarian elections were also rigged by Stalin, with the Hungarian Working People's Party taking control. In Czechoslovakia, where the communists did have a level of popular support, they were elected the largest party in 1946. Monarchy was abolished in Bulgaria and Romania. Across Eastern Europe, the Soviet model was enforced, with a termination of political pluralism, agricultural collectivisation, and investment in heavy industry. It was aimed at establishing economic autarky within the Eastern Bloc.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In October 1949, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong took power in China. With this accomplished, Marxist governments now controlled a third of the world's land mass. Privately, Stalin revealed that he had underestimated the Chinese Communists and their ability to win the civil war, instead encouraging them to make another peace with the KMT. In December 1949, Mao visited Stalin. Initially Stalin refused to repeal the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1945, which significantly benefited the Soviet Union over China, although in January 1950 he relented and agreed to sign a new treaty between the two countries. Stalin was concerned that Mao might follow Tito's example by pursuing a course independent of Soviet influence, and made it known that if displeased he would withdraw assistance from China; the Chinese desperately needed said assistance after decades of civil war.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the United States divided up the Korean Peninsula, formerly a Japanese colonial possession, along the 38th parallel, setting up a communist government in the north and a pro-Western, anti-communist government in the south. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung visited Stalin in March 1949 and again in March 1950; he wanted to invade the south and although Stalin was initially reluctant to provide support, he eventually agreed by May 1950. The North Korean Army launched the Korean War by invading South Korea in June 1950, making swift gains and capturing Seoul. Both Stalin and Mao believed that a swift victory would ensue. The U.S. went to the UN Security Council—which the Soviets were boycotting over its refusal to recognise Mao's government—and secured international military support for the South Koreans. U.S. led forces pushed the North Koreans back. Stalin wanted to avoid direct Soviet conflict with the U.S., convincing the Chinese to aid the North.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The Soviet Union was one of the first nations to extend diplomatic recognition to the newly created state of Israel in 1948, in hopes of obtaining an ally in the Middle East. When the Israeli ambassador Golda Meir arrived in the USSR, Stalin was angered by the Jewish crowds who gathered to greet her. He was further angered by Israel's growing alliance with the U.S. After Stalin fell out with Israel, he launched an anti-Jewish campaign within the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. In November 1948, he abolished the JAC, and show trials took place for some of its members. The Soviet press engaged in vituperative attacks on Zionism, Jewish culture, and \"rootless cosmopolitanism\", with growing levels of anti-Semitism being expressed across Soviet society. Stalin's increasing tolerance of anti-Semitism may have stemmed from his increasing Russian nationalism or from the recognition that anti-Semitism had proved a useful mobilising tool for Hitler and that he could do the same; he may have increasingly viewed the Jewish people as a \"counter-revolutionary\" nation whose members were loyal to the U.S. There were rumours, although they have never been substantiated, that Stalin was planning on deporting all Soviet Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan, eastern Siberia.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "In his later years, Stalin was in poor health. He took increasingly long holidays; in 1950 and again in 1951 he spent almost five months on holiday at his Abkhazian dacha. Stalin nevertheless mistrusted his doctors; in January 1952 he had one imprisoned after they suggested that he should retire to improve his health. In September 1952, several Kremlin doctors were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill senior politicians in what came to be known as the doctors' plot; the majority of the accused were Jewish. He instructed the arrested doctors to be tortured to ensure confession. In November, the Slánský trial took place in Czechoslovakia as 13 senior Communist Party figures, 11 of them Jewish, were accused and convicted of being part of a vast Zionist-American conspiracy to subvert Eastern Bloc governments. That same month, a much publicised trial of accused Jewish industrial wreckers took place in Ukraine. In 1951, he initiated the Mingrelian affair, a purge of the Georgian branch of the Communist Party which resulted in over 11,000 deportations.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "From 1946 until his death, Stalin only gave three public speeches, two of which lasted only a few minutes. The amount of written material that he produced also declined. In 1950, Stalin issued the article \"Marxism and Problems of Linguistics\", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood. In 1952, Stalin's last book, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, was published. It sought to provide a guide to leading the country after his death. In October 1952, Stalin gave an hour and a half speech at the Central Committee plenum. There, he emphasised what he regarded as leadership qualities necessary in the future and highlighted the weaknesses of various potential successors, particularly Molotov and Mikoyan. In 1952, he also eliminated the Politburo and replaced it with a larger version which he called the Presidium.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "On 1 March 1953, Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Kuntsevo Dacha. He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. He was moved onto a couch and remained there for three days. He was hand-fed using a spoon, given various medicines and injections, and leeches were applied to him. Svetlana and Vasily were called to the dacha on 2 March; the latter was drunk and angrily shouted at the doctors, as a result of which he was sent home. Stalin died on 5 March 1953. According to Svetlana, it had been \"a difficult and terrible death\". An autopsy revealed that he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage and also that his cerebral arteries were severely damaged by atherosclerosis. It has been conjectured that Stalin was murdered; Beria has been suspected of murdering him, but no firm evidence has ever appeared. According to a report published in The New York Times, Stalin was poisoned with warfarin by his own Politburo members.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Stalin's death was announced on 6 March. His body was embalmed, and then placed on display in Moscow's House of Unions for three days. The crowds of people coming to view the body were so large and disorganised that many people were killed in a crowd crush. At the funeral on 9 March, Stalin's body was laid to rest in Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square; hundreds of thousands attended. That month featured a surge in arrests for \"anti-Soviet agitation\", as those celebrating Stalin's death came to police attention. The Chinese government instituted a period of official mourning for Stalin's death. A memorial service in his honour was also held at St George the Martyr, Holborn in London.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Stalin left neither a designated successor nor a framework within which a peaceful transfer of power could take place. The Central Committee met on the day of his death, after which Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev emerged as the party's dominant figures. The system of collective leadership was restored, and measures introduced to prevent any one member from attaining autocratic domination. The collective leadership included the following eight senior members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, listed according to the order of precedence presented formally on 5 March 1953: Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich and Anastas Mikoyan. Reforms to the Soviet system were immediately implemented. Economic reform scaled back the mass construction projects, placed a new emphasis on house building, and eased the levels of taxation on the peasantry to stimulate production. The new leaders sought rapprochement with Yugoslavia and a less hostile relationship with the U.S., pursuing a negotiated end to the Korean War in July 1953. The doctors who had been imprisoned were released and the anti-Semitic purges ceased. A mass amnesty for certain categories of convicts was issued, halving the country's inmate population, while the state security and Gulag systems were reformed, with torture being banned in April 1953.",
"title": "Post-war era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Stalin claimed to have embraced Marxism at the age of fifteen, and it served as the guiding philosophy throughout his adult life; according to Kotkin, Stalin held \"zealous Marxist convictions\", while Montefiore suggested that Marxism held a \"quasi-religious\" value for Stalin. Although he never became a Georgian nationalist, during his early life elements from Georgian nationalist thought blended with Marxism in his outlook. The historian Alfred J. Rieber noted that he had been raised in \"a society where rebellion was deeply rooted in folklore and popular rituals\". Stalin believed in the need to adapt Marxism to changing circumstances; in 1917, he declared that \"there is dogmatic Marxism and there is creative Marxism. I stand on the ground of the latter\". Volkogonov believed that Stalin's Marxism was shaped by his \"dogmatic turn of mind\", suggesting that this had been instilled in the Soviet leader during his education in religious institutions. According to scholar Robert Service, Stalin's \"few innovations in ideology were crude, dubious developments of Marxism\". Some of these derived from political expediency rather than any sincere intellectual commitment; Stalin would often turn to ideology post hoc to justify his decisions. Stalin referred to himself as a praktik, meaning that he was more of a practical revolutionary than a theoretician.",
"title": "Political ideology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "As a Marxist and an anti-capitalist, Stalin believed in an inevitable \"class war\" between the world's proletariat and bourgeoisie. He believed that the working classes would prove successful in this struggle and would establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, regarding the Soviet Union as an example of such a state. He also believed that this proletarian state would need to introduce repressive measures against foreign and domestic \"enemies\" to ensure the full crushing of the propertied classes, and thus the class war would intensify with the advance of socialism. As a propaganda tool, the shaming of \"enemies\" explained all inadequate economic and political outcomes, the hardships endured by the populace, and military failures. The new state would then be able to ensure that all citizens had access to work, food, shelter, healthcare, and education, with the wastefulness of capitalism eliminated by a new, standardised economic system. According to Sandle, Stalin was \"committed to the creation of a society that was industrialised, collectivised, centrally planned and technologically advanced.\"",
"title": "Political ideology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Stalin adhered to the Leninist variant of Marxism. In his book, Foundations of Leninism, he stated that \"Leninism is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution\". He claimed to be a loyal Leninist, although was—according to Service—\"not a blindly obedient Leninist\". Stalin respected Lenin, but not uncritically, and spoke out when he believed that Lenin was wrong. During the period of his revolutionary activity, Stalin regarded some of Lenin's views and actions as being the self-indulgent activities of a spoiled émigré, deeming them counterproductive for those Bolshevik activists based within the Russian Empire itself. After the October Revolution, they continued to have differences. Whereas Lenin believed that all countries across Europe and Asia would readily unite as a single state following proletariat revolution, Stalin argued that national pride would prevent this, and that different socialist states would have to be formed; in his view, a country like Germany would not readily submit to being part of a Russian-dominated federal state. Khlevniuk nevertheless believed that the pair developed a \"strong bond\" over the years, while Kotkin suggested that Stalin's friendship with Lenin was \"the single most important relationship in Stalin's life\". After Lenin's death, Stalin relied heavily on Lenin's writings—far more so than those of Marx and Engels—to guide him in the affairs of state. Stalin adopted the Leninist view on the need for a revolutionary vanguard who could lead the proletariat rather than being led by them. Leading this vanguard, he believed that the Soviet peoples needed a strong, central figure—akin to a Tsar—whom they could rally around. In his words, \"the people need a Tsar, whom they can worship and for whom they can live and work\". He read about, and admired, two Tsars in particular: Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. In the personality cult constructed around him, he was known as the vozhd, an equivalent to the Italian duce and German führer.",
"title": "Political ideology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Stalinism was a development of Leninism, and while Stalin avoided using the term \"Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism\", he allowed others to do so. Following Lenin's death, Stalin contributed to the theoretical debates within the Communist Party, namely by developing the idea of \"Socialism in One Country\". This concept was intricately linked to factional struggles within the party, particularly against Trotsky. He first developed the idea in December 1924 and elaborated upon in his writings of 1925–26. Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory could not be guaranteed because of the threat from capitalist intervention. For this reason, he retained the Leninist view that world revolution was still a necessity to ensure the ultimate victory of socialism. Although retaining the Marxist belief that the state would wither away as socialism transformed into pure communism, he believed that the Soviet state would remain until the final defeat of international capitalism. This concept synthesised Marxist and Leninist ideas with nationalist ideals, and served to discredit Trotsky—who promoted the idea of \"permanent revolution\"—by presenting the latter as a defeatist with little faith in Russian workers' abilities to construct socialism.",
"title": "Political ideology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Stalin viewed nations as contingent entities which were formed by capitalism and could merge into others. Ultimately, he believed that all nations would merge into a single, global human community, and regarded all nations as inherently equal. In his work, he stated that \"the right of secession\" should be offered to the ethnic minorities of the Russian Empire, but that they should not be encouraged to take that option. He was of the view that if they became fully autonomous, then they would end up being controlled by the most reactionary elements of their community; as an example, he cited the largely illiterate Tatars, whom he claimed would end up dominated by their mullahs. Stalin argued that the Jews possessed a \"national character\" but were not a \"nation\" and were thus unassimilable. He argued that Jewish nationalism, particularly Zionism, was hostile to socialism. According to Khlevniuk, Stalin reconciled Marxism with great-power imperialism and therefore expansion of the empire makes him a worthy to the Russian tsars. Service argued that Stalin's Marxism was imbued with a great deal of Russian nationalism. According to Montefiore, Stalin's embrace of the Russian nation was pragmatic, as the Russians were the core of the population of the USSR; it was not a rejection of his Georgian origins. Stalin's push for Soviet westward expansion into eastern Europe resulted in accusations of Russian imperialism.",
"title": "Political ideology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Ethnically Georgian, Stalin grew up speaking the Georgian language, and did not begin learning Russian until the age of eight or nine. It has been argued that his ancestry was Ossetian, because his genetic haplotype (G2a-Z6653) is considered typical of the Ossetians, but he never acknowledged an Ossetian identity. He remained proud of his Georgian identity, and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian. According to Montefiore, despite Stalin's affinity for Russia and Russians, he remained profoundly Georgian in his lifestyle and personality. Some of Stalin's colleagues described him as \"Asiatic\", and he supposedly once told a Japanese journalist that \"I am not a European man, but an Asian, a Russified Georgian\". Service also noted that Stalin \"would never be Russian\", could not credibly pass as one, and never tried to pretend that he was. Montefiore was of the view that \"after 1917, [Stalin] became quadri-national: Georgian by nationality, Russian by loyalty, internationalist by ideology, Soviet by citizenship.\"",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Stalin had a soft voice, and when speaking Russian did so slowly, carefully choosing his phrasing. In private he often used coarse language and profanity, although avoided doing so in public. Described as a poor orator, according to Volkogonov, Stalin's speaking style was \"simple and clear, without flights of fancy, catchy phrases or platform histrionics\". He rarely spoke before large audiences and preferred to express himself in written form. His writing style was similar, being characterised by its simplicity, clarity, and conciseness. Throughout his life, he used various nicknames and pseudonyms, including \"Koba\", \"Soselo\", and \"Ivanov\", adopting \"Stalin\" in 1912; it was based on the Russian word for \"steel\" and has often been translated as \"Man of Steel\".",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "In adulthood, Stalin measured 1.70 m (5 feet 7 inches). His mustached face was pock-marked from smallpox during childhood; this was airbrushed from published photographs. He was born with a webbed left foot, and his left arm had been permanently injured in childhood which left it shorter than his right and lacking in flexibility, which was probably the result of being hit, at the age of 12, by a horse-drawn carriage.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "During his youth, Stalin cultivated a scruffy appearance in rejection of middle-class aesthetic values. By 1907, he grew his hair long and often wore a beard; for clothing, he often wore a traditional Georgian chokha or a red satin shirt with a grey coat and black fedora. From mid-1918 until his death he favoured military-style clothing, in particular long black boots, light-coloured collarless tunics, and a gun. He was a lifelong smoker, who smoked both a pipe and cigarettes. Publicly at least, Stalin had a minimalist lust and lived relatively plainly, with simple and inexpensive clothing and furniture; his dominant interest was the accumulation of power.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "As leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin typically awoke around 11 am, with lunch being served between 3 and 5 pm and dinner no earlier than 9 pm; he then worked late into the evening. He often dined with other Politburo members and their families. As leader, he rarely left Moscow unless to go to one of his dachas for holiday; he disliked travel, and refused to travel by plane. His choice of favoured holiday house changed over the years, although he holidayed in southern parts of the USSR every year from 1925 to 1936 and again from 1945 to 1951. Along with other senior figures, he had a dacha at Zubalova, 35 km outside Moscow, although ceased using it after Nadezhda's 1932 suicide. After 1932, he favoured holidays in Abkhazia, being a friend of its leader, Nestor Lakoba. In 1934, his new Kuntsevo Dacha was built; 9 km from the Kremlin, it became his primary residence. In 1935, he began using a new dacha provided for him by Lakoba at Novy Afon; in 1936, he had the Kholodnaya Rechka dacha built on the Abkhazian coast, designed by Miron Merzhanov.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Trotsky and several other Soviet figures promoted the idea that Stalin was a mediocrity. This gained widespread acceptance outside the Soviet Union during his lifetime but was misleading. According to Montefiore, \"it is clear from hostile and friendly witnesses alike that Stalin was always exceptional, even from childhood\". Stalin had a complex mind, great self-control, and an excellent memory. He was a hard worker, and displayed a keen desire to learn; when in power, he scrutinised many details of Soviet life, from film scripts to architectural plans and military hardware. According to Volkogonov, \"Stalin's private life and working life were one and the same\"; he did not take days off from political activities. Although, Bazhanov described Stalin as having little education and making limited contributions to various matters of state which were discussed at Politburo sessions. Similarly, historian Robert William Davies viewed Stalin as being liable to fall under the sway of persuasive charlatans such as the pseudo-scientific, agronomist Trofim Lysenko due in part to his lack of education. According to Lenin's sister, Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova, Lenin stated that \"Stalin is not intelligent at all\", but \"valued Stalin as a practical type\".",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Stalin could play different roles to different audiences, and was adept at deception, often deceiving others as to his true motives and aims. According to Bolshevik historian, Vladimir Nevsky, Stalin was appointed the General Secretary because he used false rumours to convince Lenin that the party faced a split. Nevsky also claimed that Lenin would later deeply regret trusting Stalin and strove to correct this mistake with his \"Testament\". Several historians have seen it as appropriate to follow Lazar Kaganovich's description of there being \"several Stalins\" as a means of understanding his multi-faceted personality. He was a good organiser, with a strategic mind, and judged others according to their inner strength, practicality, and cleverness. He acknowledged that he could be rude and insulting, but he rarely raised his voice in anger; as his health deteriorated in later life he became increasingly unpredictable and bad-tempered. Despite his tough-talking attitude, he could be very charming; when relaxed, he cracked jokes and mimicked others. Montefiore suggested that this charm was \"the foundation of Stalin's power in the Party\". According to Service he was \"decisive, competent, confident, and ambitious\".",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Stalin was ruthless, temperamentally cruel, and had a propensity for violence high even among the Bolsheviks. He lacked compassion, something Volkogonov suggested might have been accentuated by his many years in prison and exile, although he was capable of acts of kindness to strangers, even amid the Great Terror. He was capable of self-righteous indignation, and was resentful, and vindictive, holding on to grudges for many years. By the 1920s, he was also suspicious and conspiratorial, prone to believing that people were plotting against him and that there were vast international conspiracies behind acts of dissent. He never attended torture sessions or executions, although Service thought Stalin \"derived deep satisfaction\" from degrading and humiliating people and enjoyed keeping even close associates in a state of \"unrelieved fear\". Montefiore thought Stalin's brutality marked him out as a \"natural extremist\"; Service suggested he had tendencies toward a paranoid and sociopathic personality disorder. According to historian Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin wasn't a psychopath. He was instead an emotionally intelligent and feeling intellectual. Other historians linked his brutality not to any personality trait, but to his unwavering commitment to the survival of the Soviet Union and the international Marxist–Leninist cause. Conversely, historian E.A. Rees believed that there was a strong argument in the case of Stalin \"that it was psychopathy that breed tyranny\". Rees cited a diagnosis performed by neuropathologist Vladimir Bekhterev on Stalin in 1927 and who had described him as a \"typical case of severe paranoia\".",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Keenly interested in the arts, Stalin admired artistic talent. He protected several Soviet writers from arrest and prosecution, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, even when their work was labelled harmful to his regime. He enjoyed listening to classical music, owning around 2,700 records, and frequently attending the Bolshoi Theatre during the 1930s and 1940s. His taste in music and theatre was conservative, favouring classical drama, opera, and ballet over what he dismissed as experimental \"formalism\". He also favoured classical forms in the visual arts, disliking avant-garde styles like cubism and futurism. He was a voracious reader and kept a personal library of over 20,000 books. Little of this was fiction, although he could cite passages from Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Nekrasov, and Walt Whitman by heart. Stalin's favourite subject was history, closely followed by Marxist theory and then fiction. Stalin knew Marxist theory well and according to Bullock was an \"effective debater\" who would quote Marx and Engels in his arguments. He favoured historical studies, keeping up with debates in the study of Russian, Mesopotamian, ancient Roman, and Byzantine history. He was very interested in the reigns of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. An autodidact, he claimed to read as many as 500 pages a day, with Montefiore regarding him as an intellectual. Lenin was his favourite author but he also read, and sometimes appreciated, a great deal of writing by Leon Trotsky and other archenemies. Like all Bolshevik leaders, Stalin believed that reading could help transform not just people's ideas and consciousness, but human nature itself. Stalin also enjoyed watching films late at night at cinemas installed in the Kremlin and his dachas. He liked the Western genre, although his favourite films were Volga Volga and Circus (both directed by Grigori Alexandrov and starring Lyubov Orlova).",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Stalin was a keen and accomplished billiards player, and collected watches. He also enjoyed practical jokes; for instance, he would place a tomato on the chairs of Politburo members and wait for them to sit on it. When at social events, he encouraged singing, as well as alcohol consumption; he hoped that others would drunkenly reveal their secrets to him. As an infant, Stalin displayed a love of flowers, and later in life he became a keen gardener. His Volynskoe suburb had a 20-hectare (50-acre) park, with Stalin devoting much attention to its agricultural activities.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Stalin publicly condemned anti-Semitism, although he was repeatedly accused of it. People who knew him, such as Khrushchev, suggested he long harboured negative sentiments toward Jews, and it has been argued that anti-Semitic trends in his policies were further fuelled by Stalin's struggle against Trotsky. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev claimed that Stalin encouraged him to incite anti-Semitism in Ukraine, allegedly telling him that \"the good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews.\" In 1946, Stalin allegedly said privately that \"every Jew is a potential spy\". Conquest stated that although Stalin had Jewish associates, he promoted anti-Semitism. Service cautioned that there was \"no irrefutable evidence\" of anti-Semitism in Stalin's published work, although his private statements and public actions were \"undeniably reminiscent of crude antagonism towards Jews\"; he added that throughout Stalin's lifetime, the Georgian \"would be the friend, associate or leader of countless individual Jews\". Additionally, according to Beria, Stalin had affairs with several Jewish women.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "His ability to assume absolute power has remained a subject of historical debate. Some historians have attributed his success to his personal qualities. Contrarily, certain political theorists such as Trotsky have emphasised the role of external conditions in facilitating the growth of a Soviet bureaucracy which served as a power base for Stalin. Other historians have regarded the premature deaths of prominent Bolsheviks such as Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov to have been key factors in his elevation to the position of leadership in the Soviet Union. In part, because Sverdlov served as the original chairman of the party secretariat and was considered a natural candidate for the position of General Secretary. Historian Peter Kenez believed that Trotsky could probably have removed Stalin with the use of Lenin's testament, but he acquiesced to the collective decision not to publish the document.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Friendship was important to Stalin, and he used it to gain and maintain power. Kotkin observed that Stalin \"generally gravitated to people like himself: parvenu intelligentsia of humble background\". He gave nicknames to his favourites, for instance referring to Yezhov as \"my blackberry\". Stalin was sociable and enjoyed a joke. According to Montefiore, Stalin's friendships \"meandered between love, admiration, and venomous jealousy\". While head of the Soviet Union he remained in contact with many of his old friends in Georgia, sending them letters and gifts of money.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Stalin was not a womaniser. According to Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's one-time secretary, \"Women didn't interest him. His own woman [Alliluyeva] was enough for him, and he paid scant attention to her.\" However, Montefiore noted that in his early life Stalin \"rarely seems to have been without a girlfriend\". Montefiore described Stalin's favoured types as \"young, malleable teenagers or buxom peasant women\", who would be supportive and unchallenging toward him. According to Service, Stalin \"regarded women as a resource for sexual gratification and domestic comfort\". Stalin married twice and had several children.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Stalin married his first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, in 1906. According to Montefiore, theirs was \"a true love match\"; Volkogonov suggested that she was \"probably the one human being he had really loved\". When she died, Stalin allegedly said: \"This creature softened my heart of stone.\" However, Russian historian Anton Antonov-Ovseenko wrote that Stalin was physically abusive to her in Baku. They had a son, Yakov, who often frustrated and annoyed Stalin. Yakov had a daughter, Galina, before fighting for the Red Army in the Second World War. He was captured by the German Army and then committed suicide.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "In 1914, Stalin, circa age 35, had a relationship with Lidia Pereprygina, then 14-years-old, who subsequently became pregnant with Stalin's child. Circa December 1914, Pereprygia gave birth to Stalin's child, although the infant died soon after. In 1916, Lidia – now 15-years-old – was pregnant again. She gave birth to a son, named Alexander Davydov, in around April 1917. Stalin, then absent, later came to know of the child's existence but showed no apparent interest in him.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "Stalin's second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva; theirs was not an easy relationship, and they often fought. They had two biological children—a son, Vasily, and a daughter, Svetlana, and adopted another son, Artyom Sergeev, in 1921. It is unclear if Stalin ever had a mistress during or after his marriage to Alliluyeva. In any event, she suspected that he was unfaithful with other women, and committed suicide in 1932. Stalin regarded Vasily as spoiled and often chastised his behaviour; as Stalin's son, Vasily nevertheless was swiftly promoted through the ranks of the Red Army and allowed a lavish lifestyle. Conversely, Stalin had an affectionate relationship with Svetlana during her childhood, and was also very fond of Artyom. In later life, he disapproved of Svetlana's various suitors and husbands, putting a strain on his relationship with her. After the Second World War, he made little time for his children and his family played a decreasingly important role in his life. After Stalin's death, Svetlana changed her surname from Stalin to Alliluyeva, and defected to the U.S.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "After Nadezhda's death, Stalin became increasingly close to his sister-in-law Zhenya Alliluyeva; Montefiore believed that they were lovers. There are unproven rumours that from 1934 onward he had a relationship with his housekeeper Valentina Istomina. Montefiore also claimed that Stalin had at least two illegitimate children, although he never recognised them as being his. One of them, Konstantin Kuzakov, later taught philosophy at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, but never met Stalin. The other, Alexander, was the son of Lidia Pereprygina; he was raised as the son of a peasant fisherman and the Soviet authorities made him swear never to reveal that Stalin was his biological father. Stalin was also complicit with the persecution of several relatives of his former wives such as Maria and Alexander Svanidze who were arrested and eliminated during the Great Purge.",
"title": "Personal life and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The historian Robert Conquest stated that Stalin perhaps \"determined the course of the twentieth century\" more than any other individual. Biographers like Service and Volkogonov have considered him an outstanding and exceptional politician; Montefiore labelled Stalin as \"that rare combination: both 'intellectual' and killer\", a man who was \"the ultimate politician\" and \"the most elusive and fascinating of the twentieth-century titans\". According to historian Kevin McDermott, interpretations of Stalin range from \"the sycophantic and adulatory to the vitriolic and condemnatory.\" For most Westerners and anti-communist Russians, he is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a mass murderer; for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "According to Service, Stalin strengthened and stabilised the Soviet Union. Service suggested that the country might have collapsed long before 1991 without Stalin. In under three decades, Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a major industrial world power, one which could \"claim impressive achievements\" in terms of urbanisation, military strength, education and Soviet pride. Under his rule, the average Soviet life expectancy grew due to improved living conditions, nutrition and medical care as mortality rates also declined. Although millions of Soviet citizens despised him, support for Stalin was nevertheless widespread throughout Soviet society. Conversely, the historian Vadim Rogovin argued that the Great Terror which had gained traction in 1937 \"caused losses to the communist movement both in the USSR and throughout the world from which the movement has not recovered to this very day\". Similarly, Khrushchev believed his widespread purges of the \"most advanced nucleus of people\" among the Old Bolsheviks and leading figures in the military and scientific fields had \"undoubtedly\" weakened the nation.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Stalin's necessity for the Soviet Union's economic development has been questioned, and it has been argued that Stalin's policies from 1928 onwards may have only been a limiting factor. Stalin's Soviet Union has been characterised as a totalitarian state, with Stalin its authoritarian leader. Various biographers have described him as a dictator, an autocrat, or accused him of practising Caesarism. Montefiore argued that while Stalin initially ruled as part of a Communist Party oligarchy, the Soviet government transformed from this oligarchy into a personal dictatorship in 1934, with Stalin only becoming \"absolute dictator\" between March and June 1937, when senior military and NKVD figures were eliminated. According to Kotkin, Stalin \"built a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship.\" In both the Soviet Union and elsewhere he came to be portrayed as an \"Oriental despot\". Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as \"one of the most powerful figures in human history.\" McDermott stated that Stalin had \"concentrated unprecedented political authority in his hands.\" Service stated that Stalin \"had come closer to personal despotism than almost any monarch in history\" by the late 1930s.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "McDermott nevertheless cautioned against \"over-simplistic stereotypes\"—promoted in the fiction of writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and Anatoly Rybakov—that portrayed Stalin as an omnipotent and omnipresent tyrant who controlled every aspect of Soviet life through repression and totalitarianism. Service similarly warned of the portrayal of Stalin as an \"unimpeded despot\", noting that \"powerful though he was, his powers were not limitless\", and his rule depended on his willingness to conserve the Soviet structure he had inherited. Kotkin observed that Stalin's ability to remain in power relied on him having a majority in the Politburo at all times. Khlevniuk noted that at various points, particularly when Stalin was old and frail, there were \"periodic manifestations\" in which the party oligarchy threatened his autocratic control. Stalin denied to foreign visitors that he was a dictator, stating that those who labelled him such did not understand the Soviet governance structure.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "A vast literature devoted to Stalin has been produced. During Stalin's lifetime, his approved biographies were largely hagiographic in content. Stalin ensured that these works gave very little attention to his early life, particularly because he did not wish to emphasise his Georgian origins in a state numerically dominated by Russians. Since his death many more biographies have been written, although until the 1980s these relied largely on the same sources of information. Under Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet administration various previously classified files on Stalin's life were made available to historians, at which point Stalin became \"one of the most urgent and vital issues on the public agenda\" in the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Union in 1991, the rest of the archives were opened to historians, resulting in much new information about Stalin coming to light, and producing a flood of new research.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Leninists remain divided in their views on Stalin; some view him as Lenin's authentic successor, while others believe he betrayed Lenin's ideas by deviating from them. The socio-economic nature of Stalin's Soviet Union has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of state socialism, state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, or a totally unique mode of production. Socialist writers like Volkogonov have acknowledged that Stalin's actions damaged \"the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "With a high number of excess deaths occurring under his rule, Stalin has been labelled \"one of the most notorious figures in history\". These deaths occurred as a result of collectivisation, famine, terror campaigns, disease, war and mortality rates in the Gulag. As the majority of excess deaths under Stalin were not direct killings, the exact number of victims of Stalinism is difficult to calculate due to lack of consensus among scholars on which deaths can be attributed to the regime. Stalin has also been accused of genocide in the cases of forced population transfer of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and the famine in Ukraine.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Official records reveal 799,455 documented executions in the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953; 681,692 of these were carried out between 1937 and 1938, the years of the Great Purge. According to Michael Ellman, the best modern estimate for the number of repression deaths during the Great Purge is 950,000–1.2 million, which includes executions, deaths in detention, or soon after their release. In addition, while archival data shows that 1,053,829 perished in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953, the current historical consensus is that of the 18 million people who passed through the Gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7 million died as a result of their incarceration. Historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft and Michael Ellman attribute roughly 3 million deaths to the Stalinist regime, including executions and deaths from criminal negligence. Wheatcroft and historian R. W. Davies estimate famine deaths at 5.5–6.5 million while scholar Steven Rosefielde gives a number of 8.7 million.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "In 2011, historian Timothy D. Snyder summarised modern data made after the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s and states that Stalin's regime was responsible for 9 million deaths, with 6 million of these being deliberate killings. He further states that estimates of 20 million or above, which were made before access to the archives, are not credible. According to Rogovin, 80–90% of the members of the Central Committee elected at the Sixth through to the Seventeenth Congresses were physically annihilated.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Shortly after his death, the Soviet Union went through a period of de-Stalinization. Malenkov denounced the Stalin personality cult, which was subsequently criticised in Pravda. In 1956, Khrushchev gave his \"Secret Speech\", titled \"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences\", to a closed session of the Party's 20th Congress. There, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for both his mass repression and his personality cult. He repeated these denunciations at the 22nd Party Congress in October 1962. In October 1961, Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, the location marked by a bust. Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation process in Soviet society ended when he was replaced as leader by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964; the latter introduced a level of re-Stalinisation within the Soviet Union. In 1969 and again in 1979, plans were proposed for a full rehabilitation of Stalin's legacy but on both occasions were halted due to fears of damaging the USSR's public image. Gorbachev saw the total denunciation of Stalin as necessary for the regeneration of Soviet society. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the first president of the new Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, continued Gorbachev's denunciation of Stalin but added to it a denunciation of Lenin. His successor Vladimir Putin did not seek to rehabilitate Stalin but emphasised the celebration of Soviet achievements under Stalin's leadership rather than the Stalinist repressions. In October 2017, Putin opened the Wall of Grief memorial in Moscow, noting that the \"terrible past\" would neither be \"justified by anything\" nor \"erased from the national memory\". In a 2017 interview, Putin added that while \"we should not forget the horrors of Stalinism\", the excessive demonization of Stalin \"is a means to attack [the] Soviet Union and Russia\". In recent years, the government and general public of Russia has been accused of rehabilitating Stalin.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "Amid the social and economic turmoil of the post-Soviet period, many Russians viewed Stalin as having overseen an era of order, predictability, and pride. He remains a revered figure among many Russian nationalists, who feel nostalgic about the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, and he is regularly invoked approvingly within both Russia's far-left and far-right.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "Polling by the Levada Center suggest Stalin's popularity has grown since 2015, with 46% of Russians expressing a favourable view of him in 2017 and 51% in 2019. In a 2021 poll, a record 70% of Russians indicated they had a mostly/very favourable view of Stalin. The same year, a survey by the Center showed that Joseph Stalin was named by 39% of Russians as the \"most outstanding national figure of all time\" and, while nobody received an absolute majority, Stalin was very clearly in first place, followed by another Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin with 30% and Russian poet Alexander Pushkin with 23%. At the same time, there was a growth in pro-Stalinist literature in Russia, much relying upon the misrepresentation or fabrication of source material. In this literature, Stalin's repressions are regarded either as a necessary measure to defeat \"enemies of the people\" or the result of lower-level officials acting without Stalin's knowledge.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "The only other part of the former Soviet Union other than Russia where admiration for Stalin has remained consistently widespread is Georgia, although Georgian attitudes have been very divided. A number of Georgians resent criticism of Stalin, the most famous figure from their nation's modern history. A 2013 survey by Tbilisi State University found 45% of Georgians expressing \"a positive attitude\" to him. A 2017 Pew Research survey had 57% of Georgians saying he played a positive role in history, compared to 18% of those expressing the same for Mikhail Gorbachev.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Some positive sentiment can also be found elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. A 2012 survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found 38% of Armenians concurring that their country \"will always have need of a leader like Stalin\". In early 2010, a new monument to Stalin was erected in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. In December 2010, unknown persons decapitated it and it was destroyed in a bomb attack in 2011. In a 2016 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll, 38% of respondents had a negative attitude to Stalin, 26% a neutral one and 17% a positive, with 19% refusing to answer.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution and created a one-party state under the new Communist Party in 1917, Stalin joined its governing Politburo. Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924. Under Stalin, socialism in one country became a central tenet of the party's ideology. As a result of his Five-Year Plans, the country underwent agricultural collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, creating a centralised command economy. Severe disruptions to food production contributed to the famine of 1930–33, including the Asharshylyk in Kazakhstan and the Holodomor in Ukraine. To eradicate accused "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the Great Purge, in which over a million were imprisoned, largely in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. By 1937, he had absolute control over the party and government. Stalin promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported European anti-fascist movements during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, his regime signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial catastrophes, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German invasion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. Amid the war, the Soviets annexed the Baltic states and Bessarabia and North Bukovina, subsequently establishing Soviet-aligned governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe and in parts of East Asia. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as global superpowers and entered a period of tension, the Cold War. Stalin presided over the Soviet post-war reconstruction and its development of an atomic bomb in 1949. During these years, the country experienced another major famine and an antisemitic campaign that culminated in the doctors' plot. After Stalin's death in 1953, he was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who subsequently denounced his rule and initiated the de-Stalinisation of Soviet society. Widely considered to be one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of the working class and socialism. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who cemented the Soviet Union's status as a leading world power. Conversely, his totalitarian regime has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repression, ethnic cleansing, wide-scale deportation, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions. | 2001-10-28T13:40:17Z | 2023-12-31T12:16:21Z | [
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15,642 | January | January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. The first day of the month is known as New Year's Day. It is, on average, the coldest month of the year within most of the Northern Hemisphere (where it is the second month of winter) and the warmest month of the year within most of the Southern Hemisphere (where it is the second month of summer). In the Southern hemisphere, January is the seasonal equivalent of July in the Northern hemisphere and vice versa.
Ancient Roman observances during this month include Cervula and Juvenalia, celebrated January 1, as well as one of three Agonalia, celebrated January 9, and Carmentalia, celebrated January 11. These dates do not correspond to the modern Gregorian calendar.
January (in Latin, Ianuarius) is named after Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in Roman mythology.
Traditionally, the original Roman calendar consisted of 10 months totaling 304 days, winter being considered a month-less period. Around 713 BC, the semi-mythical successor of Romulus, King Numa Pompilius, is supposed to have added the months of January and February, so that the calendar covered a standard lunar year (354 days). Although March was originally the first month in the old Roman calendar, January became the first month of the calendar year either under Numa or under the Decemvirs about 450 BC (Roman writers differ). In contrast, each specific calendar year was identified by the names of the two consuls, who entered office on March 15 until 153 BC, at which point they started entering office on January 1.
Various Christian feast dates were used for the New Year in Europe during the Middle Ages, including March 25 (Feast of the Annunciation) and December 25. However, medieval calendars were still displayed in the Roman fashion with twelve columns from January to December. Beginning in the 16th century, European countries began officially making January 1 the start of the New Year once again—sometimes called Circumcision Style because this was the date of the Feast of the Circumcision, being the seventh day after December 25.
Historical names for January include its original Roman designation, Ianuarius, the Saxon term Wulf-monath (meaning "wolf month") and Charlemagne's designation Wintarmanoth ("winter / cold month"). In Slovene, it is traditionally called prosinec. The name, associated with millet bread and the act of asking for something, was first written in 1466 in the Škofja Loka manuscript.
According to Theodor Mommsen, 1 January became the first day of the year in 600 AUC of the Roman calendar (153 BC), due to disasters in the Lusitanian War. A Lusitanian chief called Punicus invaded the Roman territory, defeated two Roman governors, and killed their troops. The Romans resolved to send a consul to Hispania, and in order to accelerate the dispatch of aid, "they even made the new consuls enter into office two months and a half before the legal time" (March 15).
January's birthstone is the garnet, which represents constancy.
Its birth flower is the cottage pink Dianthus caryophyllus, galanthus or traditional carnation. The zodiac signs are Capricorn (until January 19) and Aquarius (January 20 onward).
This list does not necessarily imply either official status or general observance.
This list does not necessarily imply either official status or general observance.
All Baha'i, Islamic, and Jewish observances begin at sundown prior to the date listed, and end at sundown on the date in question.
This list does not necessarily imply either official status or general observance.
January 2 unless that day is a Sunday, in which case January 3
First Friday
Second Saturday
Second Monday
Friday before third Monday
Third Friday
Sunday closest to January 22
Third full week of January
Last full week of January
Third Monday
Wednesday of the third full week of January
Friday between January 19–25
Last Saturday
Last Sunday
January 30 or the nearest Sunday
Last Monday in January
Fourth Monday
Monday Closest to January 29 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. The first day of the month is known as New Year's Day. It is, on average, the coldest month of the year within most of the Northern Hemisphere (where it is the second month of winter) and the warmest month of the year within most of the Southern Hemisphere (where it is the second month of summer). In the Southern hemisphere, January is the seasonal equivalent of July in the Northern hemisphere and vice versa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Ancient Roman observances during this month include Cervula and Juvenalia, celebrated January 1, as well as one of three Agonalia, celebrated January 9, and Carmentalia, celebrated January 11. These dates do not correspond to the modern Gregorian calendar.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "January (in Latin, Ianuarius) is named after Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in Roman mythology.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Traditionally, the original Roman calendar consisted of 10 months totaling 304 days, winter being considered a month-less period. Around 713 BC, the semi-mythical successor of Romulus, King Numa Pompilius, is supposed to have added the months of January and February, so that the calendar covered a standard lunar year (354 days). Although March was originally the first month in the old Roman calendar, January became the first month of the calendar year either under Numa or under the Decemvirs about 450 BC (Roman writers differ). In contrast, each specific calendar year was identified by the names of the two consuls, who entered office on March 15 until 153 BC, at which point they started entering office on January 1.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Various Christian feast dates were used for the New Year in Europe during the Middle Ages, including March 25 (Feast of the Annunciation) and December 25. However, medieval calendars were still displayed in the Roman fashion with twelve columns from January to December. Beginning in the 16th century, European countries began officially making January 1 the start of the New Year once again—sometimes called Circumcision Style because this was the date of the Feast of the Circumcision, being the seventh day after December 25.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Historical names for January include its original Roman designation, Ianuarius, the Saxon term Wulf-monath (meaning \"wolf month\") and Charlemagne's designation Wintarmanoth (\"winter / cold month\"). In Slovene, it is traditionally called prosinec. The name, associated with millet bread and the act of asking for something, was first written in 1466 in the Škofja Loka manuscript.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "According to Theodor Mommsen, 1 January became the first day of the year in 600 AUC of the Roman calendar (153 BC), due to disasters in the Lusitanian War. A Lusitanian chief called Punicus invaded the Roman territory, defeated two Roman governors, and killed their troops. The Romans resolved to send a consul to Hispania, and in order to accelerate the dispatch of aid, \"they even made the new consuls enter into office two months and a half before the legal time\" (March 15).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "January's birthstone is the garnet, which represents constancy.",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Its birth flower is the cottage pink Dianthus caryophyllus, galanthus or traditional carnation. The zodiac signs are Capricorn (until January 19) and Aquarius (January 20 onward).",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "This list does not necessarily imply either official status or general observance.",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "This list does not necessarily imply either official status or general observance.",
"title": "Observances"
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{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "All Baha'i, Islamic, and Jewish observances begin at sundown prior to the date listed, and end at sundown on the date in question.",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "This list does not necessarily imply either official status or general observance.",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "January 2 unless that day is a Sunday, in which case January 3",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "First Friday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Second Saturday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Second Monday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Friday before third Monday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Third Friday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Sunday closest to January 22",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Third full week of January",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Last full week of January",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Third Monday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Wednesday of the third full week of January",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Friday between January 19–25",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Last Saturday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Last Sunday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "January 30 or the nearest Sunday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Last Monday in January",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Fourth Monday",
"title": "Observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Monday Closest to January 29",
"title": "Observances"
}
]
| January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. The first day of the month is known as New Year's Day. It is, on average, the coldest month of the year within most of the Northern Hemisphere and the warmest month of the year within most of the Southern Hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, January is the seasonal equivalent of July in the Northern hemisphere and vice versa. Ancient Roman observances during this month include Cervula and Juvenalia, celebrated January 1, as well as one of three Agonalia, celebrated January 9, and Carmentalia, celebrated January 11. These dates do not correspond to the modern Gregorian calendar. | 2001-06-11T23:27:53Z | 2023-12-19T16:56:28Z | [
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15,644 | Johnny Unitas | John Constantine Unitas (/juːˈnaɪtəs/; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played 18 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Unitas played college football for the Louisville Cardinals. He set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three in the pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, and 1968, and one in the Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and is credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.
Nicknamed "Johnny U" and "the Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; his surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. He grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. At St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.
In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would "get murdered" if he was put on the field.
Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) Unitas weighed 145 pounds (66 kg) on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).
By the 1952 season, the university had decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.
The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, punted once for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.
Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.
After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, resulting in a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, sparking a fourth quarter comeback to beat the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
With the Colts fresh off back-to-back championships, Unitas was lauded by rookie head coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, who said of the 26-year-old signal caller: "Without him, they're just ordinary. With him, they're great. He's the best quarterback I've ever seen."
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts, as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference, and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also thrown two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.
In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972, at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by a score of 35–7.
Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would have kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.
Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in Week 2. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many questioned his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in Week 3. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback and future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After posting a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's film Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. They were on display at the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards until its closure in 2015.
Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the football organization that made up the original Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and established the Baltimore Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
On November 20, 1954, Unitas, at age 21, married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle. They lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972. They had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.
Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.
Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games. Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.
In 1991, Unitas and his wife filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. Their court filings showed that the couple owed creditors as much as $3.2 million but had assets of about $1.4 million. His financial problems arose in part from a business venture in which he and two partners took out loans to buy National Circuits Inc., a maker of printed circuit boards, and the firm subsequently failed.
On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while exercising at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore. Unitas was buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.
Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Constantine Unitas (/juːˈnaɪtəs/; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played 18 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Unitas played college football for the Louisville Cardinals. He set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three in the pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, and 1968, and one in the Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and is credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Nicknamed \"Johnny U\" and \"the Golden Arm\", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; his surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. He grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. At St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would \"get murdered\" if he was put on the field.",
"title": "College career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) Unitas weighed 145 pounds (66 kg) on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).",
"title": "College career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "By the 1952 season, the university had decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.",
"title": "College career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, punted once for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.",
"title": "College career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.",
"title": "College career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, \"[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams).\" The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious \"mop-up\" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, resulting in a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the \"greatest game ever played\". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, sparking a fourth quarter comeback to beat the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "With the Colts fresh off back-to-back championships, Unitas was lauded by rookie head coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, who said of the 26-year-old signal caller: \"Without him, they're just ordinary. With him, they're great. He's the best quarterback I've ever seen.\"",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts, as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference, and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the \"night ball\" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record and missed the playoffs.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also thrown two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with \"Broadway\" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972, at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, \"We want Unitas!!!\", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by a score of 35–7.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would have kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in Week 2. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many questioned his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in Week 3. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback and future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After posting a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.",
"title": "Professional career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as \"Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride,\" he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's film Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. They were on display at the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards until its closure in 2015.",
"title": "Post-playing years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.",
"title": "Post-playing years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the football organization that made up the original Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and established the Baltimore Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, \"He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone.\"",
"title": "Post-playing years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On November 20, 1954, Unitas, at age 21, married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle. They lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972. They had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games. Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 1991, Unitas and his wife filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. Their court filings showed that the couple owed creditors as much as $3.2 million but had assets of about $1.4 million. His financial problems arose in part from a business venture in which he and two partners took out loans to buy National Circuits Inc., a maker of printed circuit boards, and the firm subsequently failed.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while exercising at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore. Unitas was buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| John Constantine Unitas was an American football quarterback who played 18 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time. Unitas played college football for the Louisville Cardinals. He set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three in the pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, and 1968, and one in the Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and is credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years. Nicknamed "Johnny U" and "the Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. | 2001-04-04T21:22:09Z | 2023-12-29T08:17:13Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Unitas |
15,645 | John Jacob Astor | John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-born American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor. Astor made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by smuggling opium into China, and by investing in real estate in or around New York City. He was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States.
Born in Germany, Astor immigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer. He moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. Seeing the expansion of population to the west, Astor entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. Following a decline in demand due to changing European tastes, he got out of the fur trade in 1830, diversifying by investing in New York City real estate. Astor was highly wealthy and became a prominent patron of the arts. In proportion to GDP, he was one of the richest people in modern history.
Johann Jakob Astor was born in 1763 in Walldorf, a town near Heidelberg in the Electoral Palatinate, which is in the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg. He was the youngest son of Johann Jacob Astor and Maria Magdalena vom Berg. His three older brothers were George, Henry, and Melchior. In his childhood, Johann worked in his father's butcher shop and as a dairy salesman. In 1779, at the age of 16, he moved to London to join his brother George in working for an uncle's piano and flute manufacturer, Astor & Broadwood. While there, he learned English and anglicized his name to John Jacob Astor.
In November of 1783, just after the end of the American Revolutionary War, Astor boarded a ship for the United States, arriving in Baltimore around March of the following year. There, he rented a room from Sarah Cox Todd, a widow, and began a flirtation with his landlady's daughter, also named Sarah Cox Todd. The young couple married in 1785. His intent had been to join his brother Henry, who had established a butcher shop in New York City. A chance meeting with a fur trader on his voyage had inspired him to join the North American fur trade as well. After working at his brother's shop for a time, Astor began to purchase raw hides from Native Americans, prepare them himself, and resell them in London and elsewhere at great profit. He opened his own fur goods shop in New York in the late 1780s and also served as the New York agent of his uncle's musical instrument business.
Astor took advantage of the 1794 Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. In London, Astor at once made a contract with the North West Company, which from Montreal rivaled the trade interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, then based in London.
Astor imported furs from Montreal to New York and shipped them to Europe. By 1800, he had amassed over a quarter of a million dollars (the equivalent of six million dollars in 2023) and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade. His agents worked throughout the western areas and were ruthless in competition. In 1800, following the example of the Empress of China, the first American trading vessel to China, Astor traded mostly opium, but also, furs, teas, and sandalwood at the port of Canton in China, and greatly benefited from it.
The U.S. Embargo Act of 1807 disrupted Astor's import/export business because it closed off trade with Canada. With the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, Astor established the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808. He later formed subsidiaries: the Pacific Fur Company, and the Southwest Fur Company (in which Canadians had a part), in order to control fur trading in the Great Lakes areas and Columbia River region. His Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (established in April 1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast. He financed the overland Astor Expedition in 1810–1812 to reach the outpost. Members of the expedition were to discover South Pass, through which hundreds of thousands of settlers on the Oregon, Mormon, and California Trails used to later pass through the Rocky Mountains.
Astor's fur trading ventures were disrupted during the War of 1812, when the British captured his trading posts. In 1816, he joined the opium smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchased ten tons of Ottoman-produced opium, and shipped the contraband to Canton onboard the packet ship Macedonian. Astor later left the Chinese opium trade and sold opium solely in Britain.
Astor's business rebounded in 1817 after the U.S. Congress passed a protectionist law that barred foreign fur traders from U.S. territories. The American Fur Company came to dominate trading in the area around the Great Lakes, absorbing competitors in a monopoly. Astor had a townhouse at 233 Broadway in Manhattan and a country estate, Hellgate, in Northern New York City.
In 1822, Astor established the Robert Stuart House on Mackinac Island in Michigan as headquarters for the reorganized American Fur Company, making the island a metropolis of the fur trade. Washington Irving described this at length, based on contemporary documents, diaries, etc., in his travelogue Astoria. Astor's commercial connections extended over the entire globe, and his ships were found in every sea. He and Sarah moved to a townhouse on Prince Street in Manhattan, New York.
Astor began buying land in New York City in 1799 and acquired sizable holdings along the waterfront. After the start of the 19th century, flush with China trade profits, he became more systematic, ambitious, and calculating by investing in New York real estate. In 1803, he bought a 70-acre farm on which he built the Astor Mansion at Hellgate. The property ran west of Broadway to the Hudson River between 42nd and 46th streets. That same year, and the following year, he bought considerable holdings from the disgraced Aaron Burr.
In the 1830s, Astor foresaw that the next big boom would be the build-up of New York, which would soon emerge as one of the world's greatest cities. Astor sold his interests in the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and used the money to buy and develop large tracts of Manhattan real estate. Astor correctly predicted the city's rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island, and he purchased more and more land beyond the then-existing city limits. Astor rarely built on his land, but leased it to others for rent and their use. After retiring from his business, Astor spent the rest of his life as a patron of culture. He supported the ornithologist John James Audubon in his studies, artwork, and travels, and the presidential campaign of Henry Clay.
On September 19, 1785, Astor married Sarah Cox Todd (April 9, 1762 – August 3, 1842). Her parents were Scottish immigrants Adam Todd and Sarah Cox. Although she brought him a dowry of only $300, she possessed a frugal mind and a business judgment that he declared better than that of most merchants. She assisted him in the practical details of his business, and managed Astor's affairs when he was away from New York.
They had eight children:
Astor belonged to the Freemasons, a fraternal order, and served as Master of Holland Lodge #8, New York City in 1788. Later he served as Grand Treasurer for the Grand Lodge of New York. He was president of the German Society of the City of New York from 1837 to 1841.
At the time of his death in 1848, Astor was the wealthiest person in the United States, leaving an estate estimated to be worth at least $20 million, or 0.9% of estimated US GDP at the time, which is equivalent to $598 million in 2020). By comparison, the fortune of Jeff Bezos was worth approximately $200 billion in 2020, similar to Astor at approximately 0.9% of US GDP.
In his will, Astor bequeathed $400,000 to build the Astor Library for the New York public, which was later consolidated with other libraries to form the New York Public Library. He also left $50,000 for a poorhouse and orphanage in his German hometown of Walldorf. The Astorhaus is now operated as a museum honoring Astor. It is a renowned and popular fest hall for marriages. Astor donated gifts totaling $20,000 to the German Society of the City of New York, during his term as president, from 1837 until 1841.
Astor left the bulk of his fortune to his second son William, because his eldest son, John Jr., was sickly and mentally unstable. Astor left enough money to care for John Jr. for the rest of his life. William continued building the family fortune, and was an ancestor of John Jacob Astor III, John Jacob Astor IV, and John Jacob Astor VI.
Astor is buried in Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan. Many members of his family had joined its congregation, but Astor remained a member of the local German Reformed congregation to his death. In the short story Bartleby, the Scrivener, Herman Melville used Astor as a symbol of men who made the earliest fortunes in New York.
The pair of marble lions that sit by the entrance of the New York Public Library Main Branch at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after Astor and James Lenox, who founded the library from his own collection. Next, they were called Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (both lions are males). Mayor Fiorello La Guardia renamed them "Patience" and "Fortitude" during the Great Depression.
The neighborhood of Astoria in Queens, New York City, is named after Astor.
The one-block Astor Place street in Manhattan, New York City, was named after Astor, soon after his death.
The coastal town of Astoria, Oregon, is named after Astor, as well as an elementary school named in his honor. The background to the founding of this town is described in Washington Irving’s Astoria, a book whose writing was financed by Astor.
The historic Astor Street in Green Bay, Wisconsin is named after Astor. In 1835, John Jacob Astor founded the Town of Astor in Wisconsin. After the Town of Astor was united with the Town of Navarino to form the Borough of Green Bay, one neighborhood was named after him.
In 1908, when the association football club FC Astoria Walldorf was formed in Astor's birthplace in Germany, the group added "Astoria" to its name in his, and the family's, honor. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-born American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor. Astor made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by smuggling opium into China, and by investing in real estate in or around New York City. He was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born in Germany, Astor immigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer. He moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. Seeing the expansion of population to the west, Astor entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. Following a decline in demand due to changing European tastes, he got out of the fur trade in 1830, diversifying by investing in New York City real estate. Astor was highly wealthy and became a prominent patron of the arts. In proportion to GDP, he was one of the richest people in modern history.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Johann Jakob Astor was born in 1763 in Walldorf, a town near Heidelberg in the Electoral Palatinate, which is in the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg. He was the youngest son of Johann Jacob Astor and Maria Magdalena vom Berg. His three older brothers were George, Henry, and Melchior. In his childhood, Johann worked in his father's butcher shop and as a dairy salesman. In 1779, at the age of 16, he moved to London to join his brother George in working for an uncle's piano and flute manufacturer, Astor & Broadwood. While there, he learned English and anglicized his name to John Jacob Astor.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In November of 1783, just after the end of the American Revolutionary War, Astor boarded a ship for the United States, arriving in Baltimore around March of the following year. There, he rented a room from Sarah Cox Todd, a widow, and began a flirtation with his landlady's daughter, also named Sarah Cox Todd. The young couple married in 1785. His intent had been to join his brother Henry, who had established a butcher shop in New York City. A chance meeting with a fur trader on his voyage had inspired him to join the North American fur trade as well. After working at his brother's shop for a time, Astor began to purchase raw hides from Native Americans, prepare them himself, and resell them in London and elsewhere at great profit. He opened his own fur goods shop in New York in the late 1780s and also served as the New York agent of his uncle's musical instrument business.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Astor took advantage of the 1794 Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. In London, Astor at once made a contract with the North West Company, which from Montreal rivaled the trade interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, then based in London.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Astor imported furs from Montreal to New York and shipped them to Europe. By 1800, he had amassed over a quarter of a million dollars (the equivalent of six million dollars in 2023) and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade. His agents worked throughout the western areas and were ruthless in competition. In 1800, following the example of the Empress of China, the first American trading vessel to China, Astor traded mostly opium, but also, furs, teas, and sandalwood at the port of Canton in China, and greatly benefited from it.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The U.S. Embargo Act of 1807 disrupted Astor's import/export business because it closed off trade with Canada. With the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, Astor established the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808. He later formed subsidiaries: the Pacific Fur Company, and the Southwest Fur Company (in which Canadians had a part), in order to control fur trading in the Great Lakes areas and Columbia River region. His Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (established in April 1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast. He financed the overland Astor Expedition in 1810–1812 to reach the outpost. Members of the expedition were to discover South Pass, through which hundreds of thousands of settlers on the Oregon, Mormon, and California Trails used to later pass through the Rocky Mountains.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Astor's fur trading ventures were disrupted during the War of 1812, when the British captured his trading posts. In 1816, he joined the opium smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchased ten tons of Ottoman-produced opium, and shipped the contraband to Canton onboard the packet ship Macedonian. Astor later left the Chinese opium trade and sold opium solely in Britain.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Astor's business rebounded in 1817 after the U.S. Congress passed a protectionist law that barred foreign fur traders from U.S. territories. The American Fur Company came to dominate trading in the area around the Great Lakes, absorbing competitors in a monopoly. Astor had a townhouse at 233 Broadway in Manhattan and a country estate, Hellgate, in Northern New York City.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1822, Astor established the Robert Stuart House on Mackinac Island in Michigan as headquarters for the reorganized American Fur Company, making the island a metropolis of the fur trade. Washington Irving described this at length, based on contemporary documents, diaries, etc., in his travelogue Astoria. Astor's commercial connections extended over the entire globe, and his ships were found in every sea. He and Sarah moved to a townhouse on Prince Street in Manhattan, New York.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Astor began buying land in New York City in 1799 and acquired sizable holdings along the waterfront. After the start of the 19th century, flush with China trade profits, he became more systematic, ambitious, and calculating by investing in New York real estate. In 1803, he bought a 70-acre farm on which he built the Astor Mansion at Hellgate. The property ran west of Broadway to the Hudson River between 42nd and 46th streets. That same year, and the following year, he bought considerable holdings from the disgraced Aaron Burr.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the 1830s, Astor foresaw that the next big boom would be the build-up of New York, which would soon emerge as one of the world's greatest cities. Astor sold his interests in the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and used the money to buy and develop large tracts of Manhattan real estate. Astor correctly predicted the city's rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island, and he purchased more and more land beyond the then-existing city limits. Astor rarely built on his land, but leased it to others for rent and their use. After retiring from his business, Astor spent the rest of his life as a patron of culture. He supported the ornithologist John James Audubon in his studies, artwork, and travels, and the presidential campaign of Henry Clay.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On September 19, 1785, Astor married Sarah Cox Todd (April 9, 1762 – August 3, 1842). Her parents were Scottish immigrants Adam Todd and Sarah Cox. Although she brought him a dowry of only $300, she possessed a frugal mind and a business judgment that he declared better than that of most merchants. She assisted him in the practical details of his business, and managed Astor's affairs when he was away from New York.",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "They had eight children:",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Astor belonged to the Freemasons, a fraternal order, and served as Master of Holland Lodge #8, New York City in 1788. Later he served as Grand Treasurer for the Grand Lodge of New York. He was president of the German Society of the City of New York from 1837 to 1841.",
"title": "Fraternal organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "At the time of his death in 1848, Astor was the wealthiest person in the United States, leaving an estate estimated to be worth at least $20 million, or 0.9% of estimated US GDP at the time, which is equivalent to $598 million in 2020). By comparison, the fortune of Jeff Bezos was worth approximately $200 billion in 2020, similar to Astor at approximately 0.9% of US GDP.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In his will, Astor bequeathed $400,000 to build the Astor Library for the New York public, which was later consolidated with other libraries to form the New York Public Library. He also left $50,000 for a poorhouse and orphanage in his German hometown of Walldorf. The Astorhaus is now operated as a museum honoring Astor. It is a renowned and popular fest hall for marriages. Astor donated gifts totaling $20,000 to the German Society of the City of New York, during his term as president, from 1837 until 1841.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Astor left the bulk of his fortune to his second son William, because his eldest son, John Jr., was sickly and mentally unstable. Astor left enough money to care for John Jr. for the rest of his life. William continued building the family fortune, and was an ancestor of John Jacob Astor III, John Jacob Astor IV, and John Jacob Astor VI.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Astor is buried in Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan. Many members of his family had joined its congregation, but Astor remained a member of the local German Reformed congregation to his death. In the short story Bartleby, the Scrivener, Herman Melville used Astor as a symbol of men who made the earliest fortunes in New York.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The pair of marble lions that sit by the entrance of the New York Public Library Main Branch at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after Astor and James Lenox, who founded the library from his own collection. Next, they were called Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (both lions are males). Mayor Fiorello La Guardia renamed them \"Patience\" and \"Fortitude\" during the Great Depression.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The neighborhood of Astoria in Queens, New York City, is named after Astor.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The one-block Astor Place street in Manhattan, New York City, was named after Astor, soon after his death.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The coastal town of Astoria, Oregon, is named after Astor, as well as an elementary school named in his honor. The background to the founding of this town is described in Washington Irving’s Astoria, a book whose writing was financed by Astor.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The historic Astor Street in Green Bay, Wisconsin is named after Astor. In 1835, John Jacob Astor founded the Town of Astor in Wisconsin. After the Town of Astor was united with the Town of Navarino to form the Borough of Green Bay, one neighborhood was named after him.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1908, when the association football club FC Astoria Walldorf was formed in Astor's birthplace in Germany, the group added \"Astoria\" to its name in his, and the family's, honor.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| John Jacob Astor was a German-born American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor. Astor made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by smuggling opium into China, and by investing in real estate in or around New York City. He was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States. Born in Germany, Astor immigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer. He moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. Seeing the expansion of population to the west, Astor entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. Following a decline in demand due to changing European tastes, he got out of the fur trade in 1830, diversifying by investing in New York City real estate. Astor was highly wealthy and became a prominent patron of the arts. In proportion to GDP, he was one of the richest people in modern history. | 2001-09-10T05:12:40Z | 2023-12-29T01:35:46Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor |
15,651 | Julian calendar | The Julian calendar is a solar calendar of 365 days in every year with an additional leap day every fourth year (without exception). The Julian calendar is still used in parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church and in parts of Oriental Orthodoxy as well as by the Amazigh people (also known as the Berbers), whereas the Gregorian calendar is used in most parts of the world. It is named after Julius Caesar.
The calendar was proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC as a reform of the earlier Roman calendar, which was largely a lunisolar one. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict.
The calendar became the predominant calendar in the Roman Empire and subsequently most of the Western world for more than 1,600 years, until 1582. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII promulgated a minor modification to reduce the average length of the year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days and thus corrected the Julian calendar's drift against the solar year. Worldwide adoption of this revised calendar, which became known as the Gregorian calendar, took place over the subsequent centuries, first in Catholic countries and subsequently in Protestant countries of the Western Christian world.
The Julian calendar has two types of years: a normal year of 365 days and a leap year of 366 days. They follow a simple cycle of three normal years and one leap year, giving an average year that is 365.25 days long. That is more than the actual solar year value of approximately 365.2422 days (the current value, which varies), which means the Julian calendar gains a day every 129 years. In other words, the Julian calendar gains 3.1 days every 400 years, while the Gregorian calendar gains 0.1 day over the same time. For any given event during the years from 1901 through 2099, its date according to the Julian calendar is 13 days behind its corresponding Gregorian date (for instance Julian 1 January falls on Gregorian 14 January).
The Julian calendar was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandria.
The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, for a total of 355 days. In addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March. This intercalary month was formed by inserting 22 or 23 days after the first 23 days of February; the last five days of February, which counted down toward the start of March, became the last five days of Intercalaris. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, forming an intercalary year of 377 or 378 days. Some say the mensis intercalaris always had 27 days and began on either the first or the second day after the Terminalia (23 February).
If managed correctly this system could have allowed the Roman year to stay roughly aligned to a tropical year. However, since the pontifices were often politicians, and because a Roman magistrate's term of office corresponded with a calendar year, this power was prone to abuse: a pontifex could lengthen a year in which he or one of his political allies was in office, or refuse to lengthen one in which his opponents were in power.
Caesar's reform was intended to solve this problem permanently, by creating a calendar that remained aligned to the sun without any human intervention. This proved useful very soon after the new calendar came into effect. Varro used it in 37 BC to fix calendar dates for the start of the four seasons, which would have been impossible only 8 years earlier. A century later, when Pliny dated the winter solstice to 25 December because the sun entered the 8th degree of Capricorn on that date, this stability had become an ordinary fact of life.
Although the approximation of 365+1⁄4 days for the tropical year had been known for a long time, ancient solar calendars had used less precise periods, resulting in gradual misalignment of the calendar with the seasons.
The octaeteris, a cycle of eight lunar years popularised by Cleostratus (and also commonly attributed to Eudoxus) which was used in some early Greek calendars, notably in Athens, is 1.53 days longer than eight mean Julian years. The length of nineteen years in the cycle of Meton was 6,940 days, six hours longer than the mean Julian year. The mean Julian year was the basis of the 76-year cycle devised by Callippus (a student under Eudoxus) to improve the Metonic cycle.
In Persia (Iran) after the reform in the Persian calendar by introduction of the Persian Zoroastrian (i. e. Young Avestan) calendar in 503 BC and afterwards, the first day of the year (1 Farvardin=Nowruz) slipped against the vernal equinox at the rate of approximately one day every four years.
Likewise in the Egyptian calendar, a fixed year of 365 days was in use, drifting by one day against the sun in four years. An unsuccessful attempt to add an extra day every fourth year was made in 238 BC (Decree of Canopus). Caesar probably experienced this "wandering" or "vague" calendar in that country. He landed in the Nile delta in October 48 BC and soon became embroiled in the Ptolemaic dynastic war, especially after Cleopatra managed to be "introduced" to him in Alexandria.
Caesar imposed a peace, and a banquet was held to celebrate the event. Lucan depicted Caesar talking to a wise man called Acoreus during the feast, stating his intention to create a calendar more perfect than that of Eudoxus (Eudoxus was popularly credited with having determined the length of the year to be 365+1⁄4 days). But the war soon resumed and Caesar was attacked by the Egyptian army for several months until he achieved victory. He then enjoyed a long cruise on the Nile with Cleopatra before leaving the country in June 47 BC.
Caesar returned to Rome in 46 BC and, according to Plutarch, called in the best philosophers and mathematicians of his time to solve the problem of the calendar. Pliny says that Caesar was aided in his reform by the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria who is generally considered the principal designer of the reform. Sosigenes may also have been the author of the astronomical almanac published by Caesar to facilitate the reform. Eventually, it was decided to establish a calendar that would be a combination between the old Roman months, the fixed length of the Egyptian calendar, and the 365+1⁄4 days of Greek astronomy. According to Macrobius, Caesar was assisted in this by a certain Marcus Flavius.
Caesar's reform only applied to the Roman calendar. However, in the following decades many of the local civic and provincial calendars of the empire and neighbouring client kingdoms were aligned to the Julian calendar by transforming them into calendars with years of 365 days with an extra day intercalated every four years. The reformed calendars typically retained many features of the unreformed calendars. In many cases, the New Year was not on 1 January, the leap day was not on the traditional bissextile day, the old month names were retained, the lengths of the reformed months did not match the lengths of Julian months, and, even if they did, their first days did not match the first day of the corresponding Julian month. Nevertheless, since the reformed calendars had fixed relationships to each other and to the Julian calendar, the process of converting dates between them became quite straightforward, through the use of conversion tables known as "hemerologia".
The three most important of these calendars are the Alexandrian calendar and the Ancient Macedonian calendar─which had two forms: the Syro-Macedonian and the 'Asian' calendars. Other reformed calendars are known from Cappadocia, Cyprus and the cities of (Roman) Syria and Palestine. Unreformed calendars continued to be used in Gaul (the Coligny calendar), Greece, Macedon, the Balkans and parts of Palestine, most notably in Judea.
The Asian calendar was an adaptation of the Ancient Macedonian calendar used in the Roman province of Asia and, with minor variations, in nearby cities and provinces. It is known in detail through the survival of decrees promulgating it issued in 8 BC by the proconsul Paullus Fabius Maximus. It renamed the first month Dios as Kaisar, and arranged the months such that each month started on the ninth day before the kalends of the corresponding Roman month; thus the year began on 23 September, Augustus's birthday.
The first step of the reform was to realign the start of the calendar year (1 January) to the tropical year by making 46 BC 445 days long, compensating for the intercalations which had been missed during Caesar's pontificate. This year had already been extended from 355 to 378 days by the insertion of a regular intercalary month in February. When Caesar decreed the reform, probably shortly after his return from the African campaign in late Quintilis (July), he added 67 more days by inserting two extraordinary intercalary months between November and December.
These months are called Intercalaris Prior and Intercalaris Posterior in letters of Cicero written at the time; there is no basis for the statement sometimes seen that they were called "Undecimber" and "Duodecimber", terms that arose in the 18th century over a millennium after the Roman Empire's collapse. Their individual lengths are unknown, as is the position of the Nones and Ides within them.
Because 46 BC was the last of a series of irregular years, this extra-long year was, and is, referred to as the "last year of confusion". The new calendar began operation after the realignment had been completed, in 45 BC.
The Julian months were formed by adding ten days to a regular pre-Julian Roman year of 355 days, creating a regular Julian year of 365 days. Two extra days were added to January, Sextilis (August) and December, and one extra day was added to April, June, September, and November. February was not changed in ordinary years, and so continued to be the traditional 28 days. Thus, the ordinary (i.e., non-leap year) lengths of all of the months were set by the Julian calendar to the same values they still hold today. (See Sacrobosco's incorrect theory on month lengths (below) for stories purporting otherwise.)
The Julian reform did not change the method used to account days of the month in the pre-Julian calendar, based on the Kalends, Nones and Ides, nor did it change the positions of these three dates within the months. Macrobius states that the extra days were added immediately before the last day of each month to avoid disturbing the position of the established religious ceremonies relative to the Nones and Ides of the month.
The inserted days were all initially characterised as dies fasti (F – see Roman calendar). The character of a few festival days was changed. In the early Julio-Claudian period a large number of festivals were decreed to celebrate events of dynastic importance, which caused the character of the associated dates to be changed to NP. However, this practice was discontinued around the reign of Claudius, and the practice of characterising days fell into disuse around the end of the first century AD: the Antonine jurist Gaius speaks of dies nefasti as a thing of the past.
The old intercalary month was abolished. The new leap day was dated as ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martias ('the sixth doubled day before the Kalends of March'), usually abbreviated as a.d. bis VI Kal. Mart.; hence it is called in English the bissextile day. The year in which it occurred was termed annus bissextus, in English the bissextile year.
There is debate about the exact position of the bissextile day in the early Julian calendar. The earliest direct evidence is a statement of the 2nd century jurist Celsus, who states that there were two-halves of a 48-hour day, and that the intercalated day was the "posterior" half. An inscription from AD 168 states that a.d. V Kal. Mart. was the day after the bissextile day. The 19th century chronologist Ideler argued that Celsus used the term "posterior" in a technical fashion to refer to the earlier of the two days, which requires the inscription to refer to the whole 48-hour day as the bissextile. Some later historians share this view. Others, following Mommsen, take the view that Celsus was using the ordinary Latin (and English) meaning of "posterior". A third view is that neither half of the 48-hour "bis sextum" was originally formally designated as intercalated, but that the need to do so arose as the concept of a 48-hour day became obsolete.
There is no doubt that the bissextile day eventually became the earlier of the two days for most purposes. In 238 Censorinus stated that it was inserted after the Terminalia (23 February) and was followed by the last five days of February, i.e., a.d. VI, V, IV, III and prid. Kal. Mart. (which would be 24 to 28 February in a common year and the 25th to 29th in a leap year). Hence he regarded the bissextum as the first half of the doubled day. All later writers, including Macrobius about 430, Bede in 725, and other medieval computists (calculators of Easter) followed this rule, as does the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. However, Celsus' definition continued to be used for legal purposes. It was incorporated into Justinian's Digest, and in the English statute De anno et die bissextili of 1236, which was not formally repealed until 1879.
The effect of the bissextile day on the nundinal cycle is not discussed in the sources. According to Dio Cassius, a leap day was inserted in 41 BC to ensure that the first market day of 40 BC did not fall on 1 January, which implies that the old 8-day cycle was not immediately affected by the Julian reform. However, he also reports that in AD 44, and on some previous occasions, the market day was changed to avoid a conflict with a religious festival. This may indicate that a single nundinal letter was assigned to both halves of the 48-hour bissextile day by this time, so that the Regifugium and the market day might fall on the same date but on different days. In any case, the 8-day nundinal cycle began to be displaced by the 7-day week in the first century AD, and dominical letters began to appear alongside nundinal letters in the fasti.
The Julian reform set the lengths of the months to their modern values. However, there is a different explanation for the lengths of Julian months that is still widely repeated but is certainly wrong. It is a theory usually attributed to the 13th century scholar Sacrobosco, but also attested in 12th century works. The model is explicitly contradicted by the 3rd and 5th century authors Censorinus and Macrobius, and it is inconsistent with seasonal lengths given by Varro, writing in 37 BCE, before Sextilis was renamed for Augustus in 8 BCE, with the 31 day Sextilis given by an Egyptian papyrus from 24 BCE, and with the 28 day Februarius shown in the Fasti Caeretani, which is dated before 12 BCE.
Also, the Julian reform did not change the dates of the Nones and Ides. In particular, the Ides were late (on the 15th rather than 13th) in March, May, July, and October, showing that these months always had 31 days in the Roman calendar, whereas Sacrobosco's theory requires that March, May, and July were originally 30 days long and that the length of October was changed from 29 to 30 days by Caesar and to 31 days by Augustus.
The Julian calendar has two types of year: "normal" years of 365 days and "leap" years of 366 days. There is a simple cycle of three "normal" years followed by a leap year and this pattern repeats forever without exception. The Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long. Consequently, the Julian year drifts over time with respect to the tropical (solar) year (365.24217 days).
Although Greek astronomers had known, at least since Hipparchus, a century before the Julian reform, that the tropical year was slightly shorter than 365.25 days, the calendar did not compensate for this difference. As a result, the calendar year gains about three days every four centuries compared to observed equinox times and the seasons. This discrepancy was largely corrected by the Gregorian reform of 1582. The Gregorian calendar has the same months and month lengths as the Julian calendar, but, in the Gregorian calendar, year numbers evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, except that those evenly divisible by 400 remain leap years (even then, the Gregorian calendar diverges from astronomical observations by one day in 3,030 years).
Although the new calendar was much simpler than the pre-Julian calendar, the pontifices initially added a leap day every three years, instead of every four. There are accounts of this in Solinus, Pliny, Ammianus, Suetonius, and Censorinus.
Macrobius gives the following account of the introduction of the Julian calendar:
Caesar's regulation of the civil year to accord with his revised measurement was proclaimed publicly by edict, and the arrangement might have continued to stand had not the correction itself of the calendar led the priests to introduce a new error of their own; for they proceeded to insert the intercalary day, which represented the four quarter-days, at the beginning of each fourth year instead of at its end, although the intercalation ought to have been made at the end of each fourth year and before the beginning of the fifth. This error continued for thirty-six years by which time twelve intercalary days had been inserted instead of the number actually due, namely nine. But when this error was at length recognised, it too was corrected, by an order of Augustus, that twelve years should be allowed to pass without an intercalary day, since the sequence of twelve such years would account for the three days which, in the course of thirty-six years, had been introduced by the premature actions of the priests.
So, according to Macrobius,
Some people have had different ideas as to how the leap years went. The above scheme is that of Scaliger (1583) in the table below. He established that the Augustan reform was instituted in 8 BC. The table below shows for each reconstruction the implied proleptic Julian date for the first day of Caesar's reformed calendar and the first Julian date on which the Roman calendar date matches the Julian calendar after the completion of Augustus' reform.
By the systems of Scaliger, Ideler and Bünting, the leap years prior to the suspension happen to be BC years that are divisible by 3, just as, after leap year resumption, they are the AD years divisible by 4.
Pierre Brind'Amour argued that "only one day was intercalated between 1/1/45 and 1/1/40 (disregarding a momentary 'fiddling' in December of 41) to avoid the nundinum falling on Kal. Ian."
Alexander Jones says that the correct Julian calendar was in use in Egypt in 24 BC, implying that the first day of the reform in both Egypt and Rome, 1 January 45 BC, was the Julian date 1 January if 45 BC was a leap year and 2 January if it was not. This necessitates fourteen leap days up to and including AD 8 if 45 BC was a leap year and thirteen if it was not. In 1999, a papyrus was discovered which gives the dates of astronomical phenomena in 24 BC in both the Egyptian and Roman calendars. From 30 August 26 BC (Julian), Egypt had two calendars: the old Egyptian in which every year had 365 days and the new Alexandrian in which every fourth year had 366 days. Up to 28 August 22 BC (Julian) the date in both calendars was the same. The dates in the Alexandrian and Julian calendars are in one-to-one correspondence except for the period from 29 August in the year preceding a Julian leap year to the following 24 February. From a comparison of the astronomical data with the Egyptian and Roman dates, Alexander Jones concluded that the Egyptian astronomers (as opposed to travellers from Rome) used the correct Julian calendar.
Due to the confusion about this period, we cannot be sure exactly what day (e.g. Julian day number) any particular Roman date refers to before March of 8 BC, except for those used in Egypt in 24 BC which are secured by astronomy.
An inscription has been discovered which orders a new calendar to be used in the Province of Asia to replace the previous Greek lunar calendar. According to one translation
Intercalation shall commence on the day after 14 Peritius [a.d. IX Kal. Feb, which would have been 15 Peritius] as it is currently constituted in the third year following promulgation of the decree. Xanthicus shall have 32 days in this intercalary year.
This is historically correct. It was decreed by the proconsul that the first day of the year in the new calendar shall be Augustus' birthday, a.d. IX Kal. Oct. Every month begins on the ninth day before the kalends. The date of introduction, the day after 14 Peritius, was 1 Dystrus, the next month. The month after that was Xanthicus. Thus Xanthicus began on a.d. IX Kal. Mart., and normally contained 31 days. In leap year, however, it contained an extra "Sebaste day", the Roman leap day, and thus had 32 days. From the lunar nature of the old calendar we can fix the starting date of the new one as 24 January, a.d. IX Kal. Feb 5 BC in the Julian calendar, which was a leap year. Thus from inception the dates of the reformed Asian calendar are in one-to-one correspondence with the Julian.
Another translation of this inscription is
Intercalation shall commence on the day after the fourteenth day in the current month of Peritius [a.d. IX Kal. Feb], occurring every third year. Xanthicus shall have 32 days in this intercalary year.
This would move the starting date back three years to 8 BC, and from the lunar synchronism back to 26 January (Julian). But since the corresponding Roman date in the inscription is 24 January, this must be according to the incorrect calendar which in 8 BC Augustus had ordered to be corrected by the omission of leap days. As the authors of the previous paper point out, with the correct four-year cycle being used in Egypt and the three-year cycle abolished in Rome, it is unlikely that Augustus would have ordered the three-year cycle to be introduced in Asia.
The Julian reform did not immediately cause the names of any months to be changed. The old intercalary month was abolished and replaced with a single intercalary day at the same point (i.e., five days before the end of February).
The Romans later renamed months after Julius Caesar and Augustus, renaming Quintilis as "Iulius" (July) in 44 BC and Sextilis as "Augustus" (August) in 8 BC. Quintilis was renamed to honour Caesar because it was the month of his birth. According to a senatus consultum quoted by Macrobius, Sextilis was renamed to honour Augustus because several of the most significant events in his rise to power, culminating in the fall of Alexandria, occurred in that month.
Other months were renamed by other emperors, but apparently none of the later changes survived their deaths. In AD 37, Caligula renamed September as "Germanicus" after his father; in AD 65, Nero renamed April as "Neroneus", May as "Claudius" and June as "Germanicus"; and in AD 84 Domitian renamed September as "Germanicus" and October as "Domitianus". Commodus was unique in renaming all twelve months after his own adopted names (January to December): "Amazonius", "Invictus", "Felix", "Pius", "Lucius", "Aelius", "Aurelius", "Commodus", "Augustus", "Herculeus", "Romanus", and "Exsuperatorius". The emperor Tacitus is said to have ordered that September, the month of his birth and accession, be renamed after him, but the story is doubtful since he did not become emperor before November 275. Similar honorific month names were implemented in many of the provincial calendars that were aligned to the Julian calendar.
Other name changes were proposed but were never implemented. Tiberius rejected a senatorial proposal to rename September as "Tiberius" and October as "Livius", after his mother Livia. Antoninus Pius rejected a senatorial decree renaming September as "Antoninus" and November as "Faustina", after his empress.
Much more lasting than the ephemeral month names of the post-Augustan Roman emperors were the Old High German names introduced by Charlemagne. According to his biographer, Charlemagne renamed all of the months agriculturally into German. These names were used until the 15th century, over 700 years after his rule, and continued, with some modifications, to see some use as "traditional" month names until the late 18th century. The names (January to December) were: Wintarmanoth ("winter month"), Hornung, Lentzinmanoth ("spring month", "Lent month"), Ostarmanoth ("Easter month"), Wonnemanoth ("joy-month", a corruption of Winnimanoth "pasture-month"), Brachmanoth ("fallow-month"), Heuuimanoth ("hay month"), Aranmanoth ("reaping month"), Witumanoth ("wood month"), Windumemanoth ("vintage month"), Herbistmanoth ("harvest month"), and Heilagmanoth ("holy month").
The calendar month names used in western and northern Europe, in Byzantium, and by the Amazigh (Berbers), were derived from the Latin names. However, in eastern Europe older seasonal month names continued to be used into the 19th century, and in some cases are still in use, in many languages, including: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, Georgian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Polish, Romanian, Slovene, Ukrainian. When the Ottoman Empire adopted the Julian calendar, in the form of the Rumi calendar, the month names reflected Ottoman tradition.
The principal method used by the Romans to identify a year for dating purposes was to name it after the two consuls who took office in it, the eponymous period in question being the consular year. Beginning in 153 BC, consuls began to take office on 1 January, thus synchronizing the commencement of the consular and calendar years. The calendar year has begun in January and ended in December since about 450 BC according to Ovid or since about 713 BC according to Macrobius and Plutarch (see Roman calendar). Julius Caesar did not change the beginning of either the consular year or the calendar year. In addition to consular years, the Romans sometimes used the regnal year of the emperor, and by the late 4th century documents were also being dated according to the 15-year cycle of the indiction. In 537, Justinian required that henceforth the date must include the name of the emperor and his regnal year, in addition to the indiction and the consul, while also allowing the use of local eras.
In 309 and 310, and from time to time thereafter, no consuls were appointed. When this happened, the consular date was given a count of years since the last consul (called "post-consular" dating). After 541, only the reigning emperor held the consulate, typically for only one year in his reign, and so post-consular dating became the norm. Similar post-consular dates were also known in the west in the early 6th century. The system of consular dating, long obsolete, was formally abolished in the law code of Leo VI, issued in 888.
Only rarely did the Romans number the year from the founding of the city (of Rome), ab urbe condita (AUC). This method was used by Roman historians to determine the number of years from one event to another, not to date a year. Different historians had several different dates for the founding. The Fasti Capitolini, an inscription containing an official list of the consuls which was published by Augustus, used an epoch of 752 BC. The epoch used by Varro, 753 BC, has been adopted by modern historians. Indeed, Renaissance editors often added it to the manuscripts that they published, giving the false impression that the Romans numbered their years. Most modern historians tacitly assume that it began on the day the consuls took office, and ancient documents such as the Fasti Capitolini which use other AUC systems do so in the same way. However, Censorinus, writing in the 3rd century AD, states that, in his time, the AUC year began with the Parilia, celebrated on 21 April, which was regarded as the actual anniversary of the foundation of Rome.
Many local eras, such as the Era of Actium and the Spanish Era, were adopted for the Julian calendar or its local equivalent in the provinces and cities of the Roman Empire. Some of these were used for a considerable time. Perhaps the best known is the Era of Martyrs, sometimes also called Anno Diocletiani (after Diocletian), which was associated with the Alexandrian calendar and often used by the Alexandrian Christians to number their Easters during the 4th and 5th centuries, and continues to be used by the Coptic and Ethiopian churches.
In the eastern Mediterranean, the efforts of Christian chronographers such as Annianus of Alexandria to date the Biblical creation of the world led to the introduction of Anno Mundi eras based on this event. The most important of these was the Etos Kosmou, used throughout the Byzantine world from the 10th century and in Russia until 1700. In the west, the kingdoms succeeding the empire initially used indictions and regnal years, alone or in combination. The chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine, in the fifth century, used an era dated from the Passion of Christ, but this era was not widely adopted. Dionysius Exiguus proposed the system of Anno Domini in 525. This era gradually spread through the western Christian world, once the system was adopted by Bede in the eighth century.
The Julian calendar was also used in some Muslim countries. The Rumi calendar, the Julian calendar used in the later years of the Ottoman Empire, adopted an era derived from the lunar AH year equivalent to AD 1840, i.e., the effective Rumi epoch was AD 585. In recent years, some users of the Berber calendar have adopted an era starting in 950 BC, the approximate date that the Libyan pharaoh Sheshonq I came to power in Egypt.
The Roman calendar began the year on 1 January, and this remained the start of the year after the Julian reform. However, even after local calendars were aligned to the Julian calendar, they started the new year on different dates. The Alexandrian calendar in Egypt started on 29 August (30 August after an Alexandrian leap year). Several local provincial calendars were aligned to start on the birthday of Augustus, 23 September. The indiction caused the Byzantine year, which used the Julian calendar, to begin on 1 September; this date is still used in the Eastern Orthodox Church for the beginning of the liturgical year. When the Julian calendar was adopted in AD 988 by Vladimir I of Kiev, the year was numbered Anno Mundi 6496, beginning on 1 March, six months after the start of the Byzantine Anno Mundi year with the same number. In 1492 (AM 7000), Ivan III, according to church tradition, realigned the start of the year to 1 September, so that AM 7000 only lasted for six months in Russia, from 1 March to 31 August 1492.
In Anglo-Saxon England, the year most commonly began on 25 December, which, as (approximately) the winter solstice, had marked the start of the year in pagan times, though 25 March (the equinox) is occasionally documented in the 11th century. Sometimes the start of the year was reckoned as 24 September, the start of the so-called "western indiction" introduced by Bede. These practices changed after the Norman conquest. From 1087 to 1155 the English year began on 1 January, and from 1155 to 1751 it began on 25 March. In 1752 it was moved back to 1 January. (See Calendar (New Style) Act 1750).
Even before 1752, 1 January was sometimes treated as the start of the new year – for example by Pepys – while the "year starting 25th March was called the Civil or Legal Year". To reduce misunderstandings on the date, it was not uncommon for a date between 1 January and 24 March to be written as "1661/62". This was to explain to the reader that the year was 1661 counting from March and 1662 counting from January as the start of the year. (For more detail, see Dual dating).
The Julian calendar has been replaced as the civil calendar by the Gregorian calendar in all countries which officially used it. Turkey switched (for fiscal purposes) on 16 February/1 March 1917. Russia changed on 1/14 February 1918. Greece made the change for civil purposes on 16 February/1 March 1923, but the national day (25 March) was to remain on the old calendar. Most Christian denominations in the west and areas evangelised by western churches have made the change to Gregorian for their liturgical calendars to align with the civil calendar.
A calendar similar to the Julian one, the Alexandrian calendar, is the basis for the Ethiopian calendar, which is still the civil calendar of Ethiopia. Egypt converted from the Alexandrian calendar to Gregorian on 1 Thaut 1592/11 September 1875.
During the changeover between calendars and for some time afterwards, dual dating was used in documents and gave the date according to both systems. In contemporary as well as modern texts that describe events during the period of change, it is customary to clarify to which calendar a given date refers by using an O.S. or N.S. suffix (denoting Old Style, Julian or New Style, Gregorian).
In 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the Gregorian calendar. Reform was required because too many leap days were added with respect to the astronomical seasons under the Julian scheme. On average, the astronomical solstices and the equinoxes advance by 10.8 minutes per year against the Julian year. As a result, 21 March (which is the base date for the calculating the date of Easter) gradually moved out of alignment with the March equinox.
While Hipparchus and presumably Sosigenes were aware of the discrepancy, although not of its correct value, it was evidently felt to be of little importance at the time of the Julian reform (46 BC). However, it accumulated significantly over time: the Julian calendar gained a day every 128 years. By 1582, 21 March was ten days out of alignment with the March equinox, the date where it was reckoned to have been in 325, the year of the Council of Nicaea.
Since the Julian and Gregorian calendars were long used simultaneously, although in different places, calendar dates in the transition period are often ambiguous, unless it is specified which calendar was being used. In some circumstances, double dates might be used, one in each calendar. The notation "Old Style" (O.S.) is sometimes used to indicate a date in the Julian calendar, as opposed to "New Style" (N.S.), which either represents the Julian date with the start of the year as 1 January or a full mapping onto the Gregorian calendar. This notation is used to clarify dates from countries that continued to use the Julian calendar after the Gregorian reform, such as Great Britain, which did not switch to the reformed calendar until 1752, or Russia, which did not switch until 1918 (see Soviet calendar). This is why the Russian Revolution of 7 November 1917 N.S. is known as the October Revolution, because it began on 25 October O.S.
Although most Eastern Orthodox countries (most of them in eastern or southeastern Europe) had adopted the Gregorian calendar by 1924, their national churches had not. The "Revised Julian calendar" was endorsed by a synod in Constantinople in May 1923, consisting of a solar part which was and will be identical to the Gregorian calendar until the year 2800, and a lunar part which calculated Easter astronomically at Jerusalem. All Eastern Orthodox churches refused to accept the lunar part, so all Orthodox churches continue to celebrate Easter according to the Julian calendar, with the exception of the Finnish Orthodox Church (the Estonian Orthodox Church was also an exception from 1923 to 1945).
The Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Poland (from 15 June 2014), North Macedonia, Georgia, and the Greek Old Calendarists and other groups continue to use the Julian calendar, thus they celebrate the Nativity on 25 December Julian (which is 7 January Gregorian until 2100). The Russian Orthodox Church has some parishes in the West that celebrate the Nativity on 25 December Gregorian until 2799.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine announced in late May 2023 that they would use the Gregorian calendar to celebrate Christmas on December 25, 2023, partly in reflection to Russia's deadly invasion of the country in early 2022.
Most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church use the Julian calendar for calculating the date of Easter, upon which the timing of all the other moveable feasts depends. Some such churches have adopted the Revised Julian calendar for the observance of fixed feasts, while such Orthodox churches retain the Julian calendar for all purposes.
The Ancient Assyrian Church of the East, an East Syriac rite that is commonly miscategorised under "eastern Orthodox", uses the Julian calendar, where its participants celebrate Christmas on 7 January Gregorian (which is 25 December Julian). The Assyrian Church of the East, the church it split from in 1968 (the replacement of traditional Julian calendar with Gregorian calendar being among the reasons), uses the Gregorian calendar ever since the year of the schism.
The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem of Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church uses Julian calendar, while the rest of Armenian Church uses Gregorian calendar. Both celebrate the Nativity as part of the Feast of Theophany according to their respective calendar.
The Julian calendar is still used by the Berbers of the Maghreb in the form of the Berber calendar.
Foula, Shetland, Scotland a small settlement on a remote island influenced by Norse culture, still celebrates festivities according to the Julian calendar. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Julian calendar is a solar calendar of 365 days in every year with an additional leap day every fourth year (without exception). The Julian calendar is still used in parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church and in parts of Oriental Orthodoxy as well as by the Amazigh people (also known as the Berbers), whereas the Gregorian calendar is used in most parts of the world. It is named after Julius Caesar.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The calendar was proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC as a reform of the earlier Roman calendar, which was largely a lunisolar one. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The calendar became the predominant calendar in the Roman Empire and subsequently most of the Western world for more than 1,600 years, until 1582. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII promulgated a minor modification to reduce the average length of the year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days and thus corrected the Julian calendar's drift against the solar year. Worldwide adoption of this revised calendar, which became known as the Gregorian calendar, took place over the subsequent centuries, first in Catholic countries and subsequently in Protestant countries of the Western Christian world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Julian calendar has two types of years: a normal year of 365 days and a leap year of 366 days. They follow a simple cycle of three normal years and one leap year, giving an average year that is 365.25 days long. That is more than the actual solar year value of approximately 365.2422 days (the current value, which varies), which means the Julian calendar gains a day every 129 years. In other words, the Julian calendar gains 3.1 days every 400 years, while the Gregorian calendar gains 0.1 day over the same time. For any given event during the years from 1901 through 2099, its date according to the Julian calendar is 13 days behind its corresponding Gregorian date (for instance Julian 1 January falls on Gregorian 14 January).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Julian calendar was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandria.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, for a total of 355 days. In addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March. This intercalary month was formed by inserting 22 or 23 days after the first 23 days of February; the last five days of February, which counted down toward the start of March, became the last five days of Intercalaris. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, forming an intercalary year of 377 or 378 days. Some say the mensis intercalaris always had 27 days and began on either the first or the second day after the Terminalia (23 February).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "If managed correctly this system could have allowed the Roman year to stay roughly aligned to a tropical year. However, since the pontifices were often politicians, and because a Roman magistrate's term of office corresponded with a calendar year, this power was prone to abuse: a pontifex could lengthen a year in which he or one of his political allies was in office, or refuse to lengthen one in which his opponents were in power.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Caesar's reform was intended to solve this problem permanently, by creating a calendar that remained aligned to the sun without any human intervention. This proved useful very soon after the new calendar came into effect. Varro used it in 37 BC to fix calendar dates for the start of the four seasons, which would have been impossible only 8 years earlier. A century later, when Pliny dated the winter solstice to 25 December because the sun entered the 8th degree of Capricorn on that date, this stability had become an ordinary fact of life.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Although the approximation of 365+1⁄4 days for the tropical year had been known for a long time, ancient solar calendars had used less precise periods, resulting in gradual misalignment of the calendar with the seasons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The octaeteris, a cycle of eight lunar years popularised by Cleostratus (and also commonly attributed to Eudoxus) which was used in some early Greek calendars, notably in Athens, is 1.53 days longer than eight mean Julian years. The length of nineteen years in the cycle of Meton was 6,940 days, six hours longer than the mean Julian year. The mean Julian year was the basis of the 76-year cycle devised by Callippus (a student under Eudoxus) to improve the Metonic cycle.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In Persia (Iran) after the reform in the Persian calendar by introduction of the Persian Zoroastrian (i. e. Young Avestan) calendar in 503 BC and afterwards, the first day of the year (1 Farvardin=Nowruz) slipped against the vernal equinox at the rate of approximately one day every four years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Likewise in the Egyptian calendar, a fixed year of 365 days was in use, drifting by one day against the sun in four years. An unsuccessful attempt to add an extra day every fourth year was made in 238 BC (Decree of Canopus). Caesar probably experienced this \"wandering\" or \"vague\" calendar in that country. He landed in the Nile delta in October 48 BC and soon became embroiled in the Ptolemaic dynastic war, especially after Cleopatra managed to be \"introduced\" to him in Alexandria.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Caesar imposed a peace, and a banquet was held to celebrate the event. Lucan depicted Caesar talking to a wise man called Acoreus during the feast, stating his intention to create a calendar more perfect than that of Eudoxus (Eudoxus was popularly credited with having determined the length of the year to be 365+1⁄4 days). But the war soon resumed and Caesar was attacked by the Egyptian army for several months until he achieved victory. He then enjoyed a long cruise on the Nile with Cleopatra before leaving the country in June 47 BC.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Caesar returned to Rome in 46 BC and, according to Plutarch, called in the best philosophers and mathematicians of his time to solve the problem of the calendar. Pliny says that Caesar was aided in his reform by the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria who is generally considered the principal designer of the reform. Sosigenes may also have been the author of the astronomical almanac published by Caesar to facilitate the reform. Eventually, it was decided to establish a calendar that would be a combination between the old Roman months, the fixed length of the Egyptian calendar, and the 365+1⁄4 days of Greek astronomy. According to Macrobius, Caesar was assisted in this by a certain Marcus Flavius.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Caesar's reform only applied to the Roman calendar. However, in the following decades many of the local civic and provincial calendars of the empire and neighbouring client kingdoms were aligned to the Julian calendar by transforming them into calendars with years of 365 days with an extra day intercalated every four years. The reformed calendars typically retained many features of the unreformed calendars. In many cases, the New Year was not on 1 January, the leap day was not on the traditional bissextile day, the old month names were retained, the lengths of the reformed months did not match the lengths of Julian months, and, even if they did, their first days did not match the first day of the corresponding Julian month. Nevertheless, since the reformed calendars had fixed relationships to each other and to the Julian calendar, the process of converting dates between them became quite straightforward, through the use of conversion tables known as \"hemerologia\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The three most important of these calendars are the Alexandrian calendar and the Ancient Macedonian calendar─which had two forms: the Syro-Macedonian and the 'Asian' calendars. Other reformed calendars are known from Cappadocia, Cyprus and the cities of (Roman) Syria and Palestine. Unreformed calendars continued to be used in Gaul (the Coligny calendar), Greece, Macedon, the Balkans and parts of Palestine, most notably in Judea.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Asian calendar was an adaptation of the Ancient Macedonian calendar used in the Roman province of Asia and, with minor variations, in nearby cities and provinces. It is known in detail through the survival of decrees promulgating it issued in 8 BC by the proconsul Paullus Fabius Maximus. It renamed the first month Dios as Kaisar, and arranged the months such that each month started on the ninth day before the kalends of the corresponding Roman month; thus the year began on 23 September, Augustus's birthday.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The first step of the reform was to realign the start of the calendar year (1 January) to the tropical year by making 46 BC 445 days long, compensating for the intercalations which had been missed during Caesar's pontificate. This year had already been extended from 355 to 378 days by the insertion of a regular intercalary month in February. When Caesar decreed the reform, probably shortly after his return from the African campaign in late Quintilis (July), he added 67 more days by inserting two extraordinary intercalary months between November and December.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "These months are called Intercalaris Prior and Intercalaris Posterior in letters of Cicero written at the time; there is no basis for the statement sometimes seen that they were called \"Undecimber\" and \"Duodecimber\", terms that arose in the 18th century over a millennium after the Roman Empire's collapse. Their individual lengths are unknown, as is the position of the Nones and Ides within them.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Because 46 BC was the last of a series of irregular years, this extra-long year was, and is, referred to as the \"last year of confusion\". The new calendar began operation after the realignment had been completed, in 45 BC.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Julian months were formed by adding ten days to a regular pre-Julian Roman year of 355 days, creating a regular Julian year of 365 days. Two extra days were added to January, Sextilis (August) and December, and one extra day was added to April, June, September, and November. February was not changed in ordinary years, and so continued to be the traditional 28 days. Thus, the ordinary (i.e., non-leap year) lengths of all of the months were set by the Julian calendar to the same values they still hold today. (See Sacrobosco's incorrect theory on month lengths (below) for stories purporting otherwise.)",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Julian reform did not change the method used to account days of the month in the pre-Julian calendar, based on the Kalends, Nones and Ides, nor did it change the positions of these three dates within the months. Macrobius states that the extra days were added immediately before the last day of each month to avoid disturbing the position of the established religious ceremonies relative to the Nones and Ides of the month.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The inserted days were all initially characterised as dies fasti (F – see Roman calendar). The character of a few festival days was changed. In the early Julio-Claudian period a large number of festivals were decreed to celebrate events of dynastic importance, which caused the character of the associated dates to be changed to NP. However, this practice was discontinued around the reign of Claudius, and the practice of characterising days fell into disuse around the end of the first century AD: the Antonine jurist Gaius speaks of dies nefasti as a thing of the past.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The old intercalary month was abolished. The new leap day was dated as ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martias ('the sixth doubled day before the Kalends of March'), usually abbreviated as a.d. bis VI Kal. Mart.; hence it is called in English the bissextile day. The year in which it occurred was termed annus bissextus, in English the bissextile year.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "There is debate about the exact position of the bissextile day in the early Julian calendar. The earliest direct evidence is a statement of the 2nd century jurist Celsus, who states that there were two-halves of a 48-hour day, and that the intercalated day was the \"posterior\" half. An inscription from AD 168 states that a.d. V Kal. Mart. was the day after the bissextile day. The 19th century chronologist Ideler argued that Celsus used the term \"posterior\" in a technical fashion to refer to the earlier of the two days, which requires the inscription to refer to the whole 48-hour day as the bissextile. Some later historians share this view. Others, following Mommsen, take the view that Celsus was using the ordinary Latin (and English) meaning of \"posterior\". A third view is that neither half of the 48-hour \"bis sextum\" was originally formally designated as intercalated, but that the need to do so arose as the concept of a 48-hour day became obsolete.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "There is no doubt that the bissextile day eventually became the earlier of the two days for most purposes. In 238 Censorinus stated that it was inserted after the Terminalia (23 February) and was followed by the last five days of February, i.e., a.d. VI, V, IV, III and prid. Kal. Mart. (which would be 24 to 28 February in a common year and the 25th to 29th in a leap year). Hence he regarded the bissextum as the first half of the doubled day. All later writers, including Macrobius about 430, Bede in 725, and other medieval computists (calculators of Easter) followed this rule, as does the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. However, Celsus' definition continued to be used for legal purposes. It was incorporated into Justinian's Digest, and in the English statute De anno et die bissextili of 1236, which was not formally repealed until 1879.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The effect of the bissextile day on the nundinal cycle is not discussed in the sources. According to Dio Cassius, a leap day was inserted in 41 BC to ensure that the first market day of 40 BC did not fall on 1 January, which implies that the old 8-day cycle was not immediately affected by the Julian reform. However, he also reports that in AD 44, and on some previous occasions, the market day was changed to avoid a conflict with a religious festival. This may indicate that a single nundinal letter was assigned to both halves of the 48-hour bissextile day by this time, so that the Regifugium and the market day might fall on the same date but on different days. In any case, the 8-day nundinal cycle began to be displaced by the 7-day week in the first century AD, and dominical letters began to appear alongside nundinal letters in the fasti.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Julian reform set the lengths of the months to their modern values. However, there is a different explanation for the lengths of Julian months that is still widely repeated but is certainly wrong. It is a theory usually attributed to the 13th century scholar Sacrobosco, but also attested in 12th century works. The model is explicitly contradicted by the 3rd and 5th century authors Censorinus and Macrobius, and it is inconsistent with seasonal lengths given by Varro, writing in 37 BCE, before Sextilis was renamed for Augustus in 8 BCE, with the 31 day Sextilis given by an Egyptian papyrus from 24 BCE, and with the 28 day Februarius shown in the Fasti Caeretani, which is dated before 12 BCE.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Also, the Julian reform did not change the dates of the Nones and Ides. In particular, the Ides were late (on the 15th rather than 13th) in March, May, July, and October, showing that these months always had 31 days in the Roman calendar, whereas Sacrobosco's theory requires that March, May, and July were originally 30 days long and that the length of October was changed from 29 to 30 days by Caesar and to 31 days by Augustus.",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Julian calendar has two types of year: \"normal\" years of 365 days and \"leap\" years of 366 days. There is a simple cycle of three \"normal\" years followed by a leap year and this pattern repeats forever without exception. The Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long. Consequently, the Julian year drifts over time with respect to the tropical (solar) year (365.24217 days).",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Although Greek astronomers had known, at least since Hipparchus, a century before the Julian reform, that the tropical year was slightly shorter than 365.25 days, the calendar did not compensate for this difference. As a result, the calendar year gains about three days every four centuries compared to observed equinox times and the seasons. This discrepancy was largely corrected by the Gregorian reform of 1582. The Gregorian calendar has the same months and month lengths as the Julian calendar, but, in the Gregorian calendar, year numbers evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, except that those evenly divisible by 400 remain leap years (even then, the Gregorian calendar diverges from astronomical observations by one day in 3,030 years).",
"title": "Julian reform"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Although the new calendar was much simpler than the pre-Julian calendar, the pontifices initially added a leap day every three years, instead of every four. There are accounts of this in Solinus, Pliny, Ammianus, Suetonius, and Censorinus.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Macrobius gives the following account of the introduction of the Julian calendar:",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Caesar's regulation of the civil year to accord with his revised measurement was proclaimed publicly by edict, and the arrangement might have continued to stand had not the correction itself of the calendar led the priests to introduce a new error of their own; for they proceeded to insert the intercalary day, which represented the four quarter-days, at the beginning of each fourth year instead of at its end, although the intercalation ought to have been made at the end of each fourth year and before the beginning of the fifth. This error continued for thirty-six years by which time twelve intercalary days had been inserted instead of the number actually due, namely nine. But when this error was at length recognised, it too was corrected, by an order of Augustus, that twelve years should be allowed to pass without an intercalary day, since the sequence of twelve such years would account for the three days which, in the course of thirty-six years, had been introduced by the premature actions of the priests.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "So, according to Macrobius,",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Some people have had different ideas as to how the leap years went. The above scheme is that of Scaliger (1583) in the table below. He established that the Augustan reform was instituted in 8 BC. The table below shows for each reconstruction the implied proleptic Julian date for the first day of Caesar's reformed calendar and the first Julian date on which the Roman calendar date matches the Julian calendar after the completion of Augustus' reform.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "By the systems of Scaliger, Ideler and Bünting, the leap years prior to the suspension happen to be BC years that are divisible by 3, just as, after leap year resumption, they are the AD years divisible by 4.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Pierre Brind'Amour argued that \"only one day was intercalated between 1/1/45 and 1/1/40 (disregarding a momentary 'fiddling' in December of 41) to avoid the nundinum falling on Kal. Ian.\"",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Alexander Jones says that the correct Julian calendar was in use in Egypt in 24 BC, implying that the first day of the reform in both Egypt and Rome, 1 January 45 BC, was the Julian date 1 January if 45 BC was a leap year and 2 January if it was not. This necessitates fourteen leap days up to and including AD 8 if 45 BC was a leap year and thirteen if it was not. In 1999, a papyrus was discovered which gives the dates of astronomical phenomena in 24 BC in both the Egyptian and Roman calendars. From 30 August 26 BC (Julian), Egypt had two calendars: the old Egyptian in which every year had 365 days and the new Alexandrian in which every fourth year had 366 days. Up to 28 August 22 BC (Julian) the date in both calendars was the same. The dates in the Alexandrian and Julian calendars are in one-to-one correspondence except for the period from 29 August in the year preceding a Julian leap year to the following 24 February. From a comparison of the astronomical data with the Egyptian and Roman dates, Alexander Jones concluded that the Egyptian astronomers (as opposed to travellers from Rome) used the correct Julian calendar.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Due to the confusion about this period, we cannot be sure exactly what day (e.g. Julian day number) any particular Roman date refers to before March of 8 BC, except for those used in Egypt in 24 BC which are secured by astronomy.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "An inscription has been discovered which orders a new calendar to be used in the Province of Asia to replace the previous Greek lunar calendar. According to one translation",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Intercalation shall commence on the day after 14 Peritius [a.d. IX Kal. Feb, which would have been 15 Peritius] as it is currently constituted in the third year following promulgation of the decree. Xanthicus shall have 32 days in this intercalary year.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "This is historically correct. It was decreed by the proconsul that the first day of the year in the new calendar shall be Augustus' birthday, a.d. IX Kal. Oct. Every month begins on the ninth day before the kalends. The date of introduction, the day after 14 Peritius, was 1 Dystrus, the next month. The month after that was Xanthicus. Thus Xanthicus began on a.d. IX Kal. Mart., and normally contained 31 days. In leap year, however, it contained an extra \"Sebaste day\", the Roman leap day, and thus had 32 days. From the lunar nature of the old calendar we can fix the starting date of the new one as 24 January, a.d. IX Kal. Feb 5 BC in the Julian calendar, which was a leap year. Thus from inception the dates of the reformed Asian calendar are in one-to-one correspondence with the Julian.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Another translation of this inscription is",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Intercalation shall commence on the day after the fourteenth day in the current month of Peritius [a.d. IX Kal. Feb], occurring every third year. Xanthicus shall have 32 days in this intercalary year.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "This would move the starting date back three years to 8 BC, and from the lunar synchronism back to 26 January (Julian). But since the corresponding Roman date in the inscription is 24 January, this must be according to the incorrect calendar which in 8 BC Augustus had ordered to be corrected by the omission of leap days. As the authors of the previous paper point out, with the correct four-year cycle being used in Egypt and the three-year cycle abolished in Rome, it is unlikely that Augustus would have ordered the three-year cycle to be introduced in Asia.",
"title": "Leap year error"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Julian reform did not immediately cause the names of any months to be changed. The old intercalary month was abolished and replaced with a single intercalary day at the same point (i.e., five days before the end of February).",
"title": "Month names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Romans later renamed months after Julius Caesar and Augustus, renaming Quintilis as \"Iulius\" (July) in 44 BC and Sextilis as \"Augustus\" (August) in 8 BC. Quintilis was renamed to honour Caesar because it was the month of his birth. According to a senatus consultum quoted by Macrobius, Sextilis was renamed to honour Augustus because several of the most significant events in his rise to power, culminating in the fall of Alexandria, occurred in that month.",
"title": "Month names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Other months were renamed by other emperors, but apparently none of the later changes survived their deaths. In AD 37, Caligula renamed September as \"Germanicus\" after his father; in AD 65, Nero renamed April as \"Neroneus\", May as \"Claudius\" and June as \"Germanicus\"; and in AD 84 Domitian renamed September as \"Germanicus\" and October as \"Domitianus\". Commodus was unique in renaming all twelve months after his own adopted names (January to December): \"Amazonius\", \"Invictus\", \"Felix\", \"Pius\", \"Lucius\", \"Aelius\", \"Aurelius\", \"Commodus\", \"Augustus\", \"Herculeus\", \"Romanus\", and \"Exsuperatorius\". The emperor Tacitus is said to have ordered that September, the month of his birth and accession, be renamed after him, but the story is doubtful since he did not become emperor before November 275. Similar honorific month names were implemented in many of the provincial calendars that were aligned to the Julian calendar.",
"title": "Month names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Other name changes were proposed but were never implemented. Tiberius rejected a senatorial proposal to rename September as \"Tiberius\" and October as \"Livius\", after his mother Livia. Antoninus Pius rejected a senatorial decree renaming September as \"Antoninus\" and November as \"Faustina\", after his empress.",
"title": "Month names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Much more lasting than the ephemeral month names of the post-Augustan Roman emperors were the Old High German names introduced by Charlemagne. According to his biographer, Charlemagne renamed all of the months agriculturally into German. These names were used until the 15th century, over 700 years after his rule, and continued, with some modifications, to see some use as \"traditional\" month names until the late 18th century. The names (January to December) were: Wintarmanoth (\"winter month\"), Hornung, Lentzinmanoth (\"spring month\", \"Lent month\"), Ostarmanoth (\"Easter month\"), Wonnemanoth (\"joy-month\", a corruption of Winnimanoth \"pasture-month\"), Brachmanoth (\"fallow-month\"), Heuuimanoth (\"hay month\"), Aranmanoth (\"reaping month\"), Witumanoth (\"wood month\"), Windumemanoth (\"vintage month\"), Herbistmanoth (\"harvest month\"), and Heilagmanoth (\"holy month\").",
"title": "Month names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The calendar month names used in western and northern Europe, in Byzantium, and by the Amazigh (Berbers), were derived from the Latin names. However, in eastern Europe older seasonal month names continued to be used into the 19th century, and in some cases are still in use, in many languages, including: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, Georgian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Polish, Romanian, Slovene, Ukrainian. When the Ottoman Empire adopted the Julian calendar, in the form of the Rumi calendar, the month names reflected Ottoman tradition.",
"title": "Month names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The principal method used by the Romans to identify a year for dating purposes was to name it after the two consuls who took office in it, the eponymous period in question being the consular year. Beginning in 153 BC, consuls began to take office on 1 January, thus synchronizing the commencement of the consular and calendar years. The calendar year has begun in January and ended in December since about 450 BC according to Ovid or since about 713 BC according to Macrobius and Plutarch (see Roman calendar). Julius Caesar did not change the beginning of either the consular year or the calendar year. In addition to consular years, the Romans sometimes used the regnal year of the emperor, and by the late 4th century documents were also being dated according to the 15-year cycle of the indiction. In 537, Justinian required that henceforth the date must include the name of the emperor and his regnal year, in addition to the indiction and the consul, while also allowing the use of local eras.",
"title": "Year numbering"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 309 and 310, and from time to time thereafter, no consuls were appointed. When this happened, the consular date was given a count of years since the last consul (called \"post-consular\" dating). After 541, only the reigning emperor held the consulate, typically for only one year in his reign, and so post-consular dating became the norm. Similar post-consular dates were also known in the west in the early 6th century. The system of consular dating, long obsolete, was formally abolished in the law code of Leo VI, issued in 888.",
"title": "Year numbering"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Only rarely did the Romans number the year from the founding of the city (of Rome), ab urbe condita (AUC). This method was used by Roman historians to determine the number of years from one event to another, not to date a year. Different historians had several different dates for the founding. The Fasti Capitolini, an inscription containing an official list of the consuls which was published by Augustus, used an epoch of 752 BC. The epoch used by Varro, 753 BC, has been adopted by modern historians. Indeed, Renaissance editors often added it to the manuscripts that they published, giving the false impression that the Romans numbered their years. Most modern historians tacitly assume that it began on the day the consuls took office, and ancient documents such as the Fasti Capitolini which use other AUC systems do so in the same way. However, Censorinus, writing in the 3rd century AD, states that, in his time, the AUC year began with the Parilia, celebrated on 21 April, which was regarded as the actual anniversary of the foundation of Rome.",
"title": "Year numbering"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Many local eras, such as the Era of Actium and the Spanish Era, were adopted for the Julian calendar or its local equivalent in the provinces and cities of the Roman Empire. Some of these were used for a considerable time. Perhaps the best known is the Era of Martyrs, sometimes also called Anno Diocletiani (after Diocletian), which was associated with the Alexandrian calendar and often used by the Alexandrian Christians to number their Easters during the 4th and 5th centuries, and continues to be used by the Coptic and Ethiopian churches.",
"title": "Year numbering"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In the eastern Mediterranean, the efforts of Christian chronographers such as Annianus of Alexandria to date the Biblical creation of the world led to the introduction of Anno Mundi eras based on this event. The most important of these was the Etos Kosmou, used throughout the Byzantine world from the 10th century and in Russia until 1700. In the west, the kingdoms succeeding the empire initially used indictions and regnal years, alone or in combination. The chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine, in the fifth century, used an era dated from the Passion of Christ, but this era was not widely adopted. Dionysius Exiguus proposed the system of Anno Domini in 525. This era gradually spread through the western Christian world, once the system was adopted by Bede in the eighth century.",
"title": "Year numbering"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Julian calendar was also used in some Muslim countries. The Rumi calendar, the Julian calendar used in the later years of the Ottoman Empire, adopted an era derived from the lunar AH year equivalent to AD 1840, i.e., the effective Rumi epoch was AD 585. In recent years, some users of the Berber calendar have adopted an era starting in 950 BC, the approximate date that the Libyan pharaoh Sheshonq I came to power in Egypt.",
"title": "Year numbering"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The Roman calendar began the year on 1 January, and this remained the start of the year after the Julian reform. However, even after local calendars were aligned to the Julian calendar, they started the new year on different dates. The Alexandrian calendar in Egypt started on 29 August (30 August after an Alexandrian leap year). Several local provincial calendars were aligned to start on the birthday of Augustus, 23 September. The indiction caused the Byzantine year, which used the Julian calendar, to begin on 1 September; this date is still used in the Eastern Orthodox Church for the beginning of the liturgical year. When the Julian calendar was adopted in AD 988 by Vladimir I of Kiev, the year was numbered Anno Mundi 6496, beginning on 1 March, six months after the start of the Byzantine Anno Mundi year with the same number. In 1492 (AM 7000), Ivan III, according to church tradition, realigned the start of the year to 1 September, so that AM 7000 only lasted for six months in Russia, from 1 March to 31 August 1492.",
"title": "New Year's Day"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In Anglo-Saxon England, the year most commonly began on 25 December, which, as (approximately) the winter solstice, had marked the start of the year in pagan times, though 25 March (the equinox) is occasionally documented in the 11th century. Sometimes the start of the year was reckoned as 24 September, the start of the so-called \"western indiction\" introduced by Bede. These practices changed after the Norman conquest. From 1087 to 1155 the English year began on 1 January, and from 1155 to 1751 it began on 25 March. In 1752 it was moved back to 1 January. (See Calendar (New Style) Act 1750).",
"title": "New Year's Day"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Even before 1752, 1 January was sometimes treated as the start of the new year – for example by Pepys – while the \"year starting 25th March was called the Civil or Legal Year\". To reduce misunderstandings on the date, it was not uncommon for a date between 1 January and 24 March to be written as \"1661/62\". This was to explain to the reader that the year was 1661 counting from March and 1662 counting from January as the start of the year. (For more detail, see Dual dating).",
"title": "New Year's Day"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The Julian calendar has been replaced as the civil calendar by the Gregorian calendar in all countries which officially used it. Turkey switched (for fiscal purposes) on 16 February/1 March 1917. Russia changed on 1/14 February 1918. Greece made the change for civil purposes on 16 February/1 March 1923, but the national day (25 March) was to remain on the old calendar. Most Christian denominations in the west and areas evangelised by western churches have made the change to Gregorian for their liturgical calendars to align with the civil calendar.",
"title": "Replacement by the Gregorian calendar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "A calendar similar to the Julian one, the Alexandrian calendar, is the basis for the Ethiopian calendar, which is still the civil calendar of Ethiopia. Egypt converted from the Alexandrian calendar to Gregorian on 1 Thaut 1592/11 September 1875.",
"title": "Replacement by the Gregorian calendar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "During the changeover between calendars and for some time afterwards, dual dating was used in documents and gave the date according to both systems. In contemporary as well as modern texts that describe events during the period of change, it is customary to clarify to which calendar a given date refers by using an O.S. or N.S. suffix (denoting Old Style, Julian or New Style, Gregorian).",
"title": "Replacement by the Gregorian calendar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the Gregorian calendar. Reform was required because too many leap days were added with respect to the astronomical seasons under the Julian scheme. On average, the astronomical solstices and the equinoxes advance by 10.8 minutes per year against the Julian year. As a result, 21 March (which is the base date for the calculating the date of Easter) gradually moved out of alignment with the March equinox.",
"title": "Replacement by the Gregorian calendar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "While Hipparchus and presumably Sosigenes were aware of the discrepancy, although not of its correct value, it was evidently felt to be of little importance at the time of the Julian reform (46 BC). However, it accumulated significantly over time: the Julian calendar gained a day every 128 years. By 1582, 21 March was ten days out of alignment with the March equinox, the date where it was reckoned to have been in 325, the year of the Council of Nicaea.",
"title": "Replacement by the Gregorian calendar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Since the Julian and Gregorian calendars were long used simultaneously, although in different places, calendar dates in the transition period are often ambiguous, unless it is specified which calendar was being used. In some circumstances, double dates might be used, one in each calendar. The notation \"Old Style\" (O.S.) is sometimes used to indicate a date in the Julian calendar, as opposed to \"New Style\" (N.S.), which either represents the Julian date with the start of the year as 1 January or a full mapping onto the Gregorian calendar. This notation is used to clarify dates from countries that continued to use the Julian calendar after the Gregorian reform, such as Great Britain, which did not switch to the reformed calendar until 1752, or Russia, which did not switch until 1918 (see Soviet calendar). This is why the Russian Revolution of 7 November 1917 N.S. is known as the October Revolution, because it began on 25 October O.S.",
"title": "Replacement by the Gregorian calendar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Although most Eastern Orthodox countries (most of them in eastern or southeastern Europe) had adopted the Gregorian calendar by 1924, their national churches had not. The \"Revised Julian calendar\" was endorsed by a synod in Constantinople in May 1923, consisting of a solar part which was and will be identical to the Gregorian calendar until the year 2800, and a lunar part which calculated Easter astronomically at Jerusalem. All Eastern Orthodox churches refused to accept the lunar part, so all Orthodox churches continue to celebrate Easter according to the Julian calendar, with the exception of the Finnish Orthodox Church (the Estonian Orthodox Church was also an exception from 1923 to 1945).",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Poland (from 15 June 2014), North Macedonia, Georgia, and the Greek Old Calendarists and other groups continue to use the Julian calendar, thus they celebrate the Nativity on 25 December Julian (which is 7 January Gregorian until 2100). The Russian Orthodox Church has some parishes in the West that celebrate the Nativity on 25 December Gregorian until 2799.",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The Orthodox Church of Ukraine announced in late May 2023 that they would use the Gregorian calendar to celebrate Christmas on December 25, 2023, partly in reflection to Russia's deadly invasion of the country in early 2022.",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church use the Julian calendar for calculating the date of Easter, upon which the timing of all the other moveable feasts depends. Some such churches have adopted the Revised Julian calendar for the observance of fixed feasts, while such Orthodox churches retain the Julian calendar for all purposes.",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Ancient Assyrian Church of the East, an East Syriac rite that is commonly miscategorised under \"eastern Orthodox\", uses the Julian calendar, where its participants celebrate Christmas on 7 January Gregorian (which is 25 December Julian). The Assyrian Church of the East, the church it split from in 1968 (the replacement of traditional Julian calendar with Gregorian calendar being among the reasons), uses the Gregorian calendar ever since the year of the schism.",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem of Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church uses Julian calendar, while the rest of Armenian Church uses Gregorian calendar. Both celebrate the Nativity as part of the Feast of Theophany according to their respective calendar.",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Julian calendar is still used by the Berbers of the Maghreb in the form of the Berber calendar.",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Foula, Shetland, Scotland a small settlement on a remote island influenced by Norse culture, still celebrates festivities according to the Julian calendar.",
"title": "Modern usage"
}
]
| The Julian calendar is a solar calendar of 365 days in every year with an additional leap day every fourth year. The Julian calendar is still used in parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church and in parts of Oriental Orthodoxy as well as by the Amazigh people, whereas the Gregorian calendar is used in most parts of the world. It is named after Julius Caesar. The calendar was proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC as a reform of the earlier Roman calendar, which was largely a lunisolar one. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict. The calendar became the predominant calendar in the Roman Empire and subsequently most of the Western world for more than 1,600 years, until 1582. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII promulgated a minor modification to reduce the average length of the year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days and thus corrected the Julian calendar's drift against the solar year. Worldwide adoption of this revised calendar, which became known as the Gregorian calendar, took place over the subsequent centuries, first in Catholic countries and subsequently in Protestant countries of the Western Christian world. The Julian calendar has two types of years: a normal year of 365 days and a leap year of 366 days. They follow a simple cycle of three normal years and one leap year, giving an average year that is 365.25 days long. That is more than the actual solar year value of approximately 365.2422 days, which means the Julian calendar gains a day every 129 years. In other words, the Julian calendar gains 3.1 days every 400 years, while the Gregorian calendar gains 0.1 day over the same time. For any given event during the years from 1901 through 2099, its date according to the Julian calendar is 13 days behind its corresponding Gregorian date. The Julian calendar was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandria. | 2001-11-17T19:44:53Z | 2023-12-29T04:54:13Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar |
15,654 | John Quincy Adams | John Quincy Adams (/ˈkwɪnzi/ ; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams served as an ambassador and also as a member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in both chambers. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and later, in the mid-1830s, became affiliated with the Whig Party.
Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, Adams spent much of his youth in Europe, where his father served as a diplomat. After returning to the United States, Adams established a successful legal practice in Boston. In 1794, President George Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, and Adams would serve in high-ranking diplomatic posts until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson took office as president. Federalist leaders in Massachusetts arranged for Adams's election to the United States Senate in 1802, but Adams broke with the Federalist Party over foreign policy and was denied re-election. In 1809, President James Madison, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. Multilingual, Adams held diplomatic posts for the duration of Madison's presidency, and he served as part of the American delegation that negotiated an end to the War of 1812. In 1817, President James Monroe selected Adams as his secretary of state. In that role, Adams negotiated the Adams–Onís Treaty, which provided for the American acquisition of Florida. He also helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine, which became a key tenet of U.S. foreign policy. In 1818, Adams was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay—all members of the Democratic-Republican Party—competed in the 1824 presidential election. Because no candidate won a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives held a contingent election, which Adams won with the support of Speaker of the House Henry Clay, whom Adams would controversially appoint as his secretary of state. As president, Adams called for an ambitious agenda that included federally funded infrastructure projects, the establishment of a national university, and engagement with the countries of Latin America, but Congress refused to pass many of his initiatives. During Adams's presidency, the Democratic-Republican Party split into two major camps: the National Republican Party, which supported Adams, and Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party. The Democrats proved to be more effective political organizers than Adams and his National Republican supporters, and Jackson soundly defeated Adams in the 1828 presidential election, making Adams the second president to fail to win re-election (his father being the first).
Rather than retiring from public service, Adams won election to the House of Representatives, where he would serve from 1831 until his death in 1848. He remains the only former president to be elected to the chamber. After narrowly losing his bids for Governor of Massachusetts and Senate re-election, Adams joined the Anti-Masonic Party in the early 1830s before joining the Whig Party, which united those opposed to President Jackson. During his time in Congress, Adams became increasingly critical of slavery and of the Southern leaders whom he believed controlled the Democratic Party. He was particularly opposed to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, which he saw as a war to extend slavery and its political grip on Congress. He also led the repeal of the "gag rule", which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery. Historians concur that Adams was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history; they typically rank him as an average president, as he had an ambitious agenda but could not get it passed by Congress. By contrast, historians also view Adams in a more positive light during his post-presidency because of his vehement stance against slavery, as well as his fight for the rights of women and Native Americans.
John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, to John and Abigail Adams (née Smith) in a part of Braintree, Massachusetts, that is now Quincy. He was named after his mother's maternal grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, after whom Quincy, Massachusetts, is also named. Colonel Quincy died two days after his great-grandson's birth. Young Adams was educated by private tutors – his cousin James Thaxter and his father's law clerk, Nathan Rice. He soon exhibited literary skills, and in 1779 he started a diary that he kept until just before he died in 1848. Until the age of ten, Adams grew up on the family farm in Braintree, largely in the care of his mother. Though frequently absent because of his participation in the American Revolution, John Adams maintained a correspondence with his son, encouraging him to read works by authors such as Thucydides and Hugo Grotius. With his father's encouragement, Adams would also translate classical authors such as Virgil, Horace, Plutarch, and Aristotle.
In 1778, Adams and his father departed for Europe, where John Adams would serve as part of American diplomatic missions in France and the Netherlands. During this period, Adams studied law, French, Greek, and Latin, and attended several schools, including Leiden University. In 1781, Adams traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he served as the secretary to the American diplomat, Francis Dana. He returned to the Netherlands in 1783 and accompanied his father to Great Britain in 1784. Though Adams enjoyed Europe, he and his family decided he needed to return to the United States to complete his education and eventually launch a political career.
Adams returned to the United States in 1785 and earned admission as a member of the junior class of Harvard College the following year. He joined Phi Beta Kappa and excelled academically, graduating second in his class in 1787. After graduating from Harvard, he studied law with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts, from 1787 to 1789. Adams initially opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution, but he ultimately came to accept the document, and in 1789 his father was elected as the first vice president of the United States. In 1790, Adams opened his own legal practice in Boston. Despite some early struggles, he was successful as an attorney and established financial independence from his parents.
Adams initially avoided becoming involved in politics, instead focusing on building his legal career. In 1791, he wrote a series of pseudonymously published essays arguing that Britain provided a better governmental model than France. Two years later, he published another series of essays attacking Edmond-Charles Genêt, a French diplomat who sought to undermine President George Washington's policy of neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1794, Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. Adams considered declining the role, but ultimately took the position on the advice of his father. While abroad, Adams continued to urge neutrality, arguing that the United States would benefit economically by staying out of the ongoing French Revolutionary Wars. His chief duty as the ambassador to the Netherlands was to secure and maintain loans essential to U.S. finances. On his way to the Netherlands, he met with John Jay, who was then negotiating the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Adams supported the Jay Treaty, but it proved unpopular with many in the United States, contributing to a growing partisan split between the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson. In 1794 he supported John Skey Eustace who wanted to return to the United States via the Netherlands.
Adams spent the winter of 1795–1796 in London, where he met Louisa Catherine Johnson, the second daughter of American merchant Joshua Johnson. In April 1796, Louisa accepted Adams's proposal of marriage. Adams's parents disapproved of his decision to marry a woman who had grown up in England, but he informed his parents that he would not reconsider his decision. Adams initially wanted to delay his wedding to Louisa until he returned to the United States, but they married in All Hallows-by-the-Tower on July 26, 1797. Shortly after the wedding, Joshua Johnson fled England to escape his creditors, and Adams did not receive the dowry that Johnson had promised him, much to the embarrassment of Louisa. Adams noted in his own diary that he had no regrets about his decision to marry Louisa.
In 1796, Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to Portugal. Later that year, John Adams defeated Jefferson in the 1796 presidential election. When the elder Adams became president, he appointed his son as the U.S. ambassador to Prussia. Though concerned that his appointment would be criticized as nepotistic, Adams accepted the position and traveled to the Prussian capital of Berlin with his wife and his younger brother, Thomas Boylston Adams. The State Department tasked Adams with developing commercial relations with Prussia and Sweden, but President Adams also asked his son to write to him frequently about affairs in Europe. In 1799, Adams negotiated a new trade agreement between the United States and Prussia, though he could never complete an agreement with Sweden. He frequently wrote to family members in the United States, and in 1801 his letters about the Prussian region of Silesia were published in a book titled Letters on Silesia. During his time in Prussia, Adams befriended the German diplomat and writer Friedrich von Gentz, whose work, The Origins and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origins and Principles of the French Revolution, Adams would translate into English in 1800. In the 1800 presidential election, Jefferson defeated John Adams, and both Adams and his son left office in early 1801.
On his return to the United States, Adams re-established a legal practice in Boston, and in April 1802 he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. In November of that year, he ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives. In February 1803, the Massachusetts legislature elected Adams to the United States Senate. Though somewhat reluctant to affiliate with any political party, Adams joined the Federalist minority in Congress. Like his Federalist colleagues, he opposed the impeachment of Associate Justice Samuel Chase, an outspoken supporter of the Federalist Party.
Adams had strongly opposed Jefferson's 1800 presidential candidacy, but he gradually became alienated from the Federalist Party. His disaffection was driven by the party's declining popularity, disagreements over foreign policy, and Adams's hostility to Timothy Pickering, a Federalist Party leader whom Adams viewed as overly favorable to Britain. Unlike other New England Federalists, Adams supported the Jefferson administration's Louisiana Purchase and expansionist policies. Adams was the lone Federalist in Congress to vote for the Non-importation Act of 1806 that punished Britain for its attacks on American shipping during the ongoing Napoleonic Wars. Adams became increasingly frustrated with the unwillingness of other Federalists to condemn British actions, including impressment, and he moved closer to the Jefferson administration. After Adams supported the Embargo Act of 1807, the Federalist-controlled Massachusetts legislature elected Adams's successor several months before the end of his term, and Adams resigned from the Senate shortly thereafter.
While a member of the Senate, Adams served as a professor of logic at Brown University and as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. Adams's devotion to classical rhetoric shaped his response to public issues, and he would remain inspired by those rhetorical ideals long after the neo-classicalism and deferential politics of the founding generation were eclipsed by the commercial ethos and mass democracy of the Jacksonian Era. Many of Adams's idiosyncratic positions were rooted in his abiding devotion to the Ciceronian ideal of the citizen-orator "speaking well" to promote the welfare of the polis. He was also influenced by the classical republican ideal of civic eloquence espoused by British philosopher David Hume. Adams adapted these classical republican ideals of public oratory to the American debate, viewing its multilevel political structure as ripe for "the renaissance of Demosthenic eloquence". His Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory (1810) looks at the fate of ancient oratory, the necessity of liberty for it to flourish, and its importance as a unifying element for a new nation of diverse cultures and beliefs. Just as civic eloquence failed to gain popularity in Britain, in the United States interest faded in the second decade of the 19th century, as the "public spheres of heated oratory" disappeared in favor of the private sphere.
After resigning from the Senate, Adams was ostracized by Massachusetts Federalist leaders, but he declined Democratic-Republican entreaties to seek office. In 1809, he argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Fletcher v. Peck, and the Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Adams's argument that the Constitution's Contract Clause prevented the state of Georgia from invalidating a land sale to out-of-state companies. Later that year, President James Madison appointed Adams as the first United States Minister to Russia in 1809. Though Adams had only recently broken with the Federalist Party, his support of Jefferson's foreign policy had earned him goodwill with the Madison Administration. Adams was well-qualified for the role after his experiences in Europe generally and Russia specifically.
After a difficult passage through the Baltic Sea, Adams arrived in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg in October 1809. He quickly established a productive working relationship with Russian official Nikolay Rumyantsev and eventually befriended Tsar Alexander I of Russia. Adams continued to favor American neutrality between France and Britain during the Napoleonic War. Louisa was initially distraught at the prospect of living in Russia, but she became a popular figure at the Russian court. From his diplomatic post, Adams observed the French Emperor Napoleon's invasion of Russia, which ended in defeat for the French. In February 1811, President Madison nominated Adams as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, but Adams declined the seat, preferring a career in politics and diplomacy, so Joseph Story took the seat instead.
Adams had long feared that the United States would enter a war it could not win against Britain, and by early 1812, he saw such a war as inevitable due to the constant British attacks on American shipping and the British practice of impressment. In mid-1812, the United States declared war against Britain, beginning the War of 1812. Tsar Alexander attempted to mediate the conflict between Britain and the United States, and President Madison appointed Adams, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, and Federalist Senator James A. Bayard to a delegation charged with negotiating an end to the war. Gallatin and Bayard arrived in St. Petersburg in July 1813, but the British declined Tsar Alexander's offer of mediation. Hoping to start negotiations at another venue, Adams left Russia in April 1814. Negotiations finally began in mid-1814 in Ghent, where Adams, Gallatin, and Bayard were joined by two additional American delegates, Jonathan Russell and former Speaker of the House Henry Clay. Adams, the nominal head of the delegation, got along well with Gallatin, Bayard, and Russell, but he occasionally clashed with Clay.
The British delegation initially treated the United States as a defeated power, demanding the creation of an Indian barrier state from American territory near the Great Lakes. The American delegation unanimously rejected this offer, and their negotiating position was bolstered by the American victory in the Battle of Plattsburgh. By November 1814, the government of Lord Liverpool decided to seek an end to hostilities with the U.S. on the basis of status quo ante bellum. Even though a return to the status quo would mean the continuation of the British practice of impressment, Adams and his fellow commissioners had hoped for similar terms. The treaty was signed on December 24, 1814. The United States did not gain any concessions from the treaty but could boast that it had survived a war against the strongest power in the world. Following the signing of the treaty, Adams traveled to Paris, where he witnessed first-hand the Hundred Days of Napoleon's restoration.
In May 1815, Adams learned that President Madison had appointed him as the U.S. ambassador to Britain. With the aid of Clay and Gallatin, Adams negotiated a limited trade agreement with Britain. Following the conclusion of the trade agreement, much of Adams's time as ambassador was spent helping stranded American sailors and prisoners of war. In pursuit of national unity, newly elected president James Monroe decided a Northerner would be optimal for the position of Secretary of State, and he chose the respected and experienced Adams for the role. Having spent several years in Europe, Adams returned to the United States in August 1817.
Adams served as Secretary of State during Monroe's eight-year presidency, from 1817 to 1825. Many of his successes as secretary, such as the convention of 1818 with the United Kingdom, the Transcontinental Treaty with Spain, and the Monroe Doctrine, were not preplanned strategies but responses to unexpected events. Adams wanted to delay American recognition of the newly independent republics of Latin America to avoid the risk of war with Spain and its European allies. However, Andrew Jackson's military campaign in Florida and Henry Clay's threats in Congress forced Spain to cut a deal, which Adams negotiated successfully. Biographer James Lewis says, "He managed to play the cards that he had been dealt – cards that he very clearly had not wanted – in ways that forced the Spanish cabinet to recognize the weakness of its own hand". Apart from the Monroe doctrine, his last four years as Secretary of State were less successful because he was preoccupied with his presidential campaign and refused to make compromises with other countries that might have weakened his candidacy; the result was a small-scale trade war but a successful election to the White House.
Taking office in the aftermath of the War of 1812, Adams thought that the country had been fortunate in avoiding territorial losses, and he prioritized avoiding another war with a European power, particularly Britain. He also sought to avoid exacerbating sectional tensions, which had been a major issue for the country during the War of 1812. One of the major challenges confronting Adams was how to respond to the power vacuum in Latin America that arose from Spain's weakness following the Peninsular War. In addition to his foreign policy role, Adams held several domestic duties, including overseeing the 1820 United States census and writing an extensive report on weights and measures. The weights and measures report, a particular passion of Adams', provided an extensive historical perspective on the topic and advocated for adoption of the metric system.
Monroe and Adams agreed on most major foreign policy issues: both favored neutrality in Latin American independence wars, peace with the United Kingdom, rejection of a trade agreement with the French, and peaceful expansion into the Spanish Empire's North American territories. The president and his secretary of state developed a strong working relationship, and while Adams often influenced Monroe's policies, he respected that Monroe made the final decisions on major issues. Monroe met regularly with his five-person cabinet, which initially consisted of Adams, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield, and Attorney General William Wirt. Adams developed a strong respect for Calhoun but believed that Crawford was unduly focused on succeeding Monroe in 1824.
During his time as ambassador to Britain, Adams had begun negotiations over several contentious issues that had not been solved by the War of 1812 or the Treaty of Ghent. In 1817, the two countries agreed to the Rush–Bagot Treaty, which limited naval armaments on the Great Lakes. Negotiations between the two powers continued, resulting in the Treaty of 1818, which defined the Canada–United States border west of the Great Lakes. The boundary was set at the 49th parallel to the Rocky Mountains, while the territory to the west of the mountains, known as Oregon Country, would be jointly occupied. The agreement marked a watershed moment in United Kingdom–United States relations, as the United States focused on its southern and western borders and British concerns about American expansionism subsided.
When Adams took office, Spanish possessions bordered the United States to the south and west. To the south, Spain retained control of Florida, which the U.S. had long sought to purchase. Spain struggled to control the Indian tribes active in Florida, and some of those tribes raided United States territory. To the west, New Spain bordered the territory acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, but no clear boundary had been established between United States and Spanish territory. After taking office, Adams began negotiations with Luis de Onís, the Spanish minister to the United States, for the purchase of Florida and the settlement of a border between the United States and New Spain. The negotiations were interrupted by an escalation of the Seminole War, and in December 1818, Monroe ordered General Andrew Jackson to enter Florida and retaliate against Seminoles that had raided Georgia. Exceeding his orders, Jackson captured the Spanish outposts of St. Marks and Pensacola and executed two Englishmen. While Jackson's actions outraged the rest of the cabinet, Adams defended them as necessary to the country's self-defense, and he eventually convinced Monroe and most of the cabinet to support Jackson. Adams informed Spain that its failure to police its own territory had compelled Jackson to act, and he advised Spain to either secure the region or sell it to the United States. The British, meanwhile, declined to risk their recent rapprochement with the United States, and did not make a major diplomatic issue out of Jackson's execution of two British nationals.
Negotiations between Spain and the United States continued, and Spain agreed to cede Florida. The determination of the western boundary of the United States proved more difficult. American expansionists favored setting the border at the Rio Grande, but Spain, intent on protecting its colony of Mexico from American encroachment, insisted on setting the boundary at the Sabine River. At Monroe's direction, Adams agreed to the Sabine River boundary, but he insisted that Spain cede its claims on Oregon Country. Adams was deeply interested in establishing American control over the Oregon Country, partly because he believed that control of that region would spur trade with Asia. The acquisition of Spanish claims to the Pacific Northwest also allowed the Monroe administration to pair the acquisition of Florida, which was chiefly sought by Southerners, with territorial gains favored primarily by those in the North. After extended negotiations, Spain and the United States agreed to the Adams–Onís Treaty, which was ratified in February 1821. Adams was deeply proud of the treaty, though he privately was concerned by the potential expansion of slavery into the newly acquired territories. In 1824, the Monroe administration would strengthen US claims to Oregon by ratifying the Russo-American Treaty of 1824, which established Russian Alaska's southern border at 54°40′ north.
As the Spanish Empire continued to fracture during Monroe's second term, Adams, Monroe and Clay became increasingly concerned that the "Holy Alliance" of Prussia, Austria, and Russia would seek to bring Spain's erstwhile colonies under their control, to the point of even contemplating a Holy Alliance of their own to defend democracy. In his 1821 Fourth of July address, Adams addressed this issue, noting a shared "chain of sympathy" between the U.S. and Latin America, but arguing for neutrality rather than a Holy Alliance. In 1822, following the conclusion of the Adams–Onís Treaty, the Monroe administration recognized the independence of several Latin American countries, including Argentina and Mexico. In 1823, British Foreign Secretary George Canning suggested that the United States and Britain should work together to preserve the independence of these fledgling republics. The cabinet debated whether to accept the offer, but Adams opposed it. Instead, Adams urged Monroe to publicly declare the United States' opposition to any European attempt to colonize or re-take control of territory in the Americas, while also committing the United States to neutrality in European affairs. In his December 1823 annual message to Congress, Monroe laid out the Monroe Doctrine, which was largely built upon Adams's ideas. In issuing the Monroe Doctrine, the United States displayed a new level of assertiveness in international relations, as the doctrine represented the country's first claim to a sphere of influence. It also marked the country's shift in psychological orientation away from Europe and towards the Americas. Debates over foreign policy would no longer center on relations with Britain and France, but instead focus on western expansion and relations with Native Americans. The doctrine became one of the foundational principles of U.S. foreign policy.
Immediately upon becoming Secretary of State, Adams emerged as one of Monroe's most likely successors, as the last three presidents had all served in the role before taking office. As the 1824 election approached, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun (who later dropped out of the race), and William H. Crawford appeared to be Adams's primary competition to succeed Monroe. Crawford favored state sovereignty and a strict constructionist view of the Constitution, while Clay, Calhoun, and Adams embraced federally funded internal improvements, high tariffs, and the Second Bank of the United States, which was also known as the national bank. Because the Federalist Party had all but collapsed after the War of 1812, all the major presidential candidates were members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Adams felt that his own election as president would vindicate his father, while also allowing him to pursue an ambitious domestic policy. Though he lacked the charisma of his competitors, Adams was widely respected and benefited from the lack of other prominent Northern political leaders.
Adams's top choice for the role of vice president was General Andrew Jackson; Adams noted that "the Vice-Presidency was a station in which [Jackson] could hang no one, and in which he would need to quarrel with no one". However, as the 1824 election approached, Jackson jumped into the race for president, and Calhoun ended up receiving the Vice-presidential support of Adams supporters. While the other candidates based their candidacies on their long tenure as congressmen, ambassadors, or members of the cabinet, Jackson's appeal rested on his military service, especially in the Battle of New Orleans. The congressional nominating caucus had decided upon previous Democratic-Republican presidential nominees, but it had become largely discredited by 1824. Candidates were instead nominated by state legislatures or nominating conventions, and Adams received the endorsement of the New England legislatures. The regional strength of each candidate played an important role in the election; Adams was popular in New England, Clay and Jackson were strong in the West, and Jackson and Crawford competed for the South.
In the 1824 presidential election, Jackson won a plurality in the Electoral College, taking 99 of the 261 electoral votes, while Adams won 84, Crawford won 41, and Clay took 37. Calhoun, meanwhile, won a majority of the electoral votes for vice president. Adams nearly swept the electoral votes of New England and won a majority of the electoral votes in New York, but he won just six electoral votes from the slave states. Most of Jackson's support came from slave-holding states, but he also won New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and some electoral votes from the Northwest. As no candidate won a majority of the electoral votes, the House was required to hold a contingent election under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment. The House would decide among the top three electoral vote winners, with each state's delegation having one vote; thus, unlike his three rivals, Clay was not eligible to be elected by the House.
Adams knew that his own victory in the contingent election would require the support of Clay, who wielded immense influence in the House of Representatives. Though they were quite different in temperament and had clashed in the past, Adams and Clay shared similar views on national issues. By contrast, Clay viewed Jackson as a dangerous demagogue, and he was unwilling to support Crawford due to the latter's health issues. Adams and Clay met before the contingent election, and Clay agreed to support Adams in the election. Adams also met with Federalists such as Daniel Webster, promising that he would not deny governmental positions to members of their party. On February 9, 1825, Adams won the contingent election on the first ballot, taking 13 of the 24 state delegations. Adams won the House delegations of all the states in which he or Clay had won a majority of the electoral votes, as well as the delegations of Illinois, Louisiana, and Maryland. Adams's victory made him the first child of a president to serve as president himself. After the election, many of Jackson's supporters claimed that Adams and Clay had reached a "Corrupt bargain" whereby Adams promised Clay the position of Secretary of State in return for Clay's support.
Adams was inaugurated on March 4, 1825, becoming the first son of a former United States president to himself become president, a feat only repeated 176 years later by George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush. As Adams took the oath of office, he departed from tradition by placing his hand on a book of constitutional law instead of on a Bible. In his inaugural address, he adopted a post-partisan tone, promising to avoid party-building and politically motivated appointments. He also proposed an elaborate program of "internal improvements": roads, ports, and canals. Though some were worried about the constitutionality of such federal projects, Adams argued that the General Welfare Clause provided for broad constitutional authority. He promised that he would ask Congress to authorize many such projects.
Adams presided over a harmonious and productive cabinet that he met with on a weekly basis. Like Monroe, Adams sought a geographically balanced cabinet that would represent the various party factions, and he asked the members of the Monroe cabinet to remain in place for his own administration. Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey stayed on as Secretary of the Navy, William Wirt kept his post of Attorney General, and John McLean of Ohio continued to serve as the Postmaster General, an important position that was not part of the cabinet at that time. Adams's first choices for Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury were Andrew Jackson and William Crawford, but each declined to serve in the administration. Adams instead selected James Barbour of Virginia, a prominent supporter of Crawford, to lead the War Department. Leadership of the Treasury Department went to Richard Rush of Pennsylvania, who would become a prominent advocate of internal improvements and protective tariffs within the administration. Adams chose Henry Clay as Secretary of State, angering those who believed Clay had offered Adams his support in the 1824 election in exchange for the most prestigious position in the cabinet. Clay would later regret accepting the job since it reinforced the "Corrupt Bargain" accusation. However, Clay's strength in the West and interest in foreign policy made him a natural choice for the position.
In his 1825 annual message to Congress, Adams presented a comprehensive and ambitious agenda. He called for major investments in internal improvements as well as the creation of a national university, a naval academy, and a national astronomical observatory. Noting the healthy status of the treasury and the possibility for more revenue via land sales, Adams argued for the completion of several projects that were in various stages of construction or planning, including a road from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. He also proposed the establishment of a Department of the Interior as a new cabinet-level department that would preside over these internal improvements. Adams hoped to fund these measures primarily through Western land sales, rather than increased taxes or public debt. The domestic agenda of Adams and Clay, which would come to be known as the American System, was designed to unite disparate regional interests in the promotion of a thriving national economy.
Adams's programs faced opposition from various quarters. Many disagreed with his broad interpretation of the constitution and preferred that power be concentrated in state governments rather than the federal government. Others disliked interference from any level of government and were opposed to central planning. Some in the South feared that Adams was secretly an abolitionist and that he sought to subordinate the states to the federal government. Most of the president's proposals were defeated in Congress. Adams's ideas for a national university, a national observatory, and the establishment of a uniform system of weights and measures never received congressional votes. His proposal for the creation of a naval academy won the approval of the Senate but was defeated in the House; opponents objected to the naval academy's cost and worried that the establishment of such an institution would "produce degeneracy and corruption of the public morality". Adams's proposal to establish a national bankruptcy law was also defeated.
Unlike other aspects of his domestic agenda, Adams won congressional approval for several ambitious infrastructure projects. Between 1824 and 1828, the United States Army Corps of Engineers conducted surveys for a bevy of potential roads, canals, railroads, and improvements in river navigation. Adams presided over major repairs and further construction on the National Road, and shortly after he left office the National Road extended from Cumberland, Maryland, to Zanesville, Ohio. The Adams administration also saw the beginning of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; the construction of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and the Louisville and Portland Canal around the Falls of the Ohio; the connection of the Great Lakes to the Ohio River system in Ohio and Indiana; and the enlargement and rebuilding of the Dismal Swamp Canal in North Carolina. Additionally, the first passenger railroad in the United States, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was constructed during Adams's presidency. Though many of these projects were undertaken by private actors, the government often provided money or land to aid the completion of such projects.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1825 contingent election, Jackson was gracious to Adams. Nevertheless, Adams's appointment of Clay rankled Jackson, who received a flood of letters encouraging him to run. In 1825, Jackson accepted the presidential nomination of the Tennessee legislature for the 1828 election. Though he had been close to Adams during Monroe's presidency, Vice President Calhoun was also politically alienated from the president by the appointment of Clay, since that appointment established Clay as the natural heir to Adams. Adams's ambitious December 1825 annual message to Congress further galvanized the opposition, with important figures such as Francis Preston Blair of Kentucky and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri breaking with the Adams administration. By the end of the first session of the 19th United States Congress, an anti-Adams congressional coalition consisting of Jacksonians (led by Benton and Hugh Lawson White), Crawfordites (led by Martin Van Buren and Nathaniel Macon), and Calhounites (led by Robert Y. Hayne and George McDuffie) had emerged. Aside from Clay, Adams lacked strong supporters outside of the North, and Edward Everett, John Taylor, and Daniel Webster served as his strongest advocates in Congress. Supporters of Adams began calling themselves National Republicans, while supporters of Jackson began calling themselves Democrats. In the press, they were often described as "Adams Men" and "Jackson Men".
In the 1826 elections, Adams's opponents picked up seats throughout the country, as allies of Adams failed to coordinate among themselves. Andrew Stevenson, a Jackson supporter, replaced John Taylor, an Adams supporter, as Speaker of the House. As Adams himself noted, the United States had never seen a Congress that was firmly under the control of political opponents of the president. After the elections, Van Buren and Calhoun agreed to throw their support behind Jackson in 1828, with Van Buren bringing along many of Crawford's supporters. Though Jackson did not articulate a detailed political platform in the same way that Adams did, his coalition united in opposition to Adams's reliance on government planning. Adams, meanwhile, clung to the hope of a non-partisan nation, and he refused to make full use of the power of patronage to build up his own party structure.
During the first half of his administration, Adams avoided taking a strong stand on tariffs, partly because he wanted to avoid alienating his allies in the South and New England. After Jacksonians took power in 1827, they devised a tariff bill designed to appeal to Western states while instituting high rates on imported materials important to the economy of New England. It is unclear whether Van Buren, who shepherded the bill through Congress, meant for the bill to pass, or if he had deliberately designed it to force Adams and his allies to oppose it. Regardless, Adams signed the Tariff of 1828, which became known as the "Tariff of Abominations" by opponents. Adams was denounced in the South, and he received little credit for the tariff in the North.
Adams sought the gradual assimilation of Native Americans via consensual agreements, a priority shared by few whites in the 1820s. Yet Adams was also deeply committed to the westward expansion of the United States. Settlers on the frontier, constantly seeking to move westward, cried for a more expansionist policy that disregarded the concerns of Native Americans. Early in his term, Adams suspended the Treaty of Indian Springs after learning that the Governor of Georgia, George Troup, had forced the treaty on the Muscogee. Adams signed a new treaty with the Muscogee in January 1826 that allowed the Muscogee to stay but ceded most of their land to Georgia. Troup refused to accept its terms and authorized all Georgian citizens to evict the Muscogee. A showdown between Georgia and the federal government was only averted after the Muscogee agreed to a third treaty. Though many saw Troup as unreasonable in his dealings with the federal government and the Native Americans, the administration's handling of the incident alienated those in the Deep South who favored immediate Indian removal.
Adams famously said "America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".
One of the major foreign policy goals of the Adams administration was the expansion of American trade. His administration reached reciprocity treaties with a number of nations, including Denmark, Prussia, and the Federal Republic of Central America. The administration also reached commercial agreements with the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Kingdom of Tahiti. Agreements with Denmark and Sweden opened their colonies to American trade, but Adams was especially focused on opening trade with the British West Indies. The United States had reached a commercial agreement with Britain in 1815, but that agreement excluded British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. In response to United States pressure, the British had begun to allow a limited amount of American imports to the West Indies in 1823, but United States leaders continued to seek an end to Britain's protective Imperial Preference system. In 1825, Britain banned United States trade with the British West Indies, dealing a blow to Adams's prestige. The Adams administration negotiated extensively with the British to lift this ban, but the two sides could not reach an agreement. Despite the loss of trade with the British West Indies, the other commercial agreements secured by Adams helped expand the overall volume of United States exports.
Aside from an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Texas from Mexico, President Adams did not seek to expand into Latin America or North America. Adams and Clay instead sought engagement with Latin America to prevent it from falling under the British Empire's economic influence. As part of this goal, the administration favored sending a United States delegation to the Congress of Panama, an 1826 conference of New World republics organized by Simón Bolívar. Clay and Adams hoped that the conference would inaugurate a "Good Neighborhood Policy" among the independent states of the Americas. However, the funding for a delegation and the confirmation of delegation nominees became entangled in a political battle over Adams's domestic policies, with opponents such as Van Buren impeding the confirmation of a delegation. While Van Buren saw the Panama Congress as an unwelcome deviation from the more isolationist foreign policy established by President Washington, many Southerners opposed involvement with any conference attended by delegates from Haiti, a republic that had been established through a slave revolt. Though the United States delegation finally won confirmation from the Senate, it never reached the Congress of Panama due to the Senate's delay.
The Jacksonians formed an effective party apparatus that adopted many modern campaign techniques. Rather than focusing on issues, they emphasized Jackson's popularity and the supposed corruption of Adams and the federal government. Jackson himself described the campaign as a "struggle between the virtue of the people and executive patronage". Adams, meanwhile, refused to adapt to the new reality of political campaigns, and he avoided public functions and refused to invest in pro-administration tools such as newspapers. In early 1827, Jackson was publicly accused of having encouraged his wife, Rachel, to desert her first husband. In response, followers of Jackson attacked Adams's personal life, and the campaign turned increasingly nasty. The Jacksonian press portrayed Adams as an out-of-touch elitist, while pro-Adams newspapers attacked Jackson's past involvement in various duels and scuffles, portraying him as too emotional and impetuous for the presidency. Though Adams and Clay had hoped that the campaign would focus on the American System, it was instead dominated by the personalities of Jackson and Adams.
Vice President Calhoun joined Jackson's ticket, while Adams turned to Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush as his running mate. The 1828 election thus marked the first time in United States history that a presidential ticket composed of two Northerners faced off against a presidential ticket composed of two Southerners. In the election, Jackson won 178 of the 261 electoral votes and just under 56% of the popular vote. Jackson won 50.3% of the popular vote in the free states, but 72.6% of the vote in the slave states. No future presidential candidate would match Jackson's proportion of the popular vote until Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 campaign, while Adams's loss made him the second one-term president, after his own father. By 1828, only two states did not hold a popular vote for president, and the number of votes in the 1828 election was triple that in the 1824 election. This increase in votes was due not only to the recent wave of democratization, but also because of increased interest in elections and the growing ability of the parties to mobilize voters. Adams did not attend Jackson's inauguration, making him one of only four presidents who finished their terms but skipped the event.
Adams considered permanently retiring from public life after his 1828 defeat, and he was deeply hurt by the suicide of his son, George Washington Adams, in 1829. He was appalled by many of the Jackson administration's actions, including its embrace of the spoils system and the prosecution of his close friend, Treasury Auditor Tobias Watkins, for embezzlement. Though they had once maintained a cordial relationship, Adams and Jackson each came to loathe the other in the decades after the 1828 election. Adams grew bored with his retirement and still felt that his career was unfinished, so he ran for and won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in the 1830 elections. His election went against the generally held opinion, shared by his own wife and youngest son, that former presidents should not run for public office. Nonetheless, he would win election to nine terms, serving from 1831 until his death in 1848. Adams and Andrew Johnson are the only former presidents to serve in Congress. After winning election, Adams became affiliated with the Anti-Masonic Party, partly because the National Republican Party's leadership in Massachusetts included many of the former Federalists that Adams had clashed with earlier in his career. The Anti-Masonic Party originated as a movement against Freemasonry, but it developed into the country's first third party and embraced a general program of anti-elitism.
Adams expected a light workload when he returned to Washington at 64 years old, but Speaker Andrew Stevenson selected Adams chair of the Committee on Commerce and Manufactures. Though he identified as a member of the Anti-Masonic Party, Congress was broadly polarized into allies of Jackson and opponents of Jackson, and Adams generally aligned with the latter camp. Stevenson, an ally of Jackson, expected that the committee chairmanship would keep Adams busy defending the tariff even while the Jacksonian majority on the committee would prevent Adams from accruing any real power. As chair of the committee charged with writing tariff laws, Adams became an important player in the nullification crisis, which stemmed largely from Southern objections to the high rates imposed by the Tariff of 1828. South Carolina leaders argued that states could nullify federal laws, and they announced that they would bar the federal government from enforcing the tariff in their state. Adams helped pass the Tariff of 1832, which lowered rates, but not enough to mollify the South Carolina nullifiers. The crisis ended when Clay and Calhoun agreed to another tariff bill, the Tariff of 1833, that furthered lower tariff rates. Adams was appalled by the Nullification Crisis's outcome, as he felt that the Southern states had unfairly benefited from challenging federal law. After the crisis, Adams was convinced that Southerners exercised undue influence over the federal government through their control of Jackson's Democratic Party.
In the 1833 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, the Anti-Masonic Party nominated Adams in a four-way race between Adams, the National Republican candidate, the Democratic candidate, and a candidate of the Working Men's Party. The National Republican candidate, John Davis, won 40% of the vote, while Adams finished in second place with 29%. Because no candidate won a majority of the vote, the state legislature decided the election. Rather than seek election by the legislature, Adams withdrew his name from contention, and the legislature selected Davis. Adams was nearly elected to the Senate in 1835 by a coalition of Anti-Masons and National Republicans, but his support for Jackson in a minor foreign policy matter annoyed National Republican leaders enough that they dropped their support for his candidacy. After 1835, Adams never again sought higher office, focusing instead on his service in the House of Representatives.
In the mid-1830s, the Anti-Masonic Party, the National Republicans, and other groups opposed to Jackson coalesced into the Whig Party. In the 1836 presidential election Democrats put forward Martin Van Buren, while the Whigs fielded multiple presidential candidates. Because he disdained all the major party contenders for president, Adams did not take part in the campaign; Van Buren won the election. Nonetheless, Adams became aligned with the Whig Party in Congress. Adams generally opposed the initiatives of President Van Buren, long a political adversary, though they maintained a cordial public relationship.
The Republic of Texas won its independence from Mexico in the Texas Revolution of 1835–1836. Texas had largely been settled by Americans from the Southern United States, and many of those settlers owned slaves despite an 1829 Mexican law that abolished slavery. Many in the United States and Texas thus favored the admission of Texas into the union as a slave state. Adams considered the issue of Texas to be "a question of far deeper root and more overshadowing branches than any or all others that agitate the country", and he emerged as one of the leading congressional opponents of annexation. When he served as secretary of state, Adams had sought to acquire Texas, but he argued that, because Mexico had abolished slavery, the acquisition of Texas would transform the region from a free territory into a slave state. He also feared that the annexation of Texas would encourage Southern expansionists to pursue other potential slave states, including Cuba. Adams's firm stance may have played a role in discouraging Van Buren from pushing for the annexation of Texas during his presidency.
Whig nominee William Henry Harrison defeated Van Buren in the 1840 presidential election, and the Whigs gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time. Despite his low regard for Harrison as a person, Adams was enthusiastic about the new Whig administration and the end of the long-standing Democratic dominance of the federal government. However, Harrison died in April 1841 and was succeeded by Vice President John Tyler, a Southerner who, unlike Adams, Henry Clay, and many other prominent Whigs, did not embrace the American System. Adams saw Tyler as an agent of "the slave-driving, Virginia, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement". After Tyler vetoed a bill to restore the national bank, Whig congressmen expelled Tyler from the party. Adams was appointed chairman of a special committee that explored impeaching Tyler, and Adams presented a scathing report of Tyler that argued that his actions warranted impeachment. The impeachment process did not move forward, though, because the Whigs did not believe that the Senate would vote to remove Tyler from office.
Tyler made the annexation of Texas the main foreign policy priority of the later stages of his administration. He attempted to win ratification of an annexation treaty in 1844, but, to Adams's surprise and relief, the Senate rejected the treaty. The annexation of Texas became the central issue of the 1844 presidential election, and Southerners blocked the nomination of Van Buren at the 1844 Democratic National Convention due to the latter's opposition to annexation; the party instead nominated James K. Polk, an acolyte of Andrew Jackson. Though he once again did not take part in the campaigning, Adams was deeply disappointed that Polk defeated his old ally, Henry Clay, in the 1844 election. He attributed the outcome of the election partly to the Liberty Party, a small, abolitionist third party that may have siphoned votes from Clay in the crucial state of New York. After the election, Tyler, whose term would end in March 1845, once again submitted an annexation treaty to Congress. Adams strongly attacked the treaty, arguing that the annexation of Texas would involve the United States in "a war for slavery". Despite Adams's opposition, both houses of Congress approved the treaty, with most Democrats voting for annexation and most Whigs voting against it. Texas thus joined the United States as a slave state in 1845.
Adams had served with James K. Polk in the House of Representatives, and Adams loathed the new president, seeing him as another expansionist, pro-slavery Southern Democrat. Adams favored the annexation of the entirety of Oregon Country, a disputed region occupied by both the United States and Britain, and was disappointed when President Polk signed the Oregon Treaty, which divided the land between the two claimants at the 49th parallel. Polk's expansionist aims centered instead on the Mexican province of Alta California, and he attempted to buy the province from Mexico. The Mexican government refused to sell California or recognize the independence and subsequent American annexation of Texas. Polk deployed a military detachment led by General Zachary Taylor to back up his assertion that the Rio Grande constituted the Southern border of both Texas and the United States. After Taylor's forces clashed with Mexican soldiers north of the Rio Grande, Polk asked for a declaration of war in early 1846, asserting that Mexico had invaded American territory. Though some Whigs questioned whether Mexico had started an aggressive war, both houses of Congress declared war, with the House voting 174-to-14 to approve the declaration. One of the 14 dissenting votes was Adams, who believed that Polk was seeking to wage an offensive to expand slavery. After the start of the war, he supported the Wilmot Proviso, an unsuccessful legislative proposal that would have banned slavery in any territory ceded by Mexico. After 1846, ill health increasingly affected Adams, but he continued to oppose the Mexican–American War until his death in 1848.
In the 1830s, slavery emerged as an increasingly polarizing issue in the United States. A longtime opponent of slavery, Adams used his new role in Congress to fight it, and he became the most prominent national leader opposing slavery. After one of his reelection victories, he said that he must "bring about a day prophesied when slavery and war shall be banished from the face of the Earth". He wrote in his private journal in 1820:
The discussion of this Missouri question has betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they admit that slavery is an evil, they disclaim it, and cast it all upon the shoulder of Great Britain. But when probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom. They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee's manners, because he has no habits of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?
In 1836, partially in response to Adams's consistent presentation of citizen petitions requesting the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the U.S. House of Representatives imposed a gag rule that immediately tabled any petitions about slavery. Democrats and Southern Whigs favored the rule, but Northern Whigs, like Adams, opposed it. In late 1836, Adams began a campaign to ridicule slave owners and the gag rule. He frequently attempted to present anti-slavery petitions, often in ways that provoked strong reactions from Southern representatives. Though the gag rule remained in place, the discussion ignited by his actions and the attempts of others to quiet him raised questions of the right to petition, the right to legislative debate, and the morality of slavery. Adams fought actively against the gag rule for another seven years, eventually moving the resolution that led to its repeal in 1844.
In 1841, at the request of Lewis Tappan and Ellis Gray Loring, Adams joined the case of United States v. The Amistad. Adams went before the Supreme Court on behalf of African slaves who had revolted and seized the Spanish ship Amistad. Adams appeared on February 24, 1841, and spoke for four hours. His argument succeeded: the Court ruled that the Africans were free and they returned to their homes.
Adams also became a leading force for the promotion of science. In 1829, British scientist James Smithson died, and he left his fortune for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge". In Smithson's will, he stated that should his nephew, Henry James Hungerford, die without heirs, the Smithson estate would go to the government of the United States to create an "Establishment for the increase and diffusion of Knowledge among men". After the nephew died without heirs in 1835, President Andrew Jackson informed Congress of the bequest, which amounted to about US$500,000 (US$75 million in 2008 dollars after inflation). Adams realized that this might allow the United States to realize his dream of building a national institution of science and learning. Adams thus became Congress's primary supporter of the future Smithsonian Institution.
The money was invested in shaky state bonds, which quickly defaulted. After heated debate in Congress, Adams successfully argued to restore the lost funds with interest. Though Congress wanted to use the money for other purposes, Adams successfully persuaded Congress to preserve the money for an institution of science and learning. Congress also debated whether the federal government had the authority to accept the gift, though with Adams leading the initiative, Congress accepted the legacy bequeathed to the nation and pledged the faith of the United States to the charitable trust on July 1, 1836. Partly due to Adams's efforts, Congress voted to establish the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. A nonpolitical board of regents was established to lead the institution, which included a museum, art gallery, library, and laboratory.
In 1846, the 78-year-old former president suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. After a few months of rest, he made a full recovery and resumed his duties in Congress. When Adams entered the House chamber on February 13, 1847, everyone "stood up and applauded".
On February 21, 1848, the House of Representatives was discussing the matter of honoring United States Army officers who served in the Mexican–American War. Adams had been a vehement critic of the war, and as Congressmen rose up to say, "Aye!" in favor of the measure, he instead yelled, "No!" He rose to answer a question put forth by Speaker of the House Robert Charles Winthrop. Immediately thereafter, Adams collapsed, having suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Two days later, on February 23, he died at 7:20 p.m. with his wife at his side in the Speaker's Room inside the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.; his only living child, Charles Francis, did not arrive in time to see his father alive. His last words were "This is the last of Earth. I am content". Among those present for his death was future president Abraham Lincoln, then a freshman representative from Illinois.
His original interment was temporary, in the public vault at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Later, he was interred in the family burial ground in Quincy, Massachusetts, across from the (Unitarian) United First Parish Church, called Hancock Cemetery. After Louisa's death in 1852, his son had his parents re-interred in the expanded family crypt in the United First Parish Church across the street, next to John and Abigail. Both tombs are viewable by the public. Adams's original tomb at Hancock Cemetery is still there and marked simply "J.Q. Adams".
Adams and Louisa had three sons and a daughter. Their daughter, Louisa, was born in 1811 but died in 1812. They named their first son George Washington Adams (1801–1829) after the first president. This decision upset Adams's mother, and, by her account, his father as well. Both George and their second son, John (1803–1834), led troubled lives and died in early adulthood. George, who had long suffered from alcoholism, died in 1829 after going overboard on a steamboat; it is not clear whether he fell or purposely jumped from the boat. John, who ran an unprofitable flour and grist mill owned by his father, died of an unknown illness in 1834. Adams's youngest son, Charles Francis Adams Sr., was an important leader of the "Conscience Whigs", a Northern, anti-slavery faction of the Whig Party. Charles served as the Free Soil Party's vice presidential candidate in the 1848 presidential election and later became a prominent member of the Republican Party, serving as United States Minister to England during the American Civil War.
Adams's personality and political beliefs were much like his father's. He always preferred solitary reading to social engagements, and he was repeatedly persuaded to stay in public service by others. Historian Paul Nagel states that, like Abraham Lincoln after him, Adams often suffered from depression, for which he sought treatment in early years. Adams thought his depression was due to the high expectations demanded of him by his father and mother. Throughout his life, he felt inadequate and socially awkward because of his depression, and was constantly bothered by his physical appearance. He was closer to his father, with whom he spent much of his early life while abroad, than he was to his mother. In his youth, while the American Revolution raged on, Adams heard from his mother about his father's work and the substantial risks he took to support it. As a result, he developed a deep respect for his father. In contrast, Adams had a rocky relationship with his mother, due to her high expectations of him, and her fear that her children would follow in the footsteps of her brother, who died of alcoholism. His biographer, Nagel, concludes that his mother's disapproval of Louisa Johnson motivated him to marry Johnson in 1797, despite Adams's reservations that Johnson, like his mother, had a forceful personality.
Though Adams wore a powdered wig tied in a queue in his youth, he abandoned this fashion while serving as the U.S. Minister to Russia (1809–1814) and became the first president to adopt a short haircut instead of long hair tied in a queue and to regularly wear long trousers instead of knee breeches according to the fashion of the 19th century. It has been suggested that John Quincy Adams had the highest I.Q. of any U.S. president. Dean Simonton, a professor of psychology at UC Davis, estimated his I.Q. score at 165. He reportedly spoke eight foreign languages (Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish), more than any other U.S. president. He remains the only U.S. president who could converse in Russian.
Adams is widely regarded as one of the most effective diplomats and secretaries of state in American history, but scholars generally rank him as an average president. Adams is remembered as a man eminently qualified for the presidency, yet hopelessly weakened in his presidential leadership potential because of the 1824 election. Most importantly, Adams is remembered as a poor politician in an era when politics had begun to matter more. He spoke of trying to serve as a man above the "baneful weed of party strife" at the precise moment in history when the Second Party System was emerging with nearly revolutionary force. Biographer and historian William J. Cooper Jr. comments that Adams "does not loom large in the American imagination", but that he has received more public attention since the late 20th century due to his anti-slavery stances. Cooper writes that Adams was the first "major public figure" to publicly question whether the United States could remain united so long as the institution of slavery persisted. Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes that Adams's "intellectual ability and courage were above reproach, and his wisdom in perceiving the national interest has stood the test of time". He has also been praised as a strong prose stylist, with James Parker describing him as one of the "three authentically muddy-eyed and pained-by-subjectivity writers" that the White House has harbored, along with Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.
John Quincy Adams Birthplace is now part of Adams National Historical Park and open to the public. Adams House, one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University, is named for John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and other members of the Adams family associated with Harvard. John Quincy Adams tower, located in the Southwest residential area of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is named for the president. In 1870, Charles Francis built the first presidential library in the United States, to honor his father. The Stone Library includes over 14,000 books written in twelve languages. The library is located at Peacefield (the "Old House") at Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts.
An Adams Memorial has been proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Adams and his wife, son, father, mother, and other members of their family.
Adams's middle name of Quincy has been used by several locations in the United States, including the town of Quincy, Illinois. Adams County, Illinois and Adams County, Indiana are also named after Adams. Adams County, Iowa, and Adams County, Wisconsin, were each named for either John Adams or John Quincy Adams.
Some sources contend that in 1843 Adams sat for the earliest confirmed photograph of a United States president, although others maintain that William Henry Harrison had posed even earlier for his portrait, in 1841. The original daguerreotype is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.
Adams occasionally is featured in the mass media. In the PBS miniseries The Adams Chronicles (1976), he was portrayed by David Birney, William Daniels, Marcel Trenchard, Steven Grover and Mark Winkworth. He was also portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the 1997 film Amistad, and again by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Steven Hinkle in the 2008 HBO television miniseries John Adams. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Quincy Adams (/ˈkwɪnzi/ ; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams served as an ambassador and also as a member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in both chambers. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and later, in the mid-1830s, became affiliated with the Whig Party.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, Adams spent much of his youth in Europe, where his father served as a diplomat. After returning to the United States, Adams established a successful legal practice in Boston. In 1794, President George Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, and Adams would serve in high-ranking diplomatic posts until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson took office as president. Federalist leaders in Massachusetts arranged for Adams's election to the United States Senate in 1802, but Adams broke with the Federalist Party over foreign policy and was denied re-election. In 1809, President James Madison, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. Multilingual, Adams held diplomatic posts for the duration of Madison's presidency, and he served as part of the American delegation that negotiated an end to the War of 1812. In 1817, President James Monroe selected Adams as his secretary of state. In that role, Adams negotiated the Adams–Onís Treaty, which provided for the American acquisition of Florida. He also helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine, which became a key tenet of U.S. foreign policy. In 1818, Adams was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay—all members of the Democratic-Republican Party—competed in the 1824 presidential election. Because no candidate won a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives held a contingent election, which Adams won with the support of Speaker of the House Henry Clay, whom Adams would controversially appoint as his secretary of state. As president, Adams called for an ambitious agenda that included federally funded infrastructure projects, the establishment of a national university, and engagement with the countries of Latin America, but Congress refused to pass many of his initiatives. During Adams's presidency, the Democratic-Republican Party split into two major camps: the National Republican Party, which supported Adams, and Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party. The Democrats proved to be more effective political organizers than Adams and his National Republican supporters, and Jackson soundly defeated Adams in the 1828 presidential election, making Adams the second president to fail to win re-election (his father being the first).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Rather than retiring from public service, Adams won election to the House of Representatives, where he would serve from 1831 until his death in 1848. He remains the only former president to be elected to the chamber. After narrowly losing his bids for Governor of Massachusetts and Senate re-election, Adams joined the Anti-Masonic Party in the early 1830s before joining the Whig Party, which united those opposed to President Jackson. During his time in Congress, Adams became increasingly critical of slavery and of the Southern leaders whom he believed controlled the Democratic Party. He was particularly opposed to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, which he saw as a war to extend slavery and its political grip on Congress. He also led the repeal of the \"gag rule\", which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery. Historians concur that Adams was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history; they typically rank him as an average president, as he had an ambitious agenda but could not get it passed by Congress. By contrast, historians also view Adams in a more positive light during his post-presidency because of his vehement stance against slavery, as well as his fight for the rights of women and Native Americans.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, to John and Abigail Adams (née Smith) in a part of Braintree, Massachusetts, that is now Quincy. He was named after his mother's maternal grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, after whom Quincy, Massachusetts, is also named. Colonel Quincy died two days after his great-grandson's birth. Young Adams was educated by private tutors – his cousin James Thaxter and his father's law clerk, Nathan Rice. He soon exhibited literary skills, and in 1779 he started a diary that he kept until just before he died in 1848. Until the age of ten, Adams grew up on the family farm in Braintree, largely in the care of his mother. Though frequently absent because of his participation in the American Revolution, John Adams maintained a correspondence with his son, encouraging him to read works by authors such as Thucydides and Hugo Grotius. With his father's encouragement, Adams would also translate classical authors such as Virgil, Horace, Plutarch, and Aristotle.",
"title": "Early life, education, and early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1778, Adams and his father departed for Europe, where John Adams would serve as part of American diplomatic missions in France and the Netherlands. During this period, Adams studied law, French, Greek, and Latin, and attended several schools, including Leiden University. In 1781, Adams traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he served as the secretary to the American diplomat, Francis Dana. He returned to the Netherlands in 1783 and accompanied his father to Great Britain in 1784. Though Adams enjoyed Europe, he and his family decided he needed to return to the United States to complete his education and eventually launch a political career.",
"title": "Early life, education, and early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Adams returned to the United States in 1785 and earned admission as a member of the junior class of Harvard College the following year. He joined Phi Beta Kappa and excelled academically, graduating second in his class in 1787. After graduating from Harvard, he studied law with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts, from 1787 to 1789. Adams initially opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution, but he ultimately came to accept the document, and in 1789 his father was elected as the first vice president of the United States. In 1790, Adams opened his own legal practice in Boston. Despite some early struggles, he was successful as an attorney and established financial independence from his parents.",
"title": "Early life, education, and early career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Adams initially avoided becoming involved in politics, instead focusing on building his legal career. In 1791, he wrote a series of pseudonymously published essays arguing that Britain provided a better governmental model than France. Two years later, he published another series of essays attacking Edmond-Charles Genêt, a French diplomat who sought to undermine President George Washington's policy of neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1794, Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. Adams considered declining the role, but ultimately took the position on the advice of his father. While abroad, Adams continued to urge neutrality, arguing that the United States would benefit economically by staying out of the ongoing French Revolutionary Wars. His chief duty as the ambassador to the Netherlands was to secure and maintain loans essential to U.S. finances. On his way to the Netherlands, he met with John Jay, who was then negotiating the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Adams supported the Jay Treaty, but it proved unpopular with many in the United States, contributing to a growing partisan split between the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson. In 1794 he supported John Skey Eustace who wanted to return to the United States via the Netherlands.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Adams spent the winter of 1795–1796 in London, where he met Louisa Catherine Johnson, the second daughter of American merchant Joshua Johnson. In April 1796, Louisa accepted Adams's proposal of marriage. Adams's parents disapproved of his decision to marry a woman who had grown up in England, but he informed his parents that he would not reconsider his decision. Adams initially wanted to delay his wedding to Louisa until he returned to the United States, but they married in All Hallows-by-the-Tower on July 26, 1797. Shortly after the wedding, Joshua Johnson fled England to escape his creditors, and Adams did not receive the dowry that Johnson had promised him, much to the embarrassment of Louisa. Adams noted in his own diary that he had no regrets about his decision to marry Louisa.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1796, Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to Portugal. Later that year, John Adams defeated Jefferson in the 1796 presidential election. When the elder Adams became president, he appointed his son as the U.S. ambassador to Prussia. Though concerned that his appointment would be criticized as nepotistic, Adams accepted the position and traveled to the Prussian capital of Berlin with his wife and his younger brother, Thomas Boylston Adams. The State Department tasked Adams with developing commercial relations with Prussia and Sweden, but President Adams also asked his son to write to him frequently about affairs in Europe. In 1799, Adams negotiated a new trade agreement between the United States and Prussia, though he could never complete an agreement with Sweden. He frequently wrote to family members in the United States, and in 1801 his letters about the Prussian region of Silesia were published in a book titled Letters on Silesia. During his time in Prussia, Adams befriended the German diplomat and writer Friedrich von Gentz, whose work, The Origins and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origins and Principles of the French Revolution, Adams would translate into English in 1800. In the 1800 presidential election, Jefferson defeated John Adams, and both Adams and his son left office in early 1801.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On his return to the United States, Adams re-established a legal practice in Boston, and in April 1802 he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. In November of that year, he ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives. In February 1803, the Massachusetts legislature elected Adams to the United States Senate. Though somewhat reluctant to affiliate with any political party, Adams joined the Federalist minority in Congress. Like his Federalist colleagues, he opposed the impeachment of Associate Justice Samuel Chase, an outspoken supporter of the Federalist Party.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Adams had strongly opposed Jefferson's 1800 presidential candidacy, but he gradually became alienated from the Federalist Party. His disaffection was driven by the party's declining popularity, disagreements over foreign policy, and Adams's hostility to Timothy Pickering, a Federalist Party leader whom Adams viewed as overly favorable to Britain. Unlike other New England Federalists, Adams supported the Jefferson administration's Louisiana Purchase and expansionist policies. Adams was the lone Federalist in Congress to vote for the Non-importation Act of 1806 that punished Britain for its attacks on American shipping during the ongoing Napoleonic Wars. Adams became increasingly frustrated with the unwillingness of other Federalists to condemn British actions, including impressment, and he moved closer to the Jefferson administration. After Adams supported the Embargo Act of 1807, the Federalist-controlled Massachusetts legislature elected Adams's successor several months before the end of his term, and Adams resigned from the Senate shortly thereafter.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "While a member of the Senate, Adams served as a professor of logic at Brown University and as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. Adams's devotion to classical rhetoric shaped his response to public issues, and he would remain inspired by those rhetorical ideals long after the neo-classicalism and deferential politics of the founding generation were eclipsed by the commercial ethos and mass democracy of the Jacksonian Era. Many of Adams's idiosyncratic positions were rooted in his abiding devotion to the Ciceronian ideal of the citizen-orator \"speaking well\" to promote the welfare of the polis. He was also influenced by the classical republican ideal of civic eloquence espoused by British philosopher David Hume. Adams adapted these classical republican ideals of public oratory to the American debate, viewing its multilevel political structure as ripe for \"the renaissance of Demosthenic eloquence\". His Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory (1810) looks at the fate of ancient oratory, the necessity of liberty for it to flourish, and its importance as a unifying element for a new nation of diverse cultures and beliefs. Just as civic eloquence failed to gain popularity in Britain, in the United States interest faded in the second decade of the 19th century, as the \"public spheres of heated oratory\" disappeared in favor of the private sphere.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "After resigning from the Senate, Adams was ostracized by Massachusetts Federalist leaders, but he declined Democratic-Republican entreaties to seek office. In 1809, he argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Fletcher v. Peck, and the Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Adams's argument that the Constitution's Contract Clause prevented the state of Georgia from invalidating a land sale to out-of-state companies. Later that year, President James Madison appointed Adams as the first United States Minister to Russia in 1809. Though Adams had only recently broken with the Federalist Party, his support of Jefferson's foreign policy had earned him goodwill with the Madison Administration. Adams was well-qualified for the role after his experiences in Europe generally and Russia specifically.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "After a difficult passage through the Baltic Sea, Adams arrived in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg in October 1809. He quickly established a productive working relationship with Russian official Nikolay Rumyantsev and eventually befriended Tsar Alexander I of Russia. Adams continued to favor American neutrality between France and Britain during the Napoleonic War. Louisa was initially distraught at the prospect of living in Russia, but she became a popular figure at the Russian court. From his diplomatic post, Adams observed the French Emperor Napoleon's invasion of Russia, which ended in defeat for the French. In February 1811, President Madison nominated Adams as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, but Adams declined the seat, preferring a career in politics and diplomacy, so Joseph Story took the seat instead.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Adams had long feared that the United States would enter a war it could not win against Britain, and by early 1812, he saw such a war as inevitable due to the constant British attacks on American shipping and the British practice of impressment. In mid-1812, the United States declared war against Britain, beginning the War of 1812. Tsar Alexander attempted to mediate the conflict between Britain and the United States, and President Madison appointed Adams, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, and Federalist Senator James A. Bayard to a delegation charged with negotiating an end to the war. Gallatin and Bayard arrived in St. Petersburg in July 1813, but the British declined Tsar Alexander's offer of mediation. Hoping to start negotiations at another venue, Adams left Russia in April 1814. Negotiations finally began in mid-1814 in Ghent, where Adams, Gallatin, and Bayard were joined by two additional American delegates, Jonathan Russell and former Speaker of the House Henry Clay. Adams, the nominal head of the delegation, got along well with Gallatin, Bayard, and Russell, but he occasionally clashed with Clay.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The British delegation initially treated the United States as a defeated power, demanding the creation of an Indian barrier state from American territory near the Great Lakes. The American delegation unanimously rejected this offer, and their negotiating position was bolstered by the American victory in the Battle of Plattsburgh. By November 1814, the government of Lord Liverpool decided to seek an end to hostilities with the U.S. on the basis of status quo ante bellum. Even though a return to the status quo would mean the continuation of the British practice of impressment, Adams and his fellow commissioners had hoped for similar terms. The treaty was signed on December 24, 1814. The United States did not gain any concessions from the treaty but could boast that it had survived a war against the strongest power in the world. Following the signing of the treaty, Adams traveled to Paris, where he witnessed first-hand the Hundred Days of Napoleon's restoration.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In May 1815, Adams learned that President Madison had appointed him as the U.S. ambassador to Britain. With the aid of Clay and Gallatin, Adams negotiated a limited trade agreement with Britain. Following the conclusion of the trade agreement, much of Adams's time as ambassador was spent helping stranded American sailors and prisoners of war. In pursuit of national unity, newly elected president James Monroe decided a Northerner would be optimal for the position of Secretary of State, and he chose the respected and experienced Adams for the role. Having spent several years in Europe, Adams returned to the United States in August 1817.",
"title": "Early political career (1793–1817)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Adams served as Secretary of State during Monroe's eight-year presidency, from 1817 to 1825. Many of his successes as secretary, such as the convention of 1818 with the United Kingdom, the Transcontinental Treaty with Spain, and the Monroe Doctrine, were not preplanned strategies but responses to unexpected events. Adams wanted to delay American recognition of the newly independent republics of Latin America to avoid the risk of war with Spain and its European allies. However, Andrew Jackson's military campaign in Florida and Henry Clay's threats in Congress forced Spain to cut a deal, which Adams negotiated successfully. Biographer James Lewis says, \"He managed to play the cards that he had been dealt – cards that he very clearly had not wanted – in ways that forced the Spanish cabinet to recognize the weakness of its own hand\". Apart from the Monroe doctrine, his last four years as Secretary of State were less successful because he was preoccupied with his presidential campaign and refused to make compromises with other countries that might have weakened his candidacy; the result was a small-scale trade war but a successful election to the White House.",
"title": "Secretary of State (1817–1825)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Taking office in the aftermath of the War of 1812, Adams thought that the country had been fortunate in avoiding territorial losses, and he prioritized avoiding another war with a European power, particularly Britain. He also sought to avoid exacerbating sectional tensions, which had been a major issue for the country during the War of 1812. One of the major challenges confronting Adams was how to respond to the power vacuum in Latin America that arose from Spain's weakness following the Peninsular War. In addition to his foreign policy role, Adams held several domestic duties, including overseeing the 1820 United States census and writing an extensive report on weights and measures. The weights and measures report, a particular passion of Adams', provided an extensive historical perspective on the topic and advocated for adoption of the metric system.",
"title": "Secretary of State (1817–1825)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Monroe and Adams agreed on most major foreign policy issues: both favored neutrality in Latin American independence wars, peace with the United Kingdom, rejection of a trade agreement with the French, and peaceful expansion into the Spanish Empire's North American territories. The president and his secretary of state developed a strong working relationship, and while Adams often influenced Monroe's policies, he respected that Monroe made the final decisions on major issues. Monroe met regularly with his five-person cabinet, which initially consisted of Adams, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield, and Attorney General William Wirt. Adams developed a strong respect for Calhoun but believed that Crawford was unduly focused on succeeding Monroe in 1824.",
"title": "Secretary of State (1817–1825)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "During his time as ambassador to Britain, Adams had begun negotiations over several contentious issues that had not been solved by the War of 1812 or the Treaty of Ghent. In 1817, the two countries agreed to the Rush–Bagot Treaty, which limited naval armaments on the Great Lakes. Negotiations between the two powers continued, resulting in the Treaty of 1818, which defined the Canada–United States border west of the Great Lakes. The boundary was set at the 49th parallel to the Rocky Mountains, while the territory to the west of the mountains, known as Oregon Country, would be jointly occupied. The agreement marked a watershed moment in United Kingdom–United States relations, as the United States focused on its southern and western borders and British concerns about American expansionism subsided.",
"title": "Secretary of State (1817–1825)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "When Adams took office, Spanish possessions bordered the United States to the south and west. To the south, Spain retained control of Florida, which the U.S. had long sought to purchase. Spain struggled to control the Indian tribes active in Florida, and some of those tribes raided United States territory. To the west, New Spain bordered the territory acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, but no clear boundary had been established between United States and Spanish territory. After taking office, Adams began negotiations with Luis de Onís, the Spanish minister to the United States, for the purchase of Florida and the settlement of a border between the United States and New Spain. The negotiations were interrupted by an escalation of the Seminole War, and in December 1818, Monroe ordered General Andrew Jackson to enter Florida and retaliate against Seminoles that had raided Georgia. Exceeding his orders, Jackson captured the Spanish outposts of St. Marks and Pensacola and executed two Englishmen. While Jackson's actions outraged the rest of the cabinet, Adams defended them as necessary to the country's self-defense, and he eventually convinced Monroe and most of the cabinet to support Jackson. Adams informed Spain that its failure to police its own territory had compelled Jackson to act, and he advised Spain to either secure the region or sell it to the United States. The British, meanwhile, declined to risk their recent rapprochement with the United States, and did not make a major diplomatic issue out of Jackson's execution of two British nationals.",
"title": "Secretary of State (1817–1825)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Negotiations between Spain and the United States continued, and Spain agreed to cede Florida. The determination of the western boundary of the United States proved more difficult. American expansionists favored setting the border at the Rio Grande, but Spain, intent on protecting its colony of Mexico from American encroachment, insisted on setting the boundary at the Sabine River. At Monroe's direction, Adams agreed to the Sabine River boundary, but he insisted that Spain cede its claims on Oregon Country. Adams was deeply interested in establishing American control over the Oregon Country, partly because he believed that control of that region would spur trade with Asia. The acquisition of Spanish claims to the Pacific Northwest also allowed the Monroe administration to pair the acquisition of Florida, which was chiefly sought by Southerners, with territorial gains favored primarily by those in the North. After extended negotiations, Spain and the United States agreed to the Adams–Onís Treaty, which was ratified in February 1821. Adams was deeply proud of the treaty, though he privately was concerned by the potential expansion of slavery into the newly acquired territories. In 1824, the Monroe administration would strengthen US claims to Oregon by ratifying the Russo-American Treaty of 1824, which established Russian Alaska's southern border at 54°40′ north.",
"title": "Secretary of State (1817–1825)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "As the Spanish Empire continued to fracture during Monroe's second term, Adams, Monroe and Clay became increasingly concerned that the \"Holy Alliance\" of Prussia, Austria, and Russia would seek to bring Spain's erstwhile colonies under their control, to the point of even contemplating a Holy Alliance of their own to defend democracy. In his 1821 Fourth of July address, Adams addressed this issue, noting a shared \"chain of sympathy\" between the U.S. and Latin America, but arguing for neutrality rather than a Holy Alliance. In 1822, following the conclusion of the Adams–Onís Treaty, the Monroe administration recognized the independence of several Latin American countries, including Argentina and Mexico. In 1823, British Foreign Secretary George Canning suggested that the United States and Britain should work together to preserve the independence of these fledgling republics. The cabinet debated whether to accept the offer, but Adams opposed it. Instead, Adams urged Monroe to publicly declare the United States' opposition to any European attempt to colonize or re-take control of territory in the Americas, while also committing the United States to neutrality in European affairs. In his December 1823 annual message to Congress, Monroe laid out the Monroe Doctrine, which was largely built upon Adams's ideas. In issuing the Monroe Doctrine, the United States displayed a new level of assertiveness in international relations, as the doctrine represented the country's first claim to a sphere of influence. It also marked the country's shift in psychological orientation away from Europe and towards the Americas. Debates over foreign policy would no longer center on relations with Britain and France, but instead focus on western expansion and relations with Native Americans. The doctrine became one of the foundational principles of U.S. foreign policy.",
"title": "Secretary of State (1817–1825)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Immediately upon becoming Secretary of State, Adams emerged as one of Monroe's most likely successors, as the last three presidents had all served in the role before taking office. As the 1824 election approached, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun (who later dropped out of the race), and William H. Crawford appeared to be Adams's primary competition to succeed Monroe. Crawford favored state sovereignty and a strict constructionist view of the Constitution, while Clay, Calhoun, and Adams embraced federally funded internal improvements, high tariffs, and the Second Bank of the United States, which was also known as the national bank. Because the Federalist Party had all but collapsed after the War of 1812, all the major presidential candidates were members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Adams felt that his own election as president would vindicate his father, while also allowing him to pursue an ambitious domestic policy. Though he lacked the charisma of his competitors, Adams was widely respected and benefited from the lack of other prominent Northern political leaders.",
"title": "1824 presidential election"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Adams's top choice for the role of vice president was General Andrew Jackson; Adams noted that \"the Vice-Presidency was a station in which [Jackson] could hang no one, and in which he would need to quarrel with no one\". However, as the 1824 election approached, Jackson jumped into the race for president, and Calhoun ended up receiving the Vice-presidential support of Adams supporters. While the other candidates based their candidacies on their long tenure as congressmen, ambassadors, or members of the cabinet, Jackson's appeal rested on his military service, especially in the Battle of New Orleans. The congressional nominating caucus had decided upon previous Democratic-Republican presidential nominees, but it had become largely discredited by 1824. Candidates were instead nominated by state legislatures or nominating conventions, and Adams received the endorsement of the New England legislatures. The regional strength of each candidate played an important role in the election; Adams was popular in New England, Clay and Jackson were strong in the West, and Jackson and Crawford competed for the South.",
"title": "1824 presidential election"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 1824 presidential election, Jackson won a plurality in the Electoral College, taking 99 of the 261 electoral votes, while Adams won 84, Crawford won 41, and Clay took 37. Calhoun, meanwhile, won a majority of the electoral votes for vice president. Adams nearly swept the electoral votes of New England and won a majority of the electoral votes in New York, but he won just six electoral votes from the slave states. Most of Jackson's support came from slave-holding states, but he also won New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and some electoral votes from the Northwest. As no candidate won a majority of the electoral votes, the House was required to hold a contingent election under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment. The House would decide among the top three electoral vote winners, with each state's delegation having one vote; thus, unlike his three rivals, Clay was not eligible to be elected by the House.",
"title": "1824 presidential election"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Adams knew that his own victory in the contingent election would require the support of Clay, who wielded immense influence in the House of Representatives. Though they were quite different in temperament and had clashed in the past, Adams and Clay shared similar views on national issues. By contrast, Clay viewed Jackson as a dangerous demagogue, and he was unwilling to support Crawford due to the latter's health issues. Adams and Clay met before the contingent election, and Clay agreed to support Adams in the election. Adams also met with Federalists such as Daniel Webster, promising that he would not deny governmental positions to members of their party. On February 9, 1825, Adams won the contingent election on the first ballot, taking 13 of the 24 state delegations. Adams won the House delegations of all the states in which he or Clay had won a majority of the electoral votes, as well as the delegations of Illinois, Louisiana, and Maryland. Adams's victory made him the first child of a president to serve as president himself. After the election, many of Jackson's supporters claimed that Adams and Clay had reached a \"Corrupt bargain\" whereby Adams promised Clay the position of Secretary of State in return for Clay's support.",
"title": "1824 presidential election"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Adams was inaugurated on March 4, 1825, becoming the first son of a former United States president to himself become president, a feat only repeated 176 years later by George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush. As Adams took the oath of office, he departed from tradition by placing his hand on a book of constitutional law instead of on a Bible. In his inaugural address, he adopted a post-partisan tone, promising to avoid party-building and politically motivated appointments. He also proposed an elaborate program of \"internal improvements\": roads, ports, and canals. Though some were worried about the constitutionality of such federal projects, Adams argued that the General Welfare Clause provided for broad constitutional authority. He promised that he would ask Congress to authorize many such projects.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Adams presided over a harmonious and productive cabinet that he met with on a weekly basis. Like Monroe, Adams sought a geographically balanced cabinet that would represent the various party factions, and he asked the members of the Monroe cabinet to remain in place for his own administration. Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey stayed on as Secretary of the Navy, William Wirt kept his post of Attorney General, and John McLean of Ohio continued to serve as the Postmaster General, an important position that was not part of the cabinet at that time. Adams's first choices for Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury were Andrew Jackson and William Crawford, but each declined to serve in the administration. Adams instead selected James Barbour of Virginia, a prominent supporter of Crawford, to lead the War Department. Leadership of the Treasury Department went to Richard Rush of Pennsylvania, who would become a prominent advocate of internal improvements and protective tariffs within the administration. Adams chose Henry Clay as Secretary of State, angering those who believed Clay had offered Adams his support in the 1824 election in exchange for the most prestigious position in the cabinet. Clay would later regret accepting the job since it reinforced the \"Corrupt Bargain\" accusation. However, Clay's strength in the West and interest in foreign policy made him a natural choice for the position.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In his 1825 annual message to Congress, Adams presented a comprehensive and ambitious agenda. He called for major investments in internal improvements as well as the creation of a national university, a naval academy, and a national astronomical observatory. Noting the healthy status of the treasury and the possibility for more revenue via land sales, Adams argued for the completion of several projects that were in various stages of construction or planning, including a road from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. He also proposed the establishment of a Department of the Interior as a new cabinet-level department that would preside over these internal improvements. Adams hoped to fund these measures primarily through Western land sales, rather than increased taxes or public debt. The domestic agenda of Adams and Clay, which would come to be known as the American System, was designed to unite disparate regional interests in the promotion of a thriving national economy.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Adams's programs faced opposition from various quarters. Many disagreed with his broad interpretation of the constitution and preferred that power be concentrated in state governments rather than the federal government. Others disliked interference from any level of government and were opposed to central planning. Some in the South feared that Adams was secretly an abolitionist and that he sought to subordinate the states to the federal government. Most of the president's proposals were defeated in Congress. Adams's ideas for a national university, a national observatory, and the establishment of a uniform system of weights and measures never received congressional votes. His proposal for the creation of a naval academy won the approval of the Senate but was defeated in the House; opponents objected to the naval academy's cost and worried that the establishment of such an institution would \"produce degeneracy and corruption of the public morality\". Adams's proposal to establish a national bankruptcy law was also defeated.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Unlike other aspects of his domestic agenda, Adams won congressional approval for several ambitious infrastructure projects. Between 1824 and 1828, the United States Army Corps of Engineers conducted surveys for a bevy of potential roads, canals, railroads, and improvements in river navigation. Adams presided over major repairs and further construction on the National Road, and shortly after he left office the National Road extended from Cumberland, Maryland, to Zanesville, Ohio. The Adams administration also saw the beginning of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; the construction of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and the Louisville and Portland Canal around the Falls of the Ohio; the connection of the Great Lakes to the Ohio River system in Ohio and Indiana; and the enlargement and rebuilding of the Dismal Swamp Canal in North Carolina. Additionally, the first passenger railroad in the United States, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was constructed during Adams's presidency. Though many of these projects were undertaken by private actors, the government often provided money or land to aid the completion of such projects.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In the immediate aftermath of the 1825 contingent election, Jackson was gracious to Adams. Nevertheless, Adams's appointment of Clay rankled Jackson, who received a flood of letters encouraging him to run. In 1825, Jackson accepted the presidential nomination of the Tennessee legislature for the 1828 election. Though he had been close to Adams during Monroe's presidency, Vice President Calhoun was also politically alienated from the president by the appointment of Clay, since that appointment established Clay as the natural heir to Adams. Adams's ambitious December 1825 annual message to Congress further galvanized the opposition, with important figures such as Francis Preston Blair of Kentucky and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri breaking with the Adams administration. By the end of the first session of the 19th United States Congress, an anti-Adams congressional coalition consisting of Jacksonians (led by Benton and Hugh Lawson White), Crawfordites (led by Martin Van Buren and Nathaniel Macon), and Calhounites (led by Robert Y. Hayne and George McDuffie) had emerged. Aside from Clay, Adams lacked strong supporters outside of the North, and Edward Everett, John Taylor, and Daniel Webster served as his strongest advocates in Congress. Supporters of Adams began calling themselves National Republicans, while supporters of Jackson began calling themselves Democrats. In the press, they were often described as \"Adams Men\" and \"Jackson Men\".",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In the 1826 elections, Adams's opponents picked up seats throughout the country, as allies of Adams failed to coordinate among themselves. Andrew Stevenson, a Jackson supporter, replaced John Taylor, an Adams supporter, as Speaker of the House. As Adams himself noted, the United States had never seen a Congress that was firmly under the control of political opponents of the president. After the elections, Van Buren and Calhoun agreed to throw their support behind Jackson in 1828, with Van Buren bringing along many of Crawford's supporters. Though Jackson did not articulate a detailed political platform in the same way that Adams did, his coalition united in opposition to Adams's reliance on government planning. Adams, meanwhile, clung to the hope of a non-partisan nation, and he refused to make full use of the power of patronage to build up his own party structure.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "During the first half of his administration, Adams avoided taking a strong stand on tariffs, partly because he wanted to avoid alienating his allies in the South and New England. After Jacksonians took power in 1827, they devised a tariff bill designed to appeal to Western states while instituting high rates on imported materials important to the economy of New England. It is unclear whether Van Buren, who shepherded the bill through Congress, meant for the bill to pass, or if he had deliberately designed it to force Adams and his allies to oppose it. Regardless, Adams signed the Tariff of 1828, which became known as the \"Tariff of Abominations\" by opponents. Adams was denounced in the South, and he received little credit for the tariff in the North.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Adams sought the gradual assimilation of Native Americans via consensual agreements, a priority shared by few whites in the 1820s. Yet Adams was also deeply committed to the westward expansion of the United States. Settlers on the frontier, constantly seeking to move westward, cried for a more expansionist policy that disregarded the concerns of Native Americans. Early in his term, Adams suspended the Treaty of Indian Springs after learning that the Governor of Georgia, George Troup, had forced the treaty on the Muscogee. Adams signed a new treaty with the Muscogee in January 1826 that allowed the Muscogee to stay but ceded most of their land to Georgia. Troup refused to accept its terms and authorized all Georgian citizens to evict the Muscogee. A showdown between Georgia and the federal government was only averted after the Muscogee agreed to a third treaty. Though many saw Troup as unreasonable in his dealings with the federal government and the Native Americans, the administration's handling of the incident alienated those in the Deep South who favored immediate Indian removal.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Adams famously said \"America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy\".",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "One of the major foreign policy goals of the Adams administration was the expansion of American trade. His administration reached reciprocity treaties with a number of nations, including Denmark, Prussia, and the Federal Republic of Central America. The administration also reached commercial agreements with the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Kingdom of Tahiti. Agreements with Denmark and Sweden opened their colonies to American trade, but Adams was especially focused on opening trade with the British West Indies. The United States had reached a commercial agreement with Britain in 1815, but that agreement excluded British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. In response to United States pressure, the British had begun to allow a limited amount of American imports to the West Indies in 1823, but United States leaders continued to seek an end to Britain's protective Imperial Preference system. In 1825, Britain banned United States trade with the British West Indies, dealing a blow to Adams's prestige. The Adams administration negotiated extensively with the British to lift this ban, but the two sides could not reach an agreement. Despite the loss of trade with the British West Indies, the other commercial agreements secured by Adams helped expand the overall volume of United States exports.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Aside from an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Texas from Mexico, President Adams did not seek to expand into Latin America or North America. Adams and Clay instead sought engagement with Latin America to prevent it from falling under the British Empire's economic influence. As part of this goal, the administration favored sending a United States delegation to the Congress of Panama, an 1826 conference of New World republics organized by Simón Bolívar. Clay and Adams hoped that the conference would inaugurate a \"Good Neighborhood Policy\" among the independent states of the Americas. However, the funding for a delegation and the confirmation of delegation nominees became entangled in a political battle over Adams's domestic policies, with opponents such as Van Buren impeding the confirmation of a delegation. While Van Buren saw the Panama Congress as an unwelcome deviation from the more isolationist foreign policy established by President Washington, many Southerners opposed involvement with any conference attended by delegates from Haiti, a republic that had been established through a slave revolt. Though the United States delegation finally won confirmation from the Senate, it never reached the Congress of Panama due to the Senate's delay.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Jacksonians formed an effective party apparatus that adopted many modern campaign techniques. Rather than focusing on issues, they emphasized Jackson's popularity and the supposed corruption of Adams and the federal government. Jackson himself described the campaign as a \"struggle between the virtue of the people and executive patronage\". Adams, meanwhile, refused to adapt to the new reality of political campaigns, and he avoided public functions and refused to invest in pro-administration tools such as newspapers. In early 1827, Jackson was publicly accused of having encouraged his wife, Rachel, to desert her first husband. In response, followers of Jackson attacked Adams's personal life, and the campaign turned increasingly nasty. The Jacksonian press portrayed Adams as an out-of-touch elitist, while pro-Adams newspapers attacked Jackson's past involvement in various duels and scuffles, portraying him as too emotional and impetuous for the presidency. Though Adams and Clay had hoped that the campaign would focus on the American System, it was instead dominated by the personalities of Jackson and Adams.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Vice President Calhoun joined Jackson's ticket, while Adams turned to Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush as his running mate. The 1828 election thus marked the first time in United States history that a presidential ticket composed of two Northerners faced off against a presidential ticket composed of two Southerners. In the election, Jackson won 178 of the 261 electoral votes and just under 56% of the popular vote. Jackson won 50.3% of the popular vote in the free states, but 72.6% of the vote in the slave states. No future presidential candidate would match Jackson's proportion of the popular vote until Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 campaign, while Adams's loss made him the second one-term president, after his own father. By 1828, only two states did not hold a popular vote for president, and the number of votes in the 1828 election was triple that in the 1824 election. This increase in votes was due not only to the recent wave of democratization, but also because of increased interest in elections and the growing ability of the parties to mobilize voters. Adams did not attend Jackson's inauguration, making him one of only four presidents who finished their terms but skipped the event.",
"title": "Presidency (1825–1829)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Adams considered permanently retiring from public life after his 1828 defeat, and he was deeply hurt by the suicide of his son, George Washington Adams, in 1829. He was appalled by many of the Jackson administration's actions, including its embrace of the spoils system and the prosecution of his close friend, Treasury Auditor Tobias Watkins, for embezzlement. Though they had once maintained a cordial relationship, Adams and Jackson each came to loathe the other in the decades after the 1828 election. Adams grew bored with his retirement and still felt that his career was unfinished, so he ran for and won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in the 1830 elections. His election went against the generally held opinion, shared by his own wife and youngest son, that former presidents should not run for public office. Nonetheless, he would win election to nine terms, serving from 1831 until his death in 1848. Adams and Andrew Johnson are the only former presidents to serve in Congress. After winning election, Adams became affiliated with the Anti-Masonic Party, partly because the National Republican Party's leadership in Massachusetts included many of the former Federalists that Adams had clashed with earlier in his career. The Anti-Masonic Party originated as a movement against Freemasonry, but it developed into the country's first third party and embraced a general program of anti-elitism.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Adams expected a light workload when he returned to Washington at 64 years old, but Speaker Andrew Stevenson selected Adams chair of the Committee on Commerce and Manufactures. Though he identified as a member of the Anti-Masonic Party, Congress was broadly polarized into allies of Jackson and opponents of Jackson, and Adams generally aligned with the latter camp. Stevenson, an ally of Jackson, expected that the committee chairmanship would keep Adams busy defending the tariff even while the Jacksonian majority on the committee would prevent Adams from accruing any real power. As chair of the committee charged with writing tariff laws, Adams became an important player in the nullification crisis, which stemmed largely from Southern objections to the high rates imposed by the Tariff of 1828. South Carolina leaders argued that states could nullify federal laws, and they announced that they would bar the federal government from enforcing the tariff in their state. Adams helped pass the Tariff of 1832, which lowered rates, but not enough to mollify the South Carolina nullifiers. The crisis ended when Clay and Calhoun agreed to another tariff bill, the Tariff of 1833, that furthered lower tariff rates. Adams was appalled by the Nullification Crisis's outcome, as he felt that the Southern states had unfairly benefited from challenging federal law. After the crisis, Adams was convinced that Southerners exercised undue influence over the federal government through their control of Jackson's Democratic Party.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In the 1833 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, the Anti-Masonic Party nominated Adams in a four-way race between Adams, the National Republican candidate, the Democratic candidate, and a candidate of the Working Men's Party. The National Republican candidate, John Davis, won 40% of the vote, while Adams finished in second place with 29%. Because no candidate won a majority of the vote, the state legislature decided the election. Rather than seek election by the legislature, Adams withdrew his name from contention, and the legislature selected Davis. Adams was nearly elected to the Senate in 1835 by a coalition of Anti-Masons and National Republicans, but his support for Jackson in a minor foreign policy matter annoyed National Republican leaders enough that they dropped their support for his candidacy. After 1835, Adams never again sought higher office, focusing instead on his service in the House of Representatives.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In the mid-1830s, the Anti-Masonic Party, the National Republicans, and other groups opposed to Jackson coalesced into the Whig Party. In the 1836 presidential election Democrats put forward Martin Van Buren, while the Whigs fielded multiple presidential candidates. Because he disdained all the major party contenders for president, Adams did not take part in the campaign; Van Buren won the election. Nonetheless, Adams became aligned with the Whig Party in Congress. Adams generally opposed the initiatives of President Van Buren, long a political adversary, though they maintained a cordial public relationship.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Republic of Texas won its independence from Mexico in the Texas Revolution of 1835–1836. Texas had largely been settled by Americans from the Southern United States, and many of those settlers owned slaves despite an 1829 Mexican law that abolished slavery. Many in the United States and Texas thus favored the admission of Texas into the union as a slave state. Adams considered the issue of Texas to be \"a question of far deeper root and more overshadowing branches than any or all others that agitate the country\", and he emerged as one of the leading congressional opponents of annexation. When he served as secretary of state, Adams had sought to acquire Texas, but he argued that, because Mexico had abolished slavery, the acquisition of Texas would transform the region from a free territory into a slave state. He also feared that the annexation of Texas would encourage Southern expansionists to pursue other potential slave states, including Cuba. Adams's firm stance may have played a role in discouraging Van Buren from pushing for the annexation of Texas during his presidency.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Whig nominee William Henry Harrison defeated Van Buren in the 1840 presidential election, and the Whigs gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time. Despite his low regard for Harrison as a person, Adams was enthusiastic about the new Whig administration and the end of the long-standing Democratic dominance of the federal government. However, Harrison died in April 1841 and was succeeded by Vice President John Tyler, a Southerner who, unlike Adams, Henry Clay, and many other prominent Whigs, did not embrace the American System. Adams saw Tyler as an agent of \"the slave-driving, Virginia, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement\". After Tyler vetoed a bill to restore the national bank, Whig congressmen expelled Tyler from the party. Adams was appointed chairman of a special committee that explored impeaching Tyler, and Adams presented a scathing report of Tyler that argued that his actions warranted impeachment. The impeachment process did not move forward, though, because the Whigs did not believe that the Senate would vote to remove Tyler from office.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Tyler made the annexation of Texas the main foreign policy priority of the later stages of his administration. He attempted to win ratification of an annexation treaty in 1844, but, to Adams's surprise and relief, the Senate rejected the treaty. The annexation of Texas became the central issue of the 1844 presidential election, and Southerners blocked the nomination of Van Buren at the 1844 Democratic National Convention due to the latter's opposition to annexation; the party instead nominated James K. Polk, an acolyte of Andrew Jackson. Though he once again did not take part in the campaigning, Adams was deeply disappointed that Polk defeated his old ally, Henry Clay, in the 1844 election. He attributed the outcome of the election partly to the Liberty Party, a small, abolitionist third party that may have siphoned votes from Clay in the crucial state of New York. After the election, Tyler, whose term would end in March 1845, once again submitted an annexation treaty to Congress. Adams strongly attacked the treaty, arguing that the annexation of Texas would involve the United States in \"a war for slavery\". Despite Adams's opposition, both houses of Congress approved the treaty, with most Democrats voting for annexation and most Whigs voting against it. Texas thus joined the United States as a slave state in 1845.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Adams had served with James K. Polk in the House of Representatives, and Adams loathed the new president, seeing him as another expansionist, pro-slavery Southern Democrat. Adams favored the annexation of the entirety of Oregon Country, a disputed region occupied by both the United States and Britain, and was disappointed when President Polk signed the Oregon Treaty, which divided the land between the two claimants at the 49th parallel. Polk's expansionist aims centered instead on the Mexican province of Alta California, and he attempted to buy the province from Mexico. The Mexican government refused to sell California or recognize the independence and subsequent American annexation of Texas. Polk deployed a military detachment led by General Zachary Taylor to back up his assertion that the Rio Grande constituted the Southern border of both Texas and the United States. After Taylor's forces clashed with Mexican soldiers north of the Rio Grande, Polk asked for a declaration of war in early 1846, asserting that Mexico had invaded American territory. Though some Whigs questioned whether Mexico had started an aggressive war, both houses of Congress declared war, with the House voting 174-to-14 to approve the declaration. One of the 14 dissenting votes was Adams, who believed that Polk was seeking to wage an offensive to expand slavery. After the start of the war, he supported the Wilmot Proviso, an unsuccessful legislative proposal that would have banned slavery in any territory ceded by Mexico. After 1846, ill health increasingly affected Adams, but he continued to oppose the Mexican–American War until his death in 1848.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In the 1830s, slavery emerged as an increasingly polarizing issue in the United States. A longtime opponent of slavery, Adams used his new role in Congress to fight it, and he became the most prominent national leader opposing slavery. After one of his reelection victories, he said that he must \"bring about a day prophesied when slavery and war shall be banished from the face of the Earth\". He wrote in his private journal in 1820:",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The discussion of this Missouri question has betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they admit that slavery is an evil, they disclaim it, and cast it all upon the shoulder of Great Britain. But when probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom. They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee's manners, because he has no habits of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 1836, partially in response to Adams's consistent presentation of citizen petitions requesting the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the U.S. House of Representatives imposed a gag rule that immediately tabled any petitions about slavery. Democrats and Southern Whigs favored the rule, but Northern Whigs, like Adams, opposed it. In late 1836, Adams began a campaign to ridicule slave owners and the gag rule. He frequently attempted to present anti-slavery petitions, often in ways that provoked strong reactions from Southern representatives. Though the gag rule remained in place, the discussion ignited by his actions and the attempts of others to quiet him raised questions of the right to petition, the right to legislative debate, and the morality of slavery. Adams fought actively against the gag rule for another seven years, eventually moving the resolution that led to its repeal in 1844.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1841, at the request of Lewis Tappan and Ellis Gray Loring, Adams joined the case of United States v. The Amistad. Adams went before the Supreme Court on behalf of African slaves who had revolted and seized the Spanish ship Amistad. Adams appeared on February 24, 1841, and spoke for four hours. His argument succeeded: the Court ruled that the Africans were free and they returned to their homes.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Adams also became a leading force for the promotion of science. In 1829, British scientist James Smithson died, and he left his fortune for the \"increase and diffusion of knowledge\". In Smithson's will, he stated that should his nephew, Henry James Hungerford, die without heirs, the Smithson estate would go to the government of the United States to create an \"Establishment for the increase and diffusion of Knowledge among men\". After the nephew died without heirs in 1835, President Andrew Jackson informed Congress of the bequest, which amounted to about US$500,000 (US$75 million in 2008 dollars after inflation). Adams realized that this might allow the United States to realize his dream of building a national institution of science and learning. Adams thus became Congress's primary supporter of the future Smithsonian Institution.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The money was invested in shaky state bonds, which quickly defaulted. After heated debate in Congress, Adams successfully argued to restore the lost funds with interest. Though Congress wanted to use the money for other purposes, Adams successfully persuaded Congress to preserve the money for an institution of science and learning. Congress also debated whether the federal government had the authority to accept the gift, though with Adams leading the initiative, Congress accepted the legacy bequeathed to the nation and pledged the faith of the United States to the charitable trust on July 1, 1836. Partly due to Adams's efforts, Congress voted to establish the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. A nonpolitical board of regents was established to lead the institution, which included a museum, art gallery, library, and laboratory.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1846, the 78-year-old former president suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. After a few months of rest, he made a full recovery and resumed his duties in Congress. When Adams entered the House chamber on February 13, 1847, everyone \"stood up and applauded\".",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On February 21, 1848, the House of Representatives was discussing the matter of honoring United States Army officers who served in the Mexican–American War. Adams had been a vehement critic of the war, and as Congressmen rose up to say, \"Aye!\" in favor of the measure, he instead yelled, \"No!\" He rose to answer a question put forth by Speaker of the House Robert Charles Winthrop. Immediately thereafter, Adams collapsed, having suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Two days later, on February 23, he died at 7:20 p.m. with his wife at his side in the Speaker's Room inside the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.; his only living child, Charles Francis, did not arrive in time to see his father alive. His last words were \"This is the last of Earth. I am content\". Among those present for his death was future president Abraham Lincoln, then a freshman representative from Illinois.",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "His original interment was temporary, in the public vault at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Later, he was interred in the family burial ground in Quincy, Massachusetts, across from the (Unitarian) United First Parish Church, called Hancock Cemetery. After Louisa's death in 1852, his son had his parents re-interred in the expanded family crypt in the United First Parish Church across the street, next to John and Abigail. Both tombs are viewable by the public. Adams's original tomb at Hancock Cemetery is still there and marked simply \"J.Q. Adams\".",
"title": "Later congressional career (1830–1848)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Adams and Louisa had three sons and a daughter. Their daughter, Louisa, was born in 1811 but died in 1812. They named their first son George Washington Adams (1801–1829) after the first president. This decision upset Adams's mother, and, by her account, his father as well. Both George and their second son, John (1803–1834), led troubled lives and died in early adulthood. George, who had long suffered from alcoholism, died in 1829 after going overboard on a steamboat; it is not clear whether he fell or purposely jumped from the boat. John, who ran an unprofitable flour and grist mill owned by his father, died of an unknown illness in 1834. Adams's youngest son, Charles Francis Adams Sr., was an important leader of the \"Conscience Whigs\", a Northern, anti-slavery faction of the Whig Party. Charles served as the Free Soil Party's vice presidential candidate in the 1848 presidential election and later became a prominent member of the Republican Party, serving as United States Minister to England during the American Civil War.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Adams's personality and political beliefs were much like his father's. He always preferred solitary reading to social engagements, and he was repeatedly persuaded to stay in public service by others. Historian Paul Nagel states that, like Abraham Lincoln after him, Adams often suffered from depression, for which he sought treatment in early years. Adams thought his depression was due to the high expectations demanded of him by his father and mother. Throughout his life, he felt inadequate and socially awkward because of his depression, and was constantly bothered by his physical appearance. He was closer to his father, with whom he spent much of his early life while abroad, than he was to his mother. In his youth, while the American Revolution raged on, Adams heard from his mother about his father's work and the substantial risks he took to support it. As a result, he developed a deep respect for his father. In contrast, Adams had a rocky relationship with his mother, due to her high expectations of him, and her fear that her children would follow in the footsteps of her brother, who died of alcoholism. His biographer, Nagel, concludes that his mother's disapproval of Louisa Johnson motivated him to marry Johnson in 1797, despite Adams's reservations that Johnson, like his mother, had a forceful personality.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Though Adams wore a powdered wig tied in a queue in his youth, he abandoned this fashion while serving as the U.S. Minister to Russia (1809–1814) and became the first president to adopt a short haircut instead of long hair tied in a queue and to regularly wear long trousers instead of knee breeches according to the fashion of the 19th century. It has been suggested that John Quincy Adams had the highest I.Q. of any U.S. president. Dean Simonton, a professor of psychology at UC Davis, estimated his I.Q. score at 165. He reportedly spoke eight foreign languages (Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish), more than any other U.S. president. He remains the only U.S. president who could converse in Russian.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Adams is widely regarded as one of the most effective diplomats and secretaries of state in American history, but scholars generally rank him as an average president. Adams is remembered as a man eminently qualified for the presidency, yet hopelessly weakened in his presidential leadership potential because of the 1824 election. Most importantly, Adams is remembered as a poor politician in an era when politics had begun to matter more. He spoke of trying to serve as a man above the \"baneful weed of party strife\" at the precise moment in history when the Second Party System was emerging with nearly revolutionary force. Biographer and historian William J. Cooper Jr. comments that Adams \"does not loom large in the American imagination\", but that he has received more public attention since the late 20th century due to his anti-slavery stances. Cooper writes that Adams was the first \"major public figure\" to publicly question whether the United States could remain united so long as the institution of slavery persisted. Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes that Adams's \"intellectual ability and courage were above reproach, and his wisdom in perceiving the national interest has stood the test of time\". He has also been praised as a strong prose stylist, with James Parker describing him as one of the \"three authentically muddy-eyed and pained-by-subjectivity writers\" that the White House has harbored, along with Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "John Quincy Adams Birthplace is now part of Adams National Historical Park and open to the public. Adams House, one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University, is named for John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and other members of the Adams family associated with Harvard. John Quincy Adams tower, located in the Southwest residential area of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is named for the president. In 1870, Charles Francis built the first presidential library in the United States, to honor his father. The Stone Library includes over 14,000 books written in twelve languages. The library is located at Peacefield (the \"Old House\") at Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "An Adams Memorial has been proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Adams and his wife, son, father, mother, and other members of their family.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Adams's middle name of Quincy has been used by several locations in the United States, including the town of Quincy, Illinois. Adams County, Illinois and Adams County, Indiana are also named after Adams. Adams County, Iowa, and Adams County, Wisconsin, were each named for either John Adams or John Quincy Adams.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Some sources contend that in 1843 Adams sat for the earliest confirmed photograph of a United States president, although others maintain that William Henry Harrison had posed even earlier for his portrait, in 1841. The original daguerreotype is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Adams occasionally is featured in the mass media. In the PBS miniseries The Adams Chronicles (1976), he was portrayed by David Birney, William Daniels, Marcel Trenchard, Steven Grover and Mark Winkworth. He was also portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the 1997 film Amistad, and again by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Steven Hinkle in the 2008 HBO television miniseries John Adams.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| John Quincy Adams was an American statesman, politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams served as an ambassador and also as a member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in both chambers. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and later, in the mid-1830s, became affiliated with the Whig Party. Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, Adams spent much of his youth in Europe, where his father served as a diplomat. After returning to the United States, Adams established a successful legal practice in Boston. In 1794, President George Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, and Adams would serve in high-ranking diplomatic posts until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson took office as president. Federalist leaders in Massachusetts arranged for Adams's election to the United States Senate in 1802, but Adams broke with the Federalist Party over foreign policy and was denied re-election. In 1809, President James Madison, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. Multilingual, Adams held diplomatic posts for the duration of Madison's presidency, and he served as part of the American delegation that negotiated an end to the War of 1812. In 1817, President James Monroe selected Adams as his secretary of state. In that role, Adams negotiated the Adams–Onís Treaty, which provided for the American acquisition of Florida. He also helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine, which became a key tenet of U.S. foreign policy. In 1818, Adams was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay—all members of the Democratic-Republican Party—competed in the 1824 presidential election. Because no candidate won a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives held a contingent election, which Adams won with the support of Speaker of the House Henry Clay, whom Adams would controversially appoint as his secretary of state. As president, Adams called for an ambitious agenda that included federally funded infrastructure projects, the establishment of a national university, and engagement with the countries of Latin America, but Congress refused to pass many of his initiatives. During Adams's presidency, the Democratic-Republican Party split into two major camps: the National Republican Party, which supported Adams, and Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party. The Democrats proved to be more effective political organizers than Adams and his National Republican supporters, and Jackson soundly defeated Adams in the 1828 presidential election, making Adams the second president to fail to win re-election. Rather than retiring from public service, Adams won election to the House of Representatives, where he would serve from 1831 until his death in 1848. He remains the only former president to be elected to the chamber. After narrowly losing his bids for Governor of Massachusetts and Senate re-election, Adams joined the Anti-Masonic Party in the early 1830s before joining the Whig Party, which united those opposed to President Jackson. During his time in Congress, Adams became increasingly critical of slavery and of the Southern leaders whom he believed controlled the Democratic Party. He was particularly opposed to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, which he saw as a war to extend slavery and its political grip on Congress. He also led the repeal of the "gag rule", which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery. Historians concur that Adams was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history; they typically rank him as an average president, as he had an ambitious agenda but could not get it passed by Congress. By contrast, historians also view Adams in a more positive light during his post-presidency because of his vehement stance against slavery, as well as his fight for the rights of women and Native Americans. | 2001-09-28T03:36:32Z | 2023-12-21T04:39:03Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams |
15,655 | Jurassic | The Jurassic (/dʒʊˈræsɪk/ juu-RASS-ik) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period 201.4 million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era and is named after the Jura Mountains, where limestone strata from the period were first identified.
The start of the Jurassic was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, associated with the eruption of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP). The beginning of the Toarcian Stage started around 183 million years ago and is marked by the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, a global episode of oceanic anoxia, ocean acidification, and elevated global temperatures associated with extinctions, likely caused by the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces. The end of the Jurassic, however, has no clear, definitive boundary with the Cretaceous and is the only boundary between geological periods to remain formally undefined.
By the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The climate of the Jurassic was warmer than the present, and there were no ice caps. Forests grew close to the poles, with large arid expanses in the lower latitudes.
On land, the fauna transitioned from the Triassic fauna, dominated jointly by dinosauromorph and pseudosuchian archosaurs, to one dominated by dinosaurs alone. The first birds appeared during the Jurassic, evolving from a branch of theropod dinosaurs. Other major events include the appearance of the earliest lizards and the evolution of therian mammals. Crocodylomorphs made the transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic life. The oceans were inhabited by marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, while pterosaurs were the dominant flying vertebrates. The first sharks, rays and crabs also first appeared during the period.
The chronostratigraphic term "Jurassic" is linked to the Jura Mountains, a forested mountain range that mainly follows the France–Switzerland border. The name "Jura" is derived from the Celtic root *jor via Gaulish *iuris "wooded mountain", which was borrowed into Latin as a name of a place and evolved into Juria and finally Jura.
During a tour of the region in 1795, German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt recognized carbonate deposits within the Jura Mountains as geologically distinct from the Triassic aged Muschelkalk of southern Germany, but he erroneously concluded that they were older. He then named them Jura-Kalkstein ('Jura limestone') in 1799.
In 1829, the French naturalist Alexandre Brongniart published a book entitled Description of the Terrains that Constitute the Crust of the Earth or Essay on the Structure of the Known Lands of the Earth. In this book, Brongniart used the phrase terrains jurassiques when correlating the "Jura-Kalkstein" of Humboldt with similarly aged oolitic limestones in Britain, thus coining and publishing the term "Jurassic".
The German geologist Leopold von Buch in 1839 established the three-fold division of the Jurassic, originally named from oldest to the youngest: the Black Jurassic, Brown Jurassic, and White Jurassic. The term "Lias" had previously been used for strata of equivalent age to the Black Jurassic in England by William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822.
The French palaeontologist Alcide d'Orbigny in papers between 1842 and 1852 divided the Jurassic into ten stages based on ammonite and other fossil assemblages in England and France, of which seven are still used, but none has retained its original definition. The German geologist and palaeontologist Friedrich August von Quenstedt in 1858 divided the three series of von Buch in the Swabian Jura into six subdivisions defined by ammonites and other fossils.
The German palaeontologist Albert Oppel in his studies between 1856 and 1858 altered d'Orbigny's original scheme and further subdivided the stages into biostratigraphic zones, based primarily on ammonites. Most of the modern stages of the Jurassic were formalized at the Colloque du Jurassique à Luxembourg in 1962.
The Jurassic Period is divided into three epochs: Early, Middle, and Late. Similarly, in stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, and Upper Jurassic series. Geologists divide the rocks of the Jurassic into a stratigraphic set of units called stages, each formed during corresponding time intervals called ages.
Stages can be defined globally or regionally. For global stratigraphic correlation, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) ratify global stages based on a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) from a single formation (a stratotype) identifying the lower boundary of the stage. The ages of the Jurassic from youngest to oldest are as follows:
Jurassic stratigraphy is primarily based on the use of ammonites as index fossils. The first appearance datum of specific ammonite taxa is used to mark the beginnings of stages, as well as smaller timespans within stages, referred to as "ammonite zones"; these, in turn, are also sometimes subdivided further into subzones. Global stratigraphy is based on standard European ammonite zones, with other regions being calibrated to the European successions.
The oldest part of the Jurassic Period has historically been referred to as the Lias or Liassic, roughly equivalent in extent to the Early Jurassic, but also including part of the preceding Rhaetian. The Hettangian Stage was named by Swiss palaeontologist Eugène Renevier in 1864 after Hettange-Grande in north-eastern France. The GSSP for the base of the Hettangian is located at the Kuhjoch Pass, Karwendel Mountains, Northern Calcareous Alps, Austria; it was ratified in 2010. The beginning of the Hettangian, and thus the Jurassic as a whole, is marked by the first appearance of the ammonite Psiloceras spelae tirolicum in the Kendlbach Formation exposed at Kuhjoch. The base of the Jurassic was previously defined as the first appearance of Psiloceras planorbis by Albert Oppel in 1856–58, but this was changed as the appearance was seen as too localised an event for an international boundary.
The Sinemurian Stage was first defined and introduced into scientific literature by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842. It takes its name from the French town of Semur-en-Auxois, near Dijon. The original definition of Sinemurian included what is now the Hettangian. The GSSP of the Sinemurian is located at a cliff face north of the hamlet of East Quantoxhead, 6 kilometres east of Watchet, Somerset, England, within the Blue Lias, and was ratified in 2000. The beginning of the Sinemurian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Vermiceras quantoxense.
Albert Oppel in 1858 named the Pliensbachian Stage after the hamlet of Pliensbach in the community of Zell unter Aichelberg in the Swabian Alb, near Stuttgart, Germany. The GSSP for the base of the Pliensbachian is found at the Wine Haven locality in Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire, England, in the Redcar Mudstone Formation, and was ratified in 2005. The beginning of the Pliensbachian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Bifericeras donovani.
The village Thouars (Latin: Toarcium), just south of Saumur in the Loire Valley of France, lends its name to the Toarcian Stage. The Toarcian was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842, with the original locality being Vrines quarry around 2 km northwest of Thouars. The GSSP for the base of the Toarcian is located at Peniche, Portugal, and was ratified in 2014. The boundary is defined by the first appearance of ammonites belonging to the subgenus Dactylioceras (Eodactylites).
The Aalenian is named after the city of Aalen in Germany. The Aalenian was defined by Swiss geologist Karl Mayer-Eymar in 1864. The lower boundary was originally between the dark clays of the Black Jurassic and the overlying clayey sandstone and ferruginous oolite of the Brown Jurassic sequences of southwestern Germany. The GSSP for the base of the Aalenian is located at Fuentelsaz in the Iberian range near Guadalajara, Spain, and was ratified in 2000. The base of the Aalenian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Leioceras opalinum.
Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842 named the Bajocian Stage after the town of Bayeux (Latin: Bajoce) in Normandy, France. The GSSP for the base of the Bajocian is located in the Murtinheira section at Cabo Mondego, Portugal; it was ratified in 1997. The base of the Bajocian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Hyperlioceras mundum.
The Bathonian is named after the city of Bath, England, introduced by Belgian geologist d'Omalius d'Halloy in 1843, after an incomplete section of oolitic limestones in several quarries in the region. The GSSP for the base of the Bathonian is Ravin du Bès, Bas-Auran area, Alpes de Haute Provence, France; it was ratified in 2009. The base of the Bathonian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Gonolkites convergens, at the base of the Zigzagiceras zigzag ammonite zone.
The Callovian is derived from the Latinized name of the village of Kellaways in Wiltshire, England, and was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1852, originally the base at the contact between the Forest Marble Formation and the Cornbrash Formation. However, this boundary was later found to be within the upper part of the Bathonian. The base of the Callovian does not yet have a certified GSSP. The working definition for the base of the Callovian is the first appearance of ammonites belonging to the genus Kepplerites.
The Oxfordian is named after the city of Oxford in England and was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1844 in reference to the Oxford Clay. The base of the Oxfordian lacks a defined GSSP. W. J. Arkell in studies in 1939 and 1946 placed the lower boundary of the Oxfordian as the first appearance of the ammonite Quenstedtoceras mariae (then placed in the genus Vertumniceras). Subsequent proposals have suggested the first appearance of Cardioceras redcliffense as the lower boundary.
The village of Kimmeridge on the coast of Dorset, England, is the origin of the name of the Kimmeridgian. The stage was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842 in reference to the Kimmeridge Clay. The GSSP for the base of the Kimmeridgian is the Flodigarry section at Staffin Bay on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, which was ratified in 2021. The boundary is defined by the first appearance of ammonites marking the boreal Bauhini Zone and the subboreal Baylei Zone.
The Tithonian was introduced in scientific literature by Albert Oppel in 1865. The name Tithonian is unusual in geological stage names because it is derived from Greek mythology rather than a place name. Tithonus was the son of Laomedon of Troy and fell in love with Eos, the Greek goddess of dawn. His name was chosen by Albert Oppel for this stratigraphical stage because the Tithonian finds itself hand in hand with the dawn of the Cretaceous. The base of the Tithonian currently lacks a GSSP. The working definition for the base of the Tithonian is the first appearance of the ammonite genus Gravesia.
The upper boundary of the Jurassic is currently undefined, and the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary is currently the only system boundary to lack a defined GSSP. Placing a GSSP for this boundary has been difficult because of the strong regionality of most biostratigraphic markers, and lack of any chemostratigraphic events, such as isotope excursions (large sudden changes in ratios of isotopes), that could be used to define or correlate a boundary. Calpionellids, an enigmatic group of planktonic protists with urn-shaped calcitic tests briefly abundant during the latest Jurassic to earliest Cretaceous, have been suggested to represent the most promising candidates for fixing the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary In particular, the first appearance Calpionella alpina, co-inciding with the base of the eponymous Alpina subzone, has been proposed as the definition of the base of the Cretaceous. The working definition for the boundary has often been placed as the first appearance of the ammonite Strambergella jacobi, formerly placed in the genus Berriasella, but its use as a stratigraphic indicator has been questioned, as its first appearance does not correlate with that of C. alpina.
The Kimmeridge Clay and equivalents are the major source rock for the North Sea oil. The Arabian Intrashelf Basin, deposited during the Middle and Late Jurassic, is the setting of the world's largest oil reserves, including the Ghawar Field, the world's largest oil field. The Jurassic-aged Sargelu and Naokelekan formations are major source rocks for oil in Iraq. Over 1500 gigatons of Jurassic coal reserves are found in north-west China, primarily in the Turpan-Hami Basin and the Ordos Basin.
Major impact structures include the Morokweng impact structure, a 70 km diameter impact structure buried beneath the Kalahari desert in northern South Africa. The impact is dated to the Tithonian, approximately 146.06 ± 0.16 Mya. Another major structure is the Puchezh-Katunki crater, 40 kilometres in diameter, buried beneath Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in western Russia. The impact has been dated to the Sinemurian, 195.9 ± 1.0 Ma.
At the beginning of the Jurassic, all of the world's major landmasses were coalesced into the supercontinent Pangaea, which during the Early Jurassic began to break up into northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana. The rifting between North America and Africa was the first to initiate, beginning in the early Jurassic, associated with the emplacement of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province.
During the Jurassic, the North Atlantic Ocean remained relatively narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the Cretaceous. The continents were surrounded by Panthalassa, with the Tethys Ocean between Gondwana and Asia. At the end of the Triassic, there was a marine transgression in Europe, flooding most parts of central and western Europe transforming it into an archipelago of islands surrounded by shallow seas. During the Jurassic, both the North and South Pole were covered by oceans. Beginning in the Early Jurassic, the Boreal Ocean was connected to the proto-Atlantic by the "Viking corridor" or Transcontinental Laurasian Seaway, a passage between the Baltic Shield and Greenland several hundred kilometers wide. During the Callovian, the Turgai Epicontinental Sea formed, creating a marine barrier between Europe and Asia.
Madagascar and Antarctica began to rift away from Africa during the late Early Jurassic in association with the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces, opening the western Indian Ocean and beginning the fragmentation of Gondwana. At the beginning of the Jurassic, North and South America remained connected, but by the beginning of the Late Jurassic they had rifted apart to form the Caribbean Seaway, also known as the Hispanic Corridor, which connected the North Atlantic Ocean with eastern Panthalassa. Palaeontological data suggest that the seaway had been open since the Early Jurassic.
As part of the Nevadan orogeny, which began during the Triassic, the Cache Creek Ocean closed, and various terranes including the large Wrangellia Terrane accreted onto the western margin of North America. By the Middle Jurassic the Siberian plate and the North China-Amuria block had collided, resulting in the closure of the Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean.
During the Early Jurassic, around 190 million years ago, the Pacific Plate originated at the triple junction of the Farallon, Phoenix, and Izanagi tectonic plates, the three main oceanic plates of Panthalassa. The previously stable triple junction had converted to an unstable arrangement surrounded on all sides by transform faults because of a kink in one of the plate boundaries, resulting in the formation of the Pacific Plate at the centre of the junction. During the Middle to early Late Jurassic, the Sundance Seaway, a shallow epicontinental sea, covered much of northwest North America.
The eustatic sea level is estimated to have been close to present levels during the Hettangian and Sinemurian, rising several tens of metres during the late Sinemurian–Pliensbachian before regressing to near present levels by the late Pliensbachian. There seems to have been a gradual rise to a peak of ~75 m above present sea level during the Toarcian. During the latest part of the Toarcian, the sea level again dropped by several tens of metres. It progressively rose from the Aalenian onwards, aside from dips of a few tens of metres in the Bajocian and around the Callovian–Oxfordian boundary, peaking possibly as high as 140 metres above present sea level at the Kimmeridgian–Tithonian boundary. The sea levels falls in the late Tithonian, perhaps to around 100 metres, before rebounding to around 110 metres at the Tithonian–Berriasian boundary.
The sea level within the long-term trends across the Jurassic was cyclical, with 64 fluctuations, 15 of which were over 75 metres. The most noted cyclicity in Jurassic rocks is fourth order, with a periodicity of approximately 410,000 years.
During the Early Jurassic the world's oceans transitioned from an aragonite sea to a calcite sea chemistry, favouring the dissolution of aragonite and precipitation of calcite. The rise of calcareous plankton during the Middle Jurassic profoundly altered ocean chemistry, with the deposition of biomineralized plankton on the ocean floor acting as a buffer against large CO2 emissions.
The climate of the Jurassic was generally warmer than that of present, by around 5 °C to 10 °C, with atmospheric carbon dioxide likely about four times higher. Intermittent "cold snap" intervals are known to have occurred during this time period, however, interrupting the otherwise warm greenhouse climate. Forests likely grew near the poles, where they experienced warm summers and cold, sometimes snowy winters; there were unlikely to have been ice sheets given the high summer temperatures that prevented the accumulation of snow, though there may have been mountain glaciers. Dropstones and glendonites in northeastern Siberia during the Early to Middle Jurassic indicate cold winters. The ocean depths were likely 8 °C warmer than present, and coral reefs grew 10° of latitude further north and south. The Intertropical Convergence Zone likely existed over the oceans, resulting in large areas of desert and scrubland in the lower latitudes between 40° N and S of the equator. Tropical rainforest and tundra biomes are likely to have been rare or absent. The Jurassic also witnessed the decline of the Pangaean megamonsoon that had characterised the preceding Permian and Triassic periods. Variation in the frequency of wildfire activity in the Jurassic was governed by the 405 kyr eccentricity cycle. Thanks to the breakup of Pangaea, the hydrological cycle during the Jurassic was significantly enhanced.
The beginning of the Jurassic was likely marked by a thermal spike corresponding to the Triassic–Jurassic extinction and eruption of the Central Atlantic magmatic province. The first part of the Jurassic was marked by the Early Jurassic Cool Interval between 199 and 183 million years ago. It has been proposed that glaciation was present in the Northern Hemisphere during both the early Pliensbachian and the latest Pliensbachian. There was a spike in global temperatures of around 4–8 °C during the early part of the Toarcian corresponding to the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event and the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces in southern Gondwana, with the warm interval extending to the end of the Toarcian around 174 million years ago. During the Toarcian Warm Interval, ocean surface temperatures likely exceeded 30 °C, and equatorial and subtropical (30°N–30°S) regions are likely to have been extremely arid, with temperatures in the interior of Pangea likely in excess of 40 °C. The Toarcian Warm Interval is followed by the Middle Jurassic Cool Interval (MJCI) between 174 and 164 million years ago, which may have been punctuated by brief, ephemeral icehouse intervals. A transient ice age possibly occurred in the late Bajocian. The Callovian-Oxfordian boundary at the end of the MJCI witnessed particularly notable global cooling, potentially even an ice age. This is followed by the Kimmeridgian Warm Interval (KWI) between 164 and 150 million years ago. Based on fossil wood distribution, this was one of the wettest intervals of the Jurassic. The Pangaean interior had less severe seasonal swings than in previous warm periods as the expansion of the Central Atlantic and Western Indian Ocean provided new sources of moisture. A prominent drop in temperatures occurred during the Tithonian, known as the Early Tithonian Cooling Event (ETCE). The end of the Jurassic was marked by the Tithonian–early Barremian Cool Interval (TBCI), beginning 150 million years ago and continuing into the Early Cretaceous.
The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (TOAE), also known as the Jenkyns Event, was an episode of widespread oceanic anoxia during the early part of the Toarcian Age, c. 183 Mya. It is marked by a globally documented high amplitude negative carbon isotope excursion, as well as the deposition of black shales and the extinction and collapse of carbonate-producing marine organisms, associated with a major rise in global temperatures.
The TOAE is often attributed to the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces and the associated increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, as well as the possible associated release of methane clathrates. This likely accelerated the hydrological cycle and increased silicate weathering, as evidenced by an increased amount of organic matter of terrestrial origin found in marine deposits during the TOAE. Groups affected include ammonites, ostracods, foraminifera, bivalves, cnidarians, and especially brachiopods, for which the TOAE represented one of the most severe extinctions in their evolutionary history. While the event had significant impact on marine invertebrates, it had little effect on marine reptiles. During the TOAE, the Sichuan Basin was transformed into a giant lake, probably three times the size of modern-day Lake Superior, represented by the Da’anzhai Member of the Ziliujing Formation. The lake likely sequestered ~460 gigatons (Gt) of organic carbon and ~1,200 Gt of inorganic carbon during the event. Seawater pH, which had already substantially decreased prior to the event, increased slightly during the early stages of the TOAE, before dropping to its lowest point around the middle of the event. This ocean acidification is the probable cause of the collapse of carbonate production. Additionally, anoxic conditions were exacerbated by enhanced recycling of phosphorus back into ocean water as a result of high ocean acidity and temperature inhibiting its mineralisation into apatite; the abundance of phosphorus in marine environments caused further eutrophication and consequent anoxia in a positive feedback loop.
The end-Jurassic transition was originally considered one of eight mass extinctions, but is now considered to be a complex interval of faunal turnover, with the increase in diversity of some groups and decline in others, though the evidence for this is primarily European, probably controlled by changes in eustatic sea level.
There is no evidence of a mass extinction of plants at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. At the Triassic–Jurassic boundary in Greenland, the sporomorph (pollen and spores) record suggests a complete floral turnover. An analysis of macrofossil floral communities in Europe suggests that changes were mainly due to local ecological succession. At the end of the Triassic, the Peltaspermaceae became extinct in most parts of the world, with Lepidopteris persisting into the Early Jurassic in Patagonia. Dicroidium, a corystosperm seed fern that was a dominant part of Gondwanan floral communities during the Triassic, also declined at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, surviving as a relict in Antarctica into the Early Jurassic.
Conifers formed a dominant component of Jurassic floras. The Late Triassic and Jurassic was a major time of diversification of conifers, with most modern conifer groups appearing in the fossil record by the end of the Jurassic, having evolved from voltzialean ancestors.
Araucarian conifers have their first unambiguous records during the Early Jurassic, and members of the modern genus Araucaria were widespread across both hemispheres by the Middle Jurassic.
Also abundant during the Jurassic is the extinct family Cheirolepidiaceae, often recognised through their highly distinctive Classopolis pollen. Jurassic representatives include the pollen cone Classostrobus and the seed cone Pararaucaria. Araucarian and Cheirolepidiaceae conifers often occur in association.
The oldest definitive record of the cypress family (Cupressaceae) is Austrohamia minuta from the Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) of Patagonia, known from many parts of the plant. The reproductive structures of Austrohamia have strong similarities to those of the primitive living cypress genera Taiwania and Cunninghamia. By the Middle to Late Jurassic Cupressaceae were abundant in warm temperate–tropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere, most abundantly represented by the genus Elatides. The Jurassic also saw the first appearances of some modern genera of cypresses, such as Sequoia.
Members of the extinct genus Schizolepidopsis which likely represent a stem-group to the pine family (Pinaceae), were widely distributed across Eurasia during the Jurassic. The oldest unambiguous record of Pinaceae is the pine cone Eathiestrobus, known from the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) of Scotland, which remains the only known unequivocal fossil of the group before the Cretaceous. Despite being the earliest known member of the Pinaceae, Eathiestrobus appears to be a member of the pinoid clade of the family, suggesting that the initial diversification of Pinaceae occurred earlier than has been found in the fossil record.
The earliest record of the yew family (Taxaceae) is Palaeotaxus rediviva, from the Hettangian of Sweden, suggested to be closely related to the living Austrotaxus, while Marskea jurassica from the Middle Jurassic of Yorkshire, England and material from the Callovian–Oxfordian Daohugou Bed in China are thought to be closely related to Amentotaxus, with the latter material assigned to the modern genus, indicating that Taxaceae had substantially diversified by the end of the Jurassic.
The oldest unambiguous members of Podocarpaceae are known from the Jurassic, found across both hemispheres, including Scarburgia and Harrisiocarpus from the Middle Jurassic of England, as well as unnamed species from the Middle-Late Jurassic of Patagonia.
During the Early Jurassic, the flora of the mid-latitudes of Eastern Asia were dominated by the extinct deciduous broad leafed conifer Podozamites, which appears to not be closely related to any living family of conifer. Its range extended northwards into polar latitudes of Siberia and then contracted northward in the Middle to Late Jurassic, corresponding to the increasing aridity of the region.
Ginkgoales, of which the sole living species is Ginkgo biloba, were more diverse during the Jurassic: they were among the most important components of Eurasian Jurassic floras and were adapted to a wide variety of climatic conditions. The earliest representatives of the genus Ginkgo, represented by ovulate and pollen organs similar to those of the modern species, are known from the Middle Jurassic in the Northern Hemisphere. Several other lineages of ginkgoaleans are known from Jurassic rocks, including Yimaia, Grenana, Nagrenia and Karkenia. These lineages are associated with Ginkgo-like leaves, but are distinguished from living and fossil representatives of Ginkgo by having differently arranged reproductive structures. Umaltolepis from the Jurassic of Asia has strap-shaped ginkgo-like leaves with highly distinct reproductive structures with similarities to those of peltasperm and corystosperm seed ferns, has been suggested to be a member of Ginkgoales sensu lato.
Bennettitales, having first become widespread during the preceding Triassic, were diverse and abundant members of Jurassic floras across both hemispheres. The foliage of Bennettitales bears strong similarities to those of cycads, to such a degree that they cannot be reliably distinguished on the basis of morphology alone. Leaves of Bennettitales can be distinguished from those of cycads their different arrangement of stomata, and the two groups are not thought to be closely related. Jurassic Bennettitales predominantly belong to the group Williamsoniaceae, which grew as shrubs and small trees. The Williamsoniaceae are thought to have had a divaricate branching habit, similar to that of living Banksia, and adapted to growing in open habitats with poor soil nutrient conditions. Bennettitales exhibit complex, flower-like reproductive structures some of which are thought to have been pollinated by insects. Several groups of insects that bear long proboscis, including extinct families such as kalligrammatid lacewings and extant ones such as acrocerid flies, are suggested to have been pollinators of bennettitales, feeding on nectar produced by bennettitalean cones.
Cycads reached their apex of diversity during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. Despite the Mesozoic sometimes being called the "Age of Cycads", cycads are thought to have been a relatively minor component of mid-Mesozoic floras, with the Bennettitales and Nilssoniales, which have cycad-like foliage, being dominant. The Nilssoniales have often been considered cycads or cycad relatives, but have been found to be distinct on chemical grounds, and perhaps more closely allied with Bennettitales. The relationships of most Mesozoic cycads to living groups are ambiguous, with no Jurassic cycads belonging to either of the two modern groups of cycads, though some Jurassic cycads possibly represent stem-group relatives of modern Cycadaceae, like the leaf genus Paracycas known Europe, and Zamiaceae, like some European species of the leaf genus Pseudoctenis. Also widespread during the Jurassic was the extinct Ctenis lineage, which appears to be distantly related to modern cycads. Modern cycads are pollinated by beetles, and such an association is thought to have formed by the Early Jurassic.
Although there have been several claimed records, there are no widely accepted Jurassic fossil records of flowering plants, which make up 90% of living plant species, and fossil evidence suggests that the group diversified during the following Cretaceous.
The earliest known gnetophytes, one of the four main living groups of gymnosperms, appeared by the end of the Jurassic, with the oldest unequivocal gnetophyte being the seed Dayvaultia from the Late Jurassic of North America.
"Seed ferns" (Pteridospermatophyta) is a collective term to refer to disparate lineages of fern like plants that produce seeds but have uncertain affinities to living seed plant groups. A prominent group of Jurassic seed ferns is the Caytoniales, which reached their zenith during the Jurassic, with widespread records in the Northern Hemisphere, though records in the Southern Hemisphere remain rare. Due to their berry-like seed-bearing capsules, they have often been suggested to have been closely related or perhaps ancestral to flowering plants, but the evidence for this is inconclusive. Corystosperm-aligned seed ferns, such as Pachypteris and Komlopteris were widespread across both hemispheres during the Jurassic.
Czekanowskiales, also known as Leptostrobales, are a group of seed plants uncertain affinities with persistent heavily dissected leaves borne on deciduous short shoots, subtended by scale-like leaves, known from the Late Triassic (possibly Late Permian) to Cretaceous. They are thought to have had a tree- or shrub-like habit and formed a conspicuous component of Northern Hemisphere Mesozoic temperate and warm-temperate floras. The genus Phoenicopsis was widespread in Early-Middle Jurassic floras of Eastern Asia and Siberia.
The Pentoxylales, a small but clearly distinct group of liana-like seed plants of obscure affinities, first appeared during the Jurassic. Their distribution appears to have been confined to Eastern Gondwana.
Living families of ferns widespread during the Jurassic include Dipteridaceae, Matoniaceae, Gleicheniaceae, Osmundaceae and Marattiaceae. Polypodiales, which make up 80% of living fern diversity, have no record from the Jurassic and are thought to have diversified in the Cretaceous, though the widespread Jurassic herbaceous fern genus Coniopteris, historically interpreted as a close relative of tree ferns of the family Dicksoniaceae, has recently been reinterpreted as an early relative of the group.
The Cyatheales, the group containing most modern tree ferns, appeared during the Late Jurassic, represented by members of the genus Cyathocaulis, which are suggested to be early members of Cyatheaceae on the basis of cladistic analysis. Only a handful of possible records exist of the Hymenophyllaceae from the Jurassic, including Hymenophyllites macrosporangiatus from the Russian Jurassic.
The oldest remains of modern horsetails of the genus Equisetum first appear in the Early Jurassic, represented by Equisetum dimorphum from the Early Jurassic of Patagonia and Equisetum laterale from the Early to Middle Jurassic of Australia. Silicified remains of Equisetum thermale from the Late Jurassic of Argentina exhibit all the morphological characters of modern members of the genus. The estimated split between Equisetum bogotense and all other living Equisetum is estimated to have occurred no later than the Early Jurassic.
Quillworts virtually identical to modern species are known from the Jurassic onwards. Isoetites rolandii from the Middle Jurassic of Oregon is the earliest known species to represent all major morphological features of modern Isoetes. More primitive forms such as Nathorstiana, which retain an elongated stem, persisted into the Early Cretaceous.
The moss Kulindobryum from the Middle Jurassic of Russia, which was found associated with dinosaur bones, is thought to be related to the Splachnaceae, which grow on animal caracasses. Bryokhutuliinia from the same region is thought to be related to Dicranales. Heinrichsiella from the Jurassic of Patagonia is thought to belong to either Polytrichaceae or Timmiellaceae.
The liverwort Pellites hamiensis from the Middle Jurassic Xishanyao Formation of China is the oldest record of the family Pelliaceae. Pallaviciniites sandaolingensis from the same deposit is thought to belong to the subclass Pallaviciniineae within the Pallaviciniales. Ricciopsis sandaolingensis, also from the same deposit, is the only Jurassic record of Ricciaceae.
The Triassic–Jurassic extinction decimated pseudosuchian diversity, with crocodylomorphs, which originated during the early Late Triassic, being the only group of pseudosuchians to survive. All other pseudosuchians, including the herbivorous aetosaurs and carnivorous "rauisuchians", became extinct. The morphological diversity of crocodylomorphs during the Early Jurassic was around the same as that of Late Triassic pseudosuchians, but they occupied different areas of morphospace, suggesting that they occupied different ecological niches to their Triassic counterparts and that there was an extensive and rapid radiation of crocodylomorphs during this interval. While living crocodilians are mostly confined to an aquatic ambush predator lifestyle, Jurassic crocodylomorphs exhibited a wide variety of life habits. An unnamed protosuchid known from teeth from the Early Jurassic of Arizona represents the earliest known herbivorous crocodylomorph, an adaptation that appeared several times during the Mesozoic.
The Thalattosuchia, a clade of predominantly marine crocodylomorphs, first appeared during the Early Jurassic and became a prominent part of marine ecosystems. Within Thalattosuchia, the Metriorhynchidae became highly adapted for life in the open ocean, including the transformation of limbs into flippers, the development of a tail fluke, and smooth, scaleless skin. The morphological diversity of crocodylomorphs during the Early and Middle Jurassic was relatively low compared to that in later time periods and was dominated by terrestrial small-bodied, long-legged sphenosuchians, early crocodyliforms and thalattosuchians. The Neosuchia, a major group of crocodylomorphs, first appeared during the Early to Middle Jurassic. The Neosuchia represents the transition from an ancestrally terrestrial lifestyle to a freshwater aquatic ecology similar to that occupied by modern crocodilians. The timing of the origin of Neosuchia is disputed. The oldest record of Neosuchians has been suggested to be Calsoyasuchus, from the Early Jurassic of Arizona, which in many analyses has been recovered as the earliest branching member of the neosuchian family Goniopholididae, which radically alters times of diversification for crocodylomorphs. However, this placement has been disputed, with some analyses finding it outside Neosuchia, which would place the oldest records of Neosuchia in the Middle Jurassic. Razanandrongobe from the Middle Jurassic of Madagascar has been suggested the represent the oldest record of Notosuchia, a primarily Gondwanan clade of mostly terrestrial crocodylomorphs, otherwise known from the Cretaceous and Cenozoic.
Stem-group turtles (Testudinata) diversified during the Jurassic. Jurassic stem-turtles belong to two progressively more advanced clades, the Mesochelydia and Perichelydia. It is thought that the ancestral condition for mesochelydians is aquatic, as opposed to terrestrial for testudinates. The two modern groups of turtles (Testudines), Pleurodira and Cryptodira, diverged by the beginning of the Late Jurassic. The oldest known pleurodires, the Platychelyidae, are known from the Late Jurassic of Europe and the Americas, while the oldest unambiguous cryptodire, Sinaspideretes, an early relative of softshell turtles, is known from the Late Jurassic of China. The Thalassochelydia, a diverse lineage of marine turtles unrelated to modern sea turtles, are known from the Late Jurassic of Europe and South America.
Rhynchocephalians (the sole living representative being the tuatara) had achieved a global distribution by the beginning of the Jurassic. Rhynchocephalians reached their highest morphological diversity in their evolutionary history during the Jurassic, occupying a wide range of lifestyles, including the aquatic pleurosaurs with long snake-like bodies and reduced limbs, the specialized herbivorous eilenodontines, as well as the sapheosaurs which had broad tooth plates indicative of durophagy. Rhynchocephalians disappeared from Asia after the Early Jurassic. The last common ancestor of living squamates (which includes lizards and snakes) is estimated to have lived around 190 million years ago during the Early Jurassic, with the major divergences between modern squamate lineages estimated to have occurred during the Early to Middle Jurassic. Squamates first appear in the fossil record during the Middle Jurassic including members of modern clades such as Scincomorpha, though many Jurassic squamates have unclear relationships to living groups. Eichstaettisaurus from the Late Jurassic of Germany has been suggested to be an early relative of geckos and displays adaptations for climbing. Dorsetisaurus from the Late Jurassic of North America and Europe represents the oldest widely accepted record of Anguimorpha. Marmoretta from the Middle Jurassic of Britain has been suggested to represent a late surviving lepidosauromorph outside both Rhynchocephalia and Squamata, though some studies have recovered it as a stem-squamate.
The earliest known remains of Choristodera, a group of freshwater aquatic reptiles with uncertain affinities to other reptile groups, are found in the Middle Jurassic. Only two genera of choristodere are known from the Jurassic. One is the small lizard-like Cteniogenys, thought to be the most basal known choristodere; it is known from the Middle to Late Jurassic of Europe and Late Jurassic of North America, with similar remains also known from the upper Middle Jurassic of Kyrgyzstan and western Siberia. The other is Coeruleodraco from the Late Jurassic of China, which is a more advanced choristodere, though still small and lizard-like in morphology.
Ichthyosaurs suffered an evolutionary bottleneck during the end-Triassic extinction, with all non-neoichthyosaurians becoming extinct. Ichthyosaurs reached their apex of species diversity during the Early Jurassic, with an array of morphologies including the huge apex predator Temnodontosaurus and swordfish-like Eurhinosaurus, though Early Jurassic ichthyosaurs were significantly less morphologically diverse than their Triassic counterparts. At the Early–Middle Jurassic boundary, between the end of the Toarcian and the beginning of the Bajocian, most lineages of ichythosaur appear to have become extinct, with the first appearance of the Ophthalmosauridae, the clade that would encompass almost all ichthyosaurs from then on, during the early Bajocian. Ophthalmosaurids were diverse by the Late Jurassic, but failed to fill many of the niches that had been occupied by ichthyosaurs during the Early Jurassic.
Plesiosaurs originated at the end of the Triassic (Rhaetian). By the end of the Triassic, all other sauropterygians, including placodonts and nothosaurs, had become extinct. At least six lineages of plesiosaur crossed the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. Plesiosaurs were already diverse in the earliest Jurassic, with the majority of plesiosaurs in the Hettangian-aged Blue Lias belonging to the Rhomaleosauridae. Early plesiosaurs were generally small-bodied, with body size increasing into the Toarcian. There appears to have been a strong turnover around the Early–Middle Jurassic boundary, with microcleidids and rhomaleosaurids becoming extinct and nearly extinct respectively after the end of the Toarcian with the first appearance of the dominant clade of plesiosaurs of the latter half of the Jurassic, the Cryptoclididae during the Bajocian. The Middle Jurassic saw the evolution of short-necked and large-headed thalassophonean pliosaurs from ancestrally small-headed, long-necked forms. Some thalassophonean pliosaurs, such as some species of Pliosaurus, had skulls up to two metres in length with body lengths estimated around 10–12 metres, making them the apex predators of Late Jurassic oceans. Plesiosaurs invaded freshwater environments during the Jurassic, with indeterminate remains of small-bodied pleisosaurs known from freshwater sediments from the Jurassic of China and Australia.
Pterosaurs first appeared in the Late Triassic. A major radiation of Jurassic pterosaurs is the Rhamphorhynchidae, which first appeared in the late Early Jurassic (Toarcian); they are thought to been piscivorous. Anurognathids, which first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, possessed short heads and densely furred bodies, and are thought to have been insectivores. Derived monofenestratan pterosaurs such as wukongopterids appeared in the late Middle Jurassic. Advanced short-tailed pterodactyloids first appeared at the Middle–Late Jurassic boundary. Jurassic pterodactyloids include the ctenochasmatids, like Ctenochasma, which have closely spaced needle-like teeth that were presumably used for filter feeding. The bizarre Late Jurassic ctenochasmatoid Cycnorhamphus had a jaw with teeth only at the tips, with bent jaws like those of living openbill storks that may have been used to hold and crush hard invertebrates.
Dinosaurs, which had morphologically diversified in the Late Triassic, experienced a major increase in diversity and abundance during the Early Jurassic in the aftermath of the end-Triassic extinction and the extinction of other reptile groups, becoming the dominant vertebrates in terrestrial ecosystems. Chilesaurus, a morphologically aberrant herbivorous dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of South America, has uncertain relationships to the three main groups of dinosaurs, having been recovered as a member of all three in different analyses.
Advanced theropods belonging to Neotheropoda first appeared in the Late Triassic. Basal neotheropods, such as coelophysoids and dilophosaurs, persisted into the Early Jurassic, but became extinct by the Middle Jurassic. The earliest averostrans appear during the Early Jurassic, with the earliest known member of Ceratosauria being Saltriovenator from the early Sinemurian (199.3–197.5 million years ago) of Italy. The unusual ceratosaur Limusaurus from the Late Jurassic of China had a herbivorous diet, with adults having edentulous beaked jaws, making it the earliest known theropod to have converted from an ancestrally carnivorous diet. The earliest members of the Tetanurae appeared during the late Early Jurassic or early Middle Jurassic. The Megalosauridae represent the oldest radiation of the Tetanurae, first appearing in Europe during the Bajocian. The oldest member of Allosauroidea has been suggested to be Asfaltovenator from the Middle Jurassic of South America. Coelurosaurs first appeared during the Middle Jurassic, including early tyrannosaurs such as Proceratosaurus from the Bathonian of Britain. Some coelurosaurs from the Late Jurassic of China including Shishugounykus and Haplocheirus are suggested to represent early alvarezsaurs, however, this has been questioned. Scansoriopterygids, a group of small feathered coelurosaurs with membraneous, bat-like wings for gliding, are known from the Middle to Late Jurassic of China. The oldest record of troodontids is suggested to be Hesperornithoides from the Late Jurassic of North America. Tooth remains suggested to represent those of dromaeosaurs are known from the Jurassic, but no body remains are known until the Cretaceous.
The earliest avialans, which include birds and their ancestors, appear during the Middle to Late Jurassic, definitively represented by Archaeopteryx from the Late Jurassic of Germany. Avialans belong to the clade Paraves within Coelurosauria, which also includes dromaeosaurs and troodontids. The Anchiornithidae from the Middle-Late Jurassic of Eurasia have frequently suggested to be avialans, but have also alternatively found as a separate lineage of paravians.
The earliest definitive ornithischians appear during the Early Jurassic, represented by basal ornithischians like Lesothosaurus, heterodontosaurids, and early members of Thyreophora. The earliest members of Ankylosauria and Stegosauria appear during the Middle Jurassic. The basal neornithischian Kulindadromeus from the Middle Jurassic of Russia indicates that at least some ornithischians were covered in protofeathers. The earliest members of Ankylopollexia, which become prominent in the Cretaceous, appeared during the Late Jurassic, represented by bipedal forms such as Camptosaurus. Ceratopsians first appeared in the Late Jurassic of China, represented by members of Chaoyangsauridae.
Sauropods became the dominant large herbivores in terrestrial ecosystems during the Jurassic. Some Jurassic sauropods reached gigantic sizes, becoming the largest organisms to have ever lived on land.
Basal bipedal sauropodomorphs, such as massospondylids, continued to exist into the Early Jurassic, but became extinct by the beginning of the Middle Jurassic. Quadrupedal sauropomorphs appeared during the Late Triassic. The quadrupedal Ledumahadi from the earliest Jurassic of South Africa reached an estimated weight of 12 tons, far in excess of other known basal sauropodomorphs. Gravisaurian sauropods first appeared during the Early Jurassic, with the oldest definitive record being Vulcanodon from Zimbabwe, likely of Sinemurian age. Eusauropods first appeared during the late Early Jurassic (Toarcian) and diversified during the Middle Jurassic; these included cetiosaurids, turiasaurs, and mamenchisaurs. Neosauropods such as macronarians and diplodocoids first appeared during the Middle Jurassic, before becoming abundant and globally distributed during the Late Jurassic.
The diversity of temnospondyls had progressively declined through the Late Triassic, with only brachyopoids surviving into the Jurassic and beyond. Members of the family Brachyopidae are known from Jurassic deposits in Asia, while the chigutisaurid Siderops is known from the Early Jurassic of Australia. Modern lissamphibians began to diversify during the Jurassic. The Early Jurassic Prosalirus thought to represent the first frog relative with a morphology capable of hopping like living frogs. Morphologically recognisable stem-frogs like the South American Notobatrachus are known from the Middle Jurassic, with modern crown-group frogs like Enneabatrachus and Rhadinosteus appearing by the Late Jurassic. While the earliest salamander-line amphibians are known from the Triassic, crown group salamanders first appear during the Middle to Late Jurassic in Eurasia, alongside stem-group relatives. Many Jurassic stem-group salamanders, such as Marmorerpeton and Kokartus, are thought to have been neotenic. Early representatives of crown group salamanders include Chunerpeton, Pangerpeton and Linglongtriton from the Middle to Late Jurassic Yanliao Biota of China. These belong to the Cryptobranchoidea, which contains living Asiatic and giant salamanders. Beiyanerpeton, and Qinglongtriton from the same biota are thought to be early members of Salamandroidea, the group which contains all other living salamanders. Salamanders dispersed into North America by the end of the Jurassic, as evidenced by Iridotriton, found in the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation. The stem-caecilian Eocaecilia is known from the Early Jurassic of Arizona. The fourth group of lissamphibians, the extinct albanerpetontids, first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, represented by Anoualerpeton priscus from the Bathonian of Britain, as well as indeterminate remains from equivalently aged sediments in France and the Anoual Formation of Morocco.
Mammaliaformes, including mammals, having originated from cynodonts at the end of the Triassic, diversified extensively during the Jurassic. While most Jurassic mammalaliaforms are solely known from isolated teeth and jaw fragments, exceptionally preserved remains have revealed a variety of lifestyles. The docodontan Castorocauda was adapted to aquatic life, similarly to the platypus and otters. Some members of Haramiyida and the eutriconodontan tribe Volaticotherini had a patagium akin to those of flying squirrels, allowing them to glide through the air. The aardvark-like mammal Fruitafossor, of uncertain taxonomy, was likely a specialist on colonial insects, similarly to living anteaters. Australosphenida, a group of mammals possibly related to living monotremes, first appeared in the Middle Jurassic of Gondwana. The earliest records of multituberculates, of the longest lasting and most successful orders of mammals, are known from the Middle Jurassic. Therian mammals, represented today by living placentals and marsupials, have their earliest records during the early Late Jurassic, represented by Juramaia, a eutherian mammal closer to the ancestry of placentals than marsupials. Juramaia is much more advanced than expected for its age, as other therian mammals are not known until the Early Cretaceous, and it has been suggested that Juramaia may also originate from the Early Cretaceous instead. Two groups of non-mammaliaform cynodonts persisted beyond the end of the Triassic. The insectiviorous Tritheledontidae has a few records from the Early Jurassic. The Tritylodontidae, a herbiviorous group of cynodonts that first appeared during the Rhaetian, has abundant records from the Jurassic, overwhelmingly from the Northern Hemisphere.
The last known species of conodont, a class of jawless fish whose hard, tooth-like elements are key index fossils, finally became extinct during the earliest Jurassic after over 300 million years of evolutionary history, with an asynchronous extinction occurring first in the Tethys and eastern Panthalassa and survivors persisting into the earliest Hettangian of Hungary and central Panthalassa. End-Triassic conodonts were represented by only a handful of species and had been progressively declining through the Middle and Late Triassic. Yanliaomyzon from the Middle Jurassic of China represents the oldest post Paleozoic lamprey, and the oldest lamprey to have the toothed feeding apparatus and likely the three stage life cycle typical of modern members of the group.
Lungfish (Dipnoi) were present in freshwater environments of both hemispheres during the Jurassic. Genera include Ceratodus and Ptychoceratodus, which are more closely related to living South American and African lungfish than Queensland lungfish, and Ferganoceratodus from the Jurassic of Asia, which is not closely related to either group of living lungfish. Mawsoniids, a marine and freshwater/brackish group of coelacanths, which first appeared in North America during the Triassic, expanded into Europe and South America by the end of the Jurassic. The marine Latimeriidae, which contains the living coelacanths of the genus Latimeria, were also present in the Jurassic, having originated in the Triassic, with a number of records from the Jurassic of Europe.
Ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii) were major components of Jurassic freshwater and marine ecosystems. Archaic "palaeoniscoid" fish, which were common in both marine and freshwater habitats during the preceding Triassic declined during the Jurassic, being largely replaced by more derived actinopterygian lineages. The oldest known Acipenseriformes, the group that contains living sturgeon and paddlefish, are from the Early Jurassic. Amiiform fish (which today only includes the bowfin) first appeared during the Early Jurassic, represented by Caturus from the Pliensbachian of Britain; after their appearance in the western Tethys, they expanded to Africa, North America and Southeast and East Asia by the end of the Jurassic, with the modern family Amiidae appearing during the Late Jurassic. Pycnodontiformes, which first appeared in the western Tethys during the Late Triassic, expanded to South America and Southeast Asia by the end of the Jurassic, having a high diversity in Europe during the Late Jurassic. During the Jurassic, the Ginglymodi, the only living representatives being gars (Lepisosteidae) were diverse in both freshwater and marine environments. The oldest known representatives of anatomically modern gars appeared during the Upper Jurassic. Stem-group teleosts, which make up over 99% of living Actinopterygii, had first appeared during the Triassic in the western Tethys; they underwent a major diversification beginning in the Late Jurassic, with early representatives of modern teleost clades such as Elopomorpha and Osteoglossoidei appearing during this time. The Pachycormiformes, a group of marine stem-teleosts, first appeared in the Early Jurassic and included both tuna-like predatory and filter-feeding forms, the latter included the largest bony fish known to have existed: Leedsichthys, with an estimated maximum length of over 15 metres, known from the late Middle to Late Jurassic.
During the Early Jurassic, the shark-like hybodonts, which represented the dominant group of chondrichthyans during the preceding Triassic, were common in both marine and freshwater settings; however, by the Late Jurassic, hybodonts had become minor components of most marine communities, having been largely replaced by modern neoselachians, but remained common in freshwater and restricted marine environments. The Neoselachii, which contains all living sharks and rays, radiated beginning in the Early Jurassic. The oldest known ray (Batoidea) is Antiquaobatis from the Pliensbachian of Germany. Jurassic batoids known from complete remains retain a conservative, guitarfish-like morphology. The oldest known Hexanchiformes and carpet sharks (Orectolobiformes) are from the Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian & Toarcian, respectively) of Europe. The oldest known members of the Heterodontiformes, the only living members of which are the bullhead shark (Heterodontus), first appeared in the Early Jurassic, with representatives of the living genus appearing during the Late Jurassic. The oldest known mackerel sharks (Lamniformes) are from the Middle Jurassic, represented by the genus Palaeocarcharias, which has an orectolobiform-like body but shares key similarities in tooth histology with lamniformes, including the absence of orthodentine. The oldest record of angelsharks (Squatiniformes) is Pseudorhina from the Late Jurassic (Oxfordian–Tithonian) of Europe, which already has a bodyform similar to living members of the order. The oldest known remains of Carcharhiniformes, the largest order of living sharks, first appear in the late Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) of the western Tethys (England and Morocco). Known dental and exceptionally preserved body remains of Jurassic Carchariniformes are similar to those of living catsharks. Synechodontiformes, an extinct group of sharks closely related to Neoselachii, were also widespread during the Jurassic. The oldest remains of modern chimaeras are from the Early Jurassic of Europe, with members of the living family Callorhinchidae appearing during the Middle Jurassic. Unlike most living chimaeras, Jurassic chimeras are often found in shallow water environments. The closely related Squaloraja and myriacanthoids are also known from the Jurassic of Europe.
There appears to have been no major extinction of insects at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. Many important insect fossil localities are known from the Jurassic of Eurasia, the most important being the Karabastau Formation of Kazakhstan and the various Yanliao Biota deposits in Inner Mongolia, China, such as the Daohugou Bed, dating to the Callovian–Oxfordian. The diversity of insects stagnated throughout the Early and Middle Jurassic, but during the latter third of the Jurassic origination rates increased substantially while extinction rates remained flat. The increasing diversity of insects in the Middle–Late Jurassic corresponds with a substantial increase in the diversity of insect mouthparts. The Middle to Late Jurassic was a time of major diversification for beetles. Weevils first appear in the fossil record during the Middle to Late Jurassic, but are suspected to have originated during the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic. The oldest known lepidopterans (the group containing butterflies and moths) are known from the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, with wing scales belonging to the suborder Glossata and Micropterigidae-grade moths from the deposits of this age in Germany. Modern representatives of both dragonflies and damselflies also first appeared during the Jurassic. Although modern representatives are not known until the Cenozoic, ectoparasitic insects thought to represent primitive fleas, belonging to the family Pseudopulicidae, are known from the Middle Jurassic of Asia. These insects are substantially different from modern fleas, lacking the specialised morphology of the latter and being larger. Parasitoid wasps (Apocrita) first appeared during the Early Jurassic and subsequently became widespread, reshaping terrestrial food webs. The Jurassic saw also saw the first appearances of several other groups of insects, including Phasmatodea (stick insects), Mantophasmatidae, Embioptera (webspinners), and Raphidioptera (snakeflies).
Only a handful of records of mites are known from the Jurassic, including Jureremus, an oribatid mite belonging to the family Cymbaeremaeidae known from the Late Jurassic of Britain and Russia, and a member of the still living orbatid genus Hydrozetes from the Early Jurassic of Sweden. Spiders diversified through the Jurassic. The Early Jurassic Seppo koponeni may represent a stem group to Palpimanoidea. Eoplectreurys from the Middle Jurassic of China is considered a stem lineage of Synspermiata. The oldest member of the family Archaeidae, Patarchaea, is known from the Middle Jurassic of China. Mongolarachne from the Middle Jurassic of China is among the largest known fossil spiders, with legs over 5 centimetres long. The only scorpion known from the Jurassic is Liassoscorpionides from the Early Jurassic of Germany, of uncertain placement. Eupnoi harvestmen (Opiliones) are known from the Middle Jurassic of China, including members of the family Sclerosomatidae.
During the end-Triassic extinction, 46%–72% of all marine genera became extinct. The effects of the end Triassic extinction were greatest at tropical latitudes and were more severe in Panthalassa than the Tethys or Boreal oceans. Tropical reef ecosystems collapsed during the event, and would not fully recover until much later in the Jurassic. Sessile filter feeders and photosymbiotic organisms were among most severely affected.
Having declined at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, reefs substantially expanded during the Late Jurassic, including both sponge reefs and scleractinian coral reefs. Late Jurassic reefs were similar in form to modern reefs but had more microbial carbonates and hypercalcified sponges, and had weak biogenic binding. Reefs sharply declined at the close of the Jurassic, which caused an associated drop in diversity in decapod crustaceans. The earliest planktonic foraminifera, which constitute the suborder Globigerinina, are known from the late Early Jurassic (mid-Toarcian) of the western Tethys, expanding across the whole Tethys by the Middle Jurassic and becoming globally distributed in tropical latitudes by the Late Jurassic. Coccolithophores and dinoflagellates, which had first appeared during the Triassic, radiated during the Early to Middle Jurassic, becoming prominent members of the phytoplankton. Microconchid tube worms, the last remaining order of Tentaculita, a group of animals of uncertain affinities that were convergent on Spirorbis tube worms, were rare after the Triassic and had become reduced to the single genus Punctaconchus, which became extinct in the late Bathonian. The oldest known diatom is from Late Jurassic–aged amber from Thailand, assigned to the living genus Hemiaulus.
Crinoids diversified throughout the Jurassic, reaching their peak Mesozoic diversity during the Late Jurassic, primarily due to the radiation of sessile forms belonging to the orders Cyrtocrinida and Millericrinida. Echinoids (sea urchins) underwent substantial diversification beginning in the Early Jurassic, primarily driven by the radiation of irregular (asymmetrical) forms, which were adapting to deposit feeding. Rates of diversification sharply dropped during the Late Jurassic.
The Jurassic was a significant time for the evolution of decapods. The first true crabs (Brachyura) are known from the Early Jurassic, with the earliest being Eocarcinus praecursor from the early Pliensbachian of England, which lacked the crab-like morphology (carcinisation) of modern crabs, and Eoprosopon klugi from the late Pliensbachian of Germany, which may belong to the living family Homolodromiidae. Most Jurassic crabs are known only from carapace pieces, which makes it difficult to determine their relationships. While rare in the Early and Middle Jurassic, crabs became abundant during the Late Jurassic as they expanded from their ancestral silty sea floor habitat into hard substrate habitats like reefs, with crevices in reefs providing refuge from predators. Hermit crabs also first appeared during the Jurassic, with the earliest known being Schobertella hoelderi from the late Hettangian of Germany. Early hermit crabs are associated with ammonite shells rather than those of gastropods. Glypheids, which today are only known from two species, reached their peak diversity during the Jurassic, with around 150 species out of a total fossil record of 250 known from the period. Jurassic barnacles were of low diversity compared to present, but several important evolutionary innovations are known, including the first appearances of calcite shelled forms and species with an epiplanktonic mode of life.
Brachiopod diversity declined during the Triassic–Jurassic extinction. Spire-bearing brachiopods (Spiriferinida and Athyridida) did not recover their biodiversity, becoming extinct in the TOAE. Rhynchonellida and Terebratulida also declined during the Triassic–Jurassic extinction but rebounded during the Early Jurassic; neither clade underwent much morphological variation. Brachiopods substantially declined in the Late Jurassic; the causes are poorly understood. Proposed reasons include increased predation, competition with bivalves, enhanced bioturbation or increased grazing pressure.
Like the preceding Triassic, bryozoan diversity was relatively low compared to the Paleozoic. The vast majority of Jurassic bryozoans are members of Cyclostomatida, which experienced a radiation during the Middle Jurassic, with all Jurassic representatives belonging to the suborders Tubuliporina and Cerioporina. Cheilostomata, the dominant group of modern bryozoans, first appeared during the Late Jurassic.
The end-Triassic extinction had a severe impact on bivalve diversity, though it had little impact on bivalve ecological diversity. The extinction was selective, having less of an impact on deep burrowers, but there is no evidence of a differential impact between surface-living (epifaunal) and burrowing (infaunal) bivalves. Bivalve family level diversity after the Early Jurassic was static, though genus diversity experienced a gradual increase throughout the period. Rudists, the dominant reef-building organisms of the Cretaceous, first appeared in the Late Jurassic (mid-Oxfordian) in the northern margin of the western Tethys, expanding to the eastern Tethys by the end of the Jurassic.
Ammonites were devastated by the end-Triassic extinction, with only a handful of genera belonging to the family Psiloceratidae of the suborder Phylloceratina surviving and becoming ancestral to all later Jurassic and Cretaceous ammonites. Ammonites explosively diversified during the Early Jurassic, with the orders Psiloceratina, Ammonitina, Lytoceratina, Haploceratina, Perisphinctina and Ancyloceratina all appearing during the Jurassic. Ammonite faunas during the Jurassic were regional, being divided into around 20 distinguishable provinces and subprovinces in two realms, the northern high latitude Pan-Boreal realm, consisting of the Arctic, northern Panthalassa and northern Atlantic regions, and the equatorial–southern Pan-Tethyan realm, which included the Tethys and most of Panthalassa. Ammonite diversifications occurred coevally with marine transgressions, while their diversity nadirs occurred during marine regressions.
The oldest definitive records of the squid-like belemnites are from the earliest Jurassic (Hettangian–Sinemurian) of Europe and Japan; they expanded worldwide during the Jurassic. Belemnites were shallow-water dwellers, inhabiting the upper 200 metres of the water column on the continental shelves and in the littoral zone. They were key components of Jurassic ecosystems, both as predators and prey, as evidenced by the abundance of belemnite guards in Jurassic rocks.
The earliest vampyromorphs, of which the only living member is the vampire squid, first appeared during the Early Jurassic. The earliest octopuses appeared during the Middle Jurassic, having split from their closest living relatives, the vampyromorphs, during the Triassic to Early Jurassic. All Jurassic octopuses are solely known from the hard gladius. Octopuses likely originated from bottom-dwelling (benthic) ancestors which lived in shallow environments. Proteroctopus from the late Middle Jurassic La Voulte-sur-Rhône lagerstätte, previously interpreted as an early octopus, is now thought to be a basal taxon outside the clade containing vampyromorphs and octopuses. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Jurassic (/dʒʊˈræsɪk/ juu-RASS-ik) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period 201.4 million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era and is named after the Jura Mountains, where limestone strata from the period were first identified.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The start of the Jurassic was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, associated with the eruption of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP). The beginning of the Toarcian Stage started around 183 million years ago and is marked by the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, a global episode of oceanic anoxia, ocean acidification, and elevated global temperatures associated with extinctions, likely caused by the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces. The end of the Jurassic, however, has no clear, definitive boundary with the Cretaceous and is the only boundary between geological periods to remain formally undefined.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "By the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The climate of the Jurassic was warmer than the present, and there were no ice caps. Forests grew close to the poles, with large arid expanses in the lower latitudes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "On land, the fauna transitioned from the Triassic fauna, dominated jointly by dinosauromorph and pseudosuchian archosaurs, to one dominated by dinosaurs alone. The first birds appeared during the Jurassic, evolving from a branch of theropod dinosaurs. Other major events include the appearance of the earliest lizards and the evolution of therian mammals. Crocodylomorphs made the transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic life. The oceans were inhabited by marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, while pterosaurs were the dominant flying vertebrates. The first sharks, rays and crabs also first appeared during the period.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The chronostratigraphic term \"Jurassic\" is linked to the Jura Mountains, a forested mountain range that mainly follows the France–Switzerland border. The name \"Jura\" is derived from the Celtic root *jor via Gaulish *iuris \"wooded mountain\", which was borrowed into Latin as a name of a place and evolved into Juria and finally Jura.",
"title": "Etymology and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "During a tour of the region in 1795, German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt recognized carbonate deposits within the Jura Mountains as geologically distinct from the Triassic aged Muschelkalk of southern Germany, but he erroneously concluded that they were older. He then named them Jura-Kalkstein ('Jura limestone') in 1799.",
"title": "Etymology and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1829, the French naturalist Alexandre Brongniart published a book entitled Description of the Terrains that Constitute the Crust of the Earth or Essay on the Structure of the Known Lands of the Earth. In this book, Brongniart used the phrase terrains jurassiques when correlating the \"Jura-Kalkstein\" of Humboldt with similarly aged oolitic limestones in Britain, thus coining and publishing the term \"Jurassic\".",
"title": "Etymology and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The German geologist Leopold von Buch in 1839 established the three-fold division of the Jurassic, originally named from oldest to the youngest: the Black Jurassic, Brown Jurassic, and White Jurassic. The term \"Lias\" had previously been used for strata of equivalent age to the Black Jurassic in England by William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822.",
"title": "Etymology and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The French palaeontologist Alcide d'Orbigny in papers between 1842 and 1852 divided the Jurassic into ten stages based on ammonite and other fossil assemblages in England and France, of which seven are still used, but none has retained its original definition. The German geologist and palaeontologist Friedrich August von Quenstedt in 1858 divided the three series of von Buch in the Swabian Jura into six subdivisions defined by ammonites and other fossils.",
"title": "Etymology and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The German palaeontologist Albert Oppel in his studies between 1856 and 1858 altered d'Orbigny's original scheme and further subdivided the stages into biostratigraphic zones, based primarily on ammonites. Most of the modern stages of the Jurassic were formalized at the Colloque du Jurassique à Luxembourg in 1962.",
"title": "Etymology and history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Jurassic Period is divided into three epochs: Early, Middle, and Late. Similarly, in stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, and Upper Jurassic series. Geologists divide the rocks of the Jurassic into a stratigraphic set of units called stages, each formed during corresponding time intervals called ages.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Stages can be defined globally or regionally. For global stratigraphic correlation, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) ratify global stages based on a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) from a single formation (a stratotype) identifying the lower boundary of the stage. The ages of the Jurassic from youngest to oldest are as follows:",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jurassic stratigraphy is primarily based on the use of ammonites as index fossils. The first appearance datum of specific ammonite taxa is used to mark the beginnings of stages, as well as smaller timespans within stages, referred to as \"ammonite zones\"; these, in turn, are also sometimes subdivided further into subzones. Global stratigraphy is based on standard European ammonite zones, with other regions being calibrated to the European successions.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The oldest part of the Jurassic Period has historically been referred to as the Lias or Liassic, roughly equivalent in extent to the Early Jurassic, but also including part of the preceding Rhaetian. The Hettangian Stage was named by Swiss palaeontologist Eugène Renevier in 1864 after Hettange-Grande in north-eastern France. The GSSP for the base of the Hettangian is located at the Kuhjoch Pass, Karwendel Mountains, Northern Calcareous Alps, Austria; it was ratified in 2010. The beginning of the Hettangian, and thus the Jurassic as a whole, is marked by the first appearance of the ammonite Psiloceras spelae tirolicum in the Kendlbach Formation exposed at Kuhjoch. The base of the Jurassic was previously defined as the first appearance of Psiloceras planorbis by Albert Oppel in 1856–58, but this was changed as the appearance was seen as too localised an event for an international boundary.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Sinemurian Stage was first defined and introduced into scientific literature by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842. It takes its name from the French town of Semur-en-Auxois, near Dijon. The original definition of Sinemurian included what is now the Hettangian. The GSSP of the Sinemurian is located at a cliff face north of the hamlet of East Quantoxhead, 6 kilometres east of Watchet, Somerset, England, within the Blue Lias, and was ratified in 2000. The beginning of the Sinemurian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Vermiceras quantoxense.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Albert Oppel in 1858 named the Pliensbachian Stage after the hamlet of Pliensbach in the community of Zell unter Aichelberg in the Swabian Alb, near Stuttgart, Germany. The GSSP for the base of the Pliensbachian is found at the Wine Haven locality in Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire, England, in the Redcar Mudstone Formation, and was ratified in 2005. The beginning of the Pliensbachian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Bifericeras donovani.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The village Thouars (Latin: Toarcium), just south of Saumur in the Loire Valley of France, lends its name to the Toarcian Stage. The Toarcian was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842, with the original locality being Vrines quarry around 2 km northwest of Thouars. The GSSP for the base of the Toarcian is located at Peniche, Portugal, and was ratified in 2014. The boundary is defined by the first appearance of ammonites belonging to the subgenus Dactylioceras (Eodactylites).",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Aalenian is named after the city of Aalen in Germany. The Aalenian was defined by Swiss geologist Karl Mayer-Eymar in 1864. The lower boundary was originally between the dark clays of the Black Jurassic and the overlying clayey sandstone and ferruginous oolite of the Brown Jurassic sequences of southwestern Germany. The GSSP for the base of the Aalenian is located at Fuentelsaz in the Iberian range near Guadalajara, Spain, and was ratified in 2000. The base of the Aalenian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Leioceras opalinum.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842 named the Bajocian Stage after the town of Bayeux (Latin: Bajoce) in Normandy, France. The GSSP for the base of the Bajocian is located in the Murtinheira section at Cabo Mondego, Portugal; it was ratified in 1997. The base of the Bajocian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Hyperlioceras mundum.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Bathonian is named after the city of Bath, England, introduced by Belgian geologist d'Omalius d'Halloy in 1843, after an incomplete section of oolitic limestones in several quarries in the region. The GSSP for the base of the Bathonian is Ravin du Bès, Bas-Auran area, Alpes de Haute Provence, France; it was ratified in 2009. The base of the Bathonian is defined by the first appearance of the ammonite Gonolkites convergens, at the base of the Zigzagiceras zigzag ammonite zone.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Callovian is derived from the Latinized name of the village of Kellaways in Wiltshire, England, and was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1852, originally the base at the contact between the Forest Marble Formation and the Cornbrash Formation. However, this boundary was later found to be within the upper part of the Bathonian. The base of the Callovian does not yet have a certified GSSP. The working definition for the base of the Callovian is the first appearance of ammonites belonging to the genus Kepplerites.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Oxfordian is named after the city of Oxford in England and was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1844 in reference to the Oxford Clay. The base of the Oxfordian lacks a defined GSSP. W. J. Arkell in studies in 1939 and 1946 placed the lower boundary of the Oxfordian as the first appearance of the ammonite Quenstedtoceras mariae (then placed in the genus Vertumniceras). Subsequent proposals have suggested the first appearance of Cardioceras redcliffense as the lower boundary.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The village of Kimmeridge on the coast of Dorset, England, is the origin of the name of the Kimmeridgian. The stage was named by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1842 in reference to the Kimmeridge Clay. The GSSP for the base of the Kimmeridgian is the Flodigarry section at Staffin Bay on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, which was ratified in 2021. The boundary is defined by the first appearance of ammonites marking the boreal Bauhini Zone and the subboreal Baylei Zone.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Tithonian was introduced in scientific literature by Albert Oppel in 1865. The name Tithonian is unusual in geological stage names because it is derived from Greek mythology rather than a place name. Tithonus was the son of Laomedon of Troy and fell in love with Eos, the Greek goddess of dawn. His name was chosen by Albert Oppel for this stratigraphical stage because the Tithonian finds itself hand in hand with the dawn of the Cretaceous. The base of the Tithonian currently lacks a GSSP. The working definition for the base of the Tithonian is the first appearance of the ammonite genus Gravesia.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The upper boundary of the Jurassic is currently undefined, and the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary is currently the only system boundary to lack a defined GSSP. Placing a GSSP for this boundary has been difficult because of the strong regionality of most biostratigraphic markers, and lack of any chemostratigraphic events, such as isotope excursions (large sudden changes in ratios of isotopes), that could be used to define or correlate a boundary. Calpionellids, an enigmatic group of planktonic protists with urn-shaped calcitic tests briefly abundant during the latest Jurassic to earliest Cretaceous, have been suggested to represent the most promising candidates for fixing the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary In particular, the first appearance Calpionella alpina, co-inciding with the base of the eponymous Alpina subzone, has been proposed as the definition of the base of the Cretaceous. The working definition for the boundary has often been placed as the first appearance of the ammonite Strambergella jacobi, formerly placed in the genus Berriasella, but its use as a stratigraphic indicator has been questioned, as its first appearance does not correlate with that of C. alpina.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Kimmeridge Clay and equivalents are the major source rock for the North Sea oil. The Arabian Intrashelf Basin, deposited during the Middle and Late Jurassic, is the setting of the world's largest oil reserves, including the Ghawar Field, the world's largest oil field. The Jurassic-aged Sargelu and Naokelekan formations are major source rocks for oil in Iraq. Over 1500 gigatons of Jurassic coal reserves are found in north-west China, primarily in the Turpan-Hami Basin and the Ordos Basin.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Major impact structures include the Morokweng impact structure, a 70 km diameter impact structure buried beneath the Kalahari desert in northern South Africa. The impact is dated to the Tithonian, approximately 146.06 ± 0.16 Mya. Another major structure is the Puchezh-Katunki crater, 40 kilometres in diameter, buried beneath Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in western Russia. The impact has been dated to the Sinemurian, 195.9 ± 1.0 Ma.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "At the beginning of the Jurassic, all of the world's major landmasses were coalesced into the supercontinent Pangaea, which during the Early Jurassic began to break up into northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana. The rifting between North America and Africa was the first to initiate, beginning in the early Jurassic, associated with the emplacement of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "During the Jurassic, the North Atlantic Ocean remained relatively narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the Cretaceous. The continents were surrounded by Panthalassa, with the Tethys Ocean between Gondwana and Asia. At the end of the Triassic, there was a marine transgression in Europe, flooding most parts of central and western Europe transforming it into an archipelago of islands surrounded by shallow seas. During the Jurassic, both the North and South Pole were covered by oceans. Beginning in the Early Jurassic, the Boreal Ocean was connected to the proto-Atlantic by the \"Viking corridor\" or Transcontinental Laurasian Seaway, a passage between the Baltic Shield and Greenland several hundred kilometers wide. During the Callovian, the Turgai Epicontinental Sea formed, creating a marine barrier between Europe and Asia.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Madagascar and Antarctica began to rift away from Africa during the late Early Jurassic in association with the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces, opening the western Indian Ocean and beginning the fragmentation of Gondwana. At the beginning of the Jurassic, North and South America remained connected, but by the beginning of the Late Jurassic they had rifted apart to form the Caribbean Seaway, also known as the Hispanic Corridor, which connected the North Atlantic Ocean with eastern Panthalassa. Palaeontological data suggest that the seaway had been open since the Early Jurassic.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "As part of the Nevadan orogeny, which began during the Triassic, the Cache Creek Ocean closed, and various terranes including the large Wrangellia Terrane accreted onto the western margin of North America. By the Middle Jurassic the Siberian plate and the North China-Amuria block had collided, resulting in the closure of the Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "During the Early Jurassic, around 190 million years ago, the Pacific Plate originated at the triple junction of the Farallon, Phoenix, and Izanagi tectonic plates, the three main oceanic plates of Panthalassa. The previously stable triple junction had converted to an unstable arrangement surrounded on all sides by transform faults because of a kink in one of the plate boundaries, resulting in the formation of the Pacific Plate at the centre of the junction. During the Middle to early Late Jurassic, the Sundance Seaway, a shallow epicontinental sea, covered much of northwest North America.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The eustatic sea level is estimated to have been close to present levels during the Hettangian and Sinemurian, rising several tens of metres during the late Sinemurian–Pliensbachian before regressing to near present levels by the late Pliensbachian. There seems to have been a gradual rise to a peak of ~75 m above present sea level during the Toarcian. During the latest part of the Toarcian, the sea level again dropped by several tens of metres. It progressively rose from the Aalenian onwards, aside from dips of a few tens of metres in the Bajocian and around the Callovian–Oxfordian boundary, peaking possibly as high as 140 metres above present sea level at the Kimmeridgian–Tithonian boundary. The sea levels falls in the late Tithonian, perhaps to around 100 metres, before rebounding to around 110 metres at the Tithonian–Berriasian boundary.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The sea level within the long-term trends across the Jurassic was cyclical, with 64 fluctuations, 15 of which were over 75 metres. The most noted cyclicity in Jurassic rocks is fourth order, with a periodicity of approximately 410,000 years.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "During the Early Jurassic the world's oceans transitioned from an aragonite sea to a calcite sea chemistry, favouring the dissolution of aragonite and precipitation of calcite. The rise of calcareous plankton during the Middle Jurassic profoundly altered ocean chemistry, with the deposition of biomineralized plankton on the ocean floor acting as a buffer against large CO2 emissions.",
"title": "Paleogeography and tectonics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The climate of the Jurassic was generally warmer than that of present, by around 5 °C to 10 °C, with atmospheric carbon dioxide likely about four times higher. Intermittent \"cold snap\" intervals are known to have occurred during this time period, however, interrupting the otherwise warm greenhouse climate. Forests likely grew near the poles, where they experienced warm summers and cold, sometimes snowy winters; there were unlikely to have been ice sheets given the high summer temperatures that prevented the accumulation of snow, though there may have been mountain glaciers. Dropstones and glendonites in northeastern Siberia during the Early to Middle Jurassic indicate cold winters. The ocean depths were likely 8 °C warmer than present, and coral reefs grew 10° of latitude further north and south. The Intertropical Convergence Zone likely existed over the oceans, resulting in large areas of desert and scrubland in the lower latitudes between 40° N and S of the equator. Tropical rainforest and tundra biomes are likely to have been rare or absent. The Jurassic also witnessed the decline of the Pangaean megamonsoon that had characterised the preceding Permian and Triassic periods. Variation in the frequency of wildfire activity in the Jurassic was governed by the 405 kyr eccentricity cycle. Thanks to the breakup of Pangaea, the hydrological cycle during the Jurassic was significantly enhanced.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The beginning of the Jurassic was likely marked by a thermal spike corresponding to the Triassic–Jurassic extinction and eruption of the Central Atlantic magmatic province. The first part of the Jurassic was marked by the Early Jurassic Cool Interval between 199 and 183 million years ago. It has been proposed that glaciation was present in the Northern Hemisphere during both the early Pliensbachian and the latest Pliensbachian. There was a spike in global temperatures of around 4–8 °C during the early part of the Toarcian corresponding to the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event and the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces in southern Gondwana, with the warm interval extending to the end of the Toarcian around 174 million years ago. During the Toarcian Warm Interval, ocean surface temperatures likely exceeded 30 °C, and equatorial and subtropical (30°N–30°S) regions are likely to have been extremely arid, with temperatures in the interior of Pangea likely in excess of 40 °C. The Toarcian Warm Interval is followed by the Middle Jurassic Cool Interval (MJCI) between 174 and 164 million years ago, which may have been punctuated by brief, ephemeral icehouse intervals. A transient ice age possibly occurred in the late Bajocian. The Callovian-Oxfordian boundary at the end of the MJCI witnessed particularly notable global cooling, potentially even an ice age. This is followed by the Kimmeridgian Warm Interval (KWI) between 164 and 150 million years ago. Based on fossil wood distribution, this was one of the wettest intervals of the Jurassic. The Pangaean interior had less severe seasonal swings than in previous warm periods as the expansion of the Central Atlantic and Western Indian Ocean provided new sources of moisture. A prominent drop in temperatures occurred during the Tithonian, known as the Early Tithonian Cooling Event (ETCE). The end of the Jurassic was marked by the Tithonian–early Barremian Cool Interval (TBCI), beginning 150 million years ago and continuing into the Early Cretaceous.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (TOAE), also known as the Jenkyns Event, was an episode of widespread oceanic anoxia during the early part of the Toarcian Age, c. 183 Mya. It is marked by a globally documented high amplitude negative carbon isotope excursion, as well as the deposition of black shales and the extinction and collapse of carbonate-producing marine organisms, associated with a major rise in global temperatures.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The TOAE is often attributed to the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces and the associated increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, as well as the possible associated release of methane clathrates. This likely accelerated the hydrological cycle and increased silicate weathering, as evidenced by an increased amount of organic matter of terrestrial origin found in marine deposits during the TOAE. Groups affected include ammonites, ostracods, foraminifera, bivalves, cnidarians, and especially brachiopods, for which the TOAE represented one of the most severe extinctions in their evolutionary history. While the event had significant impact on marine invertebrates, it had little effect on marine reptiles. During the TOAE, the Sichuan Basin was transformed into a giant lake, probably three times the size of modern-day Lake Superior, represented by the Da’anzhai Member of the Ziliujing Formation. The lake likely sequestered ~460 gigatons (Gt) of organic carbon and ~1,200 Gt of inorganic carbon during the event. Seawater pH, which had already substantially decreased prior to the event, increased slightly during the early stages of the TOAE, before dropping to its lowest point around the middle of the event. This ocean acidification is the probable cause of the collapse of carbonate production. Additionally, anoxic conditions were exacerbated by enhanced recycling of phosphorus back into ocean water as a result of high ocean acidity and temperature inhibiting its mineralisation into apatite; the abundance of phosphorus in marine environments caused further eutrophication and consequent anoxia in a positive feedback loop.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The end-Jurassic transition was originally considered one of eight mass extinctions, but is now considered to be a complex interval of faunal turnover, with the increase in diversity of some groups and decline in others, though the evidence for this is primarily European, probably controlled by changes in eustatic sea level.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "There is no evidence of a mass extinction of plants at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. At the Triassic–Jurassic boundary in Greenland, the sporomorph (pollen and spores) record suggests a complete floral turnover. An analysis of macrofossil floral communities in Europe suggests that changes were mainly due to local ecological succession. At the end of the Triassic, the Peltaspermaceae became extinct in most parts of the world, with Lepidopteris persisting into the Early Jurassic in Patagonia. Dicroidium, a corystosperm seed fern that was a dominant part of Gondwanan floral communities during the Triassic, also declined at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, surviving as a relict in Antarctica into the Early Jurassic.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Conifers formed a dominant component of Jurassic floras. The Late Triassic and Jurassic was a major time of diversification of conifers, with most modern conifer groups appearing in the fossil record by the end of the Jurassic, having evolved from voltzialean ancestors.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Araucarian conifers have their first unambiguous records during the Early Jurassic, and members of the modern genus Araucaria were widespread across both hemispheres by the Middle Jurassic.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Also abundant during the Jurassic is the extinct family Cheirolepidiaceae, often recognised through their highly distinctive Classopolis pollen. Jurassic representatives include the pollen cone Classostrobus and the seed cone Pararaucaria. Araucarian and Cheirolepidiaceae conifers often occur in association.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The oldest definitive record of the cypress family (Cupressaceae) is Austrohamia minuta from the Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) of Patagonia, known from many parts of the plant. The reproductive structures of Austrohamia have strong similarities to those of the primitive living cypress genera Taiwania and Cunninghamia. By the Middle to Late Jurassic Cupressaceae were abundant in warm temperate–tropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere, most abundantly represented by the genus Elatides. The Jurassic also saw the first appearances of some modern genera of cypresses, such as Sequoia.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Members of the extinct genus Schizolepidopsis which likely represent a stem-group to the pine family (Pinaceae), were widely distributed across Eurasia during the Jurassic. The oldest unambiguous record of Pinaceae is the pine cone Eathiestrobus, known from the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) of Scotland, which remains the only known unequivocal fossil of the group before the Cretaceous. Despite being the earliest known member of the Pinaceae, Eathiestrobus appears to be a member of the pinoid clade of the family, suggesting that the initial diversification of Pinaceae occurred earlier than has been found in the fossil record.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The earliest record of the yew family (Taxaceae) is Palaeotaxus rediviva, from the Hettangian of Sweden, suggested to be closely related to the living Austrotaxus, while Marskea jurassica from the Middle Jurassic of Yorkshire, England and material from the Callovian–Oxfordian Daohugou Bed in China are thought to be closely related to Amentotaxus, with the latter material assigned to the modern genus, indicating that Taxaceae had substantially diversified by the end of the Jurassic.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The oldest unambiguous members of Podocarpaceae are known from the Jurassic, found across both hemispheres, including Scarburgia and Harrisiocarpus from the Middle Jurassic of England, as well as unnamed species from the Middle-Late Jurassic of Patagonia.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "During the Early Jurassic, the flora of the mid-latitudes of Eastern Asia were dominated by the extinct deciduous broad leafed conifer Podozamites, which appears to not be closely related to any living family of conifer. Its range extended northwards into polar latitudes of Siberia and then contracted northward in the Middle to Late Jurassic, corresponding to the increasing aridity of the region.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Ginkgoales, of which the sole living species is Ginkgo biloba, were more diverse during the Jurassic: they were among the most important components of Eurasian Jurassic floras and were adapted to a wide variety of climatic conditions. The earliest representatives of the genus Ginkgo, represented by ovulate and pollen organs similar to those of the modern species, are known from the Middle Jurassic in the Northern Hemisphere. Several other lineages of ginkgoaleans are known from Jurassic rocks, including Yimaia, Grenana, Nagrenia and Karkenia. These lineages are associated with Ginkgo-like leaves, but are distinguished from living and fossil representatives of Ginkgo by having differently arranged reproductive structures. Umaltolepis from the Jurassic of Asia has strap-shaped ginkgo-like leaves with highly distinct reproductive structures with similarities to those of peltasperm and corystosperm seed ferns, has been suggested to be a member of Ginkgoales sensu lato.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Bennettitales, having first become widespread during the preceding Triassic, were diverse and abundant members of Jurassic floras across both hemispheres. The foliage of Bennettitales bears strong similarities to those of cycads, to such a degree that they cannot be reliably distinguished on the basis of morphology alone. Leaves of Bennettitales can be distinguished from those of cycads their different arrangement of stomata, and the two groups are not thought to be closely related. Jurassic Bennettitales predominantly belong to the group Williamsoniaceae, which grew as shrubs and small trees. The Williamsoniaceae are thought to have had a divaricate branching habit, similar to that of living Banksia, and adapted to growing in open habitats with poor soil nutrient conditions. Bennettitales exhibit complex, flower-like reproductive structures some of which are thought to have been pollinated by insects. Several groups of insects that bear long proboscis, including extinct families such as kalligrammatid lacewings and extant ones such as acrocerid flies, are suggested to have been pollinators of bennettitales, feeding on nectar produced by bennettitalean cones.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Cycads reached their apex of diversity during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. Despite the Mesozoic sometimes being called the \"Age of Cycads\", cycads are thought to have been a relatively minor component of mid-Mesozoic floras, with the Bennettitales and Nilssoniales, which have cycad-like foliage, being dominant. The Nilssoniales have often been considered cycads or cycad relatives, but have been found to be distinct on chemical grounds, and perhaps more closely allied with Bennettitales. The relationships of most Mesozoic cycads to living groups are ambiguous, with no Jurassic cycads belonging to either of the two modern groups of cycads, though some Jurassic cycads possibly represent stem-group relatives of modern Cycadaceae, like the leaf genus Paracycas known Europe, and Zamiaceae, like some European species of the leaf genus Pseudoctenis. Also widespread during the Jurassic was the extinct Ctenis lineage, which appears to be distantly related to modern cycads. Modern cycads are pollinated by beetles, and such an association is thought to have formed by the Early Jurassic.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Although there have been several claimed records, there are no widely accepted Jurassic fossil records of flowering plants, which make up 90% of living plant species, and fossil evidence suggests that the group diversified during the following Cretaceous.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The earliest known gnetophytes, one of the four main living groups of gymnosperms, appeared by the end of the Jurassic, with the oldest unequivocal gnetophyte being the seed Dayvaultia from the Late Jurassic of North America.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "\"Seed ferns\" (Pteridospermatophyta) is a collective term to refer to disparate lineages of fern like plants that produce seeds but have uncertain affinities to living seed plant groups. A prominent group of Jurassic seed ferns is the Caytoniales, which reached their zenith during the Jurassic, with widespread records in the Northern Hemisphere, though records in the Southern Hemisphere remain rare. Due to their berry-like seed-bearing capsules, they have often been suggested to have been closely related or perhaps ancestral to flowering plants, but the evidence for this is inconclusive. Corystosperm-aligned seed ferns, such as Pachypteris and Komlopteris were widespread across both hemispheres during the Jurassic.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Czekanowskiales, also known as Leptostrobales, are a group of seed plants uncertain affinities with persistent heavily dissected leaves borne on deciduous short shoots, subtended by scale-like leaves, known from the Late Triassic (possibly Late Permian) to Cretaceous. They are thought to have had a tree- or shrub-like habit and formed a conspicuous component of Northern Hemisphere Mesozoic temperate and warm-temperate floras. The genus Phoenicopsis was widespread in Early-Middle Jurassic floras of Eastern Asia and Siberia.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Pentoxylales, a small but clearly distinct group of liana-like seed plants of obscure affinities, first appeared during the Jurassic. Their distribution appears to have been confined to Eastern Gondwana.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Living families of ferns widespread during the Jurassic include Dipteridaceae, Matoniaceae, Gleicheniaceae, Osmundaceae and Marattiaceae. Polypodiales, which make up 80% of living fern diversity, have no record from the Jurassic and are thought to have diversified in the Cretaceous, though the widespread Jurassic herbaceous fern genus Coniopteris, historically interpreted as a close relative of tree ferns of the family Dicksoniaceae, has recently been reinterpreted as an early relative of the group.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The Cyatheales, the group containing most modern tree ferns, appeared during the Late Jurassic, represented by members of the genus Cyathocaulis, which are suggested to be early members of Cyatheaceae on the basis of cladistic analysis. Only a handful of possible records exist of the Hymenophyllaceae from the Jurassic, including Hymenophyllites macrosporangiatus from the Russian Jurassic.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The oldest remains of modern horsetails of the genus Equisetum first appear in the Early Jurassic, represented by Equisetum dimorphum from the Early Jurassic of Patagonia and Equisetum laterale from the Early to Middle Jurassic of Australia. Silicified remains of Equisetum thermale from the Late Jurassic of Argentina exhibit all the morphological characters of modern members of the genus. The estimated split between Equisetum bogotense and all other living Equisetum is estimated to have occurred no later than the Early Jurassic.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Quillworts virtually identical to modern species are known from the Jurassic onwards. Isoetites rolandii from the Middle Jurassic of Oregon is the earliest known species to represent all major morphological features of modern Isoetes. More primitive forms such as Nathorstiana, which retain an elongated stem, persisted into the Early Cretaceous.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The moss Kulindobryum from the Middle Jurassic of Russia, which was found associated with dinosaur bones, is thought to be related to the Splachnaceae, which grow on animal caracasses. Bryokhutuliinia from the same region is thought to be related to Dicranales. Heinrichsiella from the Jurassic of Patagonia is thought to belong to either Polytrichaceae or Timmiellaceae.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The liverwort Pellites hamiensis from the Middle Jurassic Xishanyao Formation of China is the oldest record of the family Pelliaceae. Pallaviciniites sandaolingensis from the same deposit is thought to belong to the subclass Pallaviciniineae within the Pallaviciniales. Ricciopsis sandaolingensis, also from the same deposit, is the only Jurassic record of Ricciaceae.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Triassic–Jurassic extinction decimated pseudosuchian diversity, with crocodylomorphs, which originated during the early Late Triassic, being the only group of pseudosuchians to survive. All other pseudosuchians, including the herbivorous aetosaurs and carnivorous \"rauisuchians\", became extinct. The morphological diversity of crocodylomorphs during the Early Jurassic was around the same as that of Late Triassic pseudosuchians, but they occupied different areas of morphospace, suggesting that they occupied different ecological niches to their Triassic counterparts and that there was an extensive and rapid radiation of crocodylomorphs during this interval. While living crocodilians are mostly confined to an aquatic ambush predator lifestyle, Jurassic crocodylomorphs exhibited a wide variety of life habits. An unnamed protosuchid known from teeth from the Early Jurassic of Arizona represents the earliest known herbivorous crocodylomorph, an adaptation that appeared several times during the Mesozoic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Thalattosuchia, a clade of predominantly marine crocodylomorphs, first appeared during the Early Jurassic and became a prominent part of marine ecosystems. Within Thalattosuchia, the Metriorhynchidae became highly adapted for life in the open ocean, including the transformation of limbs into flippers, the development of a tail fluke, and smooth, scaleless skin. The morphological diversity of crocodylomorphs during the Early and Middle Jurassic was relatively low compared to that in later time periods and was dominated by terrestrial small-bodied, long-legged sphenosuchians, early crocodyliforms and thalattosuchians. The Neosuchia, a major group of crocodylomorphs, first appeared during the Early to Middle Jurassic. The Neosuchia represents the transition from an ancestrally terrestrial lifestyle to a freshwater aquatic ecology similar to that occupied by modern crocodilians. The timing of the origin of Neosuchia is disputed. The oldest record of Neosuchians has been suggested to be Calsoyasuchus, from the Early Jurassic of Arizona, which in many analyses has been recovered as the earliest branching member of the neosuchian family Goniopholididae, which radically alters times of diversification for crocodylomorphs. However, this placement has been disputed, with some analyses finding it outside Neosuchia, which would place the oldest records of Neosuchia in the Middle Jurassic. Razanandrongobe from the Middle Jurassic of Madagascar has been suggested the represent the oldest record of Notosuchia, a primarily Gondwanan clade of mostly terrestrial crocodylomorphs, otherwise known from the Cretaceous and Cenozoic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Stem-group turtles (Testudinata) diversified during the Jurassic. Jurassic stem-turtles belong to two progressively more advanced clades, the Mesochelydia and Perichelydia. It is thought that the ancestral condition for mesochelydians is aquatic, as opposed to terrestrial for testudinates. The two modern groups of turtles (Testudines), Pleurodira and Cryptodira, diverged by the beginning of the Late Jurassic. The oldest known pleurodires, the Platychelyidae, are known from the Late Jurassic of Europe and the Americas, while the oldest unambiguous cryptodire, Sinaspideretes, an early relative of softshell turtles, is known from the Late Jurassic of China. The Thalassochelydia, a diverse lineage of marine turtles unrelated to modern sea turtles, are known from the Late Jurassic of Europe and South America.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Rhynchocephalians (the sole living representative being the tuatara) had achieved a global distribution by the beginning of the Jurassic. Rhynchocephalians reached their highest morphological diversity in their evolutionary history during the Jurassic, occupying a wide range of lifestyles, including the aquatic pleurosaurs with long snake-like bodies and reduced limbs, the specialized herbivorous eilenodontines, as well as the sapheosaurs which had broad tooth plates indicative of durophagy. Rhynchocephalians disappeared from Asia after the Early Jurassic. The last common ancestor of living squamates (which includes lizards and snakes) is estimated to have lived around 190 million years ago during the Early Jurassic, with the major divergences between modern squamate lineages estimated to have occurred during the Early to Middle Jurassic. Squamates first appear in the fossil record during the Middle Jurassic including members of modern clades such as Scincomorpha, though many Jurassic squamates have unclear relationships to living groups. Eichstaettisaurus from the Late Jurassic of Germany has been suggested to be an early relative of geckos and displays adaptations for climbing. Dorsetisaurus from the Late Jurassic of North America and Europe represents the oldest widely accepted record of Anguimorpha. Marmoretta from the Middle Jurassic of Britain has been suggested to represent a late surviving lepidosauromorph outside both Rhynchocephalia and Squamata, though some studies have recovered it as a stem-squamate.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The earliest known remains of Choristodera, a group of freshwater aquatic reptiles with uncertain affinities to other reptile groups, are found in the Middle Jurassic. Only two genera of choristodere are known from the Jurassic. One is the small lizard-like Cteniogenys, thought to be the most basal known choristodere; it is known from the Middle to Late Jurassic of Europe and Late Jurassic of North America, with similar remains also known from the upper Middle Jurassic of Kyrgyzstan and western Siberia. The other is Coeruleodraco from the Late Jurassic of China, which is a more advanced choristodere, though still small and lizard-like in morphology.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Ichthyosaurs suffered an evolutionary bottleneck during the end-Triassic extinction, with all non-neoichthyosaurians becoming extinct. Ichthyosaurs reached their apex of species diversity during the Early Jurassic, with an array of morphologies including the huge apex predator Temnodontosaurus and swordfish-like Eurhinosaurus, though Early Jurassic ichthyosaurs were significantly less morphologically diverse than their Triassic counterparts. At the Early–Middle Jurassic boundary, between the end of the Toarcian and the beginning of the Bajocian, most lineages of ichythosaur appear to have become extinct, with the first appearance of the Ophthalmosauridae, the clade that would encompass almost all ichthyosaurs from then on, during the early Bajocian. Ophthalmosaurids were diverse by the Late Jurassic, but failed to fill many of the niches that had been occupied by ichthyosaurs during the Early Jurassic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Plesiosaurs originated at the end of the Triassic (Rhaetian). By the end of the Triassic, all other sauropterygians, including placodonts and nothosaurs, had become extinct. At least six lineages of plesiosaur crossed the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. Plesiosaurs were already diverse in the earliest Jurassic, with the majority of plesiosaurs in the Hettangian-aged Blue Lias belonging to the Rhomaleosauridae. Early plesiosaurs were generally small-bodied, with body size increasing into the Toarcian. There appears to have been a strong turnover around the Early–Middle Jurassic boundary, with microcleidids and rhomaleosaurids becoming extinct and nearly extinct respectively after the end of the Toarcian with the first appearance of the dominant clade of plesiosaurs of the latter half of the Jurassic, the Cryptoclididae during the Bajocian. The Middle Jurassic saw the evolution of short-necked and large-headed thalassophonean pliosaurs from ancestrally small-headed, long-necked forms. Some thalassophonean pliosaurs, such as some species of Pliosaurus, had skulls up to two metres in length with body lengths estimated around 10–12 metres, making them the apex predators of Late Jurassic oceans. Plesiosaurs invaded freshwater environments during the Jurassic, with indeterminate remains of small-bodied pleisosaurs known from freshwater sediments from the Jurassic of China and Australia.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Pterosaurs first appeared in the Late Triassic. A major radiation of Jurassic pterosaurs is the Rhamphorhynchidae, which first appeared in the late Early Jurassic (Toarcian); they are thought to been piscivorous. Anurognathids, which first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, possessed short heads and densely furred bodies, and are thought to have been insectivores. Derived monofenestratan pterosaurs such as wukongopterids appeared in the late Middle Jurassic. Advanced short-tailed pterodactyloids first appeared at the Middle–Late Jurassic boundary. Jurassic pterodactyloids include the ctenochasmatids, like Ctenochasma, which have closely spaced needle-like teeth that were presumably used for filter feeding. The bizarre Late Jurassic ctenochasmatoid Cycnorhamphus had a jaw with teeth only at the tips, with bent jaws like those of living openbill storks that may have been used to hold and crush hard invertebrates.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Dinosaurs, which had morphologically diversified in the Late Triassic, experienced a major increase in diversity and abundance during the Early Jurassic in the aftermath of the end-Triassic extinction and the extinction of other reptile groups, becoming the dominant vertebrates in terrestrial ecosystems. Chilesaurus, a morphologically aberrant herbivorous dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of South America, has uncertain relationships to the three main groups of dinosaurs, having been recovered as a member of all three in different analyses.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Advanced theropods belonging to Neotheropoda first appeared in the Late Triassic. Basal neotheropods, such as coelophysoids and dilophosaurs, persisted into the Early Jurassic, but became extinct by the Middle Jurassic. The earliest averostrans appear during the Early Jurassic, with the earliest known member of Ceratosauria being Saltriovenator from the early Sinemurian (199.3–197.5 million years ago) of Italy. The unusual ceratosaur Limusaurus from the Late Jurassic of China had a herbivorous diet, with adults having edentulous beaked jaws, making it the earliest known theropod to have converted from an ancestrally carnivorous diet. The earliest members of the Tetanurae appeared during the late Early Jurassic or early Middle Jurassic. The Megalosauridae represent the oldest radiation of the Tetanurae, first appearing in Europe during the Bajocian. The oldest member of Allosauroidea has been suggested to be Asfaltovenator from the Middle Jurassic of South America. Coelurosaurs first appeared during the Middle Jurassic, including early tyrannosaurs such as Proceratosaurus from the Bathonian of Britain. Some coelurosaurs from the Late Jurassic of China including Shishugounykus and Haplocheirus are suggested to represent early alvarezsaurs, however, this has been questioned. Scansoriopterygids, a group of small feathered coelurosaurs with membraneous, bat-like wings for gliding, are known from the Middle to Late Jurassic of China. The oldest record of troodontids is suggested to be Hesperornithoides from the Late Jurassic of North America. Tooth remains suggested to represent those of dromaeosaurs are known from the Jurassic, but no body remains are known until the Cretaceous.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The earliest avialans, which include birds and their ancestors, appear during the Middle to Late Jurassic, definitively represented by Archaeopteryx from the Late Jurassic of Germany. Avialans belong to the clade Paraves within Coelurosauria, which also includes dromaeosaurs and troodontids. The Anchiornithidae from the Middle-Late Jurassic of Eurasia have frequently suggested to be avialans, but have also alternatively found as a separate lineage of paravians.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The earliest definitive ornithischians appear during the Early Jurassic, represented by basal ornithischians like Lesothosaurus, heterodontosaurids, and early members of Thyreophora. The earliest members of Ankylosauria and Stegosauria appear during the Middle Jurassic. The basal neornithischian Kulindadromeus from the Middle Jurassic of Russia indicates that at least some ornithischians were covered in protofeathers. The earliest members of Ankylopollexia, which become prominent in the Cretaceous, appeared during the Late Jurassic, represented by bipedal forms such as Camptosaurus. Ceratopsians first appeared in the Late Jurassic of China, represented by members of Chaoyangsauridae.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Sauropods became the dominant large herbivores in terrestrial ecosystems during the Jurassic. Some Jurassic sauropods reached gigantic sizes, becoming the largest organisms to have ever lived on land.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Basal bipedal sauropodomorphs, such as massospondylids, continued to exist into the Early Jurassic, but became extinct by the beginning of the Middle Jurassic. Quadrupedal sauropomorphs appeared during the Late Triassic. The quadrupedal Ledumahadi from the earliest Jurassic of South Africa reached an estimated weight of 12 tons, far in excess of other known basal sauropodomorphs. Gravisaurian sauropods first appeared during the Early Jurassic, with the oldest definitive record being Vulcanodon from Zimbabwe, likely of Sinemurian age. Eusauropods first appeared during the late Early Jurassic (Toarcian) and diversified during the Middle Jurassic; these included cetiosaurids, turiasaurs, and mamenchisaurs. Neosauropods such as macronarians and diplodocoids first appeared during the Middle Jurassic, before becoming abundant and globally distributed during the Late Jurassic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The diversity of temnospondyls had progressively declined through the Late Triassic, with only brachyopoids surviving into the Jurassic and beyond. Members of the family Brachyopidae are known from Jurassic deposits in Asia, while the chigutisaurid Siderops is known from the Early Jurassic of Australia. Modern lissamphibians began to diversify during the Jurassic. The Early Jurassic Prosalirus thought to represent the first frog relative with a morphology capable of hopping like living frogs. Morphologically recognisable stem-frogs like the South American Notobatrachus are known from the Middle Jurassic, with modern crown-group frogs like Enneabatrachus and Rhadinosteus appearing by the Late Jurassic. While the earliest salamander-line amphibians are known from the Triassic, crown group salamanders first appear during the Middle to Late Jurassic in Eurasia, alongside stem-group relatives. Many Jurassic stem-group salamanders, such as Marmorerpeton and Kokartus, are thought to have been neotenic. Early representatives of crown group salamanders include Chunerpeton, Pangerpeton and Linglongtriton from the Middle to Late Jurassic Yanliao Biota of China. These belong to the Cryptobranchoidea, which contains living Asiatic and giant salamanders. Beiyanerpeton, and Qinglongtriton from the same biota are thought to be early members of Salamandroidea, the group which contains all other living salamanders. Salamanders dispersed into North America by the end of the Jurassic, as evidenced by Iridotriton, found in the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation. The stem-caecilian Eocaecilia is known from the Early Jurassic of Arizona. The fourth group of lissamphibians, the extinct albanerpetontids, first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, represented by Anoualerpeton priscus from the Bathonian of Britain, as well as indeterminate remains from equivalently aged sediments in France and the Anoual Formation of Morocco.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Mammaliaformes, including mammals, having originated from cynodonts at the end of the Triassic, diversified extensively during the Jurassic. While most Jurassic mammalaliaforms are solely known from isolated teeth and jaw fragments, exceptionally preserved remains have revealed a variety of lifestyles. The docodontan Castorocauda was adapted to aquatic life, similarly to the platypus and otters. Some members of Haramiyida and the eutriconodontan tribe Volaticotherini had a patagium akin to those of flying squirrels, allowing them to glide through the air. The aardvark-like mammal Fruitafossor, of uncertain taxonomy, was likely a specialist on colonial insects, similarly to living anteaters. Australosphenida, a group of mammals possibly related to living monotremes, first appeared in the Middle Jurassic of Gondwana. The earliest records of multituberculates, of the longest lasting and most successful orders of mammals, are known from the Middle Jurassic. Therian mammals, represented today by living placentals and marsupials, have their earliest records during the early Late Jurassic, represented by Juramaia, a eutherian mammal closer to the ancestry of placentals than marsupials. Juramaia is much more advanced than expected for its age, as other therian mammals are not known until the Early Cretaceous, and it has been suggested that Juramaia may also originate from the Early Cretaceous instead. Two groups of non-mammaliaform cynodonts persisted beyond the end of the Triassic. The insectiviorous Tritheledontidae has a few records from the Early Jurassic. The Tritylodontidae, a herbiviorous group of cynodonts that first appeared during the Rhaetian, has abundant records from the Jurassic, overwhelmingly from the Northern Hemisphere.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The last known species of conodont, a class of jawless fish whose hard, tooth-like elements are key index fossils, finally became extinct during the earliest Jurassic after over 300 million years of evolutionary history, with an asynchronous extinction occurring first in the Tethys and eastern Panthalassa and survivors persisting into the earliest Hettangian of Hungary and central Panthalassa. End-Triassic conodonts were represented by only a handful of species and had been progressively declining through the Middle and Late Triassic. Yanliaomyzon from the Middle Jurassic of China represents the oldest post Paleozoic lamprey, and the oldest lamprey to have the toothed feeding apparatus and likely the three stage life cycle typical of modern members of the group.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Lungfish (Dipnoi) were present in freshwater environments of both hemispheres during the Jurassic. Genera include Ceratodus and Ptychoceratodus, which are more closely related to living South American and African lungfish than Queensland lungfish, and Ferganoceratodus from the Jurassic of Asia, which is not closely related to either group of living lungfish. Mawsoniids, a marine and freshwater/brackish group of coelacanths, which first appeared in North America during the Triassic, expanded into Europe and South America by the end of the Jurassic. The marine Latimeriidae, which contains the living coelacanths of the genus Latimeria, were also present in the Jurassic, having originated in the Triassic, with a number of records from the Jurassic of Europe.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii) were major components of Jurassic freshwater and marine ecosystems. Archaic \"palaeoniscoid\" fish, which were common in both marine and freshwater habitats during the preceding Triassic declined during the Jurassic, being largely replaced by more derived actinopterygian lineages. The oldest known Acipenseriformes, the group that contains living sturgeon and paddlefish, are from the Early Jurassic. Amiiform fish (which today only includes the bowfin) first appeared during the Early Jurassic, represented by Caturus from the Pliensbachian of Britain; after their appearance in the western Tethys, they expanded to Africa, North America and Southeast and East Asia by the end of the Jurassic, with the modern family Amiidae appearing during the Late Jurassic. Pycnodontiformes, which first appeared in the western Tethys during the Late Triassic, expanded to South America and Southeast Asia by the end of the Jurassic, having a high diversity in Europe during the Late Jurassic. During the Jurassic, the Ginglymodi, the only living representatives being gars (Lepisosteidae) were diverse in both freshwater and marine environments. The oldest known representatives of anatomically modern gars appeared during the Upper Jurassic. Stem-group teleosts, which make up over 99% of living Actinopterygii, had first appeared during the Triassic in the western Tethys; they underwent a major diversification beginning in the Late Jurassic, with early representatives of modern teleost clades such as Elopomorpha and Osteoglossoidei appearing during this time. The Pachycormiformes, a group of marine stem-teleosts, first appeared in the Early Jurassic and included both tuna-like predatory and filter-feeding forms, the latter included the largest bony fish known to have existed: Leedsichthys, with an estimated maximum length of over 15 metres, known from the late Middle to Late Jurassic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "During the Early Jurassic, the shark-like hybodonts, which represented the dominant group of chondrichthyans during the preceding Triassic, were common in both marine and freshwater settings; however, by the Late Jurassic, hybodonts had become minor components of most marine communities, having been largely replaced by modern neoselachians, but remained common in freshwater and restricted marine environments. The Neoselachii, which contains all living sharks and rays, radiated beginning in the Early Jurassic. The oldest known ray (Batoidea) is Antiquaobatis from the Pliensbachian of Germany. Jurassic batoids known from complete remains retain a conservative, guitarfish-like morphology. The oldest known Hexanchiformes and carpet sharks (Orectolobiformes) are from the Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian & Toarcian, respectively) of Europe. The oldest known members of the Heterodontiformes, the only living members of which are the bullhead shark (Heterodontus), first appeared in the Early Jurassic, with representatives of the living genus appearing during the Late Jurassic. The oldest known mackerel sharks (Lamniformes) are from the Middle Jurassic, represented by the genus Palaeocarcharias, which has an orectolobiform-like body but shares key similarities in tooth histology with lamniformes, including the absence of orthodentine. The oldest record of angelsharks (Squatiniformes) is Pseudorhina from the Late Jurassic (Oxfordian–Tithonian) of Europe, which already has a bodyform similar to living members of the order. The oldest known remains of Carcharhiniformes, the largest order of living sharks, first appear in the late Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) of the western Tethys (England and Morocco). Known dental and exceptionally preserved body remains of Jurassic Carchariniformes are similar to those of living catsharks. Synechodontiformes, an extinct group of sharks closely related to Neoselachii, were also widespread during the Jurassic. The oldest remains of modern chimaeras are from the Early Jurassic of Europe, with members of the living family Callorhinchidae appearing during the Middle Jurassic. Unlike most living chimaeras, Jurassic chimeras are often found in shallow water environments. The closely related Squaloraja and myriacanthoids are also known from the Jurassic of Europe.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "There appears to have been no major extinction of insects at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. Many important insect fossil localities are known from the Jurassic of Eurasia, the most important being the Karabastau Formation of Kazakhstan and the various Yanliao Biota deposits in Inner Mongolia, China, such as the Daohugou Bed, dating to the Callovian–Oxfordian. The diversity of insects stagnated throughout the Early and Middle Jurassic, but during the latter third of the Jurassic origination rates increased substantially while extinction rates remained flat. The increasing diversity of insects in the Middle–Late Jurassic corresponds with a substantial increase in the diversity of insect mouthparts. The Middle to Late Jurassic was a time of major diversification for beetles. Weevils first appear in the fossil record during the Middle to Late Jurassic, but are suspected to have originated during the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic. The oldest known lepidopterans (the group containing butterflies and moths) are known from the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, with wing scales belonging to the suborder Glossata and Micropterigidae-grade moths from the deposits of this age in Germany. Modern representatives of both dragonflies and damselflies also first appeared during the Jurassic. Although modern representatives are not known until the Cenozoic, ectoparasitic insects thought to represent primitive fleas, belonging to the family Pseudopulicidae, are known from the Middle Jurassic of Asia. These insects are substantially different from modern fleas, lacking the specialised morphology of the latter and being larger. Parasitoid wasps (Apocrita) first appeared during the Early Jurassic and subsequently became widespread, reshaping terrestrial food webs. The Jurassic saw also saw the first appearances of several other groups of insects, including Phasmatodea (stick insects), Mantophasmatidae, Embioptera (webspinners), and Raphidioptera (snakeflies).",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Only a handful of records of mites are known from the Jurassic, including Jureremus, an oribatid mite belonging to the family Cymbaeremaeidae known from the Late Jurassic of Britain and Russia, and a member of the still living orbatid genus Hydrozetes from the Early Jurassic of Sweden. Spiders diversified through the Jurassic. The Early Jurassic Seppo koponeni may represent a stem group to Palpimanoidea. Eoplectreurys from the Middle Jurassic of China is considered a stem lineage of Synspermiata. The oldest member of the family Archaeidae, Patarchaea, is known from the Middle Jurassic of China. Mongolarachne from the Middle Jurassic of China is among the largest known fossil spiders, with legs over 5 centimetres long. The only scorpion known from the Jurassic is Liassoscorpionides from the Early Jurassic of Germany, of uncertain placement. Eupnoi harvestmen (Opiliones) are known from the Middle Jurassic of China, including members of the family Sclerosomatidae.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "During the end-Triassic extinction, 46%–72% of all marine genera became extinct. The effects of the end Triassic extinction were greatest at tropical latitudes and were more severe in Panthalassa than the Tethys or Boreal oceans. Tropical reef ecosystems collapsed during the event, and would not fully recover until much later in the Jurassic. Sessile filter feeders and photosymbiotic organisms were among most severely affected.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Having declined at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, reefs substantially expanded during the Late Jurassic, including both sponge reefs and scleractinian coral reefs. Late Jurassic reefs were similar in form to modern reefs but had more microbial carbonates and hypercalcified sponges, and had weak biogenic binding. Reefs sharply declined at the close of the Jurassic, which caused an associated drop in diversity in decapod crustaceans. The earliest planktonic foraminifera, which constitute the suborder Globigerinina, are known from the late Early Jurassic (mid-Toarcian) of the western Tethys, expanding across the whole Tethys by the Middle Jurassic and becoming globally distributed in tropical latitudes by the Late Jurassic. Coccolithophores and dinoflagellates, which had first appeared during the Triassic, radiated during the Early to Middle Jurassic, becoming prominent members of the phytoplankton. Microconchid tube worms, the last remaining order of Tentaculita, a group of animals of uncertain affinities that were convergent on Spirorbis tube worms, were rare after the Triassic and had become reduced to the single genus Punctaconchus, which became extinct in the late Bathonian. The oldest known diatom is from Late Jurassic–aged amber from Thailand, assigned to the living genus Hemiaulus.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Crinoids diversified throughout the Jurassic, reaching their peak Mesozoic diversity during the Late Jurassic, primarily due to the radiation of sessile forms belonging to the orders Cyrtocrinida and Millericrinida. Echinoids (sea urchins) underwent substantial diversification beginning in the Early Jurassic, primarily driven by the radiation of irregular (asymmetrical) forms, which were adapting to deposit feeding. Rates of diversification sharply dropped during the Late Jurassic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The Jurassic was a significant time for the evolution of decapods. The first true crabs (Brachyura) are known from the Early Jurassic, with the earliest being Eocarcinus praecursor from the early Pliensbachian of England, which lacked the crab-like morphology (carcinisation) of modern crabs, and Eoprosopon klugi from the late Pliensbachian of Germany, which may belong to the living family Homolodromiidae. Most Jurassic crabs are known only from carapace pieces, which makes it difficult to determine their relationships. While rare in the Early and Middle Jurassic, crabs became abundant during the Late Jurassic as they expanded from their ancestral silty sea floor habitat into hard substrate habitats like reefs, with crevices in reefs providing refuge from predators. Hermit crabs also first appeared during the Jurassic, with the earliest known being Schobertella hoelderi from the late Hettangian of Germany. Early hermit crabs are associated with ammonite shells rather than those of gastropods. Glypheids, which today are only known from two species, reached their peak diversity during the Jurassic, with around 150 species out of a total fossil record of 250 known from the period. Jurassic barnacles were of low diversity compared to present, but several important evolutionary innovations are known, including the first appearances of calcite shelled forms and species with an epiplanktonic mode of life.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Brachiopod diversity declined during the Triassic–Jurassic extinction. Spire-bearing brachiopods (Spiriferinida and Athyridida) did not recover their biodiversity, becoming extinct in the TOAE. Rhynchonellida and Terebratulida also declined during the Triassic–Jurassic extinction but rebounded during the Early Jurassic; neither clade underwent much morphological variation. Brachiopods substantially declined in the Late Jurassic; the causes are poorly understood. Proposed reasons include increased predation, competition with bivalves, enhanced bioturbation or increased grazing pressure.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Like the preceding Triassic, bryozoan diversity was relatively low compared to the Paleozoic. The vast majority of Jurassic bryozoans are members of Cyclostomatida, which experienced a radiation during the Middle Jurassic, with all Jurassic representatives belonging to the suborders Tubuliporina and Cerioporina. Cheilostomata, the dominant group of modern bryozoans, first appeared during the Late Jurassic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The end-Triassic extinction had a severe impact on bivalve diversity, though it had little impact on bivalve ecological diversity. The extinction was selective, having less of an impact on deep burrowers, but there is no evidence of a differential impact between surface-living (epifaunal) and burrowing (infaunal) bivalves. Bivalve family level diversity after the Early Jurassic was static, though genus diversity experienced a gradual increase throughout the period. Rudists, the dominant reef-building organisms of the Cretaceous, first appeared in the Late Jurassic (mid-Oxfordian) in the northern margin of the western Tethys, expanding to the eastern Tethys by the end of the Jurassic.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Ammonites were devastated by the end-Triassic extinction, with only a handful of genera belonging to the family Psiloceratidae of the suborder Phylloceratina surviving and becoming ancestral to all later Jurassic and Cretaceous ammonites. Ammonites explosively diversified during the Early Jurassic, with the orders Psiloceratina, Ammonitina, Lytoceratina, Haploceratina, Perisphinctina and Ancyloceratina all appearing during the Jurassic. Ammonite faunas during the Jurassic were regional, being divided into around 20 distinguishable provinces and subprovinces in two realms, the northern high latitude Pan-Boreal realm, consisting of the Arctic, northern Panthalassa and northern Atlantic regions, and the equatorial–southern Pan-Tethyan realm, which included the Tethys and most of Panthalassa. Ammonite diversifications occurred coevally with marine transgressions, while their diversity nadirs occurred during marine regressions.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The oldest definitive records of the squid-like belemnites are from the earliest Jurassic (Hettangian–Sinemurian) of Europe and Japan; they expanded worldwide during the Jurassic. Belemnites were shallow-water dwellers, inhabiting the upper 200 metres of the water column on the continental shelves and in the littoral zone. They were key components of Jurassic ecosystems, both as predators and prey, as evidenced by the abundance of belemnite guards in Jurassic rocks.",
"title": "Fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The earliest vampyromorphs, of which the only living member is the vampire squid, first appeared during the Early Jurassic. The earliest octopuses appeared during the Middle Jurassic, having split from their closest living relatives, the vampyromorphs, during the Triassic to Early Jurassic. All Jurassic octopuses are solely known from the hard gladius. Octopuses likely originated from bottom-dwelling (benthic) ancestors which lived in shallow environments. Proteroctopus from the late Middle Jurassic La Voulte-sur-Rhône lagerstätte, previously interpreted as an early octopus, is now thought to be a basal taxon outside the clade containing vampyromorphs and octopuses.",
"title": "Fauna"
}
]
| The Jurassic is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period 201.4 million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era and is named after the Jura Mountains, where limestone strata from the period were first identified. The start of the Jurassic was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, associated with the eruption of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP). The beginning of the Toarcian Stage started around 183 million years ago and is marked by the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, a global episode of oceanic anoxia, ocean acidification, and elevated global temperatures associated with extinctions, likely caused by the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces. The end of the Jurassic, however, has no clear, definitive boundary with the Cretaceous and is the only boundary between geological periods to remain formally undefined. By the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The climate of the Jurassic was warmer than the present, and there were no ice caps. Forests grew close to the poles, with large arid expanses in the lower latitudes. On land, the fauna transitioned from the Triassic fauna, dominated jointly by dinosauromorph and pseudosuchian archosaurs, to one dominated by dinosaurs alone. The first birds appeared during the Jurassic, evolving from a branch of theropod dinosaurs. Other major events include the appearance of the earliest lizards and the evolution of therian mammals. Crocodylomorphs made the transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic life. The oceans were inhabited by marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, while pterosaurs were the dominant flying vertebrates. The first sharks, rays and crabs also first appeared during the period. | 2001-09-26T14:35:00Z | 2023-12-26T20:46:32Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic |
15,656 | John Wyndham | John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (/ˈwɪndəm/; 10 July 1903 – 11 March 1969) was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids (1951), filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title.
Wyndham was born in Warwickshire and spent most of his childhood in private education in Devon and Hampshire. He tried several careers before publishing a novel and several short stories. He saw action during World War II and went back to writing afterwards, publishing several very successful novels, and influencing a number of other writers who followed him. On the plausibility of his writing, The Guardian states his "innocuously English backdrops are central to the power of his novels, implying that apocalypse could occur at any time — or, indeed, be happening in the next village at this moment", while The Times's reviewer of The Day of the Triffids described it as possessing "all the reality of a vividly realised nightmare."
Wyndham married Grace Wilson in 1963; he had known her for more than 30 years. They lived in Petersfield, Hampshire, where he died in 1969.
Wyndham was born in the village of Dorridge near Knowle, Warwickshire (now West Midlands), England, the son of George Beynon Harris, a barrister, and Gertrude Parkes, the daughter of a Birmingham ironmaster.
His early childhood was spent in Edgbaston in Birmingham, but when he was 8 years old his parents separated. His father then attempted to sue the Parkes family for "the custody, control and society" of his wife and family, in an unusual and high-profile court case, which he lost. Following this, Gertrude left Birmingham to live in a series of boarding houses and spa hotels. He and his younger brother, the writer Vivian Beynon Harris, spent the rest of their childhoods at a number of English preparatory and public schools, including Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, during the First World War. His longest and final stay was at Bedales School, near Petersfield in Hampshire (1918–1921), which he left at the age of 18.
After leaving school, Wyndham tried several careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising; however, he mostly relied on an allowance from his family to survive. He eventually turned to writing for money in 1925. In 1927 he published a detective novel, The Curse of the Burdens, as by John B. Harris, and by 1931 he was selling short stories and serial fiction to American science fiction magazines. His debut short story, "Worlds to Barter", appeared under the pen name John B. Harris in 1931. Subsequent stories were credited to 'John Beynon Harris' until mid-1935, when he began to use the pen name John Beynon. Three novels as by Beynon were published in 1935/36, two of them works of science fiction, the other a detective story. He also used the pen name Wyndham Parkes for one short story in the British Fantasy Magazine in 1939, as John Beynon had already been credited for another story in the same issue. During these years he lived at the Penn Club, London, which had been opened in 1920 by the remaining members of the Friends Ambulance Unit, and which had been partly funded by the Quakers. The intellectual and political mixture of pacifists, socialists and communists continued to inform his views on social engineering and feminism. At the Penn Club he met his future wife, Grace Wilson, a teacher. They embarked on a long-lasting love affair, and obtained adjacent rooms in the club, but for many years did not marry, partly because of the marriage bar under which Wilson would have lost her position.
During the Second World War, Wyndham first served as a censor in the Ministry of Information. He drew on his experiences as a firewatcher during the London Blitz and as a member of the Home Guard in The Day of the Triffids.
He then joined the British Army, serving as a corporal cipher operator in the Royal Corps of Signals. He participated in the Normandy landings, landing a few days after D-Day. He was attached to XXX Corps, which took part in some of the heaviest fighting, including surrounding the trapped German army in the Falaise Pocket.
His wartime letters to his long-time partner, Grace Wilson, are now held in the Archives of the University of Liverpool. He wrote at length of his struggles with his conscience, his doubts about humanity and his fears of the inevitability of further war. He also wrote passionately about his love for her and his fears that he would be so tainted she would not be able to love him when he returned.
After the war Wyndham returned to writing, still using the pen name John Beynon. Inspired by the success of his younger brother Vivian Beynon Harris, who had four novels published starting in 1948, he altered his writing style and, by 1951, using the John Wyndham pen name for the first time, he wrote the novel The Day of the Triffids. His pre-war writing career was not mentioned in the book's publicity and people were allowed to assume that this was a first novel from a previously unknown writer. The book had an enormous success and established Wyndham as an important exponent of science fiction.
He wrote and published six more novels under the name John Wyndham, the name he used professionally from 1951 onwards. His novel The Outward Urge (1959) was credited to John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes, but Lucas Parkes was another pseudonym for Wyndham himself. Two story collections, Jizzle and The Seeds of Time, were published in the 1950s under Wyndham's name, but included several stories originally published as by John Beynon before 1951.
Wyndham died in 1969, aged 65, at his home in Petersfield. He was outlived by his wife and his brother.
John Wyndham's reputation rests mainly on the first four of the novels published in his lifetime under that name. The Day of the Triffids remains his best-known work, but some readers consider that The Chrysalids was really his best. This is set in the far future of a post-nuclear dystopia where genetic stability is compromised and women are severely oppressed if they give birth to "mutants". David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, wrote of it: "One of the most thoughtful post-apocalypse novels ever written. Wyndham was a true English visionary, a William Blake with a science doctorate."
The ideas in The Chrysalids are echoed in The Handmaid's Tale, whose author, Margaret Atwood, has acknowledged Wyndham's work as an influence. She wrote an introduction to a new edition of Chocky in which she states that the intelligent alien babies in The Midwich Cuckoos entered her dreams.
Wyndham also wrote several short stories, ranging from hard science fiction to whimsical fantasy. Several have been filmed: "Consider Her Ways", "Random Quest", "Dumb Martian", "A Long Spoon", "Jizzle" (filmed as "Maria") and "Time to Rest" (filmed as No Place Like Earth). There is also a radio version of "Survival".
Brian Aldiss, another British science fiction writer, disparagingly labelled some of Wyndham's novels as "cosy catastrophes", especially The Day of the Triffids. This became a cliche about his work, but it has been rebutted by many more recent critics. L.J. Hurst commented that in Triffids the main character witnesses several murders, suicides and misadventures, and is frequently in mortal danger himself. Atwood wrote: "...one might as well call World War II—of which Wyndham was a veteran—a 'cozy' war because not everyone died in it."
Many other writers have acknowledged Wyndham's work as an influence on theirs, including Alex Garland, whose screenplay for 28 Days Later draws heavily on The Day of the Triffids.
In 1963, he married Grace Isobel Wilson, whom he had known for more than thirty years. They lived near Petersfield, Hampshire, just outside the grounds of Bedales School. The couple remained married until he died.
After his death, some of Wyndham's unsold work was published and his earlier work was republished. His archive was acquired by the University of Liverpool.
On 24 May 2015, an alley in Hampstead that appears in The Day of the Triffids was formally named Triffid Alley as a memorial to him.
John Wyndham's many short stories have also appeared with later variant titles or pen names. The stories include: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (/ˈwɪndəm/; 10 July 1903 – 11 March 1969) was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids (1951), filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title.",
"title": ""
},
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"title": ""
},
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"text": "Wyndham was born in the village of Dorridge near Knowle, Warwickshire (now West Midlands), England, the son of George Beynon Harris, a barrister, and Gertrude Parkes, the daughter of a Birmingham ironmaster.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
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"text": "His early childhood was spent in Edgbaston in Birmingham, but when he was 8 years old his parents separated. His father then attempted to sue the Parkes family for \"the custody, control and society\" of his wife and family, in an unusual and high-profile court case, which he lost. Following this, Gertrude left Birmingham to live in a series of boarding houses and spa hotels. He and his younger brother, the writer Vivian Beynon Harris, spent the rest of their childhoods at a number of English preparatory and public schools, including Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, during the First World War. His longest and final stay was at Bedales School, near Petersfield in Hampshire (1918–1921), which he left at the age of 18.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "After leaving school, Wyndham tried several careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising; however, he mostly relied on an allowance from his family to survive. He eventually turned to writing for money in 1925. In 1927 he published a detective novel, The Curse of the Burdens, as by John B. Harris, and by 1931 he was selling short stories and serial fiction to American science fiction magazines. His debut short story, \"Worlds to Barter\", appeared under the pen name John B. Harris in 1931. Subsequent stories were credited to 'John Beynon Harris' until mid-1935, when he began to use the pen name John Beynon. Three novels as by Beynon were published in 1935/36, two of them works of science fiction, the other a detective story. He also used the pen name Wyndham Parkes for one short story in the British Fantasy Magazine in 1939, as John Beynon had already been credited for another story in the same issue. During these years he lived at the Penn Club, London, which had been opened in 1920 by the remaining members of the Friends Ambulance Unit, and which had been partly funded by the Quakers. The intellectual and political mixture of pacifists, socialists and communists continued to inform his views on social engineering and feminism. At the Penn Club he met his future wife, Grace Wilson, a teacher. They embarked on a long-lasting love affair, and obtained adjacent rooms in the club, but for many years did not marry, partly because of the marriage bar under which Wilson would have lost her position.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "During the Second World War, Wyndham first served as a censor in the Ministry of Information. He drew on his experiences as a firewatcher during the London Blitz and as a member of the Home Guard in The Day of the Triffids.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "He then joined the British Army, serving as a corporal cipher operator in the Royal Corps of Signals. He participated in the Normandy landings, landing a few days after D-Day. He was attached to XXX Corps, which took part in some of the heaviest fighting, including surrounding the trapped German army in the Falaise Pocket.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "His wartime letters to his long-time partner, Grace Wilson, are now held in the Archives of the University of Liverpool. He wrote at length of his struggles with his conscience, his doubts about humanity and his fears of the inevitability of further war. He also wrote passionately about his love for her and his fears that he would be so tainted she would not be able to love him when he returned.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After the war Wyndham returned to writing, still using the pen name John Beynon. Inspired by the success of his younger brother Vivian Beynon Harris, who had four novels published starting in 1948, he altered his writing style and, by 1951, using the John Wyndham pen name for the first time, he wrote the novel The Day of the Triffids. His pre-war writing career was not mentioned in the book's publicity and people were allowed to assume that this was a first novel from a previously unknown writer. The book had an enormous success and established Wyndham as an important exponent of science fiction.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "He wrote and published six more novels under the name John Wyndham, the name he used professionally from 1951 onwards. His novel The Outward Urge (1959) was credited to John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes, but Lucas Parkes was another pseudonym for Wyndham himself. Two story collections, Jizzle and The Seeds of Time, were published in the 1950s under Wyndham's name, but included several stories originally published as by John Beynon before 1951.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Wyndham died in 1969, aged 65, at his home in Petersfield. He was outlived by his wife and his brother.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "John Wyndham's reputation rests mainly on the first four of the novels published in his lifetime under that name. The Day of the Triffids remains his best-known work, but some readers consider that The Chrysalids was really his best. This is set in the far future of a post-nuclear dystopia where genetic stability is compromised and women are severely oppressed if they give birth to \"mutants\". David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, wrote of it: \"One of the most thoughtful post-apocalypse novels ever written. Wyndham was a true English visionary, a William Blake with a science doctorate.\"",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The ideas in The Chrysalids are echoed in The Handmaid's Tale, whose author, Margaret Atwood, has acknowledged Wyndham's work as an influence. She wrote an introduction to a new edition of Chocky in which she states that the intelligent alien babies in The Midwich Cuckoos entered her dreams.",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Wyndham also wrote several short stories, ranging from hard science fiction to whimsical fantasy. Several have been filmed: \"Consider Her Ways\", \"Random Quest\", \"Dumb Martian\", \"A Long Spoon\", \"Jizzle\" (filmed as \"Maria\") and \"Time to Rest\" (filmed as No Place Like Earth). There is also a radio version of \"Survival\".",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Brian Aldiss, another British science fiction writer, disparagingly labelled some of Wyndham's novels as \"cosy catastrophes\", especially The Day of the Triffids. This became a cliche about his work, but it has been rebutted by many more recent critics. L.J. Hurst commented that in Triffids the main character witnesses several murders, suicides and misadventures, and is frequently in mortal danger himself. Atwood wrote: \"...one might as well call World War II—of which Wyndham was a veteran—a 'cozy' war because not everyone died in it.\"",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Many other writers have acknowledged Wyndham's work as an influence on theirs, including Alex Garland, whose screenplay for 28 Days Later draws heavily on The Day of the Triffids.",
"title": "Critical reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1963, he married Grace Isobel Wilson, whom he had known for more than thirty years. They lived near Petersfield, Hampshire, just outside the grounds of Bedales School. The couple remained married until he died.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After his death, some of Wyndham's unsold work was published and his earlier work was republished. His archive was acquired by the University of Liverpool.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On 24 May 2015, an alley in Hampstead that appears in The Day of the Triffids was formally named Triffid Alley as a memorial to him.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "John Wyndham's many short stories have also appeared with later variant titles or pen names. The stories include:",
"title": "Works"
}
]
| John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids (1951), filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title. Wyndham was born in Warwickshire and spent most of his childhood in private education in Devon and Hampshire. He tried several careers before publishing a novel and several short stories. He saw action during World War II and went back to writing afterwards, publishing several very successful novels, and influencing a number of other writers who followed him. On the plausibility of his writing, The Guardian states his "innocuously English backdrops are central to the power of his novels, implying that apocalypse could occur at any time — or, indeed, be happening in the next village at this moment", while The Times's reviewer of The Day of the Triffids described it as possessing "all the reality of a vividly realised nightmare." Wyndham married Grace Wilson in 1963; he had known her for more than 30 years. They lived in Petersfield, Hampshire, where he died in 1969. | 2001-05-12T04:08:46Z | 2023-10-07T11:51:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wyndham |
15,657 | Jerzy Kosiński | Jerzy Kosiński (born Józef Lewinkopf; Polish: [ˈjɛʐɨ kɔˈɕij̃skʲi]; June 14, 1933 – May 3, 1991) was a Polish-American novelist and two-time president of the American Chapter of P.E.N., who wrote primarily in English. Born in Poland, he survived World War II and, as a young man, emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen.
He was known for various novels, among them Being There (1971) and The Painted Bird (1965), which were adapted as films in 1979 and 2019 respectively.
Kosiński was born Józef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosiński, which his father gave to him. Eugeniusz Okoń, a Catholic priest, issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance to Polish Jews, often at great risk. Kosiński's father was assisted not only by town leaders and clergymen, but also by individuals such as Marianna Pasiowa, a member of an underground network that helped Jews evade capture. The family lived openly in Dąbrowa Rzeczycka, near Stalowa Wola, and attended church in nearby Wola Rzeczycka, with the support of villagers in Kępa Rzeczycka. For a time, they were sheltered by a Catholic family in Rzeczyca Okrągła. Jerzy even served as an altar boy in the local church.
After the war ended, Kosiński and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra. By age 22, he had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Łódź. He then became a teaching assistant at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Kosiński also studied in the Soviet Union, and served as a sharpshooter in the Polish Army.
To migrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him. He later claimed he forged the letters from prominent communist authorities guaranteeing his loyal return to Poland, as were then required for anyone leaving the country.
Kosiński first worked at odd jobs to get by, including driving a truck, and he managed to graduate from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965. He also received grants from the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and the Ford Foundation in 1968. In 1970, he won the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature. The grants allowed him to write a political non-fiction book that opened new doors of opportunity. He became a lecturer at Yale, Princeton, Davenport, and Wesleyan universities.
Kosiński practiced the photographic arts, with one-man exhibitions to his credit in Warsaw's Crooked Circle Gallery (1957) and in the Andre Zarre Gallery in New York (1988).
In 1962, Kosiński married an American steel heiress Mary Hayward Weir. They divorced four years later. Weir died in 1968 from brain cancer, leaving Kosiński out of her will. He fictionalized his marriage in his novel Blind Date, speaking of Weir under the pseudonym Mary-Jane Kirkland. Kosiński later, in 1968, married Katherina "Kiki" von Fraunhofer (1933–2007), a marketing consultant and a descendant of Bavarian nobility.
Toward the end of his life, Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses and was under attack from journalists who accused him of plagiarism. By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat.
He committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by ingesting a lethal amount of alcohol and drugs and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, suffocating himself to death. His suicide note read: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity." Kosinski's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered off a small cove in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic.
Kosiński's novels have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, and have been translated into over 30 languages, with total sales estimated at 70 million in 1991.
The Painted Bird, Kosiński's controversial 1965 novel, is a fictional account that depicts the personal experiences of a boy of unknown religious and ethnic background who wanders around unidentified areas of Eastern Europe during World War II and takes refuge among a series of people, many of whom are brutally cruel and abusive, either to him or to others.
Soon after the book was published in the US, Kosiński was accused by the then-Communist Polish government of being anti-Polish, especially following the regime's 1968 anti-Semitic campaign. The book was banned in Poland from its initial publication until the fall of the Communist government in 1989. When it was finally printed, thousands of Poles in Warsaw lined up for as long as eight hours to purchase copies of the work autographed by Kosiński. Polish literary critic and University of Warsaw professor Paweł Dudziak remarked that "in spite of the unclear role of its author,The Painted Bird is an achievement in English literature." He stressed that, because the book is a work of fiction and does not document real-world events, accusations of anti-Polish sentiment may result only from taking it too literally.
The book received recommendations from Elie Wiesel who wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was "one of the best ... Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity." Richard Kluger, reviewing it for Harper's Magazine wrote: "Extraordinary ... literally staggering ... one of the most powerful books I have ever read." Jonathan Yardley, reviewing it for The Miami Herald, wrote: "Of all the remarkable fiction that emerged from World War II, nothing stands higher than Jerzy Kosiński's The Painted Bird. A magnificent work of art, and a celebration of the individual will. No one who reads it will forget it; no one who reads it will be unmoved by it."
However, reception of the book was not uniformly positive. Several claims that Kosiński committed plagiarism in writing The Painted Bird were leveled against him. (See 'Criticism' section, below.)
Steps (1968), a novel comprising scores of loosely connected vignettes, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
American novelist David Foster Wallace described Steps as a "collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that's like nothing else anywhere ever". Wallace continued in praise: "Only Kafka's fragments get anywhere close to where Kosiński goes in this book, which is better than everything else he ever did combined." Samuel Coale, in a 1974 discussion of Kosiński's fiction, wrote that "the narrator of Steps for instance, seems to be nothing more than a disembodied voice howling in some surrealistic wilderness."
One of Kosiński's more significant works is Being There (1971), a satirical view of the absurd reality of America's media culture. It is the story of Chance the gardener, a man with few distinctive qualities who emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes the heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon and a presidential policy adviser. His simple and straightforward responses to popular concerns are praised as visionary despite the fact that no one actually understands what he is really saying. Many questions surround his mysterious origins, and filling in the blanks in his background proves impossible.
The novel was made into a 1979 movie directed by Hal Ashby, and starring Peter Sellers, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and Melvyn Douglas, who won the award for Best Supporting Actor. The screenplay was co-written by award-winning screenwriter Robert C. Jones and Kosiński. The film won the 1981 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Film) Best Screenplay Award, as well as the 1980 Writers Guild of America Award (Screen) for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. It was nominated for the 1980 Golden Globe Best Screenplay Award (Motion Picture).
According to Eliot Weinberger, an American writer, essayist, editor and translator, Kosiński was not the author of The Painted Bird. Weinberger alleged in his 2000 book Karmic Traces that Kosiński was not fluent in English at the time of its writing.
In a review of Jerzy Kosiński: A Biography by James Park Sloan, D.G. Myers, associate professor of English at Texas A&M University wrote "For years Kosinski passed off The Painted Bird as the true story of his own experience during the Holocaust. Long before writing it he regaled friends and dinner parties with macabre tales of a childhood spent in hiding among the Polish peasantry. Among those who were fascinated was Dorothy de Santillana, a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, to whom Kosiński confided that he had a manuscript based on his experiences. Upon accepting the book for publication, Santillana said 'It is my understanding that, fictional as the material may sound, it is straight autobiography'. Although he backed away from this claim, Kosiński never wholly disavowed it."
M.A. Orthofer addressed Weinberger's assertion: "Kosinski was, in many respects, a fake – possibly near as genuine a one as Weinberger could want. (One aspect of the best fakes is the lingering doubt that, possibly, there is some authenticity behind them – as is the case with Kosinski.) Kosinski famously liked to pretend he was someone he wasn't (as do many of the characters in his books), he occasionally published under a pseudonym, and, apparently, he plagiarized and forged left and right."
Kosiński addressed these claims in the introduction to the 1976 reissue of The Painted Bird, saying that "Well-intentioned writers, critics, and readers sought facts to back up their claims that the novel was autobiographical. They wanted to cast me in the role of spokesman for my generation, especially for those who had survived the war; but for me, survival was an individual action that earned the survivor the right to speak only for himself. Facts about my life and my origins, I felt, should not be used to test the book's authenticity, any more than they should be used to encourage readers to read The Painted Bird. Furthermore, I felt then, as I do now, that fiction and autobiography are very different modes."
In June 1982, a Village Voice report by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith accused Kosiński of plagiarism, claiming that much of his work was derivative of prewar books unfamiliar to English-speaking readers, and that Being There was a plagiarism of Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy — The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma — a 1932 Polish bestseller by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz. They also alleged Kosiński wrote The Painted Bird in Polish, and had it secretly translated into English. The report claimed that Kosiński's books had been ghost-written by "assistant editors", finding stylistic differences among Kosiński's novels. Kosiński, according to them, had depended upon his freelance editors for "the sort of composition that we usually call writing." American biographer James Sloan notes that New York poet, publisher and translator George Reavey claimed to have written The Painted Bird for Kosiński.
The article found a more realistic picture of Kosiński's life during the Holocaust – a view which was supported by biographers Joanna Siedlecka and Sloan. The article asserted that The Painted Bird, assumed to be semi-autobiographical, was largely a work of fiction. The information showed that rather than wandering the Polish countryside, as his fictional character did, Kosiński spent the war years in hiding with Polish Catholics.
Terence Blacker, an English publisher (who helped publish Kosiński's books) and author of children's books and mysteries for adults, wrote an article published in The Independent in 2002:
The significant point about Jerzy Kosiński was that...his books...had a vision and a voice consistent with one another and with the man himself. The problem was perhaps that he was a successful, worldly author who played polo, moved in fashionable circles and even appeared as an actor in Warren Beatty's Reds. He seemed to have had an adventurous and rather kinky sexuality which, to many, made him all the more suspect. All in all, he was a perfect candidate for the snarling pack of literary hangers-on to turn on. There is something about a storyteller becoming rich and having a reasonably full private life that has a powerful potential to irritate so that, when things go wrong, it causes a very special kind of joy.
Journalist John Corry wrote a 6,000-word feature article in The New York Times in November 1982, responding and defending Kosiński, which appeared on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section. Among other things, Corry alleged that reports claiming that "Kosinski was a plagiarist in the pay of the C.I.A. were the product of a Polish Communist disinformation campaign."
In an essay published in New York in 1999, Kosiński's sometime lover, Laurie Stieber, wrote that he incorporated passages from her letters into the revised and expanded 1981 edition of his 1973 novel The Devil Tree, without asking her. "The allegations in the Voice," wrote Stieber, "combined with what I knew to be true about the revised edition of The Devil Tree, left me with a gnawing mistrust in all aspects of our relationship. I hadn’t wavered, however, from my opinion that he was an extraordinary intellectual and philosopher, a brilliant storyteller and, yes, writer. But ego, and the fear of having his credibility strip-searched by erudite Polish or Russian editors, were behind his insistence on writing in English rather than using translators. By borrowing too greedily, Jerzy inadvertently wrote the Village Voice article himself."
In 1988, Kosiński wrote The Hermit of 69th Street, in which he sought to demonstrate the absurdity of investigating prior work by inserting footnotes for practically every term in the book. "Ironically," wrote theatre critic Lucy Komisar, "possibly his only true book ... about a successful author who is shown to be a fraud."
Despite repudiation of the Village Voice allegations in detailed articles in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications, Kosiński remained tainted. "I think it contributed to his death," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, a friend and fellow Polish emigrant.
Kosiński appeared 12 times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson during 1971–1973, and The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, was a guest on the talk radio show of Long John Nebel, posed half-naked for a cover photograph by Annie Leibovitz for The New York Times Magazine in 1982, and presented the Oscar for screenwriting in 1982.
He also played the role of Bolshevik revolutionary and Politburo member Grigory Zinoviev in Warren Beatty's film Reds. The Time magazine critic wrote: "As Reed's Soviet nemesis, novelist Jerzy Kosinski acquits himself nicely–a tundra of ice against Reed's all-American fire." Newsweek complimented Kosiński's "delightfully abrasive" performance.
Kosiński was friends with Roman Polanski, with whom he attended the National Film School in Łódź, and said he narrowly missed being at Polanski and Sharon Tate's house on the night Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's followers in 1969, due to lost luggage. His novel Blind Date portrayed the Manson murders. In 1984, Polanski denied Kosiński's story in his autobiography. Journalist John Taylor of New York Magazine believes Polanski was mistaken. "Although it was a single sentence in a 461-page book, reviewers focused on it. But the accusation was untrue: Jerzy and Kiki had been invited to stay with Tate the night of the Manson murders, and they missed being killed as well only because they stopped in New York en route from Paris because their luggage had been misdirected." The reason why Taylor believes this is that "a friend of Kosiński wrote a letter to the Times, which was published in the Book Review, describing the detailed plans he and Jerzy had made to meet that weekend at Polanski's house on Cielo Drive." The letter referenced was written by Clement Biddle Wood.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, who had a friendship with Kosiński, is introduced as a character in his novel Blind Date.
Kosiński wrote his novel Pinball (1982) for his friend George Harrison, having conceived of the idea for the book at least 10 years before writing it.
He is the subject of the off-Broadway play More Lies About Jerzy (2001), written by Davey Holmes and originally starring Jared Harris as Kosinski-inspired character "Jerzy Lesnewski". The most recent production being produced at the New End Theatre in London starring George Layton.
He also appears as one of the 'literary golems' (ghosts) in Thane Rosenbaum's novel The Golems of Gotham.
One of the songs of the Polish band NeLL, entitled "Frisco Lights", was inspired by Kosinski. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jerzy Kosiński (born Józef Lewinkopf; Polish: [ˈjɛʐɨ kɔˈɕij̃skʲi]; June 14, 1933 – May 3, 1991) was a Polish-American novelist and two-time president of the American Chapter of P.E.N., who wrote primarily in English. Born in Poland, he survived World War II and, as a young man, emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "He was known for various novels, among them Being There (1971) and The Painted Bird (1965), which were adapted as films in 1979 and 2019 respectively.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kosiński was born Józef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosiński, which his father gave to him. Eugeniusz Okoń, a Catholic priest, issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance to Polish Jews, often at great risk. Kosiński's father was assisted not only by town leaders and clergymen, but also by individuals such as Marianna Pasiowa, a member of an underground network that helped Jews evade capture. The family lived openly in Dąbrowa Rzeczycka, near Stalowa Wola, and attended church in nearby Wola Rzeczycka, with the support of villagers in Kępa Rzeczycka. For a time, they were sheltered by a Catholic family in Rzeczyca Okrągła. Jerzy even served as an altar boy in the local church.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After the war ended, Kosiński and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra. By age 22, he had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Łódź. He then became a teaching assistant at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Kosiński also studied in the Soviet Union, and served as a sharpshooter in the Polish Army.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "To migrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him. He later claimed he forged the letters from prominent communist authorities guaranteeing his loyal return to Poland, as were then required for anyone leaving the country.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Kosiński first worked at odd jobs to get by, including driving a truck, and he managed to graduate from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965. He also received grants from the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and the Ford Foundation in 1968. In 1970, he won the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature. The grants allowed him to write a political non-fiction book that opened new doors of opportunity. He became a lecturer at Yale, Princeton, Davenport, and Wesleyan universities.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kosiński practiced the photographic arts, with one-man exhibitions to his credit in Warsaw's Crooked Circle Gallery (1957) and in the Andre Zarre Gallery in New York (1988).",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1962, Kosiński married an American steel heiress Mary Hayward Weir. They divorced four years later. Weir died in 1968 from brain cancer, leaving Kosiński out of her will. He fictionalized his marriage in his novel Blind Date, speaking of Weir under the pseudonym Mary-Jane Kirkland. Kosiński later, in 1968, married Katherina \"Kiki\" von Fraunhofer (1933–2007), a marketing consultant and a descendant of Bavarian nobility.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Toward the end of his life, Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses and was under attack from journalists who accused him of plagiarism. By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "He committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by ingesting a lethal amount of alcohol and drugs and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, suffocating himself to death. His suicide note read: \"I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity.\" Kosinski's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered off a small cove in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kosiński's novels have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, and have been translated into over 30 languages, with total sales estimated at 70 million in 1991.",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Painted Bird, Kosiński's controversial 1965 novel, is a fictional account that depicts the personal experiences of a boy of unknown religious and ethnic background who wanders around unidentified areas of Eastern Europe during World War II and takes refuge among a series of people, many of whom are brutally cruel and abusive, either to him or to others.",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Soon after the book was published in the US, Kosiński was accused by the then-Communist Polish government of being anti-Polish, especially following the regime's 1968 anti-Semitic campaign. The book was banned in Poland from its initial publication until the fall of the Communist government in 1989. When it was finally printed, thousands of Poles in Warsaw lined up for as long as eight hours to purchase copies of the work autographed by Kosiński. Polish literary critic and University of Warsaw professor Paweł Dudziak remarked that \"in spite of the unclear role of its author,The Painted Bird is an achievement in English literature.\" He stressed that, because the book is a work of fiction and does not document real-world events, accusations of anti-Polish sentiment may result only from taking it too literally.",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The book received recommendations from Elie Wiesel who wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was \"one of the best ... Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity.\" Richard Kluger, reviewing it for Harper's Magazine wrote: \"Extraordinary ... literally staggering ... one of the most powerful books I have ever read.\" Jonathan Yardley, reviewing it for The Miami Herald, wrote: \"Of all the remarkable fiction that emerged from World War II, nothing stands higher than Jerzy Kosiński's The Painted Bird. A magnificent work of art, and a celebration of the individual will. No one who reads it will forget it; no one who reads it will be unmoved by it.\"",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "However, reception of the book was not uniformly positive. Several claims that Kosiński committed plagiarism in writing The Painted Bird were leveled against him. (See 'Criticism' section, below.)",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Steps (1968), a novel comprising scores of loosely connected vignettes, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "American novelist David Foster Wallace described Steps as a \"collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that's like nothing else anywhere ever\". Wallace continued in praise: \"Only Kafka's fragments get anywhere close to where Kosiński goes in this book, which is better than everything else he ever did combined.\" Samuel Coale, in a 1974 discussion of Kosiński's fiction, wrote that \"the narrator of Steps for instance, seems to be nothing more than a disembodied voice howling in some surrealistic wilderness.\"",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "One of Kosiński's more significant works is Being There (1971), a satirical view of the absurd reality of America's media culture. It is the story of Chance the gardener, a man with few distinctive qualities who emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes the heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon and a presidential policy adviser. His simple and straightforward responses to popular concerns are praised as visionary despite the fact that no one actually understands what he is really saying. Many questions surround his mysterious origins, and filling in the blanks in his background proves impossible.",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The novel was made into a 1979 movie directed by Hal Ashby, and starring Peter Sellers, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and Melvyn Douglas, who won the award for Best Supporting Actor. The screenplay was co-written by award-winning screenwriter Robert C. Jones and Kosiński. The film won the 1981 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Film) Best Screenplay Award, as well as the 1980 Writers Guild of America Award (Screen) for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. It was nominated for the 1980 Golden Globe Best Screenplay Award (Motion Picture).",
"title": "Notable novels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "According to Eliot Weinberger, an American writer, essayist, editor and translator, Kosiński was not the author of The Painted Bird. Weinberger alleged in his 2000 book Karmic Traces that Kosiński was not fluent in English at the time of its writing.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In a review of Jerzy Kosiński: A Biography by James Park Sloan, D.G. Myers, associate professor of English at Texas A&M University wrote \"For years Kosinski passed off The Painted Bird as the true story of his own experience during the Holocaust. Long before writing it he regaled friends and dinner parties with macabre tales of a childhood spent in hiding among the Polish peasantry. Among those who were fascinated was Dorothy de Santillana, a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, to whom Kosiński confided that he had a manuscript based on his experiences. Upon accepting the book for publication, Santillana said 'It is my understanding that, fictional as the material may sound, it is straight autobiography'. Although he backed away from this claim, Kosiński never wholly disavowed it.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "M.A. Orthofer addressed Weinberger's assertion: \"Kosinski was, in many respects, a fake – possibly near as genuine a one as Weinberger could want. (One aspect of the best fakes is the lingering doubt that, possibly, there is some authenticity behind them – as is the case with Kosinski.) Kosinski famously liked to pretend he was someone he wasn't (as do many of the characters in his books), he occasionally published under a pseudonym, and, apparently, he plagiarized and forged left and right.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Kosiński addressed these claims in the introduction to the 1976 reissue of The Painted Bird, saying that \"Well-intentioned writers, critics, and readers sought facts to back up their claims that the novel was autobiographical. They wanted to cast me in the role of spokesman for my generation, especially for those who had survived the war; but for me, survival was an individual action that earned the survivor the right to speak only for himself. Facts about my life and my origins, I felt, should not be used to test the book's authenticity, any more than they should be used to encourage readers to read The Painted Bird. Furthermore, I felt then, as I do now, that fiction and autobiography are very different modes.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In June 1982, a Village Voice report by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith accused Kosiński of plagiarism, claiming that much of his work was derivative of prewar books unfamiliar to English-speaking readers, and that Being There was a plagiarism of Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy — The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma — a 1932 Polish bestseller by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz. They also alleged Kosiński wrote The Painted Bird in Polish, and had it secretly translated into English. The report claimed that Kosiński's books had been ghost-written by \"assistant editors\", finding stylistic differences among Kosiński's novels. Kosiński, according to them, had depended upon his freelance editors for \"the sort of composition that we usually call writing.\" American biographer James Sloan notes that New York poet, publisher and translator George Reavey claimed to have written The Painted Bird for Kosiński.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The article found a more realistic picture of Kosiński's life during the Holocaust – a view which was supported by biographers Joanna Siedlecka and Sloan. The article asserted that The Painted Bird, assumed to be semi-autobiographical, was largely a work of fiction. The information showed that rather than wandering the Polish countryside, as his fictional character did, Kosiński spent the war years in hiding with Polish Catholics.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Terence Blacker, an English publisher (who helped publish Kosiński's books) and author of children's books and mysteries for adults, wrote an article published in The Independent in 2002:",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The significant point about Jerzy Kosiński was that...his books...had a vision and a voice consistent with one another and with the man himself. The problem was perhaps that he was a successful, worldly author who played polo, moved in fashionable circles and even appeared as an actor in Warren Beatty's Reds. He seemed to have had an adventurous and rather kinky sexuality which, to many, made him all the more suspect. All in all, he was a perfect candidate for the snarling pack of literary hangers-on to turn on. There is something about a storyteller becoming rich and having a reasonably full private life that has a powerful potential to irritate so that, when things go wrong, it causes a very special kind of joy.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Journalist John Corry wrote a 6,000-word feature article in The New York Times in November 1982, responding and defending Kosiński, which appeared on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section. Among other things, Corry alleged that reports claiming that \"Kosinski was a plagiarist in the pay of the C.I.A. were the product of a Polish Communist disinformation campaign.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In an essay published in New York in 1999, Kosiński's sometime lover, Laurie Stieber, wrote that he incorporated passages from her letters into the revised and expanded 1981 edition of his 1973 novel The Devil Tree, without asking her. \"The allegations in the Voice,\" wrote Stieber, \"combined with what I knew to be true about the revised edition of The Devil Tree, left me with a gnawing mistrust in all aspects of our relationship. I hadn’t wavered, however, from my opinion that he was an extraordinary intellectual and philosopher, a brilliant storyteller and, yes, writer. But ego, and the fear of having his credibility strip-searched by erudite Polish or Russian editors, were behind his insistence on writing in English rather than using translators. By borrowing too greedily, Jerzy inadvertently wrote the Village Voice article himself.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1988, Kosiński wrote The Hermit of 69th Street, in which he sought to demonstrate the absurdity of investigating prior work by inserting footnotes for practically every term in the book. \"Ironically,\" wrote theatre critic Lucy Komisar, \"possibly his only true book ... about a successful author who is shown to be a fraud.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Despite repudiation of the Village Voice allegations in detailed articles in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications, Kosiński remained tainted. \"I think it contributed to his death,\" said Zbigniew Brzezinski, a friend and fellow Polish emigrant.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Kosiński appeared 12 times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson during 1971–1973, and The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, was a guest on the talk radio show of Long John Nebel, posed half-naked for a cover photograph by Annie Leibovitz for The New York Times Magazine in 1982, and presented the Oscar for screenwriting in 1982.",
"title": "Television, radio, film, and newspaper appearances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "He also played the role of Bolshevik revolutionary and Politburo member Grigory Zinoviev in Warren Beatty's film Reds. The Time magazine critic wrote: \"As Reed's Soviet nemesis, novelist Jerzy Kosinski acquits himself nicely–a tundra of ice against Reed's all-American fire.\" Newsweek complimented Kosiński's \"delightfully abrasive\" performance.",
"title": "Television, radio, film, and newspaper appearances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Kosiński was friends with Roman Polanski, with whom he attended the National Film School in Łódź, and said he narrowly missed being at Polanski and Sharon Tate's house on the night Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's followers in 1969, due to lost luggage. His novel Blind Date portrayed the Manson murders. In 1984, Polanski denied Kosiński's story in his autobiography. Journalist John Taylor of New York Magazine believes Polanski was mistaken. \"Although it was a single sentence in a 461-page book, reviewers focused on it. But the accusation was untrue: Jerzy and Kiki had been invited to stay with Tate the night of the Manson murders, and they missed being killed as well only because they stopped in New York en route from Paris because their luggage had been misdirected.\" The reason why Taylor believes this is that \"a friend of Kosiński wrote a letter to the Times, which was published in the Book Review, describing the detailed plans he and Jerzy had made to meet that weekend at Polanski's house on Cielo Drive.\" The letter referenced was written by Clement Biddle Wood.",
"title": "Friendships"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Svetlana Alliluyeva, who had a friendship with Kosiński, is introduced as a character in his novel Blind Date.",
"title": "Friendships"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Kosiński wrote his novel Pinball (1982) for his friend George Harrison, having conceived of the idea for the book at least 10 years before writing it.",
"title": "Friendships"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "He is the subject of the off-Broadway play More Lies About Jerzy (2001), written by Davey Holmes and originally starring Jared Harris as Kosinski-inspired character \"Jerzy Lesnewski\". The most recent production being produced at the New End Theatre in London starring George Layton.",
"title": "Further reading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "He also appears as one of the 'literary golems' (ghosts) in Thane Rosenbaum's novel The Golems of Gotham.",
"title": "Further reading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "One of the songs of the Polish band NeLL, entitled \"Frisco Lights\", was inspired by Kosinski.",
"title": "Further reading"
}
]
| Jerzy Kosiński was a Polish-American novelist and two-time president of the American Chapter of P.E.N., who wrote primarily in English. Born in Poland, he survived World War II and, as a young man, emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen. He was known for various novels, among them Being There (1971) and The Painted Bird (1965), which were adapted as films in 1979 and 2019 respectively. | 2001-07-03T18:57:51Z | 2023-12-25T10:42:40Z | [
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]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Kosi%C5%84ski |
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In lowercase, the term "jeep" continues to be used as a generic term for vehicles inspired by the Jeep that are suitable for use on rough terrain. In Iceland, the word Jeppi (derived from Jeep) has been used since World War II and is still used for any type of SUV.
When it became clear that the United States would be involved in the European theater of World War II, the Army contacted 135 companies to create working prototypes of a four-wheel drive reconnaissance car. Only two companies responded: the American Bantam Car Company and Willys-Overland. The Army set a seemingly impossible deadline of 49 days to supply a working prototype. Willys asked for more time, but was refused. American Bantam had only a small staff with nobody to draft the vehicle plans, so chief engineer Harold Crist hired Karl Probst, a talented freelance designer from Detroit. After turning down Bantam's initial request, Probst responded to an Army request and began work on July 17, 1940, initially without salary.
Probst drafted the full plans in just two days for the Bantam prototype known as the BRC or Bantam Reconnaissance Car, working up a cost estimate the next day. Bantam's bid was submitted on July 22, complete with blueprints. Much of the vehicle could be assembled from off-the-shelf automotive parts, and custom four-wheel drivetrain components were to be supplied by Spicer. The hand-built prototype was completed in Butler, Pennsylvania and driven to Camp Holabird, Maryland on September 23 for Army testing. The vehicle met all the Army's criteria except engine torque.
The Army thought that the Bantam company lacked the production capacity to manufacture and deliver the required number of vehicles, so it supplied the Bantam design to Willys and Ford, and encouraged them to enhance the design. The resulting Ford "Pygmy" and Willys "Quad" prototypes looked very similar to the Bantam BRC prototype, and Spicer supplied very similar four-wheel drivetrain components to all three manufacturers.
1,500 of each model (Bantam BRC-40, Ford GP, and Willys MA) were built and extensively field-tested. After the weight specification was revised from 1,275 lb (578 kg) to a maximum of 2,450 lb (1,110 kg) including oil and water, Willys-Overland's chief engineer Delmar "Barney" Roos modified the design in order to use Willys's heavy but powerful "Go Devil" engine, and won the initial production contract. The Willys version became the standard jeep design, designated the model MB, and was built at their plant in Toledo, Ohio. The familiar pressed-metal Jeep grille was a Ford design feature and incorporated in the final design by the Army.
Because the US War Department required a large number of vehicles in a short time, Willys-Overland granted the US Government a non-exclusive license to allow another company to manufacture vehicles using Willys' specifications. The Army chose Ford as a second supplier, building Jeeps to the Willys' design. Willys supplied Ford with a complete set of plans and specifications. American Bantam, the creators of the first Jeep, built approximately 2,700 of them to the BRC-40 design, but spent the rest of the war building heavy-duty trailers for the Army.
Final production version jeeps built by Willys-Overland were the Model MB, while those built by Ford were the Model GPW (G = government vehicle, P = 80" wheelbase, W = Willys engine design). There were subtle differences between the two. The versions produced by Ford had every component (including bolt heads) marked with an "F", and early on Ford also stamped their name in large letters in their trademark script, embossed in the rear panel of their jeeps. Willys followed the Ford pattern by stamping 'Willys' into several body parts, but the U.S. government objected to this practice, and both parties stopped this in 1942. In spite of persistent advertising by both car and component manufacturers of contributions to the production of successful jeeps during the war, no "Jeep"-branded vehicles were built until the 1945 Willys CJ-2A.
The cost per vehicle trended upwards as the war continued from the price under the first contract from Willys at US$648.74 (Ford's was $782.59 per unit; these figures are equivalent to $10007 and $12071 in 2022, respectively). Willys-Overland and Ford, under the direction of Charles E. Sorensen (vice-president of Ford during World War II), produced about 640,000 Jeeps towards the war effort, which accounted for approximately 18% of all the wheeled military vehicles built in the U.S. during the war.
Jeeps were used by every service of the U.S. military. An average of 145 were supplied to every Army infantry regiment. Jeeps were used for many purposes, including cable laying, sawmilling, as firefighting pumpers, field ambulances, tractors, and, with suitable wheels, would run on railway tracks. An amphibious jeep, the model GPA, or "seep" (Sea Jeep) was built for Ford in modest numbers, but it could not be considered a success as it was neither a good off-road vehicle nor a good boat. As part of the war effort, nearly 30% of all Jeep production was supplied to Great Britain and to the Soviet Red Army.
The Jeep has been widely imitated around the world, including in France by Delahaye and by Hotchkiss et Cie (after 1954, Hotchkiss manufactured Jeeps under license from Willys), and in Japan by Mitsubishi Motors and Toyota. The Land Rover was inspired by the Jeep. The utilitarian good looks of the original Jeep have been hailed by industrial designers and museum curators alike. The Museum of Modern Art described the Jeep as a masterpiece of functionalist design and has periodically exhibited the Jeep as part of its collection. Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle called the jeep, along with the Coleman G.I. Pocket Stove, "the two most important pieces of noncombat equipment ever developed." Jeeps became even more famous following the war, as they became available on the surplus market. Some ads claimed to offer "Jeeps still in the factory crate." This legend persisted for decades, despite the fact that Jeeps were never shipped from the factory in crates (although Ford did "knock down" Jeeps for easier shipping, which may have perpetuated the myth).
The Jeepney is a unique type of taxi or bus created in the Philippines. The first Jeepneys were military-surplus MBs and GPWs, left behind in the war-ravaged country following World War II and Filipino independence. Jeepneys were built from Jeeps by lengthening and widening the rear "tub" of the vehicle, allowing them to carry more passengers. Over the years, Jeepneys have become the most ubiquitous symbol of the modern Philippines, even as they have been decorated in more elaborate and flamboyant styles by their owners. Most Jeepneys today are scratch-built by local manufacturers, using different powertrains.
Aside from Jeepneys, backyard assemblers in the Philippines construct replica Jeeps with stainless steel bodies and surplus parts, and are called "owner-type jeeps" (as jeepneys are also called "passenger-type jeeps").
In the United States military, the Jeep has been supplanted by a number of vehicles (e.g. Ford's M151) of which the latest is the Humvee.
After World War II, Jeep began to experiment with new designs, including a model that could drive underwater. On February 1, 1950, contract N8ss-2660 was approved for 1,000 units "especially adapted for general reconnaissance or command communications" and "constructed for short period underwater operation such as encountered in landing and fording operations." The engine was modified with a snorkel system so that the engine could properly breathe underwater.
In 1965, Jeep developed the M715 1.25-short-ton (1.13-tonne) army truck, a militarized version of the civilian J-series Jeep truck, which served extensively in the Vietnam War. It had heavier full-floating axles and a foldable, vertical, flat windshield. Today, it serves other countries and is still being produced by Kia under license.
Many explanations of the origin of the word jeep have proven difficult to verify. The most widely held theory is that the military designation GP (for Government Purposes or General Purpose) was slurred into the word Jeep in the same way that the contemporary HMMWV (for High-Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle) has become known as the Humvee. Joe Frazer, Willys-Overland President from 1939 to 1944, claimed to have coined the word jeep by slurring the initials G.P. There are no contemporaneous uses of "GP" before later attempts to create a backronym.
A more detailed view, popularized by R. Lee Ermey on his television series Mail Call, disputes this "slurred GP" origin, saying that the vehicle was designed for specific duties, and was never referred to as "General Purpose" and it is highly unlikely that the average jeep-driving GI would have been familiar with this designation. The Ford GPW abbreviation actually meant G for government use, P to designate its 80-inch (2,000 mm) wheelbase and W to indicate its Willys-Overland designed engine. Ermey suggests that soldiers at the time were so impressed with the new vehicles that they informally named it after Eugene the Jeep, a character in the Thimble Theatre comic strip and cartoons created by E. C. Segar, as early as mid-March 1936. Eugene the Jeep was Popeye's "jungle pet" and was "small, able to move between dimensions and could solve seemingly impossible problems".
The word "jeep", however, was used as early as World War I, as U.S. Army slang for new uninitiated recruits, or by mechanics to refer to new, unproven vehicles. In 1937, tractors which were supplied by Minneapolis Moline to the US Army were called jeeps. A precursor of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was also referred to as the jeep.
Words of the Fighting Forces by Clinton A. Sanders, a dictionary of military slang, published in 1942, in the library at The Pentagon gives this definition:
Jeep: A four-wheel drive vehicle of one-half- to one-and-one-half-ton [0.45 to 1.36 tonnes] capacity for reconnaissance or other army duty. A term applied to the bantam-cars, and occasionally to other motor vehicles (U.S.A.) in the Air Corps, the Link Trainer; in the armored forces, the 1⁄2-ton [0.45 tonnes] command vehicle. Also referred to as "any small plane, helicopter, or gadget."
This definition is supported by the use of the term "jeep carrier" to refer to the Navy's small escort carriers.
Early in 1941, Willys-Overland demonstrated the vehicle's off-road capability by having it drive up the steps of the United States Capitol, driven by Willys test driver Irving "Red" Hausmann, who had recently heard soldiers at Fort Holabird calling it a "jeep". When asked by syndicated columnist Katharine Hillyer for the Washington Daily News (or by a bystander, according to another account) what it was called, Hausmann answered, "It's a jeep."
Katharine Hillyer's article was published nationally on February 19, 1941, and included a picture of the vehicle with the caption:
LAWMAKERS TAKE A RIDE – With Senator Meade, of New York, at the wheel, and Representative Thomas, of New Jersey, sitting beside him, one of the Army's new scout cars, known as "jeeps" or "quads", climbs up the Capitol steps in a demonstration yesterday. Soldiers in the rear seat for gunners were unperturbed.
Although the term was also military slang for vehicles that were untried or untested, this exposure caused all other jeep references to fade, leaving the 4×4 with the name.
The "Jeep" brand has gone through many owners, starting with Willys-Overland, which filed the original trademark application for the "Jeep" brand-name in February 1943. To help establish the term as a Willys brand, the firm campaigned with advertisements emphasizing Willys' prominent contribution to the Jeep that helped win the war. Willys' application initially met with years of opposition, primarily from Bantam, but also from Minneapolis-Moline. The Federal Trade Commission initially ruled in favor of Bantam in May 1943, largely ignoring Minneapolis-Moline's claim, and continued to scold Willys-Overland after the war for its advertising. The FTC even slapped the company with a formal complaint, to cease and desist any claims that it "created or designed" the Jeep – Willys was only allowed to advertise its contribution to the Jeep's development. Willys however proceeded to produce the first Civilian Jeep (CJ) branded vehicles in 1945. Being the only company that continually produced "Jeep" vehicles after the war, Willys-Overland was eventually granted the name "Jeep" as a registered trademark in June 1950. Aside from Willys, King Features Syndicate has held a trademark on the name "Jeep" for their comics since August 1936.
Willys had also seriously considered the brand name AGRIJEEP, and was granted the trademark for it in December 1944, but instead the civilian production models as of 1945 were marketed as the "Universal Jeep", which reflected a wider range of uses outside of farming.
FCA US LLC, the most recent successor company to the Jeep brand, now holds trademark status on the name "Jeep" and the distinctive 7-slot front grille design. The original 9-slot grille associated with all World War II jeeps was designed by Ford for their GPW, and because it weighed less than the original "Slat Grille" of Willys (an arrangement of flat bars), was incorporated into the "standardized jeep" design.
The history of the HMMWV (Humvee) has ties with Jeep. In 1971, Jeep's Defense and Government Products Division was turned into AM General, a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Motors Corporation, which also owned Jeep. In 1979, while still owned by American Motors, AM General began the first steps toward designing the Humvee. AM General also continued manufacturing the two-wheel-drive DJ, which Jeep created in 1953. The General Motors Hummer and Chrysler Jeep have been waging battle in U.S. courts over the right to use seven slots in their respective radiator grilles. Chrysler Jeep claims it has the exclusive rights to use the seven vertical slits since it is the sole remaining assignee of the various companies since Willys gave their postwar jeeps seven slots instead of Ford's nine-slot design for the Jeep.
Jeep advertising has always emphasized the brand's vehicles' off-road capabilities. Today, the Wrangler is one of the few remaining four-wheel-drive vehicles with solid front and rear axles. These axles are known for their durability, strength, and articulation. New Wranglers come with a Dana 44 rear differential and a Dana 30 front differential. The upgraded Rubicon model of the JK Wrangler is equipped with electronically activated locking differentials, Dana 44 axles front and rear with 4.10 gears, a 4:1 transfer case, electronic sway bar disconnect, and heavy-duty suspension.
Another benefit of solid axle vehicles is they tend to be easier and cheaper to "lift" with aftermarket suspension systems. This increases the distance between the axle and chassis of the vehicle. By increasing this distance, larger tires can be installed, which will increase the ground clearance, allowing it to traverse even larger and more difficult obstacles. In addition to higher ground clearance, many owners aim to increase suspension articulation or "flex" to give their Jeeps greatly improved off-road capabilities. Good suspension articulation keeps all four wheels in contact with the ground and maintains traction.
Useful features of the smaller Jeeps are their short wheelbases, narrow frames, ample approach, breakover, and departure angles, thus enabling them to traverse through places where full-size four-wheel drives have difficulty.
After the war, Willys did not resume production of its passenger-car models, choosing instead to concentrate on Jeeps and Jeep-branded vehicles, launching the Jeep Station Wagon in 1946, the Jeep Truck in 1947, and the Jeepster in 1948. An attempt to re-enter the passenger-car market in 1952 with the Willys Aero sedan proved unsuccessful, and ended with the company's acquisition by Kaiser Motors in 1953, for $60 million. Kaiser initially called the merged company "Willys Motors", but renamed itself Kaiser-Jeep in 1963. By the end of 1955, Kaiser-Frazer had dropped the Willys Aero, as well as its own passenger cars to sell Jeeps exclusively.
American Motors Corporation (AMC) in turn purchased Kaiser's money-losing Jeep operations in 1970. This time $70 million changed hands. The utility vehicles complemented AMC's passenger car business by sharing components, achieving volume efficiencies, as well as capitalizing on Jeep's international and government markets. In 1971, AMC spun off Jeep's commercial, postal, and military vehicle lines into a separate subsidiary, AM General – the company that later developed the M998 Humvee. In 1976 Jeep introduced the CJ-7, replacing the CJ-6 in North America, as well as crossing 100,000 civilian units in annual global sales for the first time.
The French automaker Renault began investing in AMC in 1979. Renault began selling Jeeps through their European dealerships soon thereafter, beginning in Belgium and France, gradually supplanting a number of independent importers. During this period Jeep introduced the XJ Cherokee, its first unibody SUV; and global sales topped 200,000 for the first time in 1985. However, the replacement of the CJ Jeeps by the new Wrangler line in 1986 marked the start of a different era. By 1987, the automobile markets had changed and Renault itself was experiencing financial troubles, stemming from their heavy investment into AMC while simultaneously laying workers off in France; this led to the assassination of then-Renault CEO Georges Besse in 1986 by the French extremist group Action Directe. Renault's upper management quickly moved to sell off AMC.
Chrysler Corporation bought out AMC in 1987, shortly after the Jeep CJ-7 had been replaced with the AMC-designed Wrangler YJ; the acquisition was primarily for Jeep. After more than 40 years, the four-wheel drive utility vehicles brand that had been a profitable niche for smaller automakers fell into the hands of one of the Big Three; Jeep was the only AMC brand continued by Chrysler after the acquisition, partnered with the new Eagle marque (created for legal reasons involving Renault's sale of the AMC assets to Chrysler) as the Jeep-Eagle division. Chrysler subsequently merged with Daimler-Benz in 1998 (by which point Eagle was discontinued) and folded into DaimlerChrysler. During this time, the Chrysler and Jeep sales channels were combined, primarily to complement Chrysler's luxury automobiles with Jeep's popular SUVs. DaimlerChrysler eventually sold most of its interest in Chrysler to a private equity company in 2007. Chrysler and the Jeep division operated under Chrysler Group LLC, until December 15, 2014, when Chrysler folded into Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, with the stateside subsidiary operating under 'FCA US LLC'.
Jeeps have been built under licence by various manufacturers around the world, including Mahindra in India, EBRO in Spain, and several in South America. Mitsubishi built more than 30 models in Japan between 1953 and 1998; Most were based on the CJ-3B model of the original Willys-Kaiser design.
Toledo, Ohio has been the headquarters of the Jeep brand since its inception, and the city has always been proud of this heritage. Although no longer produced in the same Toledo Complex as the World War II originals, two streets in the vicinity of the old plant are named Willys Parkway and Jeep Parkway. The Jeep Wrangler is built in the city currently, not far from the site of the original Willys-Overland plant.
American Motors set up the first automobile-manufacturing joint venture in the People's Republic of China on January 15, 1984. The result was Beijing Jeep Corporation, Ltd., in partnership with Beijing Automobile Industry Corporation, to produce the Jeep Cherokee (XJ) in Beijing. Manufacture continued after Chrysler's buyout of AMC. This joint venture is now part of DaimlerChrysler and DaimlerChrysler China Invest Corporation. The original 1984 XJ model was updated and called the "Jeep 2500" toward the end of its production that ended after 2005.
In October 2022, the joint venture between Stellantis and Chinese company Guangzhou Automobile Group filed for bankruptcy, although Stellantis said it intends to continue servicing Jeep brand customers in China.
While Jeeps have been built in India under license by Mahindra & Mahindra since the 1960s, Jeep has entered the Indian market directly in 2016, starting with the release of the Wrangler and Grand Cherokee in the country.
The CJ (for "Civilian Jeep") series were literally the first "Jeep" branded vehicles sold commercially to the civilian public, beginning in 1945 with the CJ-2A, followed by the CJ-3A in 1949 and the CJ-3B in 1953. These early Jeeps are frequently referred to as "flat-fenders" because their front fenders were completely flat and straight, just as on the original WW II model (the Willys MB and identical Ford GPW).
The CJ-4 exists only as a single 1951 prototype and constitutes the "missing link" between the flat-fendered CJ-2A and CJ-3A/B, and the subsequent Jeeps with new bodies, featuring rounded fenders and hoods, beginning with the 1955 CJ-5, first introduced as the military Willys MD (or M38A1). The restyled body was mostly prompted to clear the taller new overhead-valve Hurricane engine.
With over 300,000 wagons and variants built in the U.S., it was one of Willys' most successful post-World War II models. Its production coincided with consumers moving to the suburbs.
The Jeepster introduced in 1948 was directly based on the rear-wheel-drive Jeep Station Wagon chassis, and shared many of the same parts.
(Jeepster) Commando
From 1955 onwards Willys offered two-wheel drive versions of their CJ Jeeps for commercial use, called DJ models (for 'Dispatcher Jeep'), in both open and closed body styles. A well-known version was the right-hand drive model with sliding side-doors, used by the US Postal service. In 1961 the range was expanded with the 'Fleetvan' delivery van, based on DJ Jeeps.
Fleetvan Jeep
SUV models (1962–1991)
Pickup models (1962–1988)
The Jeep brand currently produces five models, but 8 vehicles are under the brand name or use the Jeep logo:
Upcoming
Jeeps have been built and/or assembled around the world by various companies.
Jeep is also a brand of apparel of outdoor lifestyle sold under license. It is reported that there are between 600 and 1,500 such outlets in China, vastly outnumbering the number of Jeep auto dealers in the country.
In April 2012 Jeep signed a shirt sponsorship deal worth €35 m (US$45.8 m) with Italian football club Juventus.
In August 2014, Jeep signed a sponsorship deal with the Greek football club AEK Athens F.C.
Jeep has been the title sponsor of France's top men's professional basketball league, LNB Pro A, since 2018. Under the deal, the league markets itself as Jeep Élite. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jeep is an American automobile marque, now owned by multi-national corporation Stellantis. Jeep has been part of Chrysler since 1987, when Chrysler acquired the Jeep brand, along with other assets, from their previous owner American Motors Corporation (AMC).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jeep's current product range consists solely of sport utility vehicles—both crossovers and fully off-road worthy SUVs and models, including one pickup truck. Previously, Jeep's range included other pick-ups, as well as small vans, and a few roadsters. Some of Jeep's vehicles—such as the Grand Cherokee—reach into the luxury SUV segment, a market segment the 1963 Wagoneer is considered to have started. Jeep sold 1.4 million SUVs globally in 2016, up from 500,000 in 2008, two-thirds of which in North America, and was Fiat-Chrysler's best selling brand in the U.S. during the first half of 2017. In the U.S. alone, over 2400 dealerships hold franchise rights to sell Jeep-branded vehicles, and if Jeep were spun off into a separate company, it is estimated to be worth between $22 and $33.5 billion—slightly more than all of FCA (US). Christian Meunier is the current President of the Jeep brand worldwide.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Prior to 1940 the term \"jeep\" had been used as U.S. Army slang for new recruits or vehicles, but the World War II \"jeep\" that went into production in 1941 specifically tied the name to this light military 4×4, arguably making them the oldest four-wheel drive mass-production vehicles now known as SUVs. The Jeep became the primary light four-wheel-drive vehicle of the United States Armed Forces and the Allies during World War II, as well as the postwar period. The term became common worldwide in the wake of the war. Doug Stewart noted: \"The spartan, cramped, and unstintingly functional jeep became the ubiquitous World War II four-wheeled personification of Yankee ingenuity and cocky, can-do determination.\" It is the precursor of subsequent generations of military light utility vehicles such as the Humvee, and inspired the creation of civilian analogs such as the original Series I Land Rover. Many Jeep variants serving similar military and civilian roles have since been designed in other nations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Jeep marque has been headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, ever since Willys–Overland launched production of the first CJ or Civilian Jeep branded models there in 1945. Its replacement, the conceptually consistent Jeep Wrangler series, has remained in production since 1986. With its solid axles and open top, the Wrangler has been called the Jeep model that is as central to the brand's identity as the 911 is to Porsche.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "At least two Jeep models (the CJ-5 and the SJ Wagoneer) enjoyed extraordinary three-decade production runs of a single body generation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In lowercase, the term \"jeep\" continues to be used as a generic term for vehicles inspired by the Jeep that are suitable for use on rough terrain. In Iceland, the word Jeppi (derived from Jeep) has been used since World War II and is still used for any type of SUV.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "When it became clear that the United States would be involved in the European theater of World War II, the Army contacted 135 companies to create working prototypes of a four-wheel drive reconnaissance car. Only two companies responded: the American Bantam Car Company and Willys-Overland. The Army set a seemingly impossible deadline of 49 days to supply a working prototype. Willys asked for more time, but was refused. American Bantam had only a small staff with nobody to draft the vehicle plans, so chief engineer Harold Crist hired Karl Probst, a talented freelance designer from Detroit. After turning down Bantam's initial request, Probst responded to an Army request and began work on July 17, 1940, initially without salary.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Probst drafted the full plans in just two days for the Bantam prototype known as the BRC or Bantam Reconnaissance Car, working up a cost estimate the next day. Bantam's bid was submitted on July 22, complete with blueprints. Much of the vehicle could be assembled from off-the-shelf automotive parts, and custom four-wheel drivetrain components were to be supplied by Spicer. The hand-built prototype was completed in Butler, Pennsylvania and driven to Camp Holabird, Maryland on September 23 for Army testing. The vehicle met all the Army's criteria except engine torque.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Army thought that the Bantam company lacked the production capacity to manufacture and deliver the required number of vehicles, so it supplied the Bantam design to Willys and Ford, and encouraged them to enhance the design. The resulting Ford \"Pygmy\" and Willys \"Quad\" prototypes looked very similar to the Bantam BRC prototype, and Spicer supplied very similar four-wheel drivetrain components to all three manufacturers.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "1,500 of each model (Bantam BRC-40, Ford GP, and Willys MA) were built and extensively field-tested. After the weight specification was revised from 1,275 lb (578 kg) to a maximum of 2,450 lb (1,110 kg) including oil and water, Willys-Overland's chief engineer Delmar \"Barney\" Roos modified the design in order to use Willys's heavy but powerful \"Go Devil\" engine, and won the initial production contract. The Willys version became the standard jeep design, designated the model MB, and was built at their plant in Toledo, Ohio. The familiar pressed-metal Jeep grille was a Ford design feature and incorporated in the final design by the Army.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Because the US War Department required a large number of vehicles in a short time, Willys-Overland granted the US Government a non-exclusive license to allow another company to manufacture vehicles using Willys' specifications. The Army chose Ford as a second supplier, building Jeeps to the Willys' design. Willys supplied Ford with a complete set of plans and specifications. American Bantam, the creators of the first Jeep, built approximately 2,700 of them to the BRC-40 design, but spent the rest of the war building heavy-duty trailers for the Army.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Final production version jeeps built by Willys-Overland were the Model MB, while those built by Ford were the Model GPW (G = government vehicle, P = 80\" wheelbase, W = Willys engine design). There were subtle differences between the two. The versions produced by Ford had every component (including bolt heads) marked with an \"F\", and early on Ford also stamped their name in large letters in their trademark script, embossed in the rear panel of their jeeps. Willys followed the Ford pattern by stamping 'Willys' into several body parts, but the U.S. government objected to this practice, and both parties stopped this in 1942. In spite of persistent advertising by both car and component manufacturers of contributions to the production of successful jeeps during the war, no \"Jeep\"-branded vehicles were built until the 1945 Willys CJ-2A.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The cost per vehicle trended upwards as the war continued from the price under the first contract from Willys at US$648.74 (Ford's was $782.59 per unit; these figures are equivalent to $10007 and $12071 in 2022, respectively). Willys-Overland and Ford, under the direction of Charles E. Sorensen (vice-president of Ford during World War II), produced about 640,000 Jeeps towards the war effort, which accounted for approximately 18% of all the wheeled military vehicles built in the U.S. during the war.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Jeeps were used by every service of the U.S. military. An average of 145 were supplied to every Army infantry regiment. Jeeps were used for many purposes, including cable laying, sawmilling, as firefighting pumpers, field ambulances, tractors, and, with suitable wheels, would run on railway tracks. An amphibious jeep, the model GPA, or \"seep\" (Sea Jeep) was built for Ford in modest numbers, but it could not be considered a success as it was neither a good off-road vehicle nor a good boat. As part of the war effort, nearly 30% of all Jeep production was supplied to Great Britain and to the Soviet Red Army.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Jeep has been widely imitated around the world, including in France by Delahaye and by Hotchkiss et Cie (after 1954, Hotchkiss manufactured Jeeps under license from Willys), and in Japan by Mitsubishi Motors and Toyota. The Land Rover was inspired by the Jeep. The utilitarian good looks of the original Jeep have been hailed by industrial designers and museum curators alike. The Museum of Modern Art described the Jeep as a masterpiece of functionalist design and has periodically exhibited the Jeep as part of its collection. Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle called the jeep, along with the Coleman G.I. Pocket Stove, \"the two most important pieces of noncombat equipment ever developed.\" Jeeps became even more famous following the war, as they became available on the surplus market. Some ads claimed to offer \"Jeeps still in the factory crate.\" This legend persisted for decades, despite the fact that Jeeps were never shipped from the factory in crates (although Ford did \"knock down\" Jeeps for easier shipping, which may have perpetuated the myth).",
"title": "Post-war military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Jeepney is a unique type of taxi or bus created in the Philippines. The first Jeepneys were military-surplus MBs and GPWs, left behind in the war-ravaged country following World War II and Filipino independence. Jeepneys were built from Jeeps by lengthening and widening the rear \"tub\" of the vehicle, allowing them to carry more passengers. Over the years, Jeepneys have become the most ubiquitous symbol of the modern Philippines, even as they have been decorated in more elaborate and flamboyant styles by their owners. Most Jeepneys today are scratch-built by local manufacturers, using different powertrains.",
"title": "Post-war military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Aside from Jeepneys, backyard assemblers in the Philippines construct replica Jeeps with stainless steel bodies and surplus parts, and are called \"owner-type jeeps\" (as jeepneys are also called \"passenger-type jeeps\").",
"title": "Post-war military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the United States military, the Jeep has been supplanted by a number of vehicles (e.g. Ford's M151) of which the latest is the Humvee.",
"title": "Post-war military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After World War II, Jeep began to experiment with new designs, including a model that could drive underwater. On February 1, 1950, contract N8ss-2660 was approved for 1,000 units \"especially adapted for general reconnaissance or command communications\" and \"constructed for short period underwater operation such as encountered in landing and fording operations.\" The engine was modified with a snorkel system so that the engine could properly breathe underwater.",
"title": "Post-war military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1965, Jeep developed the M715 1.25-short-ton (1.13-tonne) army truck, a militarized version of the civilian J-series Jeep truck, which served extensively in the Vietnam War. It had heavier full-floating axles and a foldable, vertical, flat windshield. Today, it serves other countries and is still being produced by Kia under license.",
"title": "Post-war military"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Many explanations of the origin of the word jeep have proven difficult to verify. The most widely held theory is that the military designation GP (for Government Purposes or General Purpose) was slurred into the word Jeep in the same way that the contemporary HMMWV (for High-Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle) has become known as the Humvee. Joe Frazer, Willys-Overland President from 1939 to 1944, claimed to have coined the word jeep by slurring the initials G.P. There are no contemporaneous uses of \"GP\" before later attempts to create a backronym.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A more detailed view, popularized by R. Lee Ermey on his television series Mail Call, disputes this \"slurred GP\" origin, saying that the vehicle was designed for specific duties, and was never referred to as \"General Purpose\" and it is highly unlikely that the average jeep-driving GI would have been familiar with this designation. The Ford GPW abbreviation actually meant G for government use, P to designate its 80-inch (2,000 mm) wheelbase and W to indicate its Willys-Overland designed engine. Ermey suggests that soldiers at the time were so impressed with the new vehicles that they informally named it after Eugene the Jeep, a character in the Thimble Theatre comic strip and cartoons created by E. C. Segar, as early as mid-March 1936. Eugene the Jeep was Popeye's \"jungle pet\" and was \"small, able to move between dimensions and could solve seemingly impossible problems\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The word \"jeep\", however, was used as early as World War I, as U.S. Army slang for new uninitiated recruits, or by mechanics to refer to new, unproven vehicles. In 1937, tractors which were supplied by Minneapolis Moline to the US Army were called jeeps. A precursor of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was also referred to as the jeep.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Words of the Fighting Forces by Clinton A. Sanders, a dictionary of military slang, published in 1942, in the library at The Pentagon gives this definition:",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Jeep: A four-wheel drive vehicle of one-half- to one-and-one-half-ton [0.45 to 1.36 tonnes] capacity for reconnaissance or other army duty. A term applied to the bantam-cars, and occasionally to other motor vehicles (U.S.A.) in the Air Corps, the Link Trainer; in the armored forces, the 1⁄2-ton [0.45 tonnes] command vehicle. Also referred to as \"any small plane, helicopter, or gadget.\"",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "This definition is supported by the use of the term \"jeep carrier\" to refer to the Navy's small escort carriers.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Early in 1941, Willys-Overland demonstrated the vehicle's off-road capability by having it drive up the steps of the United States Capitol, driven by Willys test driver Irving \"Red\" Hausmann, who had recently heard soldiers at Fort Holabird calling it a \"jeep\". When asked by syndicated columnist Katharine Hillyer for the Washington Daily News (or by a bystander, according to another account) what it was called, Hausmann answered, \"It's a jeep.\"",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Katharine Hillyer's article was published nationally on February 19, 1941, and included a picture of the vehicle with the caption:",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "LAWMAKERS TAKE A RIDE – With Senator Meade, of New York, at the wheel, and Representative Thomas, of New Jersey, sitting beside him, one of the Army's new scout cars, known as \"jeeps\" or \"quads\", climbs up the Capitol steps in a demonstration yesterday. Soldiers in the rear seat for gunners were unperturbed.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Although the term was also military slang for vehicles that were untried or untested, this exposure caused all other jeep references to fade, leaving the 4×4 with the name.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The \"Jeep\" brand has gone through many owners, starting with Willys-Overland, which filed the original trademark application for the \"Jeep\" brand-name in February 1943. To help establish the term as a Willys brand, the firm campaigned with advertisements emphasizing Willys' prominent contribution to the Jeep that helped win the war. Willys' application initially met with years of opposition, primarily from Bantam, but also from Minneapolis-Moline. The Federal Trade Commission initially ruled in favor of Bantam in May 1943, largely ignoring Minneapolis-Moline's claim, and continued to scold Willys-Overland after the war for its advertising. The FTC even slapped the company with a formal complaint, to cease and desist any claims that it \"created or designed\" the Jeep – Willys was only allowed to advertise its contribution to the Jeep's development. Willys however proceeded to produce the first Civilian Jeep (CJ) branded vehicles in 1945. Being the only company that continually produced \"Jeep\" vehicles after the war, Willys-Overland was eventually granted the name \"Jeep\" as a registered trademark in June 1950. Aside from Willys, King Features Syndicate has held a trademark on the name \"Jeep\" for their comics since August 1936.",
"title": "Brand, trademarks and image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Willys had also seriously considered the brand name AGRIJEEP, and was granted the trademark for it in December 1944, but instead the civilian production models as of 1945 were marketed as the \"Universal Jeep\", which reflected a wider range of uses outside of farming.",
"title": "Brand, trademarks and image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "FCA US LLC, the most recent successor company to the Jeep brand, now holds trademark status on the name \"Jeep\" and the distinctive 7-slot front grille design. The original 9-slot grille associated with all World War II jeeps was designed by Ford for their GPW, and because it weighed less than the original \"Slat Grille\" of Willys (an arrangement of flat bars), was incorporated into the \"standardized jeep\" design.",
"title": "Brand, trademarks and image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The history of the HMMWV (Humvee) has ties with Jeep. In 1971, Jeep's Defense and Government Products Division was turned into AM General, a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Motors Corporation, which also owned Jeep. In 1979, while still owned by American Motors, AM General began the first steps toward designing the Humvee. AM General also continued manufacturing the two-wheel-drive DJ, which Jeep created in 1953. The General Motors Hummer and Chrysler Jeep have been waging battle in U.S. courts over the right to use seven slots in their respective radiator grilles. Chrysler Jeep claims it has the exclusive rights to use the seven vertical slits since it is the sole remaining assignee of the various companies since Willys gave their postwar jeeps seven slots instead of Ford's nine-slot design for the Jeep.",
"title": "Brand, trademarks and image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Jeep advertising has always emphasized the brand's vehicles' off-road capabilities. Today, the Wrangler is one of the few remaining four-wheel-drive vehicles with solid front and rear axles. These axles are known for their durability, strength, and articulation. New Wranglers come with a Dana 44 rear differential and a Dana 30 front differential. The upgraded Rubicon model of the JK Wrangler is equipped with electronically activated locking differentials, Dana 44 axles front and rear with 4.10 gears, a 4:1 transfer case, electronic sway bar disconnect, and heavy-duty suspension.",
"title": "Brand, trademarks and image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Another benefit of solid axle vehicles is they tend to be easier and cheaper to \"lift\" with aftermarket suspension systems. This increases the distance between the axle and chassis of the vehicle. By increasing this distance, larger tires can be installed, which will increase the ground clearance, allowing it to traverse even larger and more difficult obstacles. In addition to higher ground clearance, many owners aim to increase suspension articulation or \"flex\" to give their Jeeps greatly improved off-road capabilities. Good suspension articulation keeps all four wheels in contact with the ground and maintains traction.",
"title": "Brand, trademarks and image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Useful features of the smaller Jeeps are their short wheelbases, narrow frames, ample approach, breakover, and departure angles, thus enabling them to traverse through places where full-size four-wheel drives have difficulty.",
"title": "Brand, trademarks and image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "After the war, Willys did not resume production of its passenger-car models, choosing instead to concentrate on Jeeps and Jeep-branded vehicles, launching the Jeep Station Wagon in 1946, the Jeep Truck in 1947, and the Jeepster in 1948. An attempt to re-enter the passenger-car market in 1952 with the Willys Aero sedan proved unsuccessful, and ended with the company's acquisition by Kaiser Motors in 1953, for $60 million. Kaiser initially called the merged company \"Willys Motors\", but renamed itself Kaiser-Jeep in 1963. By the end of 1955, Kaiser-Frazer had dropped the Willys Aero, as well as its own passenger cars to sell Jeeps exclusively.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "American Motors Corporation (AMC) in turn purchased Kaiser's money-losing Jeep operations in 1970. This time $70 million changed hands. The utility vehicles complemented AMC's passenger car business by sharing components, achieving volume efficiencies, as well as capitalizing on Jeep's international and government markets. In 1971, AMC spun off Jeep's commercial, postal, and military vehicle lines into a separate subsidiary, AM General – the company that later developed the M998 Humvee. In 1976 Jeep introduced the CJ-7, replacing the CJ-6 in North America, as well as crossing 100,000 civilian units in annual global sales for the first time.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The French automaker Renault began investing in AMC in 1979. Renault began selling Jeeps through their European dealerships soon thereafter, beginning in Belgium and France, gradually supplanting a number of independent importers. During this period Jeep introduced the XJ Cherokee, its first unibody SUV; and global sales topped 200,000 for the first time in 1985. However, the replacement of the CJ Jeeps by the new Wrangler line in 1986 marked the start of a different era. By 1987, the automobile markets had changed and Renault itself was experiencing financial troubles, stemming from their heavy investment into AMC while simultaneously laying workers off in France; this led to the assassination of then-Renault CEO Georges Besse in 1986 by the French extremist group Action Directe. Renault's upper management quickly moved to sell off AMC.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Chrysler Corporation bought out AMC in 1987, shortly after the Jeep CJ-7 had been replaced with the AMC-designed Wrangler YJ; the acquisition was primarily for Jeep. After more than 40 years, the four-wheel drive utility vehicles brand that had been a profitable niche for smaller automakers fell into the hands of one of the Big Three; Jeep was the only AMC brand continued by Chrysler after the acquisition, partnered with the new Eagle marque (created for legal reasons involving Renault's sale of the AMC assets to Chrysler) as the Jeep-Eagle division. Chrysler subsequently merged with Daimler-Benz in 1998 (by which point Eagle was discontinued) and folded into DaimlerChrysler. During this time, the Chrysler and Jeep sales channels were combined, primarily to complement Chrysler's luxury automobiles with Jeep's popular SUVs. DaimlerChrysler eventually sold most of its interest in Chrysler to a private equity company in 2007. Chrysler and the Jeep division operated under Chrysler Group LLC, until December 15, 2014, when Chrysler folded into Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, with the stateside subsidiary operating under 'FCA US LLC'.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Jeeps have been built under licence by various manufacturers around the world, including Mahindra in India, EBRO in Spain, and several in South America. Mitsubishi built more than 30 models in Japan between 1953 and 1998; Most were based on the CJ-3B model of the original Willys-Kaiser design.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Toledo, Ohio has been the headquarters of the Jeep brand since its inception, and the city has always been proud of this heritage. Although no longer produced in the same Toledo Complex as the World War II originals, two streets in the vicinity of the old plant are named Willys Parkway and Jeep Parkway. The Jeep Wrangler is built in the city currently, not far from the site of the original Willys-Overland plant.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "American Motors set up the first automobile-manufacturing joint venture in the People's Republic of China on January 15, 1984. The result was Beijing Jeep Corporation, Ltd., in partnership with Beijing Automobile Industry Corporation, to produce the Jeep Cherokee (XJ) in Beijing. Manufacture continued after Chrysler's buyout of AMC. This joint venture is now part of DaimlerChrysler and DaimlerChrysler China Invest Corporation. The original 1984 XJ model was updated and called the \"Jeep 2500\" toward the end of its production that ended after 2005.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In October 2022, the joint venture between Stellantis and Chinese company Guangzhou Automobile Group filed for bankruptcy, although Stellantis said it intends to continue servicing Jeep brand customers in China.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "While Jeeps have been built in India under license by Mahindra & Mahindra since the 1960s, Jeep has entered the Indian market directly in 2016, starting with the release of the Wrangler and Grand Cherokee in the country.",
"title": "Company history and ownership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The CJ (for \"Civilian Jeep\") series were literally the first \"Jeep\" branded vehicles sold commercially to the civilian public, beginning in 1945 with the CJ-2A, followed by the CJ-3A in 1949 and the CJ-3B in 1953. These early Jeeps are frequently referred to as \"flat-fenders\" because their front fenders were completely flat and straight, just as on the original WW II model (the Willys MB and identical Ford GPW).",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The CJ-4 exists only as a single 1951 prototype and constitutes the \"missing link\" between the flat-fendered CJ-2A and CJ-3A/B, and the subsequent Jeeps with new bodies, featuring rounded fenders and hoods, beginning with the 1955 CJ-5, first introduced as the military Willys MD (or M38A1). The restyled body was mostly prompted to clear the taller new overhead-valve Hurricane engine.",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "With over 300,000 wagons and variants built in the U.S., it was one of Willys' most successful post-World War II models. Its production coincided with consumers moving to the suburbs.",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Jeepster introduced in 1948 was directly based on the rear-wheel-drive Jeep Station Wagon chassis, and shared many of the same parts.",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "(Jeepster) Commando",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "From 1955 onwards Willys offered two-wheel drive versions of their CJ Jeeps for commercial use, called DJ models (for 'Dispatcher Jeep'), in both open and closed body styles. A well-known version was the right-hand drive model with sliding side-doors, used by the US Postal service. In 1961 the range was expanded with the 'Fleetvan' delivery van, based on DJ Jeeps.",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Fleetvan Jeep",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "SUV models (1962–1991)",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Pickup models (1962–1988)",
"title": "Civilian model list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The Jeep brand currently produces five models, but 8 vehicles are under the brand name or use the Jeep logo:",
"title": "Current models"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Upcoming",
"title": "Current models"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Jeeps have been built and/or assembled around the world by various companies.",
"title": "Jeeps built outside the USA"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Jeep is also a brand of apparel of outdoor lifestyle sold under license. It is reported that there are between 600 and 1,500 such outlets in China, vastly outnumbering the number of Jeep auto dealers in the country.",
"title": "Apparel and sponsorships"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In April 2012 Jeep signed a shirt sponsorship deal worth €35 m (US$45.8 m) with Italian football club Juventus.",
"title": "Apparel and sponsorships"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In August 2014, Jeep signed a sponsorship deal with the Greek football club AEK Athens F.C.",
"title": "Apparel and sponsorships"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Jeep has been the title sponsor of France's top men's professional basketball league, LNB Pro A, since 2018. Under the deal, the league markets itself as Jeep Élite.",
"title": "Apparel and sponsorships"
}
]
| Jeep is an American automobile marque, now owned by multi-national corporation Stellantis. Jeep has been part of Chrysler since 1987, when Chrysler acquired the Jeep brand, along with other assets, from their previous owner American Motors Corporation (AMC). Jeep's current product range consists solely of sport utility vehicles—both crossovers and fully off-road worthy SUVs and models, including one pickup truck. Previously, Jeep's range included other pick-ups, as well as small vans, and a few roadsters. Some of Jeep's vehicles—such as the Grand Cherokee—reach into the luxury SUV segment, a market segment the 1963 Wagoneer is considered to have started. Jeep sold 1.4 million SUVs globally in 2016, up from 500,000 in 2008, two-thirds of which in North America, and was Fiat-Chrysler's best selling brand in the U.S. during the first half of 2017. In the U.S. alone, over 2400 dealerships hold franchise rights to sell Jeep-branded vehicles, and if Jeep were spun off into a separate company, it is estimated to be worth between $22 and $33.5 billion—slightly more than all of FCA (US). Christian Meunier is the current President of the Jeep brand worldwide. Prior to 1940 the term "jeep" had been used as U.S. Army slang for new recruits or vehicles, but the World War II "jeep" that went into production in 1941 specifically tied the name to this light military 4×4, arguably making them the oldest four-wheel drive mass-production vehicles now known as SUVs. The Jeep became the primary light four-wheel-drive vehicle of the United States Armed Forces and the Allies during World War II, as well as the postwar period. The term became common worldwide in the wake of the war. Doug Stewart noted: "The spartan, cramped, and unstintingly functional jeep became the ubiquitous World War II four-wheeled personification of Yankee ingenuity and cocky, can-do determination." It is the precursor of subsequent generations of military light utility vehicles such as the Humvee, and inspired the creation of civilian analogs such as the original Series I Land Rover. Many Jeep variants serving similar military and civilian roles have since been designed in other nations. The Jeep marque has been headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, ever since Willys–Overland launched production of the first CJ or Civilian Jeep branded models there in 1945. Its replacement, the conceptually consistent Jeep Wrangler series, has remained in production since 1986. With its solid axles and open top, the Wrangler has been called the Jeep model that is as central to the brand's identity as the 911 is to Porsche. At least two Jeep models enjoyed extraordinary three-decade production runs of a single body generation. In lowercase, the term "jeep" continues to be used as a generic term for vehicles inspired by the Jeep that are suitable for use on rough terrain.
In Iceland, the word Jeppi has been used since World War II and is still used for any type of SUV. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-16T03:38:17Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep |
15,660 | Jamaica | Jamaica (/dʒəˈmeɪkə/ ; Jamaican Patois: Jumieka, [dʒʌˈmi̯eka]) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning 10,990 square kilometres (4,240 sq mi) in area, it is the third largest island — after Cuba and Hispaniola — of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about 145 km (90 mi) south of Cuba, and 191 km (119 mi) west of Hispaniola (the island containing the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic); the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies 215 km (134 mi) to the north-west.
Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, under the name Santiago, when England (later Great Britain) conquered it and named it Jamaica. It became an important part of the colonial British West Indies. Under Britain's colonial rule, Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on continued importation of African slaves and their descendants. The British fully emancipated all slaves in 1838, and many freedmen chose to have subsistence farms rather than to work on plantations. Beginning in the 1840s, the British began using Chinese and Indian indentured labour to work on plantations. The island achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962.
With 2.8 million people, Jamaica is the third-most populous Anglophone country in the Americas (after the United States and Canada), and the fourth-most populous country in the Caribbean. Kingston is the country's capital and largest city. The majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, with significant European, East Asian (primarily Chinese), Indian, Lebanese, and mixed-race minorities. Due to a high rate of emigration for work since the 1960s, there is a large Jamaican diaspora, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The country has a global influence that belies its small size; it was the birthplace of the Rastafari religion, reggae music (and associated genres such as dub, ska and dancehall), and it is internationally prominent in sports, most notably cricket, sprinting and athletics. Jamaica has sometimes been considered the world's least populous cultural superpower.
Jamaica is an upper-middle income country with an economy heavily dependent on tourism; it has an average of 4.3 million tourists a year. The country performs favourably in measures of press freedom, democratic governance and sustainable well-being. Jamaica is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with power vested in the bicameral Parliament of Jamaica, consisting of an appointed Senate and a directly elected House of Representatives. Andrew Holness has served as Prime Minister of Jamaica since March 2016. As a Commonwealth realm, with Charles III as its king, the appointed representative of the Crown is the Governor-General of Jamaica, an office held by Patrick Allen since 2009.
The indigenous people, the Taíno, called the island Xaymaca in their language, meaning the "Land of Wood and Water" or the "Land of Springs". Yamaye has been suggested as an early Taino name for the island as recorded by Christopher Columbus.
Colloquially, Jamaicans refer to their home island as the "Rock". Slang names such as "Jamrock", "Jamdown" ("Jamdung" in Jamaican Patois), or briefly "Ja", have derived from this.
Humans inhabited Jamaica from as early as 4000–1000 BC. Little is known of these early peoples. A group known as the "Redware people" after their pottery arrived circa 600 AD, followed by the Taíno circa 800 AD, who most likely came from South America. They practised an agrarian and fishing economy, and at their height are thought to have numbered some 60,000 people, grouped into around 200 villages headed by caciques (chiefs). The south coast of Jamaica was the most populated, especially around the area now known as Old Harbour.
Though often thought to have become extinct following contact with Europeans, the Taíno in fact still inhabited Jamaica when the English took control of the island in 1655. Some fled into interior regions, merging with African Maroon communities. The Jamaican National Heritage Trust is attempting to locate and document any remaining evidence of the Taíno.
Christopher Columbus was the first European to see Jamaica, claiming the island for Spain after landing there in 1494 on his second voyage to the Americas. His probable landing point was Dry Harbour, called Discovery Bay, and St. Ann's Bay was named "Saint Gloria" by Columbus, as the first sighting of the land. He later returned in 1503; however, he was shipwrecked and he and his crew were forced to live on Jamaica for a year while waiting to be rescued.
One and a half kilometres west of St. Ann's Bay is the site of the first Spanish settlement on the island, Sevilla, which was established in 1509 by Juan de Esquivel but abandoned around 1524 because it was deemed unhealthy. The capital was moved to Spanish Town, then called St. Jago de la Vega, around 1534. Meanwhile, the Taínos began dying in large numbers, both from introduced diseases and from enslavement by the Spanish. As a result, the Spanish began importing slaves from Africa to the island.
Many slaves managed to escape, forming autonomous communities in remote and easily defended areas in the interior of Jamaica, mixing with the remaining Taino; these communities became known as Maroons. Many Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition to live on the island. They lived as conversos and were often persecuted by the Spanish rulers, and some turned to piracy against the Spanish Empire's shipping.
By the early 17th century it is estimated that no more than 2,500–3,000 people lived on Jamaica.
The English began taking an interest in the island and, following a failed attempt to conquer Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables led an invasion of Jamaica in 1655. Battles at Ocho Rios in 1657 and the Rio Nuevo in 1658 resulted in Spanish defeats; in 1660 the Maroon community under the leadership of Juan de Bolas switched sides from the Spanish, and began supporting the English. With their help, the Spanish defeat was secured. In 1661 English civil government was formed and Roundhead soldiers turned their attention to governance and agricultural responsibilities.
When the English captured Jamaica, most Spanish colonists fled, with the exception of Spanish Jews, who chose to remain. Spanish slave holders freed their slaves before leaving. Many slaves dispersed into the mountains, joining the already established maroon communities. During the centuries of slavery, Jamaican Maroons established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica, where they maintained their freedom and independence for generations, under the leadership of Maroon leaders such as Juan de Serras.
Meanwhile, the Spanish made several attempts to re-capture the island, prompting the British to support pirates attacking Spanish ships in the Caribbean; as a result piracy became rampant on Jamaica, with the city of Port Royal becoming notorious for its lawlessness. Spain later recognised English possession of the island with the Treaty of Madrid (1670). After that, the English authorities sought to rein in the worst excesses of the pirates.
In 1660, the population of Jamaica was about 4,500 white and 1,500 black. By the early 1670s, as the English developed sugar cane plantations worked by large numbers of slaves, black Africans formed a majority of the population. The Irish in Jamaica also formed a large part of the island's early population, making up two-thirds of the white population on the island in the late 17th century, twice that of the English population. They were brought in as indentured labourers and soldiers after the conquest of 1655. The majority of Irish were transported by force as political prisoners of war from Ireland as a result of the ongoing Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Migration of large numbers of Irish to the island continued into the 18th century.
A limited form of local government was introduced with the creation of the House of Assembly of Jamaica in 1664; however, it represented only a tiny number of rich plantation owners. In 1692, the colony was rocked by an earthquake that resulted in several thousand deaths and the almost complete destruction of Port Royal.
During the 1700s the economy boomed, based largely on sugar and other crops for export such as coffee, cotton and indigo. All these crops were worked by black slaves, who lived short and often brutal lives with no rights, being the property of a small planter-class. In the 18th century, slaves ran away and joined the Maroons in increasing numbers, and resulted in The First Maroon War (1728 – 1739/40), which ended in stalemate. The British government sued for peace, and signed treaties with the Leeward Maroons led by Cudjoe and Accompong in 1739, and the Windward Maroons led by Quao and Queen Nanny in 1740.
A large slave rebellion, known as Tacky's War, broke out in 1760 but was defeated by the British and their Maroon allies. After the second conflict in 1795–96, many Maroons from the Maroon town of Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town) were expelled to Nova Scotia and, later, Sierra Leone.
By the beginning of the 19th century, Jamaica's dependence on slave labour and a plantation economy had resulted in black people outnumbering white people by a ratio of almost 20 to 1. Although the British had outlawed the importation of slaves, some were still smuggled in from Spanish colonies and directly from Africa. While planning the abolition of slavery, the British Parliament passed laws to improve conditions for slaves. They banned the use of whips in the field and flogging of women; informed planters that slaves were to be allowed religious instruction, and required a free day during each week when slaves could sell their produce, prohibiting Sunday markets to enable slaves to attend church. The House of Assembly in Jamaica resented and resisted the new laws. Members, with membership then restricted to European-descended Jamaicans, claimed that the slaves were content and objected to Parliament's interference in island affairs. Slave owners feared possible revolts if conditions were lightened.
The British abolished the slave trade in 1807, but not the institution itself. In 1831 a huge slave rebellion, known as the Baptist War, broke out, led by the Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion resulted in hundreds of deaths and the destruction of many plantations, and led to ferocious reprisals by the plantocracy class. As a result of rebellions such as these, as well as the efforts of abolitionists, Britain outlawed slavery in its empire in 1834, with full emancipation from chattel slavery declared in 1838. The population in 1834 was 371,070, of whom 15,000 were white, 5,000 free black; 40,000 "coloured" or free people of colour (mixed race); and 311,070 were slaves. The resulting labour shortage prompted the British to begin to "import" indentured servants to supplement the labour pool, as many freedmen resisted working on the plantations. Workers recruited from India began arriving in 1845, Chinese workers in 1854. Many South Asian and Chinese descendants continue to reside in Jamaica today.
Over the next 20 years, several epidemics of cholera, scarlet fever, and smallpox hit the island, killing almost 60,000 people (about 10 per day). Nevertheless, in 1871 the census recorded a population of 506,154 people, 246,573 of which were males, and 259,581 females. Their races were recorded as 13,101 white, 100,346 coloured (mixed black and white), and 392,707 black. This period was marked by an economic slump, with many Jamaicans living in poverty. Dissatisfaction with this, and continued racial discrimination and marginalisation of the black majority, led to the outbreak of the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865 led by Paul Bogle, which was put down by Governor John Eyre with such brutality that he was recalled from his position. His successor, John Peter Grant, enacted a series of social, financial and political reforms whilst aiming to uphold firm British rule over the island, which became a Crown Colony in 1866. In 1872 the capital was transferred from Spanish Town to Kingston.
In 1907 Jamaica was struck by an earthquake—this, and the subsequent fire, caused immense destruction in Kingston and the deaths of 800–1,000 people.
Unemployment and poverty remained a problem for many Jamaicans. Various movements seeking political change arose as a result, most notably the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League founded by Marcus Garvey in 1917. As well as seeking greater political rights and an improvement for the condition of workers, Garvey was also a prominent Pan-Africanist and proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement. He was also one of the chief inspirations behind Rastafari, a religion founded in Jamaica in the 1930s that combined Christianity with an Afrocentric theology focused on the figure of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia. Despite occasional persecution, Rastafari grew to become an established faith on the island, later spreading abroad.
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Jamaica hard. As part of the British West Indian labour unrest of 1934–39, Jamaica saw numerous strikes, culminating in a strike in 1938 that turned into a riot. As a result, the British government instituted a commission to look into the causes of the disturbances; their report recommended political and economic reforms in Britain's Caribbean colonies. A new House of Representatives was established in 1944, elected by universal adult suffrage. During this period Jamaica's two-party system emerged, with the creation of the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) under Alexander Bustamante and the People's National Party (PNP) under Norman Manley.
Jamaica slowly gained increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. In 1958 it became a province in the Federation of the West Indies, a federation of several of Britain's Caribbean colonies. Membership of the Federation proved to be divisive, however, and a referendum on the issue saw a slight majority voting to leave. After leaving the Federation, Jamaica attained full independence on 6 August 1962. The new state retained, however, its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations (with the British monarch as head of state) and adopted a Westminster-style parliamentary system. Bustamante, at the age of 78, became the country's first prime minister.
Strong economic growth, averaging approximately 6% per year, marked the first ten years of independence under conservative JLP governments; these were led by successive Prime Ministers Alexander Bustamante, Donald Sangster (who died of natural causes within two months of taking office) and Hugh Shearer. The growth was fuelled by high levels of private investment in bauxite/alumina, tourism, the manufacturing industry and, to a lesser extent, the agricultural sector. In the 1967 Jamaican general election, the JLP were victorious again, winning 33 out of 53 seats, with the PNP taking 20 seats.
In terms of foreign policy Jamaica became a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, seeking to retain strong ties with Britain and the United States whilst also developing links with Communist states such as Cuba.
The optimism of the first decade was accompanied by a growing sense of inequality among many Afro-Jamaicans, and a concern that the benefits of growth were not being shared by the urban poor, many of whom ended up living in crime-ridden shanty towns in Kingston. This, combined with the effects of a slowdown in the global economy in 1970, led to the voters electing the PNP under Michael Manley in 1972. The PNP won 37 seats to the JLP's 16.
Manley's government enacted various social reforms, such as a higher minimum wage, land reform, legislation for women's equality, greater housing construction and an increase in educational provision. Internationally he improved ties with the Communist bloc and vigorously opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa.
In 1976, the PNP won another landslide, winning 47 seats to the JLP's 13. The turnout was a very high 85 percent. However, the economy faltered in this period due to a combination of internal and external factors (such as the oil shocks). The rivalry between the JLP and PNP became intense, and political and gang-related violence grew significantly in this period.
By 1980, Jamaica's gross national product had declined to some 25% below its 1972 level. Seeking change, Jamaicans voted the JLP back in in 1980 under Edward Seaga, the JLP winning 51 seats to the PNP's nine seats. Firmly anti-Communist, Seaga cut ties with Cuba and sent troops to support the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. The economic deterioration, however, continued into the mid-1980s, exacerbated by a number of factors. The largest and third-largest alumina producers, Alpart and Alcoa, closed; and there was a significant reduction in production by the second-largest producer, Alcan. Reynolds Jamaica Mines, Ltd. left the Jamaican industry. There was also a decline in tourism, which was important to the economy. Owing to rising foreign and local debt, accompanied by large fiscal deficits, the government sought International Monetary Fund (IMF) financing, which was dependent on implementing various austerity measures. These resulted in strikes in 1985 and a decline in support for the Seaga government, exacerbated by criticism of the government's response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Having now de-emphasised socialism and adopting a more centrist position, Michael Manley and the PNP were re-elected in 1989, winning 45 seats to the JLP's 15.
The PNP went on to win a string of elections, under Prime Ministers Michael Manley (1989–1992), P. J. Patterson (1992–2005) and Portia Simpson-Miller (2005–2007). In the 1993 Jamaican general election, Patterson led the PNP to victory, winning 52 seats to the JLP's eight seats. Patterson also won the 1997 Jamaican general election, by another landslide margin of 50 seats to the JLP's 10 seats. Patterson's third consecutive victory came in the 2002 Jamaican general election, when the PNP retained power, but with a reduced seat majority of 34 seats to 26. Patterson stepped down on 26 February 2006, and was replaced by Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica's first female Prime Minister. The turnout slowly declined during this period of time, from 67.4% in 1993 to 59.1% in 2002.
During this period various economic reforms were introduced, such as deregulating the finance sector and floating the Jamaican dollar, as well as greater investment in infrastructure, whilst also retaining a strong social safety net. Political violence, so prevalent in the previous two decades, declined significantly.
In 2007 the PNP was defeated by the JLP by a narrow margin of 32 seats to 28, with a turnout of 61.46%. This election ended 18 years of PNP rule, and Bruce Golding became the new prime minister. Golding's tenure (2007–2010) was dominated by the effects of the global recession, as well as the fallout from an attempt by Jamaican police and military to arrest drug lord Christopher Coke in 2010 which erupted in violence, resulting in over 70 deaths. As a result of this incident Golding resigned and was replaced by Andrew Holness in 2011.
Independence, however widely celebrated in Jamaica, has been questioned in the early 21st century. In 2011, a survey showed that approximately 60% of Jamaicans believe that the country would have been better off had it remained a British colony, with only 17% believing it would have been worse off, citing as problems years of social and fiscal mismanagement in the country. Holness and the JLP were defeated in the 2011 Jamaican general election, which saw Portia Simpson-Miller and the PNP return to power. The number of seats had been increased to 63, and the PNP swept to power with a landslide 42 seats to the JLP's 21. The voter turnout was 53.17%.
Holness's JLP won the 2016 general election narrowly, defeating Simpson-Miller's PNP, on 25 February. The PNP won 31 seats to the JLP's 32. As a result, Simpson-Miller became Opposition Leader for a second time. The voter turnout dipped below 50% for the first time, registering just 48.37%.
In the 2020 general election, Andrew Holness made history for the JLP by accomplishing a second consecutive win for the Jamaica Labour Party, winning 49 seats to 14 won by the PNP, led this time by Peter Phillips. The last time a consecutive win occurred for the JLP was in 1980. However, the turnout at this election was just 37%, probably affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Jamaica is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The head of state is the King of Jamaica (currently King Charles III), represented locally by the Governor-General of Jamaica. The governor-general is nominated by the Prime Minister of Jamaica and the entire Cabinet and then formally appointed by the monarch. All the members of the Cabinet are appointed by the governor-general on the advice of the prime minister. The monarch and the governor-general serve largely ceremonial roles, apart from their reserve powers for use in certain constitutional crisis situations. The position of the monarch has been a matter of continuing debate in Jamaica for many years; currently both major political parties are committed to transitioning to a republic with a president.
Jamaica's current constitution was drafted in 1962 by a bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature. It came into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962, which was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which gave Jamaica independence.
The Parliament of Jamaica is bicameral, consisting of the House of Representatives (Lower House) and the Senate (Upper House). Members of the House (known as Members of Parliament or MPs) are directly elected, and the member of the House of Representatives who, in the governor-general's best judgement, is best able to command the confidence of a majority of the members of that House, is appointed by the governor-general to be the prime minister. Senators are nominated jointly by the prime minister and the parliamentary Leader of the Opposition and are then appointed by the governor-general.
The Judiciary of Jamaica operates on a common law system derived from English law and Commonwealth of Nations precedents. The court of final appeal is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, though during the 2000s Parliament attempted to replace it with the Caribbean Court of Justice.
Jamaica has traditionally had a two-party system, with power often alternating between the People's National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The party with current administrative and legislative power is the Jamaica Labour Party, after its 2020 victory. There are also several minor parties who have yet to gain a seat in parliament; the largest of these is the National Democratic Movement (NDM).
The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) is the small but professional military force of Jamaica. The JDF is based on the British military model with similar organisation, training, weapons and traditions. Once chosen, officer candidates are sent to one of several British or Canadian basic officer courses depending on the arm of service. Enlisted soldiers are given basic training at Up Park Camp or JDF Training Depot, Newcastle, both in St. Andrew. As with the British model, NCOs are given several levels of professional training as they rise up the ranks. Additional military schools are available for speciality training in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The JDF is directly descended from the British Army's West India Regiment, which was formed during the colonial era. The West India Regiment was used extensively throughout the British Empire in policing the empire from 1795 to 1926. Other units in the JDF heritage include the early colonial Jamaica Militia, the Kingston Infantry Volunteers of WWI and reorganised into the Jamaican Infantry Volunteers in World War II. The West Indies Regiment was reformed in 1958 as part of the West Indies Federation, after dissolution of the Federation the JDF was established.
The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) comprises an infantry Regiment and Reserve Corps, an Air Wing, a Coast Guard fleet and a supporting Engineering Unit. The infantry regiment contains the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (National Reserve) battalions. The JDF Air Wing is divided into three flight units, a training unit, a support unit and the JDF Air Wing (National Reserve). The Coast Guard is divided between seagoing crews and support crews who conduct maritime safety and maritime law enforcement as well as defence-related operations.
The role of the support battalion is to provide support to boost numbers in combat and issue competency training in order to allow for the readiness of the force. The 1st Engineer Regiment was formed due to an increased demand for military engineers and their role is to provide engineering services whenever and wherever they are needed. The Headquarters JDF contains the JDF Commander, Command Staff as well as Intelligence, Judge Advocate office, Administrative and Procurement sections.
In recent years the JDF has been called on to assist the nation's police, the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), in fighting drug smuggling and a rising crime rate which includes one of the highest murder rates in the world. JDF units actively conduct armed patrols with the JCF in high-crime areas and known gang neighbourhoods. There has been vocal controversy as well as support of this JDF role. In early 2005, an Opposition leader, Edward Seaga, called for the merger of the JDF and JCF. This has not garnered support in either organisation nor among the majority of citizens. In 2017, Jamaica signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Jamaica is divided into 14 parishes, which are grouped into three historic counties that have no administrative relevance.
In the context of local government the parishes are designated "Local Authorities". These local authorities are further styled as "Municipal Corporations", which are either city municipalities or town municipalities. Any new city municipality must have a population of at least 50,000, and a town municipality a number set by the Minister of Local Government. There are currently no town municipalities.
The local governments of the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrews are consolidated as the city municipality of Kingston & St. Andrew Municipal Corporation. The newest city municipality is the Municipality of Portmore, created 2003. While it is geographically located within the parish of St. Catherine, it is governed independently.
Jamaica is the third largest island in the Caribbean. It lies between latitudes 17° and 19°N, and longitudes 76° and 79°W. Mountains dominate the interior: the Don Figuerero, Santa Cruz, and May Day mountains in the west, the Dry Harbour Mountains in the centre, and the John Crow Mountains and Blue Mountains in the east, the latter containing Blue Mountain Peak, Jamaica's tallest mountain at 2,256 m. They are surrounded by a narrow coastal plain. Jamaica has two cities, the first being Kingston, the capital city and centre of business, located on the south coast and the second being Montego Bay, one of the best known cities in the Caribbean for tourism, located on the north coast. Kingston Harbour is the seventh-largest natural harbour in the world, which contributed to the city being designated as the capital in 1872. Other towns of note include Portmore, Spanish Town, Savanna la Mar, Mandeville and the resort towns of Ocho Ríos, Port Antonio and Negril.
Tourist attractions include Dunn's River Falls in St. Ann, YS Falls in St. Elizabeth, the Blue Lagoon in Portland, a dormant volcano's crater, and Port Royal, site of a major earthquake in 1692 that helped form the island's Palisadoes tombolo.
Among the variety of terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems are dry and wet limestone forests, rainforest, riparian woodland, wetlands, caves, rivers, seagrass beds and coral reefs. The authorities have recognised the tremendous significance and potential of the environment and have designated some of the more "fertile" areas as "protected". Among the island's protected areas are the Cockpit Country, Hellshire Hills, and Litchfield forest reserves. In 1992, Jamaica's first marine park, covering nearly 15 square kilometres (5.8 sq mi), was established in Montego Bay. Portland Bight Protected Area was designated in 1999. The following year Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park was created, covering roughly 300 square miles (780 km) of a wilderness area which supports thousands of tree and fern species and rare animals.
There are several small islands off Jamaica's coast, most notably those in Portland Bight such as Pigeon Island, Salt Island, Dolphin Island, Long Island, Great Goat Island and Little Goat Island, and also Lime Cay located further east. Much further out – some 50–80 km off the south coast – lie the very small Morant Cays and Pedro Cays.
The climate in Jamaica is tropical, with hot and humid weather, although higher inland regions are more temperate. Some regions on the south coast, such as the Liguanea Plain and the Pedro Plains, are relatively dry rain-shadow areas.
Jamaica lies in the hurricane belt of the Atlantic Ocean and because of this, the island sometimes suffers significant storm damage. Hurricanes Charlie and Gilbert hit Jamaica directly in 1951 and 1988, respectively, causing major damage and many deaths. In the 2000s (decade), hurricanes Ivan, Dean, and Gustav also brought severe weather to the island.
Jamaica's climate is tropical, supporting diverse ecosystems with a wealth of plants and animals. Its plant life has changed considerably over the centuries; when the Spanish arrived in 1494, except for small agricultural clearings, the country was deeply forested. The European settlers cut down the great timber trees for building and ships' supplies, and cleared the plains, savannas, and mountain slopes for intense agricultural cultivation. Many new plants were introduced including sugarcane, bananas, and citrus trees.
Jamaica is home to about 3,000 species of native flowering plants (of which over 1,000 are endemic and 200 are species of orchid), thousands of species of non-flowering flora, and about 20 botanical gardens, some of which are several hundred years old. Areas of heavy rainfall also contain stands of bamboo, ferns, ebony, mahogany, and rosewood. Cactus and similar dry-area plants are found along the south and southwest coastal area. Parts of the west and southwest consist of large grasslands, with scattered stands of trees. Jamaica is home to three terrestrial ecoregions, the Jamaican moist forests, Jamaican dry forests, and Greater Antilles mangroves. It had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 5.01/10, ranking it 110th globally out of 172 countries.
Jamaica's fauna, typical of the Caribbean, includes highly diversified wildlife with many endemic species. As with other oceanic islands, land mammals are mostly several species of bats of which at least three endemic species are found only in Cockpit Country, one of which is at-risk. Other species of bat include the fig-eating and hairy-tailed bats. The only non-bat native mammal extant in Jamaica is the Jamaican hutia, locally known as the coney. Introduced mammals such as wild boar and the small Asian mongoose are also common. Jamaica is also home to about 50 species of reptiles, the largest of which is the American crocodile; however, it is only present within the Black River and a few other areas. Lizards such as anoles, iguanas and snakes such as racers and the Jamaican boa (the largest snake on the island), are common in areas such as the Cockpit Country. None of Jamaica's eight species of native snakes is venomous.
Jamaica is home to about 289 species of birds of which 27 are endemic including the endangered black-Billed parrots and the Jamaican blackbird, both of which are only found in Cockpit Country. It is also the indigenous home to four species of hummingbirds (three of which are found nowhere else in the world): the black-billed streamertail, the Jamaican mango, the Vervain hummingbird, and red-billed streamertails. The red-billed streamertail, known locally as the "doctor bird", is Jamaica's National Symbol. Other notable species include the Jamaican tody and the Greater flamingo,
One species of freshwater turtle is native to Jamaica, the Jamaican slider. It is found only on Jamaica and on a few islands in the Bahamas. In addition, many types of frogs are common on the island, especially treefrogs.
Jamaican waters contain considerable resources of fresh and saltwater fish. The chief varieties of saltwater fish are kingfish, jack, mackerel, whiting, bonito, and tuna. Fish that occasionally enter freshwater and estuarine environments include snook, jewfish, mangrove snapper, and mullets. Fish that spend the majority of their lives in Jamaica's fresh waters include many species of livebearers, killifish, freshwater gobies, the mountain mullet, and the American eel. Tilapia have been introduced from Africa for aquaculture, and are very common. Also visible in the waters surrounding Jamaica are dolphins, parrotfish, and the endangered manatee.
Insects and other invertebrates are abundant, including the world's largest centipede, the Amazonian giant centipede. Jamaica is the home to about 150 species of butterflies and moths, including 35 indigenous species and 22 subspecies. It is also the native home to the Jamaican swallowtail, the western hemisphere's largest butterfly.
Coral reef ecosystems are important because they provide people with a source of livelihood, food, recreation, and medicinal compounds and protect the land on which they live. Jamaica relies on the ocean and its ecosystem for its development. However, the marine life in Jamaica is also being affected. There could be many factors that contribute to marine life not having the best health. Jamaica's geological origin, topographical features and seasonal high rainfall make it susceptible to a range of natural hazards that can affect the coastal and oceanic environments. These include storm surge, slope failures (landslides), earthquakes, floods and hurricanes. Coral reefs in the Negril Marine Park (NMP), Jamaica, have been increasingly impacted by nutrient pollution and macroalgal blooms following decades of intensive development as a major tourist destination.
Another one of those factors could include tourism: being that Jamaica is a very touristy place, the island draws numerous people traveling here from all over the world. The Jamaican tourism industry accounts for 32% of total employment and 36% of the country's GDP and is largely based on the sun, sea and sand, the last two of these attributes being dependent on healthy coral reef ecosystems. Because of Jamaica's tourism, they have developed a study to see if the tourist would be willing to help financially to manage their marine ecosystem because Jamaica alone is unable to. The ocean connects all the countries all over the world, however, everyone and everything is affecting the flow and life in the ocean. Jamaica is a very touristy place specifically because of their beaches. If their oceans are not functioning at their best then the well-being of Jamaica and the people who live there will start to deteriorate. According to the OECD, oceans contribute $1.5 trillion annually in value-added to the overall economy. A developing country on an island will get the majority of their revenue from their ocean.
Pollution comes from run-off, sewage systems, and garbage. However, this typically all ends up in the ocean after there is rain or floods. Everything that ends up in the water changes the quality and balance of the ocean. Poor coastal water quality has adversely affected fisheries, tourism and mariculture, as well as undermining biological sustainability of the living resources of ocean and coastal habitats. Jamaica imports and exports many goods through their waters. Some of the imports that go into Jamaica include petroleum and petroleum products. Issues include accidents at sea; risk of spills through local and international transport of petroleum and petroleum products. Oil spills can disrupt the marine life with chemicals that are not normally found in the ocean. Other forms of pollution also occur in Jamaica. Solid waste disposal mechanisms in Jamaica are currently inadequate. The solid waste gets into the water through rainfall forces. Solid waste is also harmful to wildlife, particularly birds, fish and turtles that feed at the surface of the water and mistake floating debris for food. For example, plastic can be caught around birds' and turtles' necks, making it difficult to eat and breath as they begin to grow, causing the plastic to get tighter around their necks. Pieces of plastic, metal, and glass can be mistaken for the food fish eat. Each Jamaican generates 1 kg (2 lbs) of waste per day; only 70% of this is collected by National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA)—the remaining 30% is either burnt or disposed of in gullies/waterways.
There are policies that are being put into place to help preserve the ocean and the life below water. The goal of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) is to improve the quality of life of human communities who depend on coastal resources while maintaining the biological diversity and productivity of coastal ecosystems. Developing an underdeveloped country can impact the oceans ecosystem because of all the construction that would be done to develop the country. Over-building, driven by powerful market forces as well as poverty among some sectors of the population, and destructive exploitation contribute to the decline of ocean and coastal resources. Developing practices that will contribute to the lives of the people but also to the life of the ocean and its ecosystem. Some of these practices include: Develop sustainable fisheries practices, ensure sustainable mariculture techniques and practices, sustainable management of shipping, and promote sustainable tourism practices.
C.I.A. World Fact Book 2015
Jamaica's diverse ethnic roots are reflected in the national motto "Out of Many One People". Most of the population of 2,812,000 (July 2018 est.) are of African or partially African descent, with many being able to trace their origins to the West African countries of Ghana and Nigeria. Other major ancestral areas are Europe, South Asia, and East Asia. It is uncommon for Jamaicans to identify themselves by race as is prominent in other countries such as the United States, with most Jamaicans seeing Jamaican nationality as an identity in and of itself, identifying as simply being "Jamaican" regardless of ethnicity. A study found that the average admixture on the island was 78.3% Sub-Saharan African, 16.0% European, and 5.7% East Asian. Another study in 2020 showed that Jamaicans of African descent represent 76.3% of the population, followed by 15.1% Afro-European, 3.4% East Indian and Afro-East Indian, 3.2% Caucasian, 1.2% Chinese and 0.8% other.
The Jamaican Maroons of Accompong and other settlements are the descendants of African slaves who fled the plantations for the interior where they set up their own autonomous communities. Many Maroons continue to have their own traditions and speak their own language, known locally as Kromanti.
Asians form the second-largest group and include Indo-Jamaicans and Chinese Jamaicans. Most are descended from indentured workers brought by the British colonial government to fill labour shortages following the abolition of slavery in 1838. Prominent Indian Jamaicans include jockey Shaun Bridgmohan, who was the first Jamaican in the Kentucky Derby, NBC Nightly News journalist Lester Holt, and Miss Jamaica World and Miss Universe winner Yendi Phillips. The southwestern parish of Westmoreland is famous for its large population of Indo-Jamaicans. Along with their Indian counterparts, Chinese Jamaicans have also played an integral part in Jamaica's community and history. Prominent descendants of this group include Canadian billionaire investor Michael Lee-Chin, supermodels Naomi Campbell and Tyson Beckford, and VP Records founder Vincent "Randy" Chin.
There are about 20,000 Jamaicans who have Lebanese and Syrian ancestry. Most were Christian immigrants who fled the Ottoman occupation of Lebanon in the early 19th century. Eventually their descendants became very successful politicians and businessmen. Notable Jamaicans from this group include former Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga, Jamaican politician and former Miss World Lisa Hanna, Jamaican politicians Edward Zacca and Shahine Robinson, and hotelier Abraham Elias Issa.
The first wave of English immigrants arrived to the island 1655 after conquering the Spanish, and they have historically been the dominant group. Prominent descendants from this group include former American Governor of New York David Paterson, Sandals Hotels owner Gordon Butch Stewart, United States Presidential Advisor and "mother" of the Pell Grant Lois Rice, and former United States National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. The first Irish immigrants came to Jamaica in the 1600s as war prisoners and later, indentured labour. Their descendants include two of Jamaica's National Heroes: Prime Ministers Michael Manley and Alexander Bustamante. Along with the English and the Irish, the Scots are another group that has made a significant impact on the island. According to the Scotland Herald newspaper, Jamaica has more people using the Campbell surnames than the population of Scotland itself, and it also has the highest percentage of Scottish surnames outside of Scotland. Scottish surnames account to about 60% of the surnames in the Jamaican phone books. The first Jamaican inhabitants from Scotland were exiled "rebels". Later, they would be followed by ambitious businessmen who spent time between their great country estates in Scotland and the island. As a result, many of the slave owning plantations on the island were owned by Scottish men, and thus a large number of mixed-race Jamaicans can claim Scottish ancestry. High immigration from Scotland continued until well after independence. Today, notable Scottish-Jamaicans include the businessman John Pringle, former American Secretary of State Colin Powell, and American actress Kerry Washington.
There is also a significant Portuguese Jamaican population that is predominantly of Sephardic Jewish heritage. The first Jews arrived as explorers from Spain in the 15th century after being forced to convert to Christianity or face death. A small number of them became slave owners and even famous pirates. Judaism eventually became very influential in Jamaica and can be seen today with many Jewish cemeteries around the country. During the Holocaust Jamaica became a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. Famous Jewish descendants include the dancehall artist Sean Paul, former record producer and founder of Island Records Chris Blackwell, and Jacob De Cordova who was the founder of the Daily Gleaner newspaper.
In recent years immigration has increased, coming mainly from China, Haiti, Cuba, Colombia, and Latin America; 20,000 Latin Americans reside in Jamaica. In 2016, the Prime Minister Andrew Holness suggested making Spanish Jamaica's second official language. About 7,000 Americans also reside in Jamaica. Notable American with connection to the island include fashion icon Ralph Lauren, philanthropist Daisy Soros, Blackstone's Schwarzman family, the family of the late Lieutenant Governor of Delaware John W. Rollins, fashion designer Vanessa Noel, investor Guy Stuart, Edward and Patricia Falkenberg, and iHeart Media CEO Bob Pittman, all of whom hold annual charity events to support the island.
Jamaica is regarded as a bilingual country, with two major languages in use by the population. The official language is English, which is "used in all domains of public life", including the government, the legal system, the media, and education. However, the primary spoken language is an English-based creole called Jamaican Patois (or Patwa). The two exist in a dialect continuum, with speakers using a different register of speech depending on context and whom they are speaking to. "Pure" Patois, though sometimes seen as merely a particularly aberrant dialect of English, is essentially mutually unintelligible with standard English and is best thought of as a separate language. A 2007 survey by the Jamaican Language Unit found that 17.1 percent of the population were monolingual in Jamaican Standard English (JSE), 36.5 percent were monolingual in Patois, and 46.4 percent were bilingual, although earlier surveys had pointed to a greater degree of bilinguality (up to 90 percent). The Jamaican education system has only recently begun to offer formal instruction in Patois, while retaining JSE as the "official language of instruction".
Additionally, some Jamaicans use one or more of Jamaican Sign Language (JSL), American Sign Language (ASL) or the declining indigenous Jamaican Country Sign Language (Konchri Sain). Both JSL and ASL are rapidly replacing Konchri Sain for a variety of reasons.
Many Jamaicans have emigrated to other countries, especially to the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. In the case of the United States, about 20,000 Jamaicans per year are granted permanent residence. There has also been emigration of Jamaicans to other Caribbeans countries such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guyana, and The Bahamas. It was estimated in 2004 that up to 2.5 million Jamaicans and Jamaican descendants live abroad.
Jamaicans in the United Kingdom number an estimated 800,000 making them by far the country's largest African-Caribbean group. Large-scale migration from Jamaica to the UK occurred primarily in the 1950s and 1960s when the country was still under British rule. Jamaican communities exist in most large UK cities. Concentrations of expatriate Jamaicans are quite considerable in numerous cities in the United States, including New York City, Buffalo, the Miami metro area, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando, Tampa, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Hartford, Providence and Los Angeles. In Canada, the Jamaican population is centred in Toronto, with smaller communities in cities such as Hamilton, Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Ottawa. Jamaican Canadians comprise about 30% of the entire Black Canadian population.
A notable though much smaller group of emigrants are Jamaicans in Ethiopia. These are mostly Rastafarians, in whose theological worldview Africa is the promised land, or "Zion", or more specifically Ethiopia, due to reverence in which former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is held. Most live in the small town of Shashamane about 150 miles (240 km) south of the capital Addis Ababa.
When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, the murder rate was 3.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the lowest in the world. By 2009, the rate was 62 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world. Gang violence became a serious problem, with organised crime being centred around Jamaican posses or "Yardies". Jamaica has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for many years, according to UN estimates. Some areas of Jamaica, particularly poor areas in Kingston, Montego Bay and elsewhere experience high levels of crime and violence.
However, there were 1,683 reported murders in 2009 and 1,447 in 2010. After 2011 the murder rate continued to fall, following the downward trend in 2010, after a strategic programme was launched. In 2012, the Ministry of National Security reported a 30 percent decrease in murders. Nevertheless, in 2017 murders rose by 22% over the previous year.
Many Jamaicans are hostile towards LGBT and intersex people, and mob attacks against gay people have been reported. Numerous high-profile dancehall and ragga artists have produced songs featuring explicitly homophobic lyrics. Male homosexuality is illegal and punishable by imprisonment.
Christianity is the largest religion practised in Jamaica. About 70% are Protestants; Roman Catholics are just 2% of the population. According to the 2001 census, the country's largest Protestant denominations are the Church of God (24%), Seventh-day Adventist Church (11%), Pentecostal (10%), Baptist (7%), Anglican (4%), United Church (2%), Methodist (2%), Moravian (1%) and Plymouth Brethren (1%). Bedwardism is a form of Christianity native to the island, sometimes viewed as a separate faith. The Christian faith gained acceptance as British Christian abolitionists and Baptist missionaries joined educated former slaves in the struggle against slavery.
The Rastafari movement has 29,026 adherents, according to the 2011 census, with 25,325 Rastafarian males and 3,701 Rastafarian females. The faith originated in Jamaica in the 1930s and though rooted in Christianity it is heavily Afrocentric in its focus, revering figures such as the Jamaican black nationalist Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie, the former Emperor of Ethiopia. Rastafari has since spread across the globe, especially to areas with large black or African diasporas.
Various faiths and traditional religious practices derived from Africa are practised on the island, notably Kumina, Convince, Myal and Obeah.
Other religions in Jamaica include Jehovah's Witnesses (2% population), the Bahá'í faith, which counts perhaps 8,000 adherents and 21 Local Spiritual Assemblies, Mormonism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The Hindu Diwali festival is celebrated yearly among the Indo-Jamaican community.
There is also a small population of about 200 Jews, who describe themselves as Liberal-Conservative. The first Jews in Jamaica trace their roots back to early 15th-century Spain and Portugal. Kahal Kadosh Shaare Shalom, also known as the United Congregation of Israelites, is a historic synagogue located in the city of Kingston. Originally built in 1912, it is the official and only Jewish place of worship left on the island. The once abundant Jewish population has voluntarily converted to Christianity over time. Shaare Shalom is one of the few synagogues in the world that contains sand covered floors and is a popular tourist destination.
Other small groups include Muslims, who claim 5,000 adherents. The Muslim holidays of Ashura (known locally as Hussay or Hosay) and Eid have been celebrated throughout the island for hundreds of years. In the past, every plantation in each parish celebrated Hosay. Today it has been called an Indian carnival and is perhaps most well known in Clarendon where it is celebrated each August. People of all religions attend the event, showing mutual respect.
Jamaican culture has a strong global presence. The musical genres reggae, ska, mento, rocksteady, dub, and, more recently, dancehall and ragga all originated in the island's vibrant, popular urban recording industry. These have themselves gone on to influence numerous other genres, such as punk rock (through reggae and ska), dub poetry, New Wave, two-tone, lovers rock, reggaeton, jungle, drum and bass, dubstep, grime and American rap music. Some rappers, such as The Notorious B.I.G., Busta Rhymes, and Heavy D, are of Jamaican descent.
Bob Marley is probably the best known Jamaican musician; with his band the Wailers he had a string of hits in 1960s–70s, popularising reggae internationally and going on to sell millions of records. Many other internationally known artists were born in Jamaica, including Toots Hibbert, Millie Small, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Gregory Isaacs, Half Pint, Protoje, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Big Youth, Jimmy Cliff, Dennis Brown, Desmond Dekker, Beres Hammond, Beenie Man, Shaggy, Grace Jones, Shabba Ranks, Super Cat, Buju Banton, Sean Paul, I Wayne, Bounty Killer and many others. Bands that came from Jamaica include Black Uhuru, Third World Band, Inner Circle, Chalice Reggae Band, Culture, Fab Five and Morgan Heritage.
The journalist and author H. G. de Lisser used his native country as the setting for his many novels. Born in Falmouth, Jamaica, de Lisser worked as a reporter for the Jamaica Times at a young age and in 1920 began publishing the magazine Planters' Punch. The White Witch of Rosehall is one of his better-known novels. He was named Honorary President of the Jamaican Press Association; he worked throughout his professional career to promote the Jamaican sugar industry.
Roger Mais, a journalist, poet, and playwright wrote many short stories, plays, and novels, including The Hills Were Joyful Together (1953), Brother Man (1954), and Black Lightning (1955).
Ian Fleming, who had a home in Jamaica where he spent considerable time, repeatedly used the island as a setting in his James Bond novels, including Live and Let Die, Doctor No, "For Your Eyes Only", The Man with the Golden Gun, and Octopussy and The Living Daylights.
Marlon James (1970), novelist has published three novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009) and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
Jamaica has a history in the film industry dating from the early 1960s. A look at delinquent youth in Jamaica is presented in the 1970s musical crime film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff as a frustrated (and psychopathic) reggae musician who descends into a murderous crime spree. Other notable Jamaican films include Countryman, Rockers, Dancehall Queen, One Love, Shottas, Out the Gate, Third World Cop and Kingston Paradise. Jamaica is also often used as a filming location, such as the James Bond film Dr. No (1962), Papillon (1973) starring Steve McQueen, Cocktail (1988) starring Tom Cruise, and the 1993 Disney comedy Cool Runnings, which is loosely based on the true story of Jamaica's first bobsled team trying to make it in the Winter Olympics.
The island is famous for its Jamaican jerk spice, curries and rice and peas which is integral to Jamaican cuisine. Jamaica is also home to Red Stripe beer and Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee.
(From the Jamaica Information Service)
Sport is an integral part of national life in Jamaica and the island's athletes tend to perform to a standard well above what might ordinarily be expected of such a small country. While the most popular local sport is cricket, on the international stage Jamaicans have tended to do particularly well at track and field athletics.
The country was one of the venues of 2007 Cricket World Cup and the West Indies cricket team is one of 12 ICC full member teams that participate in international Test cricket. The Jamaica national cricket team competes regionally, and also provides players for the West Indies team. Sabina Park is the only Test venue in the island, but the Greenfield Stadium is also used for cricket.
Since independence Jamaica has consistently produced world class athletes in track and field. Over the past six decades Jamaica has produced dozens of world class sprinters including Olympic and World Champion Usain Bolt, world record holder in the 100m for men at 9.58s, and 200m for men at 19.19s. Other noteworthy Jamaican sprinters include Arthur Wint, the first Jamaican Olympic gold medalist; Donald Quarrie, Elaine Thompson double Olympic champion from Rio 2016 in the 100m and 200m, Olympic Champion and former 200m world record holder; Roy Anthony Bridge, part of the International Olympic Committee; Merlene Ottey; Delloreen Ennis-London; Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the former World and two time Olympic 100m Champion; Kerron Stewart; Aleen Bailey; Juliet Cuthbert; three-time Olympic gold medalist; Veronica Campbell-Brown; Sherone Simpson; Brigitte Foster-Hylton; Yohan Blake; Herb McKenley; George Rhoden, Olympic gold medalist; Deon Hemmings, Olympic gold medalist; as well as Asafa Powell, former 100m world record holder and two-time 100m Olympic finalist and gold medal winner in the men's 2008 Olympic 4 × 100 m. American Olympic winner Sanya Richards-Ross was also born in Jamaica.
Association football and horse-racing are other popular sports in Jamaica. The national football team qualified for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. Horse racing was Jamaica's first sport. Today, horse racing provides jobs for about 20,000 people including horse breeders, groomers, and trainers. Also, several Jamaicans are known internationally for their success in horse racing including Richard DePass, who once held the Guinness Book of World Records for the most wins in a day, Canadian awards winner George HoSang, and American award winners Charlie Hussey, Andrew Ramgeet, and Barrington Harvey.
Race car driving is also a popular sport in Jamaica with several car racing tracks and racing associations across the country.
The Jamaica national bobsled team was once a serious contender in the Winter Olympics, beating many well-established teams. Chess and basketball are widely played in Jamaica and are supported by the Jamaica Chess Federation (JCF) and the Jamaica Basketball Federation (JBF), respectively. Netball is also very popular on the island, with the Jamaica national netball team called The Sunshine Girls consistently ranking in the top five in the world.
Rugby league has been played in Jamaica since 2006. The Jamaica national rugby league team is made up of players who play in Jamaica and from UK based professional and semi professional clubs (notably in the Super League and Championship). In November 2018 for the first time ever, the Jamaican rugby league team qualified for the Rugby League World Cup after defeating the USA & Canada. Jamaica will play in the 2021 Rugby League World Cup in England.
According to ESPN, the highest paid Jamaican professional athlete in 2011 was Justin Masterson, starting pitcher for the baseball team Cleveland Indians in the United States.
The emancipation of the slaves heralded the establishment of an education system for the masses. Prior to emancipation there were few schools for educating locals and many sent their children off to England to access quality education. After emancipation the West Indian Commission granted a sum of money to establish Elementary Schools, now known as All Age Schools. Most of these schools were established by the churches. This was the genesis of the modern Jamaican school system.
Presently the following categories of schools exist:
Additionally, there are many community and teacher training colleges.
Education is free from the early childhood to secondary levels. There are also opportunities for those who cannot afford further education in the vocational arena, through the Human Employment and Resource Training-National Training Agency (HEART Trust-NTA) programme, which is opened to all working age national population and through an extensive scholarship network for the various universities.
Students are taught Spanish in school from the primary level upwards; about 40–45% of educated people in Jamaica knows some form of Spanish.
Jamaica is a mixed economy with both state enterprises and private sector businesses. Major sectors of the Jamaican economy include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism, petroleum refining, financial and insurance services. Tourism and mining are the leading earners of foreign exchange. Half the Jamaican economy relies on services, with half of its income coming from services such as tourism. An estimated 4.3 million foreign tourists visit Jamaica every year. According to the World Bank, Jamaica is an upper-middle income country that, like its Caribbean neighbours, is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, flooding, and hurricanes. In 2018, Jamaica represented the CARICOM Caribbean Community at the G20 and the G7 annual meetings. In 2019 Jamaica reported its lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.
Supported by multilateral financial institutions, Jamaica has, since the early 1980s, sought to implement structural reforms aimed at fostering private sector activity and increasing the role of market forces in resource allocation Since 1991, the government has followed a programme of economic liberalisation and stabilisation by removing exchange controls, floating the exchange rate, cutting tariffs, stabilising the Jamaican dollar, reducing inflation and removing restrictions on foreign investment. Emphasis has been placed on maintaining strict fiscal discipline, greater openness to trade and financial flows, market liberalisation and reduction in the size of government. During this period, a large share of the economy was returned to private sector ownership through divestment and privatisation programmes. The free-trade zones at Kingston, Montego Bay and Spanish Town allow duty-free importation, tax-free profits, and free repatriation of export earnings.
Jamaica's economy grew strongly after the years of independence, but then stagnated in the 1980s, due to the heavy falls in price of bauxite and fluctuations in the price of agriculture. The financial sector was troubled in 1994, with many banks and insurance companies suffering heavy losses and liquidity problems. According to the Commonwealth Secretariat, "The government set up the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) in January 1997 to assist these banks and companies, providing funds in return for equity, and acquired substantial holdings in banks and insurance companies and related companies..." but it only exasperated the problem, and brought the country into large external debt. From 2001, once it had restored these banks and companies to financial health, Finsac divested them." The Government of Jamaica remains committed to lowering inflation, with a long-term objective of bringing it in line with that of its major trading partners.
In 1996 and 1997 there was a decrease in GDP largely due to significant problems in the financial sector and, in 1997, a severe island-wide drought (the worst in 70 years) and hurricane that drastically reduced agricultural production. In 1997 and 1998, nominal GDP was approximately a high of about 8 percent of GDP and then lowered to 4½ percent of GDP in 1999 and 2000. The economy in 1997 was marked by low levels of import growth, high levels of private capital inflows and relative stability in the foreign exchange market.
Recent economic performance shows the Jamaican economy is recovering. Agricultural production, an important engine of growth increased to 5.5% in 2001 compared to the corresponding period in 2000, signalling the first positive growth rate in the sector since January 1997. In 2018, Jamaica reported a 7.9% increase in corn, 6.1% increase in plantains, 10.4% increase in bananas, 2.2% increase in pineapples, 13.3% increase in dasheen, 24.9% increase in coconuts, and a 10.6% increase in whole milk production. Bauxite and alumina production increased 5.5% from January to December 1998, compared to the corresponding period in 1997. January's bauxite production recorded a 7.1% increase relative to January 1998 and continued expansion of alumina production through 2009 is planned by Alcoa. Jamaica is the fifth-largest exporter of bauxite in the world, after Australia, China, Brazil and Guinea. The country also exports limestone, of which it holds large deposits. The government is currently implementing plans to increase its extraction.
A Canadian company, Carube Copper Corp, has found and confirmed, "...the existence of at least seven significant Cu/Au porphyry systems (in St. Catherine)." They have estimated that, "The porphyry distribution found at Bellas Gate is similar to that found in the Northparkes mining district of New South Wales, Australia (which was) sold to China in 2013 for US$820 million." Carube noted that Jamaica's geology, "... is similar to that of Chile, Argentina and the Dominican Republic – all productive mining jurisdictions." Mining on the sites began in 2017.
Tourism, which is the largest foreign exchange earner, showed improvement as well. In 1999 the total visitor arrivals was 2 million, an increase of 100,000 from the previous year. Since 2017, Jamaica's tourism has risen exponentially, rising to 4.3 million average tourists per year. Jamaica's largest tourist markets are from North America, South America, and Europe. In 2017, Jamaica recorded a 91.3% increase in stopover visitors from Southern and Western Europe (and a 41% increase in stopover arrivals from January to September 2017 over the same period from the previous year) with Germany, Portugal and Spain registering the highest percentage gains. In 2018, Jamaica won several World Travel Awards in Portugal winning the "Chairman's Award for Global Tourism Innovation", "Best Tourist Board in the Caribbean" "Best Honeymoon Destination", "Best Culinary Destination", "World's Leading Beach Destination" and "World's Leading Cruise Destination". Two months later, the Travvy Tourism Awards held in New York City, awarded Jamaica's Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, with the inaugural Chairman's Award for, "Global Tourism Innovation for the Development of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCM)". Bartlett has also won the Pacific Travel Writer's Association's award in Germany for the, "2018 Best Tourism Minister of the Year".
Petrojam, Jamaica's national and only petroleum refinery, is co-owned by the Government of Venezuela. Petrojam, "..operates a 35,000 barrel per day hydro-skimming refinery, to produce Automotive Diesel Oil; Heavy Fuel Oil; Kerosene/Jet Fuel, Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), Asphalt and Gasoline." Customers include the Power industry, Aircraft refuellers, and Local Marketing companies. On 20 February 2019, the Jamaican Government voted to retake ownership of Venezuela's 49% share.
Jamaica's agricultural exports are sugar, bananas, cocoa, coconut, molasses oranges, limes, grapefruit, rum, yams, allspice (of which it is the world's largest and "most exceptional quality" exporter), and Blue Mountain Coffee which is considered a world renowned gourmet brand.
Jamaica has a wide variety of industrial and commercial activities. The aviation industry is able to perform most routine aircraft maintenance, except for heavy structural repairs. There is a considerable amount of technical support for transport and agricultural aviation. Jamaica has a considerable amount of industrial engineering, light manufacturing, including metal fabrication, metal roofing, and furniture manufacturing. Food and beverage processing, glassware manufacturing, software and data processing, printing and publishing, insurance underwriting, music and recording, and advanced education activities can be found in the larger urban areas. The Jamaican construction industry is entirely self-sufficient, with professional technical standards and guidance.
Since the first quarter of 2006, the economy of Jamaica has undergone a period of staunch growth. With inflation for the 2006 calendar year down to 6.0% and unemployment down to 8.9%, the nominal GDP grew by an unprecedented 2.9%. An investment programme in island transportation and utility infrastructure and gains in the tourism, mining, and service sectors all contributed this figure. All projections for 2007 show an even higher potential for economic growth with all estimates over 3.0% and hampered only by urban crime and public policies. Jamaica was ranked 78th in the Global Innovation Index in 2023.
In 2006, Jamaica became part of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) as one of the pioneering members.
The global economic downturn had a significant impact on the Jamaican economy for the years 2007 to 2009, resulting in negative economic growth. The government implemented a new Debt Management Initiative, the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) on 14 January 2010. The initiative would see holders of Government of Jamaica (GOJ) bonds returning the high interest earning instruments for bonds with lower yields and longer maturities. The offer was taken up by over 95% of local financial institutions and was deemed a success by the government.
Owing to the success of the JDX program, the Bruce Golding-led government was successful in entering into a borrowing arrangement with the IMF on 4 February 2010 for the amount of US$1.27b. The loan agreement is for a period of three years.
In April 2014, the Governments of Jamaica and China signed the preliminary agreements for the first phase of the Jamaican Logistics Hub (JLH) – the initiative that aims to position Kingston as the fourth node in the global logistics chain, joining Rotterdam, Dubai and Singapore, and serving the Americas. The Project, when completed, is expected to provide many jobs for Jamaicans, Economic Zones for multinational companies and much needed economic growth to alleviate the country's heavy debt-to-GDP ratio. Strict adherence to the IMF's refinancing programme and preparations for the JLH has favourably affected Jamaica's credit rating and outlook from the three biggest rating agencies. In 2018, both Moody's and Standard and Poor Credit ratings upgraded Jamaica's ratings to both "stable and positive" respectively.
Main articles: Science and technology in Jamaica and List of Jamaican inventions and discoveries
The Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) sector is guided by the National Commission on Science and Technology (NCST) and the Scientific Research Council (SRC). Both are under the direction of the Ministry of Science, Energy, and Technology.
Since the 1990s, the government has set an agenda to push the development of science and technology in Jamaica. Despite some successes, such as the growth of the nutraceutical industry, it has been difficult to translate the results into domestic technologies, products and services - largely because of national budgetary constraints. However, with Jamaica's improved fiscal space, coming out of its recent IMF programme, the government has pledged to increase expenditure on research and development.
Jamaicans have made some noteworthy scientific and medical contributions. Amongst these include the discovery of kwashiorkor, the pioneer of treatments for pediatric sickle cell anemia and the invention of various spacecraft support systems.
The transport infrastructure in Jamaica consists of roadways, railways and air transport, with roadways forming the backbone of the island's internal transport system.
The Jamaican road network consists of almost 21,000 kilometres (13,000 mi) of roads, of which over 15,000 kilometres (9,300 mi) is paved. The Jamaican Government has, since the late 1990s and in cooperation with private investors, embarked on a campaign of infrastructural improvement projects, one of which includes the creation of a system of freeways, the first such access-controlled roadways of their kind on the island, connecting the main population centres of the island. This project has so far seen the completion of 33 kilometres (21 mi) of freeway.
Railways in Jamaica no longer enjoy the prominent position they once did, having been largely replaced by roadways as the primary means of transport. Of the 272 kilometres (169 mi) of railway found in Jamaica, only 57 kilometres (35 mi) remain in operation, currently used to transport bauxite. On 13 April 2011, a limited passenger service was resumed between May Pen, Spanish Town and Linstead.
There are three international airports in Jamaica with modern terminals, long runways, and the navigational equipment required to accommodate the large jet aircraft used in modern and air travel: Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston; Ian Fleming International Airport in Boscobel, Saint Mary Parish; and the island's largest and busiest airport, Sir Donald Sangster International Airport in the resort city of Montego Bay. Manley and Sangster International airports are home to the country's national airline, Air Jamaica. In addition there are local commuter airports at Tinson Pen (Kingston), Port Antonio, and Negril, which cater to internal flights only. Many other small, rural centres are served by private airstrips on sugar estates or bauxite mines.
Owing to its location in the Caribbean Sea in the shipping lane to the Panama Canal and relative proximity to large markets in North America and emerging markets in Latin America, Jamaica receives much traffic of shipping containers. The container terminal at the Port of Kingston has undergone large expansion in capacity in recent years to handle growth both already realised as well as that which is projected in coming years. Montego Freeport in Montego Bay also handles a variety of cargo like (though more limited than) the Port of Kingston, mainly agricultural products.
There are several other ports positioned around the island, including Port Esquivel in St. Catherine (WINDALCO), Rocky Point in Clarendon, Port Kaiser in St. Elizabeth, Port Rhoades in Discovery Bay, Reynolds Pier in Ocho Rios, and Boundbrook Port in Port Antonio.
To aid the navigation of shipping, Jamaica operates nine lighthouses. They are maintained by the <Port Authority of Jamaica, an agency of the Ministry of Transport and Works.
Jamaica depends on petroleum imports to satisfy its national energy needs. Many test sites have been explored for oil, but no commercially viable quantities have been found. The most convenient sources of imported oil and motor fuels (diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel) are from Mexico and Venezuela.
Jamaica's electrical power is produced by diesel (bunker oil) generators located in Old Harbour. This facility has been further equipped with liquid natural gas capability and storage. Other smaller power stations (most owned by the Jamaica Public Service Company, the island's electricity provider) support the island's electrical grid including the Hunts Bay Power Station, the Bogue Power Station Saint James, the Rockfort Power Station Saint Andrew and small hydroelectric plants on the White River, Rio Bueno, Morant River, Black River (Maggotty) and Roaring River. A wind farm, owned by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, was established at Wigton, Manchester.
Jamaica has successfully operated a SLOWPOKE-2 nuclear reactor of 20 kW capacity since the early 1980s, but there are no plans to expand nuclear power at present.
Jamaica imports approximately 80,000 barrels (13,000 m) of oil energy products per day, including asphalt and lubrication products. Just 20% of imported fuels are used for road transportation, the rest being used by the bauxite industry, electricity generation, and aviation. 30,000 barrels/day of crude imports are processed into various motor fuels and asphalt by the Petrojam Refinery in Kingston.
Jamaica produces enormous quantities of drinking alcohol (at least 5% water content), most of which appears to be consumed as beverages, and none used as motor fuel. Facilities exist to refine hydrous ethanol feedstock into anhydrous ethanol (0% water content), but as of 2007, the process appeared to be uneconomic and the production plant was idle. The facility has since been purchased by West Indies Petroleum Ltd. and repurposed for petroleum distillates.
Jamaica has a fully digital telephone communication system with a mobile penetration of over 95%.
The country's two mobile operators – FLOW Jamaica (formerly LIME, bMobile and Cable and Wireless Jamaica) and Digicel Jamaica have spent millions in network upgrades and expansion. The newest operator, Digicel was granted a licence in 2001 to operate mobile services in the newly liberalised telecom market that had once been the sole domain of the incumbent FLOW (then Cable and Wireless Jamaica) monopoly. Digicel opted for the more widely used GSM wireless system, while a past operator, Oceanic (which became Claro Jamaica and later merged with Digicel Jamaica in 2011) opted for the CDMA standard. FLOW (formerly "LIME" – pre-Columbus Communications merger) which had begun with TDMA standard, subsequently upgraded to GSM in 2002, decommissioned TDMA in 2006 and only utilised that standard until 2009 when LIME launched its 3G network. Both operators currently provide islandwide coverage with HSPA+ (3G) technology. Currently, only Digicel offers LTE to its customers whereas FLOW Jamaica has committed to launching LTE in the cities of Kingston and Montego Bay, places where Digicel's LTE network is currently only found in, in short order.
A new entrant to the Jamaican communications market, Flow Jamaica, laid a new submarine cable connecting Jamaica to the United States. This new cable increases the total number of submarine cables connecting Jamaica to the rest of the world to four. Cable and Wireless Communications (parent company of LIME) acquired the company in late 2014 and replaced their brand LIME with FLOW. FLOW Jamaica currently has the most broadband and cable subscribers on the island and also has 1 million mobile subscribers, second to Digicel (which had, at its peak, over 2 million mobile subscriptions on its network).
Digicel entered the broadband market in 2010 by offering WiMAX broadband, capable of up to 6 Mbit/s per subscriber. To further their broadband share post-LIME/FLOW merger in 2014, the company introduced a new broadband service called Digicel Play, which is Jamaica's second FTTH offering (after LIME's deployment in selected communities in 2011). It is currently only available in the parishes of Kingston, Portmore and St. Andrew. It offers speeds of up to 200 Mbit/s down, 100 Mbit/s up via a pure fibre optic network. Digicel's competitor, FLOW Jamaica, has a network consisting of ADSL, Coaxial and Fibre to the Home (inherited from LIME) and only offers speeds up to 100 Mbit/s. FLOW has committed to expanding its Fibre offering to more areas in order to combat Digicel's entrance into the market.
It was announced that the Office and Utilities Regulations (OUR), Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining (MSTEM) and the Spectrum Management Authority (SMA) have given approval for another mobile operator licence in January 2016. The identity of this entrant was ascertained on 20 May 2016, when the Jamaican Government named the new carrier as Symbiote Investments Limited operating under the name Caricel. The company will focus on 4G LTE data offerings and will first go live in the Kingston Metropolitan Area and will expand to the rest of Jamaica thereafter.
18°10′48″N 77°24′00″W / 18.18000°N 77.40000°W / 18.18000; -77.40000 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jamaica (/dʒəˈmeɪkə/ ; Jamaican Patois: Jumieka, [dʒʌˈmi̯eka]) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning 10,990 square kilometres (4,240 sq mi) in area, it is the third largest island — after Cuba and Hispaniola — of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about 145 km (90 mi) south of Cuba, and 191 km (119 mi) west of Hispaniola (the island containing the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic); the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies 215 km (134 mi) to the north-west.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, under the name Santiago, when England (later Great Britain) conquered it and named it Jamaica. It became an important part of the colonial British West Indies. Under Britain's colonial rule, Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on continued importation of African slaves and their descendants. The British fully emancipated all slaves in 1838, and many freedmen chose to have subsistence farms rather than to work on plantations. Beginning in the 1840s, the British began using Chinese and Indian indentured labour to work on plantations. The island achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "With 2.8 million people, Jamaica is the third-most populous Anglophone country in the Americas (after the United States and Canada), and the fourth-most populous country in the Caribbean. Kingston is the country's capital and largest city. The majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, with significant European, East Asian (primarily Chinese), Indian, Lebanese, and mixed-race minorities. Due to a high rate of emigration for work since the 1960s, there is a large Jamaican diaspora, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The country has a global influence that belies its small size; it was the birthplace of the Rastafari religion, reggae music (and associated genres such as dub, ska and dancehall), and it is internationally prominent in sports, most notably cricket, sprinting and athletics. Jamaica has sometimes been considered the world's least populous cultural superpower.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Jamaica is an upper-middle income country with an economy heavily dependent on tourism; it has an average of 4.3 million tourists a year. The country performs favourably in measures of press freedom, democratic governance and sustainable well-being. Jamaica is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with power vested in the bicameral Parliament of Jamaica, consisting of an appointed Senate and a directly elected House of Representatives. Andrew Holness has served as Prime Minister of Jamaica since March 2016. As a Commonwealth realm, with Charles III as its king, the appointed representative of the Crown is the Governor-General of Jamaica, an office held by Patrick Allen since 2009.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The indigenous people, the Taíno, called the island Xaymaca in their language, meaning the \"Land of Wood and Water\" or the \"Land of Springs\". Yamaye has been suggested as an early Taino name for the island as recorded by Christopher Columbus.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Colloquially, Jamaicans refer to their home island as the \"Rock\". Slang names such as \"Jamrock\", \"Jamdown\" (\"Jamdung\" in Jamaican Patois), or briefly \"Ja\", have derived from this.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Humans inhabited Jamaica from as early as 4000–1000 BC. Little is known of these early peoples. A group known as the \"Redware people\" after their pottery arrived circa 600 AD, followed by the Taíno circa 800 AD, who most likely came from South America. They practised an agrarian and fishing economy, and at their height are thought to have numbered some 60,000 people, grouped into around 200 villages headed by caciques (chiefs). The south coast of Jamaica was the most populated, especially around the area now known as Old Harbour.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Though often thought to have become extinct following contact with Europeans, the Taíno in fact still inhabited Jamaica when the English took control of the island in 1655. Some fled into interior regions, merging with African Maroon communities. The Jamaican National Heritage Trust is attempting to locate and document any remaining evidence of the Taíno.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Christopher Columbus was the first European to see Jamaica, claiming the island for Spain after landing there in 1494 on his second voyage to the Americas. His probable landing point was Dry Harbour, called Discovery Bay, and St. Ann's Bay was named \"Saint Gloria\" by Columbus, as the first sighting of the land. He later returned in 1503; however, he was shipwrecked and he and his crew were forced to live on Jamaica for a year while waiting to be rescued.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "One and a half kilometres west of St. Ann's Bay is the site of the first Spanish settlement on the island, Sevilla, which was established in 1509 by Juan de Esquivel but abandoned around 1524 because it was deemed unhealthy. The capital was moved to Spanish Town, then called St. Jago de la Vega, around 1534. Meanwhile, the Taínos began dying in large numbers, both from introduced diseases and from enslavement by the Spanish. As a result, the Spanish began importing slaves from Africa to the island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Many slaves managed to escape, forming autonomous communities in remote and easily defended areas in the interior of Jamaica, mixing with the remaining Taino; these communities became known as Maroons. Many Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition to live on the island. They lived as conversos and were often persecuted by the Spanish rulers, and some turned to piracy against the Spanish Empire's shipping.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "By the early 17th century it is estimated that no more than 2,500–3,000 people lived on Jamaica.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The English began taking an interest in the island and, following a failed attempt to conquer Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables led an invasion of Jamaica in 1655. Battles at Ocho Rios in 1657 and the Rio Nuevo in 1658 resulted in Spanish defeats; in 1660 the Maroon community under the leadership of Juan de Bolas switched sides from the Spanish, and began supporting the English. With their help, the Spanish defeat was secured. In 1661 English civil government was formed and Roundhead soldiers turned their attention to governance and agricultural responsibilities.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "When the English captured Jamaica, most Spanish colonists fled, with the exception of Spanish Jews, who chose to remain. Spanish slave holders freed their slaves before leaving. Many slaves dispersed into the mountains, joining the already established maroon communities. During the centuries of slavery, Jamaican Maroons established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica, where they maintained their freedom and independence for generations, under the leadership of Maroon leaders such as Juan de Serras.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Meanwhile, the Spanish made several attempts to re-capture the island, prompting the British to support pirates attacking Spanish ships in the Caribbean; as a result piracy became rampant on Jamaica, with the city of Port Royal becoming notorious for its lawlessness. Spain later recognised English possession of the island with the Treaty of Madrid (1670). After that, the English authorities sought to rein in the worst excesses of the pirates.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1660, the population of Jamaica was about 4,500 white and 1,500 black. By the early 1670s, as the English developed sugar cane plantations worked by large numbers of slaves, black Africans formed a majority of the population. The Irish in Jamaica also formed a large part of the island's early population, making up two-thirds of the white population on the island in the late 17th century, twice that of the English population. They were brought in as indentured labourers and soldiers after the conquest of 1655. The majority of Irish were transported by force as political prisoners of war from Ireland as a result of the ongoing Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Migration of large numbers of Irish to the island continued into the 18th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A limited form of local government was introduced with the creation of the House of Assembly of Jamaica in 1664; however, it represented only a tiny number of rich plantation owners. In 1692, the colony was rocked by an earthquake that resulted in several thousand deaths and the almost complete destruction of Port Royal.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "During the 1700s the economy boomed, based largely on sugar and other crops for export such as coffee, cotton and indigo. All these crops were worked by black slaves, who lived short and often brutal lives with no rights, being the property of a small planter-class. In the 18th century, slaves ran away and joined the Maroons in increasing numbers, and resulted in The First Maroon War (1728 – 1739/40), which ended in stalemate. The British government sued for peace, and signed treaties with the Leeward Maroons led by Cudjoe and Accompong in 1739, and the Windward Maroons led by Quao and Queen Nanny in 1740.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "A large slave rebellion, known as Tacky's War, broke out in 1760 but was defeated by the British and their Maroon allies. After the second conflict in 1795–96, many Maroons from the Maroon town of Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town) were expelled to Nova Scotia and, later, Sierra Leone.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "By the beginning of the 19th century, Jamaica's dependence on slave labour and a plantation economy had resulted in black people outnumbering white people by a ratio of almost 20 to 1. Although the British had outlawed the importation of slaves, some were still smuggled in from Spanish colonies and directly from Africa. While planning the abolition of slavery, the British Parliament passed laws to improve conditions for slaves. They banned the use of whips in the field and flogging of women; informed planters that slaves were to be allowed religious instruction, and required a free day during each week when slaves could sell their produce, prohibiting Sunday markets to enable slaves to attend church. The House of Assembly in Jamaica resented and resisted the new laws. Members, with membership then restricted to European-descended Jamaicans, claimed that the slaves were content and objected to Parliament's interference in island affairs. Slave owners feared possible revolts if conditions were lightened.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The British abolished the slave trade in 1807, but not the institution itself. In 1831 a huge slave rebellion, known as the Baptist War, broke out, led by the Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion resulted in hundreds of deaths and the destruction of many plantations, and led to ferocious reprisals by the plantocracy class. As a result of rebellions such as these, as well as the efforts of abolitionists, Britain outlawed slavery in its empire in 1834, with full emancipation from chattel slavery declared in 1838. The population in 1834 was 371,070, of whom 15,000 were white, 5,000 free black; 40,000 \"coloured\" or free people of colour (mixed race); and 311,070 were slaves. The resulting labour shortage prompted the British to begin to \"import\" indentured servants to supplement the labour pool, as many freedmen resisted working on the plantations. Workers recruited from India began arriving in 1845, Chinese workers in 1854. Many South Asian and Chinese descendants continue to reside in Jamaica today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Over the next 20 years, several epidemics of cholera, scarlet fever, and smallpox hit the island, killing almost 60,000 people (about 10 per day). Nevertheless, in 1871 the census recorded a population of 506,154 people, 246,573 of which were males, and 259,581 females. Their races were recorded as 13,101 white, 100,346 coloured (mixed black and white), and 392,707 black. This period was marked by an economic slump, with many Jamaicans living in poverty. Dissatisfaction with this, and continued racial discrimination and marginalisation of the black majority, led to the outbreak of the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865 led by Paul Bogle, which was put down by Governor John Eyre with such brutality that he was recalled from his position. His successor, John Peter Grant, enacted a series of social, financial and political reforms whilst aiming to uphold firm British rule over the island, which became a Crown Colony in 1866. In 1872 the capital was transferred from Spanish Town to Kingston.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1907 Jamaica was struck by an earthquake—this, and the subsequent fire, caused immense destruction in Kingston and the deaths of 800–1,000 people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Unemployment and poverty remained a problem for many Jamaicans. Various movements seeking political change arose as a result, most notably the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League founded by Marcus Garvey in 1917. As well as seeking greater political rights and an improvement for the condition of workers, Garvey was also a prominent Pan-Africanist and proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement. He was also one of the chief inspirations behind Rastafari, a religion founded in Jamaica in the 1930s that combined Christianity with an Afrocentric theology focused on the figure of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia. Despite occasional persecution, Rastafari grew to become an established faith on the island, later spreading abroad.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Jamaica hard. As part of the British West Indian labour unrest of 1934–39, Jamaica saw numerous strikes, culminating in a strike in 1938 that turned into a riot. As a result, the British government instituted a commission to look into the causes of the disturbances; their report recommended political and economic reforms in Britain's Caribbean colonies. A new House of Representatives was established in 1944, elected by universal adult suffrage. During this period Jamaica's two-party system emerged, with the creation of the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) under Alexander Bustamante and the People's National Party (PNP) under Norman Manley.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Jamaica slowly gained increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. In 1958 it became a province in the Federation of the West Indies, a federation of several of Britain's Caribbean colonies. Membership of the Federation proved to be divisive, however, and a referendum on the issue saw a slight majority voting to leave. After leaving the Federation, Jamaica attained full independence on 6 August 1962. The new state retained, however, its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations (with the British monarch as head of state) and adopted a Westminster-style parliamentary system. Bustamante, at the age of 78, became the country's first prime minister.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Strong economic growth, averaging approximately 6% per year, marked the first ten years of independence under conservative JLP governments; these were led by successive Prime Ministers Alexander Bustamante, Donald Sangster (who died of natural causes within two months of taking office) and Hugh Shearer. The growth was fuelled by high levels of private investment in bauxite/alumina, tourism, the manufacturing industry and, to a lesser extent, the agricultural sector. In the 1967 Jamaican general election, the JLP were victorious again, winning 33 out of 53 seats, with the PNP taking 20 seats.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In terms of foreign policy Jamaica became a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, seeking to retain strong ties with Britain and the United States whilst also developing links with Communist states such as Cuba.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The optimism of the first decade was accompanied by a growing sense of inequality among many Afro-Jamaicans, and a concern that the benefits of growth were not being shared by the urban poor, many of whom ended up living in crime-ridden shanty towns in Kingston. This, combined with the effects of a slowdown in the global economy in 1970, led to the voters electing the PNP under Michael Manley in 1972. The PNP won 37 seats to the JLP's 16.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Manley's government enacted various social reforms, such as a higher minimum wage, land reform, legislation for women's equality, greater housing construction and an increase in educational provision. Internationally he improved ties with the Communist bloc and vigorously opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1976, the PNP won another landslide, winning 47 seats to the JLP's 13. The turnout was a very high 85 percent. However, the economy faltered in this period due to a combination of internal and external factors (such as the oil shocks). The rivalry between the JLP and PNP became intense, and political and gang-related violence grew significantly in this period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "By 1980, Jamaica's gross national product had declined to some 25% below its 1972 level. Seeking change, Jamaicans voted the JLP back in in 1980 under Edward Seaga, the JLP winning 51 seats to the PNP's nine seats. Firmly anti-Communist, Seaga cut ties with Cuba and sent troops to support the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. The economic deterioration, however, continued into the mid-1980s, exacerbated by a number of factors. The largest and third-largest alumina producers, Alpart and Alcoa, closed; and there was a significant reduction in production by the second-largest producer, Alcan. Reynolds Jamaica Mines, Ltd. left the Jamaican industry. There was also a decline in tourism, which was important to the economy. Owing to rising foreign and local debt, accompanied by large fiscal deficits, the government sought International Monetary Fund (IMF) financing, which was dependent on implementing various austerity measures. These resulted in strikes in 1985 and a decline in support for the Seaga government, exacerbated by criticism of the government's response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Having now de-emphasised socialism and adopting a more centrist position, Michael Manley and the PNP were re-elected in 1989, winning 45 seats to the JLP's 15.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The PNP went on to win a string of elections, under Prime Ministers Michael Manley (1989–1992), P. J. Patterson (1992–2005) and Portia Simpson-Miller (2005–2007). In the 1993 Jamaican general election, Patterson led the PNP to victory, winning 52 seats to the JLP's eight seats. Patterson also won the 1997 Jamaican general election, by another landslide margin of 50 seats to the JLP's 10 seats. Patterson's third consecutive victory came in the 2002 Jamaican general election, when the PNP retained power, but with a reduced seat majority of 34 seats to 26. Patterson stepped down on 26 February 2006, and was replaced by Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica's first female Prime Minister. The turnout slowly declined during this period of time, from 67.4% in 1993 to 59.1% in 2002.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "During this period various economic reforms were introduced, such as deregulating the finance sector and floating the Jamaican dollar, as well as greater investment in infrastructure, whilst also retaining a strong social safety net. Political violence, so prevalent in the previous two decades, declined significantly.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 2007 the PNP was defeated by the JLP by a narrow margin of 32 seats to 28, with a turnout of 61.46%. This election ended 18 years of PNP rule, and Bruce Golding became the new prime minister. Golding's tenure (2007–2010) was dominated by the effects of the global recession, as well as the fallout from an attempt by Jamaican police and military to arrest drug lord Christopher Coke in 2010 which erupted in violence, resulting in over 70 deaths. As a result of this incident Golding resigned and was replaced by Andrew Holness in 2011.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Independence, however widely celebrated in Jamaica, has been questioned in the early 21st century. In 2011, a survey showed that approximately 60% of Jamaicans believe that the country would have been better off had it remained a British colony, with only 17% believing it would have been worse off, citing as problems years of social and fiscal mismanagement in the country. Holness and the JLP were defeated in the 2011 Jamaican general election, which saw Portia Simpson-Miller and the PNP return to power. The number of seats had been increased to 63, and the PNP swept to power with a landslide 42 seats to the JLP's 21. The voter turnout was 53.17%.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Holness's JLP won the 2016 general election narrowly, defeating Simpson-Miller's PNP, on 25 February. The PNP won 31 seats to the JLP's 32. As a result, Simpson-Miller became Opposition Leader for a second time. The voter turnout dipped below 50% for the first time, registering just 48.37%.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the 2020 general election, Andrew Holness made history for the JLP by accomplishing a second consecutive win for the Jamaica Labour Party, winning 49 seats to 14 won by the PNP, led this time by Peter Phillips. The last time a consecutive win occurred for the JLP was in 1980. However, the turnout at this election was just 37%, probably affected by the coronavirus pandemic.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Jamaica is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The head of state is the King of Jamaica (currently King Charles III), represented locally by the Governor-General of Jamaica. The governor-general is nominated by the Prime Minister of Jamaica and the entire Cabinet and then formally appointed by the monarch. All the members of the Cabinet are appointed by the governor-general on the advice of the prime minister. The monarch and the governor-general serve largely ceremonial roles, apart from their reserve powers for use in certain constitutional crisis situations. The position of the monarch has been a matter of continuing debate in Jamaica for many years; currently both major political parties are committed to transitioning to a republic with a president.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Jamaica's current constitution was drafted in 1962 by a bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature. It came into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962, which was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which gave Jamaica independence.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Parliament of Jamaica is bicameral, consisting of the House of Representatives (Lower House) and the Senate (Upper House). Members of the House (known as Members of Parliament or MPs) are directly elected, and the member of the House of Representatives who, in the governor-general's best judgement, is best able to command the confidence of a majority of the members of that House, is appointed by the governor-general to be the prime minister. Senators are nominated jointly by the prime minister and the parliamentary Leader of the Opposition and are then appointed by the governor-general.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Judiciary of Jamaica operates on a common law system derived from English law and Commonwealth of Nations precedents. The court of final appeal is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, though during the 2000s Parliament attempted to replace it with the Caribbean Court of Justice.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Jamaica has traditionally had a two-party system, with power often alternating between the People's National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The party with current administrative and legislative power is the Jamaica Labour Party, after its 2020 victory. There are also several minor parties who have yet to gain a seat in parliament; the largest of these is the National Democratic Movement (NDM).",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) is the small but professional military force of Jamaica. The JDF is based on the British military model with similar organisation, training, weapons and traditions. Once chosen, officer candidates are sent to one of several British or Canadian basic officer courses depending on the arm of service. Enlisted soldiers are given basic training at Up Park Camp or JDF Training Depot, Newcastle, both in St. Andrew. As with the British model, NCOs are given several levels of professional training as they rise up the ranks. Additional military schools are available for speciality training in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The JDF is directly descended from the British Army's West India Regiment, which was formed during the colonial era. The West India Regiment was used extensively throughout the British Empire in policing the empire from 1795 to 1926. Other units in the JDF heritage include the early colonial Jamaica Militia, the Kingston Infantry Volunteers of WWI and reorganised into the Jamaican Infantry Volunteers in World War II. The West Indies Regiment was reformed in 1958 as part of the West Indies Federation, after dissolution of the Federation the JDF was established.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) comprises an infantry Regiment and Reserve Corps, an Air Wing, a Coast Guard fleet and a supporting Engineering Unit. The infantry regiment contains the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (National Reserve) battalions. The JDF Air Wing is divided into three flight units, a training unit, a support unit and the JDF Air Wing (National Reserve). The Coast Guard is divided between seagoing crews and support crews who conduct maritime safety and maritime law enforcement as well as defence-related operations.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The role of the support battalion is to provide support to boost numbers in combat and issue competency training in order to allow for the readiness of the force. The 1st Engineer Regiment was formed due to an increased demand for military engineers and their role is to provide engineering services whenever and wherever they are needed. The Headquarters JDF contains the JDF Commander, Command Staff as well as Intelligence, Judge Advocate office, Administrative and Procurement sections.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In recent years the JDF has been called on to assist the nation's police, the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), in fighting drug smuggling and a rising crime rate which includes one of the highest murder rates in the world. JDF units actively conduct armed patrols with the JCF in high-crime areas and known gang neighbourhoods. There has been vocal controversy as well as support of this JDF role. In early 2005, an Opposition leader, Edward Seaga, called for the merger of the JDF and JCF. This has not garnered support in either organisation nor among the majority of citizens. In 2017, Jamaica signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Jamaica is divided into 14 parishes, which are grouped into three historic counties that have no administrative relevance.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In the context of local government the parishes are designated \"Local Authorities\". These local authorities are further styled as \"Municipal Corporations\", which are either city municipalities or town municipalities. Any new city municipality must have a population of at least 50,000, and a town municipality a number set by the Minister of Local Government. There are currently no town municipalities.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The local governments of the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrews are consolidated as the city municipality of Kingston & St. Andrew Municipal Corporation. The newest city municipality is the Municipality of Portmore, created 2003. While it is geographically located within the parish of St. Catherine, it is governed independently.",
"title": "Government and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Jamaica is the third largest island in the Caribbean. It lies between latitudes 17° and 19°N, and longitudes 76° and 79°W. Mountains dominate the interior: the Don Figuerero, Santa Cruz, and May Day mountains in the west, the Dry Harbour Mountains in the centre, and the John Crow Mountains and Blue Mountains in the east, the latter containing Blue Mountain Peak, Jamaica's tallest mountain at 2,256 m. They are surrounded by a narrow coastal plain. Jamaica has two cities, the first being Kingston, the capital city and centre of business, located on the south coast and the second being Montego Bay, one of the best known cities in the Caribbean for tourism, located on the north coast. Kingston Harbour is the seventh-largest natural harbour in the world, which contributed to the city being designated as the capital in 1872. Other towns of note include Portmore, Spanish Town, Savanna la Mar, Mandeville and the resort towns of Ocho Ríos, Port Antonio and Negril.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Tourist attractions include Dunn's River Falls in St. Ann, YS Falls in St. Elizabeth, the Blue Lagoon in Portland, a dormant volcano's crater, and Port Royal, site of a major earthquake in 1692 that helped form the island's Palisadoes tombolo.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Among the variety of terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems are dry and wet limestone forests, rainforest, riparian woodland, wetlands, caves, rivers, seagrass beds and coral reefs. The authorities have recognised the tremendous significance and potential of the environment and have designated some of the more \"fertile\" areas as \"protected\". Among the island's protected areas are the Cockpit Country, Hellshire Hills, and Litchfield forest reserves. In 1992, Jamaica's first marine park, covering nearly 15 square kilometres (5.8 sq mi), was established in Montego Bay. Portland Bight Protected Area was designated in 1999. The following year Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park was created, covering roughly 300 square miles (780 km) of a wilderness area which supports thousands of tree and fern species and rare animals.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "There are several small islands off Jamaica's coast, most notably those in Portland Bight such as Pigeon Island, Salt Island, Dolphin Island, Long Island, Great Goat Island and Little Goat Island, and also Lime Cay located further east. Much further out – some 50–80 km off the south coast – lie the very small Morant Cays and Pedro Cays.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The climate in Jamaica is tropical, with hot and humid weather, although higher inland regions are more temperate. Some regions on the south coast, such as the Liguanea Plain and the Pedro Plains, are relatively dry rain-shadow areas.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Jamaica lies in the hurricane belt of the Atlantic Ocean and because of this, the island sometimes suffers significant storm damage. Hurricanes Charlie and Gilbert hit Jamaica directly in 1951 and 1988, respectively, causing major damage and many deaths. In the 2000s (decade), hurricanes Ivan, Dean, and Gustav also brought severe weather to the island.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Jamaica's climate is tropical, supporting diverse ecosystems with a wealth of plants and animals. Its plant life has changed considerably over the centuries; when the Spanish arrived in 1494, except for small agricultural clearings, the country was deeply forested. The European settlers cut down the great timber trees for building and ships' supplies, and cleared the plains, savannas, and mountain slopes for intense agricultural cultivation. Many new plants were introduced including sugarcane, bananas, and citrus trees.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Jamaica is home to about 3,000 species of native flowering plants (of which over 1,000 are endemic and 200 are species of orchid), thousands of species of non-flowering flora, and about 20 botanical gardens, some of which are several hundred years old. Areas of heavy rainfall also contain stands of bamboo, ferns, ebony, mahogany, and rosewood. Cactus and similar dry-area plants are found along the south and southwest coastal area. Parts of the west and southwest consist of large grasslands, with scattered stands of trees. Jamaica is home to three terrestrial ecoregions, the Jamaican moist forests, Jamaican dry forests, and Greater Antilles mangroves. It had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 5.01/10, ranking it 110th globally out of 172 countries.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Jamaica's fauna, typical of the Caribbean, includes highly diversified wildlife with many endemic species. As with other oceanic islands, land mammals are mostly several species of bats of which at least three endemic species are found only in Cockpit Country, one of which is at-risk. Other species of bat include the fig-eating and hairy-tailed bats. The only non-bat native mammal extant in Jamaica is the Jamaican hutia, locally known as the coney. Introduced mammals such as wild boar and the small Asian mongoose are also common. Jamaica is also home to about 50 species of reptiles, the largest of which is the American crocodile; however, it is only present within the Black River and a few other areas. Lizards such as anoles, iguanas and snakes such as racers and the Jamaican boa (the largest snake on the island), are common in areas such as the Cockpit Country. None of Jamaica's eight species of native snakes is venomous.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Jamaica is home to about 289 species of birds of which 27 are endemic including the endangered black-Billed parrots and the Jamaican blackbird, both of which are only found in Cockpit Country. It is also the indigenous home to four species of hummingbirds (three of which are found nowhere else in the world): the black-billed streamertail, the Jamaican mango, the Vervain hummingbird, and red-billed streamertails. The red-billed streamertail, known locally as the \"doctor bird\", is Jamaica's National Symbol. Other notable species include the Jamaican tody and the Greater flamingo,",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "One species of freshwater turtle is native to Jamaica, the Jamaican slider. It is found only on Jamaica and on a few islands in the Bahamas. In addition, many types of frogs are common on the island, especially treefrogs.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Jamaican waters contain considerable resources of fresh and saltwater fish. The chief varieties of saltwater fish are kingfish, jack, mackerel, whiting, bonito, and tuna. Fish that occasionally enter freshwater and estuarine environments include snook, jewfish, mangrove snapper, and mullets. Fish that spend the majority of their lives in Jamaica's fresh waters include many species of livebearers, killifish, freshwater gobies, the mountain mullet, and the American eel. Tilapia have been introduced from Africa for aquaculture, and are very common. Also visible in the waters surrounding Jamaica are dolphins, parrotfish, and the endangered manatee.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Insects and other invertebrates are abundant, including the world's largest centipede, the Amazonian giant centipede. Jamaica is the home to about 150 species of butterflies and moths, including 35 indigenous species and 22 subspecies. It is also the native home to the Jamaican swallowtail, the western hemisphere's largest butterfly.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Coral reef ecosystems are important because they provide people with a source of livelihood, food, recreation, and medicinal compounds and protect the land on which they live. Jamaica relies on the ocean and its ecosystem for its development. However, the marine life in Jamaica is also being affected. There could be many factors that contribute to marine life not having the best health. Jamaica's geological origin, topographical features and seasonal high rainfall make it susceptible to a range of natural hazards that can affect the coastal and oceanic environments. These include storm surge, slope failures (landslides), earthquakes, floods and hurricanes. Coral reefs in the Negril Marine Park (NMP), Jamaica, have been increasingly impacted by nutrient pollution and macroalgal blooms following decades of intensive development as a major tourist destination.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Another one of those factors could include tourism: being that Jamaica is a very touristy place, the island draws numerous people traveling here from all over the world. The Jamaican tourism industry accounts for 32% of total employment and 36% of the country's GDP and is largely based on the sun, sea and sand, the last two of these attributes being dependent on healthy coral reef ecosystems. Because of Jamaica's tourism, they have developed a study to see if the tourist would be willing to help financially to manage their marine ecosystem because Jamaica alone is unable to. The ocean connects all the countries all over the world, however, everyone and everything is affecting the flow and life in the ocean. Jamaica is a very touristy place specifically because of their beaches. If their oceans are not functioning at their best then the well-being of Jamaica and the people who live there will start to deteriorate. According to the OECD, oceans contribute $1.5 trillion annually in value-added to the overall economy. A developing country on an island will get the majority of their revenue from their ocean.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Pollution comes from run-off, sewage systems, and garbage. However, this typically all ends up in the ocean after there is rain or floods. Everything that ends up in the water changes the quality and balance of the ocean. Poor coastal water quality has adversely affected fisheries, tourism and mariculture, as well as undermining biological sustainability of the living resources of ocean and coastal habitats. Jamaica imports and exports many goods through their waters. Some of the imports that go into Jamaica include petroleum and petroleum products. Issues include accidents at sea; risk of spills through local and international transport of petroleum and petroleum products. Oil spills can disrupt the marine life with chemicals that are not normally found in the ocean. Other forms of pollution also occur in Jamaica. Solid waste disposal mechanisms in Jamaica are currently inadequate. The solid waste gets into the water through rainfall forces. Solid waste is also harmful to wildlife, particularly birds, fish and turtles that feed at the surface of the water and mistake floating debris for food. For example, plastic can be caught around birds' and turtles' necks, making it difficult to eat and breath as they begin to grow, causing the plastic to get tighter around their necks. Pieces of plastic, metal, and glass can be mistaken for the food fish eat. Each Jamaican generates 1 kg (2 lbs) of waste per day; only 70% of this is collected by National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA)—the remaining 30% is either burnt or disposed of in gullies/waterways.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "There are policies that are being put into place to help preserve the ocean and the life below water. The goal of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) is to improve the quality of life of human communities who depend on coastal resources while maintaining the biological diversity and productivity of coastal ecosystems. Developing an underdeveloped country can impact the oceans ecosystem because of all the construction that would be done to develop the country. Over-building, driven by powerful market forces as well as poverty among some sectors of the population, and destructive exploitation contribute to the decline of ocean and coastal resources. Developing practices that will contribute to the lives of the people but also to the life of the ocean and its ecosystem. Some of these practices include: Develop sustainable fisheries practices, ensure sustainable mariculture techniques and practices, sustainable management of shipping, and promote sustainable tourism practices.",
"title": "Geography and environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "C.I.A. World Fact Book 2015",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Jamaica's diverse ethnic roots are reflected in the national motto \"Out of Many One People\". Most of the population of 2,812,000 (July 2018 est.) are of African or partially African descent, with many being able to trace their origins to the West African countries of Ghana and Nigeria. Other major ancestral areas are Europe, South Asia, and East Asia. It is uncommon for Jamaicans to identify themselves by race as is prominent in other countries such as the United States, with most Jamaicans seeing Jamaican nationality as an identity in and of itself, identifying as simply being \"Jamaican\" regardless of ethnicity. A study found that the average admixture on the island was 78.3% Sub-Saharan African, 16.0% European, and 5.7% East Asian. Another study in 2020 showed that Jamaicans of African descent represent 76.3% of the population, followed by 15.1% Afro-European, 3.4% East Indian and Afro-East Indian, 3.2% Caucasian, 1.2% Chinese and 0.8% other.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The Jamaican Maroons of Accompong and other settlements are the descendants of African slaves who fled the plantations for the interior where they set up their own autonomous communities. Many Maroons continue to have their own traditions and speak their own language, known locally as Kromanti.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Asians form the second-largest group and include Indo-Jamaicans and Chinese Jamaicans. Most are descended from indentured workers brought by the British colonial government to fill labour shortages following the abolition of slavery in 1838. Prominent Indian Jamaicans include jockey Shaun Bridgmohan, who was the first Jamaican in the Kentucky Derby, NBC Nightly News journalist Lester Holt, and Miss Jamaica World and Miss Universe winner Yendi Phillips. The southwestern parish of Westmoreland is famous for its large population of Indo-Jamaicans. Along with their Indian counterparts, Chinese Jamaicans have also played an integral part in Jamaica's community and history. Prominent descendants of this group include Canadian billionaire investor Michael Lee-Chin, supermodels Naomi Campbell and Tyson Beckford, and VP Records founder Vincent \"Randy\" Chin.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "There are about 20,000 Jamaicans who have Lebanese and Syrian ancestry. Most were Christian immigrants who fled the Ottoman occupation of Lebanon in the early 19th century. Eventually their descendants became very successful politicians and businessmen. Notable Jamaicans from this group include former Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga, Jamaican politician and former Miss World Lisa Hanna, Jamaican politicians Edward Zacca and Shahine Robinson, and hotelier Abraham Elias Issa.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The first wave of English immigrants arrived to the island 1655 after conquering the Spanish, and they have historically been the dominant group. Prominent descendants from this group include former American Governor of New York David Paterson, Sandals Hotels owner Gordon Butch Stewart, United States Presidential Advisor and \"mother\" of the Pell Grant Lois Rice, and former United States National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. The first Irish immigrants came to Jamaica in the 1600s as war prisoners and later, indentured labour. Their descendants include two of Jamaica's National Heroes: Prime Ministers Michael Manley and Alexander Bustamante. Along with the English and the Irish, the Scots are another group that has made a significant impact on the island. According to the Scotland Herald newspaper, Jamaica has more people using the Campbell surnames than the population of Scotland itself, and it also has the highest percentage of Scottish surnames outside of Scotland. Scottish surnames account to about 60% of the surnames in the Jamaican phone books. The first Jamaican inhabitants from Scotland were exiled \"rebels\". Later, they would be followed by ambitious businessmen who spent time between their great country estates in Scotland and the island. As a result, many of the slave owning plantations on the island were owned by Scottish men, and thus a large number of mixed-race Jamaicans can claim Scottish ancestry. High immigration from Scotland continued until well after independence. Today, notable Scottish-Jamaicans include the businessman John Pringle, former American Secretary of State Colin Powell, and American actress Kerry Washington.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "There is also a significant Portuguese Jamaican population that is predominantly of Sephardic Jewish heritage. The first Jews arrived as explorers from Spain in the 15th century after being forced to convert to Christianity or face death. A small number of them became slave owners and even famous pirates. Judaism eventually became very influential in Jamaica and can be seen today with many Jewish cemeteries around the country. During the Holocaust Jamaica became a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. Famous Jewish descendants include the dancehall artist Sean Paul, former record producer and founder of Island Records Chris Blackwell, and Jacob De Cordova who was the founder of the Daily Gleaner newspaper.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In recent years immigration has increased, coming mainly from China, Haiti, Cuba, Colombia, and Latin America; 20,000 Latin Americans reside in Jamaica. In 2016, the Prime Minister Andrew Holness suggested making Spanish Jamaica's second official language. About 7,000 Americans also reside in Jamaica. Notable American with connection to the island include fashion icon Ralph Lauren, philanthropist Daisy Soros, Blackstone's Schwarzman family, the family of the late Lieutenant Governor of Delaware John W. Rollins, fashion designer Vanessa Noel, investor Guy Stuart, Edward and Patricia Falkenberg, and iHeart Media CEO Bob Pittman, all of whom hold annual charity events to support the island.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Jamaica is regarded as a bilingual country, with two major languages in use by the population. The official language is English, which is \"used in all domains of public life\", including the government, the legal system, the media, and education. However, the primary spoken language is an English-based creole called Jamaican Patois (or Patwa). The two exist in a dialect continuum, with speakers using a different register of speech depending on context and whom they are speaking to. \"Pure\" Patois, though sometimes seen as merely a particularly aberrant dialect of English, is essentially mutually unintelligible with standard English and is best thought of as a separate language. A 2007 survey by the Jamaican Language Unit found that 17.1 percent of the population were monolingual in Jamaican Standard English (JSE), 36.5 percent were monolingual in Patois, and 46.4 percent were bilingual, although earlier surveys had pointed to a greater degree of bilinguality (up to 90 percent). The Jamaican education system has only recently begun to offer formal instruction in Patois, while retaining JSE as the \"official language of instruction\".",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Additionally, some Jamaicans use one or more of Jamaican Sign Language (JSL), American Sign Language (ASL) or the declining indigenous Jamaican Country Sign Language (Konchri Sain). Both JSL and ASL are rapidly replacing Konchri Sain for a variety of reasons.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Many Jamaicans have emigrated to other countries, especially to the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. In the case of the United States, about 20,000 Jamaicans per year are granted permanent residence. There has also been emigration of Jamaicans to other Caribbeans countries such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guyana, and The Bahamas. It was estimated in 2004 that up to 2.5 million Jamaicans and Jamaican descendants live abroad.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Jamaicans in the United Kingdom number an estimated 800,000 making them by far the country's largest African-Caribbean group. Large-scale migration from Jamaica to the UK occurred primarily in the 1950s and 1960s when the country was still under British rule. Jamaican communities exist in most large UK cities. Concentrations of expatriate Jamaicans are quite considerable in numerous cities in the United States, including New York City, Buffalo, the Miami metro area, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando, Tampa, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Hartford, Providence and Los Angeles. In Canada, the Jamaican population is centred in Toronto, with smaller communities in cities such as Hamilton, Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Ottawa. Jamaican Canadians comprise about 30% of the entire Black Canadian population.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "A notable though much smaller group of emigrants are Jamaicans in Ethiopia. These are mostly Rastafarians, in whose theological worldview Africa is the promised land, or \"Zion\", or more specifically Ethiopia, due to reverence in which former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is held. Most live in the small town of Shashamane about 150 miles (240 km) south of the capital Addis Ababa.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, the murder rate was 3.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the lowest in the world. By 2009, the rate was 62 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world. Gang violence became a serious problem, with organised crime being centred around Jamaican posses or \"Yardies\". Jamaica has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for many years, according to UN estimates. Some areas of Jamaica, particularly poor areas in Kingston, Montego Bay and elsewhere experience high levels of crime and violence.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "However, there were 1,683 reported murders in 2009 and 1,447 in 2010. After 2011 the murder rate continued to fall, following the downward trend in 2010, after a strategic programme was launched. In 2012, the Ministry of National Security reported a 30 percent decrease in murders. Nevertheless, in 2017 murders rose by 22% over the previous year.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Many Jamaicans are hostile towards LGBT and intersex people, and mob attacks against gay people have been reported. Numerous high-profile dancehall and ragga artists have produced songs featuring explicitly homophobic lyrics. Male homosexuality is illegal and punishable by imprisonment.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Christianity is the largest religion practised in Jamaica. About 70% are Protestants; Roman Catholics are just 2% of the population. According to the 2001 census, the country's largest Protestant denominations are the Church of God (24%), Seventh-day Adventist Church (11%), Pentecostal (10%), Baptist (7%), Anglican (4%), United Church (2%), Methodist (2%), Moravian (1%) and Plymouth Brethren (1%). Bedwardism is a form of Christianity native to the island, sometimes viewed as a separate faith. The Christian faith gained acceptance as British Christian abolitionists and Baptist missionaries joined educated former slaves in the struggle against slavery.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The Rastafari movement has 29,026 adherents, according to the 2011 census, with 25,325 Rastafarian males and 3,701 Rastafarian females. The faith originated in Jamaica in the 1930s and though rooted in Christianity it is heavily Afrocentric in its focus, revering figures such as the Jamaican black nationalist Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie, the former Emperor of Ethiopia. Rastafari has since spread across the globe, especially to areas with large black or African diasporas.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Various faiths and traditional religious practices derived from Africa are practised on the island, notably Kumina, Convince, Myal and Obeah.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Other religions in Jamaica include Jehovah's Witnesses (2% population), the Bahá'í faith, which counts perhaps 8,000 adherents and 21 Local Spiritual Assemblies, Mormonism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The Hindu Diwali festival is celebrated yearly among the Indo-Jamaican community.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "There is also a small population of about 200 Jews, who describe themselves as Liberal-Conservative. The first Jews in Jamaica trace their roots back to early 15th-century Spain and Portugal. Kahal Kadosh Shaare Shalom, also known as the United Congregation of Israelites, is a historic synagogue located in the city of Kingston. Originally built in 1912, it is the official and only Jewish place of worship left on the island. The once abundant Jewish population has voluntarily converted to Christianity over time. Shaare Shalom is one of the few synagogues in the world that contains sand covered floors and is a popular tourist destination.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Other small groups include Muslims, who claim 5,000 adherents. The Muslim holidays of Ashura (known locally as Hussay or Hosay) and Eid have been celebrated throughout the island for hundreds of years. In the past, every plantation in each parish celebrated Hosay. Today it has been called an Indian carnival and is perhaps most well known in Clarendon where it is celebrated each August. People of all religions attend the event, showing mutual respect.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Jamaican culture has a strong global presence. The musical genres reggae, ska, mento, rocksteady, dub, and, more recently, dancehall and ragga all originated in the island's vibrant, popular urban recording industry. These have themselves gone on to influence numerous other genres, such as punk rock (through reggae and ska), dub poetry, New Wave, two-tone, lovers rock, reggaeton, jungle, drum and bass, dubstep, grime and American rap music. Some rappers, such as The Notorious B.I.G., Busta Rhymes, and Heavy D, are of Jamaican descent.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Bob Marley is probably the best known Jamaican musician; with his band the Wailers he had a string of hits in 1960s–70s, popularising reggae internationally and going on to sell millions of records. Many other internationally known artists were born in Jamaica, including Toots Hibbert, Millie Small, Lee \"Scratch\" Perry, Gregory Isaacs, Half Pint, Protoje, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Big Youth, Jimmy Cliff, Dennis Brown, Desmond Dekker, Beres Hammond, Beenie Man, Shaggy, Grace Jones, Shabba Ranks, Super Cat, Buju Banton, Sean Paul, I Wayne, Bounty Killer and many others. Bands that came from Jamaica include Black Uhuru, Third World Band, Inner Circle, Chalice Reggae Band, Culture, Fab Five and Morgan Heritage.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The journalist and author H. G. de Lisser used his native country as the setting for his many novels. Born in Falmouth, Jamaica, de Lisser worked as a reporter for the Jamaica Times at a young age and in 1920 began publishing the magazine Planters' Punch. The White Witch of Rosehall is one of his better-known novels. He was named Honorary President of the Jamaican Press Association; he worked throughout his professional career to promote the Jamaican sugar industry.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Roger Mais, a journalist, poet, and playwright wrote many short stories, plays, and novels, including The Hills Were Joyful Together (1953), Brother Man (1954), and Black Lightning (1955).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Ian Fleming, who had a home in Jamaica where he spent considerable time, repeatedly used the island as a setting in his James Bond novels, including Live and Let Die, Doctor No, \"For Your Eyes Only\", The Man with the Golden Gun, and Octopussy and The Living Daylights.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Marlon James (1970), novelist has published three novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009) and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Jamaica has a history in the film industry dating from the early 1960s. A look at delinquent youth in Jamaica is presented in the 1970s musical crime film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff as a frustrated (and psychopathic) reggae musician who descends into a murderous crime spree. Other notable Jamaican films include Countryman, Rockers, Dancehall Queen, One Love, Shottas, Out the Gate, Third World Cop and Kingston Paradise. Jamaica is also often used as a filming location, such as the James Bond film Dr. No (1962), Papillon (1973) starring Steve McQueen, Cocktail (1988) starring Tom Cruise, and the 1993 Disney comedy Cool Runnings, which is loosely based on the true story of Jamaica's first bobsled team trying to make it in the Winter Olympics.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The island is famous for its Jamaican jerk spice, curries and rice and peas which is integral to Jamaican cuisine. Jamaica is also home to Red Stripe beer and Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "(From the Jamaica Information Service)",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Sport is an integral part of national life in Jamaica and the island's athletes tend to perform to a standard well above what might ordinarily be expected of such a small country. While the most popular local sport is cricket, on the international stage Jamaicans have tended to do particularly well at track and field athletics.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The country was one of the venues of 2007 Cricket World Cup and the West Indies cricket team is one of 12 ICC full member teams that participate in international Test cricket. The Jamaica national cricket team competes regionally, and also provides players for the West Indies team. Sabina Park is the only Test venue in the island, but the Greenfield Stadium is also used for cricket.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Since independence Jamaica has consistently produced world class athletes in track and field. Over the past six decades Jamaica has produced dozens of world class sprinters including Olympic and World Champion Usain Bolt, world record holder in the 100m for men at 9.58s, and 200m for men at 19.19s. Other noteworthy Jamaican sprinters include Arthur Wint, the first Jamaican Olympic gold medalist; Donald Quarrie, Elaine Thompson double Olympic champion from Rio 2016 in the 100m and 200m, Olympic Champion and former 200m world record holder; Roy Anthony Bridge, part of the International Olympic Committee; Merlene Ottey; Delloreen Ennis-London; Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the former World and two time Olympic 100m Champion; Kerron Stewart; Aleen Bailey; Juliet Cuthbert; three-time Olympic gold medalist; Veronica Campbell-Brown; Sherone Simpson; Brigitte Foster-Hylton; Yohan Blake; Herb McKenley; George Rhoden, Olympic gold medalist; Deon Hemmings, Olympic gold medalist; as well as Asafa Powell, former 100m world record holder and two-time 100m Olympic finalist and gold medal winner in the men's 2008 Olympic 4 × 100 m. American Olympic winner Sanya Richards-Ross was also born in Jamaica.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Association football and horse-racing are other popular sports in Jamaica. The national football team qualified for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. Horse racing was Jamaica's first sport. Today, horse racing provides jobs for about 20,000 people including horse breeders, groomers, and trainers. Also, several Jamaicans are known internationally for their success in horse racing including Richard DePass, who once held the Guinness Book of World Records for the most wins in a day, Canadian awards winner George HoSang, and American award winners Charlie Hussey, Andrew Ramgeet, and Barrington Harvey.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Race car driving is also a popular sport in Jamaica with several car racing tracks and racing associations across the country.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "The Jamaica national bobsled team was once a serious contender in the Winter Olympics, beating many well-established teams. Chess and basketball are widely played in Jamaica and are supported by the Jamaica Chess Federation (JCF) and the Jamaica Basketball Federation (JBF), respectively. Netball is also very popular on the island, with the Jamaica national netball team called The Sunshine Girls consistently ranking in the top five in the world.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Rugby league has been played in Jamaica since 2006. The Jamaica national rugby league team is made up of players who play in Jamaica and from UK based professional and semi professional clubs (notably in the Super League and Championship). In November 2018 for the first time ever, the Jamaican rugby league team qualified for the Rugby League World Cup after defeating the USA & Canada. Jamaica will play in the 2021 Rugby League World Cup in England.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "According to ESPN, the highest paid Jamaican professional athlete in 2011 was Justin Masterson, starting pitcher for the baseball team Cleveland Indians in the United States.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The emancipation of the slaves heralded the establishment of an education system for the masses. Prior to emancipation there were few schools for educating locals and many sent their children off to England to access quality education. After emancipation the West Indian Commission granted a sum of money to establish Elementary Schools, now known as All Age Schools. Most of these schools were established by the churches. This was the genesis of the modern Jamaican school system.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Presently the following categories of schools exist:",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Additionally, there are many community and teacher training colleges.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Education is free from the early childhood to secondary levels. There are also opportunities for those who cannot afford further education in the vocational arena, through the Human Employment and Resource Training-National Training Agency (HEART Trust-NTA) programme, which is opened to all working age national population and through an extensive scholarship network for the various universities.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Students are taught Spanish in school from the primary level upwards; about 40–45% of educated people in Jamaica knows some form of Spanish.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Jamaica is a mixed economy with both state enterprises and private sector businesses. Major sectors of the Jamaican economy include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism, petroleum refining, financial and insurance services. Tourism and mining are the leading earners of foreign exchange. Half the Jamaican economy relies on services, with half of its income coming from services such as tourism. An estimated 4.3 million foreign tourists visit Jamaica every year. According to the World Bank, Jamaica is an upper-middle income country that, like its Caribbean neighbours, is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, flooding, and hurricanes. In 2018, Jamaica represented the CARICOM Caribbean Community at the G20 and the G7 annual meetings. In 2019 Jamaica reported its lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Supported by multilateral financial institutions, Jamaica has, since the early 1980s, sought to implement structural reforms aimed at fostering private sector activity and increasing the role of market forces in resource allocation Since 1991, the government has followed a programme of economic liberalisation and stabilisation by removing exchange controls, floating the exchange rate, cutting tariffs, stabilising the Jamaican dollar, reducing inflation and removing restrictions on foreign investment. Emphasis has been placed on maintaining strict fiscal discipline, greater openness to trade and financial flows, market liberalisation and reduction in the size of government. During this period, a large share of the economy was returned to private sector ownership through divestment and privatisation programmes. The free-trade zones at Kingston, Montego Bay and Spanish Town allow duty-free importation, tax-free profits, and free repatriation of export earnings.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Jamaica's economy grew strongly after the years of independence, but then stagnated in the 1980s, due to the heavy falls in price of bauxite and fluctuations in the price of agriculture. The financial sector was troubled in 1994, with many banks and insurance companies suffering heavy losses and liquidity problems. According to the Commonwealth Secretariat, \"The government set up the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) in January 1997 to assist these banks and companies, providing funds in return for equity, and acquired substantial holdings in banks and insurance companies and related companies...\" but it only exasperated the problem, and brought the country into large external debt. From 2001, once it had restored these banks and companies to financial health, Finsac divested them.\" The Government of Jamaica remains committed to lowering inflation, with a long-term objective of bringing it in line with that of its major trading partners.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "In 1996 and 1997 there was a decrease in GDP largely due to significant problems in the financial sector and, in 1997, a severe island-wide drought (the worst in 70 years) and hurricane that drastically reduced agricultural production. In 1997 and 1998, nominal GDP was approximately a high of about 8 percent of GDP and then lowered to 4½ percent of GDP in 1999 and 2000. The economy in 1997 was marked by low levels of import growth, high levels of private capital inflows and relative stability in the foreign exchange market.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Recent economic performance shows the Jamaican economy is recovering. Agricultural production, an important engine of growth increased to 5.5% in 2001 compared to the corresponding period in 2000, signalling the first positive growth rate in the sector since January 1997. In 2018, Jamaica reported a 7.9% increase in corn, 6.1% increase in plantains, 10.4% increase in bananas, 2.2% increase in pineapples, 13.3% increase in dasheen, 24.9% increase in coconuts, and a 10.6% increase in whole milk production. Bauxite and alumina production increased 5.5% from January to December 1998, compared to the corresponding period in 1997. January's bauxite production recorded a 7.1% increase relative to January 1998 and continued expansion of alumina production through 2009 is planned by Alcoa. Jamaica is the fifth-largest exporter of bauxite in the world, after Australia, China, Brazil and Guinea. The country also exports limestone, of which it holds large deposits. The government is currently implementing plans to increase its extraction.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "A Canadian company, Carube Copper Corp, has found and confirmed, \"...the existence of at least seven significant Cu/Au porphyry systems (in St. Catherine).\" They have estimated that, \"The porphyry distribution found at Bellas Gate is similar to that found in the Northparkes mining district of New South Wales, Australia (which was) sold to China in 2013 for US$820 million.\" Carube noted that Jamaica's geology, \"... is similar to that of Chile, Argentina and the Dominican Republic – all productive mining jurisdictions.\" Mining on the sites began in 2017.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Tourism, which is the largest foreign exchange earner, showed improvement as well. In 1999 the total visitor arrivals was 2 million, an increase of 100,000 from the previous year. Since 2017, Jamaica's tourism has risen exponentially, rising to 4.3 million average tourists per year. Jamaica's largest tourist markets are from North America, South America, and Europe. In 2017, Jamaica recorded a 91.3% increase in stopover visitors from Southern and Western Europe (and a 41% increase in stopover arrivals from January to September 2017 over the same period from the previous year) with Germany, Portugal and Spain registering the highest percentage gains. In 2018, Jamaica won several World Travel Awards in Portugal winning the \"Chairman's Award for Global Tourism Innovation\", \"Best Tourist Board in the Caribbean\" \"Best Honeymoon Destination\", \"Best Culinary Destination\", \"World's Leading Beach Destination\" and \"World's Leading Cruise Destination\". Two months later, the Travvy Tourism Awards held in New York City, awarded Jamaica's Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, with the inaugural Chairman's Award for, \"Global Tourism Innovation for the Development of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCM)\". Bartlett has also won the Pacific Travel Writer's Association's award in Germany for the, \"2018 Best Tourism Minister of the Year\".",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Petrojam, Jamaica's national and only petroleum refinery, is co-owned by the Government of Venezuela. Petrojam, \"..operates a 35,000 barrel per day hydro-skimming refinery, to produce Automotive Diesel Oil; Heavy Fuel Oil; Kerosene/Jet Fuel, Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), Asphalt and Gasoline.\" Customers include the Power industry, Aircraft refuellers, and Local Marketing companies. On 20 February 2019, the Jamaican Government voted to retake ownership of Venezuela's 49% share.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Jamaica's agricultural exports are sugar, bananas, cocoa, coconut, molasses oranges, limes, grapefruit, rum, yams, allspice (of which it is the world's largest and \"most exceptional quality\" exporter), and Blue Mountain Coffee which is considered a world renowned gourmet brand.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Jamaica has a wide variety of industrial and commercial activities. The aviation industry is able to perform most routine aircraft maintenance, except for heavy structural repairs. There is a considerable amount of technical support for transport and agricultural aviation. Jamaica has a considerable amount of industrial engineering, light manufacturing, including metal fabrication, metal roofing, and furniture manufacturing. Food and beverage processing, glassware manufacturing, software and data processing, printing and publishing, insurance underwriting, music and recording, and advanced education activities can be found in the larger urban areas. The Jamaican construction industry is entirely self-sufficient, with professional technical standards and guidance.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Since the first quarter of 2006, the economy of Jamaica has undergone a period of staunch growth. With inflation for the 2006 calendar year down to 6.0% and unemployment down to 8.9%, the nominal GDP grew by an unprecedented 2.9%. An investment programme in island transportation and utility infrastructure and gains in the tourism, mining, and service sectors all contributed this figure. All projections for 2007 show an even higher potential for economic growth with all estimates over 3.0% and hampered only by urban crime and public policies. Jamaica was ranked 78th in the Global Innovation Index in 2023.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In 2006, Jamaica became part of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) as one of the pioneering members.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "The global economic downturn had a significant impact on the Jamaican economy for the years 2007 to 2009, resulting in negative economic growth. The government implemented a new Debt Management Initiative, the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) on 14 January 2010. The initiative would see holders of Government of Jamaica (GOJ) bonds returning the high interest earning instruments for bonds with lower yields and longer maturities. The offer was taken up by over 95% of local financial institutions and was deemed a success by the government.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Owing to the success of the JDX program, the Bruce Golding-led government was successful in entering into a borrowing arrangement with the IMF on 4 February 2010 for the amount of US$1.27b. The loan agreement is for a period of three years.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "In April 2014, the Governments of Jamaica and China signed the preliminary agreements for the first phase of the Jamaican Logistics Hub (JLH) – the initiative that aims to position Kingston as the fourth node in the global logistics chain, joining Rotterdam, Dubai and Singapore, and serving the Americas. The Project, when completed, is expected to provide many jobs for Jamaicans, Economic Zones for multinational companies and much needed economic growth to alleviate the country's heavy debt-to-GDP ratio. Strict adherence to the IMF's refinancing programme and preparations for the JLH has favourably affected Jamaica's credit rating and outlook from the three biggest rating agencies. In 2018, both Moody's and Standard and Poor Credit ratings upgraded Jamaica's ratings to both \"stable and positive\" respectively.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Main articles: Science and technology in Jamaica and List of Jamaican inventions and discoveries",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "The Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) sector is guided by the National Commission on Science and Technology (NCST) and the Scientific Research Council (SRC). Both are under the direction of the Ministry of Science, Energy, and Technology.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Since the 1990s, the government has set an agenda to push the development of science and technology in Jamaica. Despite some successes, such as the growth of the nutraceutical industry, it has been difficult to translate the results into domestic technologies, products and services - largely because of national budgetary constraints. However, with Jamaica's improved fiscal space, coming out of its recent IMF programme, the government has pledged to increase expenditure on research and development.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Jamaicans have made some noteworthy scientific and medical contributions. Amongst these include the discovery of kwashiorkor, the pioneer of treatments for pediatric sickle cell anemia and the invention of various spacecraft support systems.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "The transport infrastructure in Jamaica consists of roadways, railways and air transport, with roadways forming the backbone of the island's internal transport system.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "The Jamaican road network consists of almost 21,000 kilometres (13,000 mi) of roads, of which over 15,000 kilometres (9,300 mi) is paved. The Jamaican Government has, since the late 1990s and in cooperation with private investors, embarked on a campaign of infrastructural improvement projects, one of which includes the creation of a system of freeways, the first such access-controlled roadways of their kind on the island, connecting the main population centres of the island. This project has so far seen the completion of 33 kilometres (21 mi) of freeway.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Railways in Jamaica no longer enjoy the prominent position they once did, having been largely replaced by roadways as the primary means of transport. Of the 272 kilometres (169 mi) of railway found in Jamaica, only 57 kilometres (35 mi) remain in operation, currently used to transport bauxite. On 13 April 2011, a limited passenger service was resumed between May Pen, Spanish Town and Linstead.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "There are three international airports in Jamaica with modern terminals, long runways, and the navigational equipment required to accommodate the large jet aircraft used in modern and air travel: Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston; Ian Fleming International Airport in Boscobel, Saint Mary Parish; and the island's largest and busiest airport, Sir Donald Sangster International Airport in the resort city of Montego Bay. Manley and Sangster International airports are home to the country's national airline, Air Jamaica. In addition there are local commuter airports at Tinson Pen (Kingston), Port Antonio, and Negril, which cater to internal flights only. Many other small, rural centres are served by private airstrips on sugar estates or bauxite mines.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Owing to its location in the Caribbean Sea in the shipping lane to the Panama Canal and relative proximity to large markets in North America and emerging markets in Latin America, Jamaica receives much traffic of shipping containers. The container terminal at the Port of Kingston has undergone large expansion in capacity in recent years to handle growth both already realised as well as that which is projected in coming years. Montego Freeport in Montego Bay also handles a variety of cargo like (though more limited than) the Port of Kingston, mainly agricultural products.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "There are several other ports positioned around the island, including Port Esquivel in St. Catherine (WINDALCO), Rocky Point in Clarendon, Port Kaiser in St. Elizabeth, Port Rhoades in Discovery Bay, Reynolds Pier in Ocho Rios, and Boundbrook Port in Port Antonio.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "To aid the navigation of shipping, Jamaica operates nine lighthouses. They are maintained by the <Port Authority of Jamaica, an agency of the Ministry of Transport and Works.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Jamaica depends on petroleum imports to satisfy its national energy needs. Many test sites have been explored for oil, but no commercially viable quantities have been found. The most convenient sources of imported oil and motor fuels (diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel) are from Mexico and Venezuela.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Jamaica's electrical power is produced by diesel (bunker oil) generators located in Old Harbour. This facility has been further equipped with liquid natural gas capability and storage. Other smaller power stations (most owned by the Jamaica Public Service Company, the island's electricity provider) support the island's electrical grid including the Hunts Bay Power Station, the Bogue Power Station Saint James, the Rockfort Power Station Saint Andrew and small hydroelectric plants on the White River, Rio Bueno, Morant River, Black River (Maggotty) and Roaring River. A wind farm, owned by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, was established at Wigton, Manchester.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Jamaica has successfully operated a SLOWPOKE-2 nuclear reactor of 20 kW capacity since the early 1980s, but there are no plans to expand nuclear power at present.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "Jamaica imports approximately 80,000 barrels (13,000 m) of oil energy products per day, including asphalt and lubrication products. Just 20% of imported fuels are used for road transportation, the rest being used by the bauxite industry, electricity generation, and aviation. 30,000 barrels/day of crude imports are processed into various motor fuels and asphalt by the Petrojam Refinery in Kingston.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "Jamaica produces enormous quantities of drinking alcohol (at least 5% water content), most of which appears to be consumed as beverages, and none used as motor fuel. Facilities exist to refine hydrous ethanol feedstock into anhydrous ethanol (0% water content), but as of 2007, the process appeared to be uneconomic and the production plant was idle. The facility has since been purchased by West Indies Petroleum Ltd. and repurposed for petroleum distillates.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Jamaica has a fully digital telephone communication system with a mobile penetration of over 95%.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "The country's two mobile operators – FLOW Jamaica (formerly LIME, bMobile and Cable and Wireless Jamaica) and Digicel Jamaica have spent millions in network upgrades and expansion. The newest operator, Digicel was granted a licence in 2001 to operate mobile services in the newly liberalised telecom market that had once been the sole domain of the incumbent FLOW (then Cable and Wireless Jamaica) monopoly. Digicel opted for the more widely used GSM wireless system, while a past operator, Oceanic (which became Claro Jamaica and later merged with Digicel Jamaica in 2011) opted for the CDMA standard. FLOW (formerly \"LIME\" – pre-Columbus Communications merger) which had begun with TDMA standard, subsequently upgraded to GSM in 2002, decommissioned TDMA in 2006 and only utilised that standard until 2009 when LIME launched its 3G network. Both operators currently provide islandwide coverage with HSPA+ (3G) technology. Currently, only Digicel offers LTE to its customers whereas FLOW Jamaica has committed to launching LTE in the cities of Kingston and Montego Bay, places where Digicel's LTE network is currently only found in, in short order.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "A new entrant to the Jamaican communications market, Flow Jamaica, laid a new submarine cable connecting Jamaica to the United States. This new cable increases the total number of submarine cables connecting Jamaica to the rest of the world to four. Cable and Wireless Communications (parent company of LIME) acquired the company in late 2014 and replaced their brand LIME with FLOW. FLOW Jamaica currently has the most broadband and cable subscribers on the island and also has 1 million mobile subscribers, second to Digicel (which had, at its peak, over 2 million mobile subscriptions on its network).",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "Digicel entered the broadband market in 2010 by offering WiMAX broadband, capable of up to 6 Mbit/s per subscriber. To further their broadband share post-LIME/FLOW merger in 2014, the company introduced a new broadband service called Digicel Play, which is Jamaica's second FTTH offering (after LIME's deployment in selected communities in 2011). It is currently only available in the parishes of Kingston, Portmore and St. Andrew. It offers speeds of up to 200 Mbit/s down, 100 Mbit/s up via a pure fibre optic network. Digicel's competitor, FLOW Jamaica, has a network consisting of ADSL, Coaxial and Fibre to the Home (inherited from LIME) and only offers speeds up to 100 Mbit/s. FLOW has committed to expanding its Fibre offering to more areas in order to combat Digicel's entrance into the market.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "It was announced that the Office and Utilities Regulations (OUR), Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining (MSTEM) and the Spectrum Management Authority (SMA) have given approval for another mobile operator licence in January 2016. The identity of this entrant was ascertained on 20 May 2016, when the Jamaican Government named the new carrier as Symbiote Investments Limited operating under the name Caricel. The company will focus on 4G LTE data offerings and will first go live in the Kingston Metropolitan Area and will expand to the rest of Jamaica thereafter.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "18°10′48″N 77°24′00″W / 18.18000°N 77.40000°W / 18.18000; -77.40000",
"title": "External links"
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| Jamaica is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning 10,990 square kilometres (4,240 sq mi) in area, it is the third largest island — after Cuba and Hispaniola — of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about 145 km (90 mi) south of Cuba, and 191 km (119 mi) west of Hispaniola; the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies 215 km (134 mi) to the north-west. Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, under the name Santiago, when England conquered it and named it Jamaica. It became an important part of the colonial British West Indies. Under Britain's colonial rule, Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on continued importation of African slaves and their descendants. The British fully emancipated all slaves in 1838, and many freedmen chose to have subsistence farms rather than to work on plantations. Beginning in the 1840s, the British began using Chinese and Indian indentured labour to work on plantations. The island achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962. With 2.8 million people, Jamaica is the third-most populous Anglophone country in the Americas, and the fourth-most populous country in the Caribbean. Kingston is the country's capital and largest city. The majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, with significant European, East Asian, Indian, Lebanese, and mixed-race minorities. Due to a high rate of emigration for work since the 1960s, there is a large Jamaican diaspora, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The country has a global influence that belies its small size; it was the birthplace of the Rastafari religion, reggae music, and it is internationally prominent in sports, most notably cricket, sprinting and athletics. Jamaica has sometimes been considered the world's least populous cultural superpower. Jamaica is an upper-middle income country with an economy heavily dependent on tourism; it has an average of 4.3 million tourists a year. The country performs favourably in measures of press freedom, democratic governance and sustainable well-being. Jamaica is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with power vested in the bicameral Parliament of Jamaica, consisting of an appointed Senate and a directly elected House of Representatives. Andrew Holness has served as Prime Minister of Jamaica since March 2016. As a Commonwealth realm, with Charles III as its king, the appointed representative of the Crown is the Governor-General of Jamaica, an office held by Patrick Allen since 2009. | 2001-09-16T18:07:09Z | 2023-12-13T12:32:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica |
15,661 | History of Jamaica | The Caribbean Island of Jamaica was initially inhabited in approximately 600 AD or 650 AD by the Redware people, often associated with redware pottery. By roughly 800 AD, a second wave of inhabitance occurred by the Arawak tribes, including the Tainos, prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. Early inhabitants of Jamaica named the land "Xaymaca", meaning "land of wood and water". The Spanish enslaved the Arawak, who were ravaged further by diseases that the Spanish brought with them. Early historians believe that by 1602, the Arawak-speaking Taino tribes were extinct. However, some of the Taino escaped into the forested mountains of the interior, where they mixed with runaway African slaves, and survived free from first Spanish, and then English, rule.
The Spanish also captured and transported hundreds of West African people to the island for the purpose of slavery. However, the majority of Africans were brought into Jamaica by the English.
In 1655, the English invaded Jamaica, and defeated the Spanish. Some African enslaved people took advantage of the political turmoil and escaped to the island's interior mountains, forming independent communities which became known as the Maroons. Meanwhile, on the coast, the English built the settlement of Port Royal, a base of operations where piracy flourished as so many European rebels had been rejected from their countries to serve sentences on the seas. Captain Henry Morgan, a Welsh plantation owner and privateer, raided settlements and shipping bases from Port Royal, earning him his reputation as one of the richest pirates in the Caribbean.
In the 18th century, sugar cane replaced piracy as British Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labour-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved black Africans to the island. By 1850, the black and mulatto Jamaican population outnumbered the white population by a ratio of twenty to one. Enslaved Jamaicans mounted over a dozen major uprisings during the 18th century, including Tacky's Revolt in 1760. There were also periodic skirmishes between the British and the mountain communities of the Jamaican Maroons, culminating in the First Maroon War of the 1730s and the Second Maroon War of 1795–1796.
The aftermath of the Baptist War shone a light on the conditions of slaves which contributed greatly to the abolition movement and the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which formally ended slavery in Jamaica in 1834. However, relations between the white and black community remained tense coming into the mid-19th century, with the most notable event being the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865. The latter half of the 19th century saw economic decline, low crop prices, droughts, and disease. When sugar lost its importance, many former plantations went bankrupt, and land was sold to Jamaican peasants and cane fields were consolidated by dominant British producers.
Jamaica's first political parties emerged in the late 1920s, while workers association and trade unions emerged in the 1930s. The development of a new Constitution in 1944, universal male suffrage, and limited self-government eventually led to Jamaican Independence in 1962 with Alexander Bustamante serving as its first prime minister. The country saw an extensive period of postwar growth and a smaller reliance on the agricultural sector and a larger reliance on bauxite and mining in the 1960s and 1970s. Political power changed hands between the two dominant parties, the JLP and PNP, from the 1970s to the present day. While Jamaica's murder rate fell by nearly half after the 2010 Tivoli Incursion, the country's murder rate remains one of the highest in the world. Economic troubles hit the country in 2013, the IMF agreed to a $1 billion loan to help Jamaica meet large debt payments, making Jamaica a highly indebted country that spends around half of its annual budget on debt repayments.
The first inhabitants of Jamaica probably came from islands to the east in two waves of migration. About 600 CE the culture known as the “Redware people” arrived. Little is known of these people, however, beyond the red pottery they left behind. Alligator Pond in Manchester Parish and Little River in St. Ann Parish are among the earliest known sites of this Ostionoid person, who lived near the coast and extensively hunted turtles and fish.
Around 800 CE, the Arawak tribes of the Tainos arrived, eventually settling throughout the island. Living in villages ruled by tribal chiefs called the caciques, they sustained themselves on fishing and the cultivation of maize and cassava. At the height of their civilization, their population is estimated to have numbered as much as 60,000.
The Arawak brought a South America system of raising yuca known as "conuco" to the island. To add nutrients to the soil, the Arawak burned local bushes and trees and heaped the ash into large mounds, into which they then planted yuca cuttings. Most Arawak lived in large circular buildings (bohios), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves. The Arawak spoke an Arawakan language and did not have writing. Some of the words used by them, such as barbacoa ("barbecue"), hamaca ("hammock"), kanoa ("canoe"), tabaco ("tobacco"), yuca, batata ("sweet potato"), and juracán ("hurricane"), have been incorporated into Spanish and English.
Christopher Columbus is believed to be the first European to reach Jamaica. He landed on the island on 5 May 1494, during his second voyage to the Americas. Columbus returned to Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the Americas. He had been sailing around the Caribbean for nearly a year when a storm beached his ships in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on 25 June 1503. Columbus and his men remained stranded on the island for one year, finally departing on June 1504.
The Spanish crown granted the island to the Columbus family, but for decades it was something of a backwater, valued chiefly as a supply base for food and animal hides. In 1509 Juan de Esquivel founded the first permanent European settlement, the town of Sevilla la Nueva (New Seville), on the north coast of the island. A decade later, Friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote to Spanish authorities about Esquivel's conduct during the Higüey massacre of 1503.
In 1534 the capital was moved to Villa de la Vega (later Santiago de la Vega), now called Spanish Town. This settlement served as the capital of both Spanish and English Jamaica, from its founding until 1872, after which the capital was moved to Kingston.
The Spanish enslaved many of the Arawak. Some escaped to the mountains to join the Maroons. However, most died from European diseases as well as from being overworked. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves into the island. By the early 17th century, when most of the Taino had died out, the population of the island was about 3,000, including a small number of African slaves. Disappointed in the lack of gold on the island, Jamaica was mainly used as a military base to supply colonization efforts in the mainland Americas.
The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.
Although the Taino referred to the island as "Xaymaca", the Spanish gradually changed the name to "Jamaica". In the so-called Admiral's map of 1507 the island was labeled as "Jamaiqua" and in Peter Martyr's work Decades of 1511, he referred to it as both "Jamaica" and "Jamica".
In late 1654, English leader Oliver Cromwell launched the Western Design armada against Spain's colonies in the Caribbean. In April 1655, General Robert Venables led the armada in an attack on Spain's fort at Santo Domingo, Hispaniola. After the Spanish repelled this poorly executed attack, the English force then sailed for Jamaica, the only Spanish West Indies island that did not have new defensive works. In May 1655, around 7,000 English soldiers landed near Jamaica's capital, named Spanish Town and soon overwhelmed the small number of Spanish troops (at the time, Jamaica's entire population only numbered around 2,500).
Spain never recaptured Jamaica, losing the Battle of Ocho Rios in 1657 and the Battle of Rio Nuevo in 1658. In 1660, the turning point was when some Spanish runaway slaves, who settled in the interior mountainous regions of Jamaica, became known as the Jamaican Maroons, under the leadership of Juan de Bolas switched sides from the Spanish to the English. For England, Jamaica was to be the "dagger pointed at the heart of the Spanish Empire," but in fact, it was a possession of little economic value then. England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defence against a Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting.
Cromwell increased the island's European population by sending indentured servants and prisoners to Jamaica. Due to Irish emigration resulting from the wars in Ireland at this time two-thirds of this 17th-century European population was Irish. But tropical diseases kept the number of Europeans under 10,000 until about 1740. Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by the end of the 17th century imports of slaves increased the black population to at least five times greater than the white population. Thereafter, Jamaica's African population did not increase significantly in number until well into the 18th century, in part because ships coming from the west coast of Africa preferred to unload at the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. At the beginning of the 18th century, the number of slaves in Jamaica did not exceed 45,000, but by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
When the English captured Jamaica in 1655, the Spanish colonists fled, leaving a large number of African slaves. These former Spanish slaves organised under the leadership of rival captains Juan de Serras and Juan de Bolas. These Jamaican Maroons intermarried with the Arawak people, and established distinct independent communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica. They survived by subsistence farming and periodic raids of plantations. Over time, the Maroons came to control large areas of the Jamaican interior.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, de Serras fought regular campaigns against English colonial forces, even attacking the capital of Spanish Town, and he was never defeated by the English. Throughout the seventeenth century, and in the first few decades of the eighteenth century, Maroon forces frequently defeated the British in small-scale skirmishes. The British colonial authorities dispatched numerous expeditions in an attempt to subdue them, but the Maroons successfully fought a guerrilla campaign against the British in the mountainous interior, and forced the British government to seek peace terms to end the expensive conflict.
In the early eighteenth century, English-speaking escaped Akan slaves were at the forefront of the Maroon fighting against the British.
Beginning with the Stuart monarchy's appointment of a civil governor to Jamaica in 1661, political patterns were established that lasted well into the 20th century. The second governor, Lord Windsor, brought with him in 1662 a proclamation from the king giving Jamaica's non-slave populace the same rights as those of English citizens, including the right to make their own laws. Although he spent only ten weeks in Jamaica, Lord Windsor laid the foundations of a governing system that was to last for two centuries — a crown-appointed governor acting with the advice of a nominated council in the legislature. The legislature consisted of the governor and an elected but highly unrepresentative House of Assembly. For years, the planter-dominated Assembly was in continual conflict with the various governors and the Stuart kings; there were also contentious factions within the assembly itself. For much of the 1670s and 1680s, Charles II and James II and the assembly feuded over such matters as the purchase of slaves from ships not run by the royal English trading company. The last Stuart governor, Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, who was more interested in treasure hunting than in planting, turned the planter oligarchy out of office. After the duke's death in 1688, the planters, who had fled Jamaica to London, succeeded in lobbying James II to order a return to the pre-Albemarle political arrangement (the local control of Jamaican planters belonging to the assembly).
Following the 1655 conquest, Spain repeatedly attempted to recapture Jamaica. In response, in 1657, Governor Edward D'Oyley invited the Brethren of the Coast to come to Port Royal and make it their home port. The Brethren was made up of a group of pirates who were descendants of cattle-hunting boucaniers (later Anglicised to buccaneers), who had turned to piracy after being robbed by the Spanish (and subsequently thrown out of Hispaniola). These pirates concentrated their attacks on Spanish shipping, whose interests were considered the major threat to the town. These pirates later became legal English privateers who were given letters of marque by Jamaica's governor. Around the same time that pirates were invited to Port Royal, England launched a series of attacks against Spanish shipping vessels and coastal towns. By sending the newly appointed privateers after Spanish ships and settlements, England had successfully set up a system of defense for Port Royal. Jamaica became a haven of privateers, buccaneers, and occasionally outright pirates: Christopher Myngs, Edward Mansvelt, and most famously, Henry Morgan.
England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defense against a Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting. This settlement also improved the supply of slaves and resulted in more protection, including military support, for the planters against foreign competition. As a result, the sugar monoculture and slave-worked plantation society spread across Jamaica throughout the 18th century, decreasing Jamaica's dependence on privateers for protection and funds.
However, the English colonial authorities continued to have difficulties suppressing the Spanish Maroons, who made their homes in the mountainous interior and mounted periodic raids on estates and towns, such as Spanish Town. The Karmahaly Maroons, led by Juan de Serras, continued to stay in the forested mountains, and periodically fought the English. In the 1670s and 1680s, in his capacity as an owner of a large slave plantation, Morgan led three campaigns against the Jamaican Maroons of Juan de Serras. Morgan achieved some success against the Maroons, who withdrew further into the Blue Mountains, where they were able to stay out of the reach of Morgan and his forces.
Another blow to Jamaica's partnership with privateers was the violent earthquake which destroyed much of Port Royal on 7 June 1692. Two-thirds of the town sank into the sea immediately after the main shock. After the earthquake, the town was partially rebuilt but the colonial government was relocated to Spanish Town, which had been the capital under Spanish rule. Port Royal was further devastated by a fire in 1703 and a hurricane in 1722. Most of the sea trade moved to Kingston. By the late 18th century, Port Royal was largely abandoned.
In the mid-17th century, sugarcane was introduced to the British West Indies by the Dutch, from Brazil. Upon landing in Jamaica and other islands, they quickly urged local growers to change their main crops from cotton and tobacco to sugarcane. With depressed prices of cotton and tobacco, due mainly to stiff competition from the North American colonies, the farmers switched, leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies. Sugarcane was quickly snapped up by the British, who used it in cakes and to sweeten tea. In the 18th century, sugar replaced piracy as Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labor-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans to Jamaica. By 1832, the median-size plantation in Jamaica had about 150 slaves, and nearly one of every four bondsmen lived on units that had at least 250 slaves. In The Book of Night Women, author Marlon James indicates that the ratio of slave owners to enslaved Africans is 1:33. James also depicts atrocities that slave owners subjected slaves to along with violent resistance from the slaves as well as numerous slaves who died in pursuit of freedom. After slavery was abolished in 1834, sugarcane plantations used a variety of forms of labour including workers imported from India under contracts of indenture.
The 18th century saw thousands of slaves imported into Jamaica into the now profitable sugar plantations. From 1740 to 1834, the estimated slave population continued to grow, reaching into the three hundred thousands by the end of the century. The sugar boom of Jamaica would change the dynamics of the slave market and the economics of the West Indies. Towards the end of the 18th century, Jamaica became the leader of sugar production for the British empire, producing up to 66% of the empire's sugar in 1796. With the high demand for sugar out of Jamaica, the demand for slaves increased, leading to an increase in prices for slaves. From 1750 to 1807, the average price for a slave in the Caribbean would continue to steadily rise, reaching a high of £73 in 1805. Prices soared towards the dawn of the new century as a result of the plantation system in Saint-Domingue falling due to the Haitian revolution, putting more emphasis on Jamaica. Interestingly, the most efficient plantations employed fewer slaves per acre of land, which was observed in St. Andrews parish. This created a higher demand for slaves that were efficient and in good health and shape, inflating the prices of those individuals and creating a quality over quantity dynamic. With the increase in traffic of ships and slaves, British merchants implemented the guarantee system, in which a merchant would be appointed to guarantee payment upon the delivery of the enslaved.
Starting in the late seventeenth century, there were periodic skirmishes between the English colonial militia and the Windward Maroons, alongside occasional slave revolts. In 1673 one such revolt in St. Ann's Parish of 200 slaves created the separate group of Leeward Maroons. These Maroons united with a group of Madagascars who had survived the shipwreck of a slave ship and formed their own maroon community in St. George's parish. Several more rebellions strengthened the numbers of this Leeward group. Notably, in 1690 a revolt at Sutton's plantation in Clarendon Parish of 400 slaves considerably strengthened the Leeward Maroons. The Leeward Maroons inhabited "cockpits," caves, or deep ravines that were easily defended, even against troops with superior firepower. Such guerrilla warfare and the use of scouts who blew the abeng (the cow horn, which was used as a trumpet) to warn of approaching enemies allowed the Maroons to evade, thwart, frustrate, and defeat the British.
Early in the 18th century, the Maroons took a heavy toll on British colonial militiamen who sent against them in the interior, in what came to be known as the First Maroon War. In 1728, the British authorities sent Robert Hunter to assume the office of governor of Jamaica; Hunter's arrival led to an intensification of the conflict. However, despite increased numbers, the British colonial authorities were unable to defeat the Windward Maroons.
In 1739–40, the British government in Jamaica recognised that it could not defeat the Maroons, so they offered them treaties of peace instead. In 1739, the British, led by Governor Edward Trelawny, sued for peace with the Leeward Maroon leader, Cudjoe, described by British planters as a short, almost dwarf-like man who for years fought skilfully and bravely to maintain his people's independence. Some writers maintain that during the conflict, Cudjoe became increasingly disillusioned, and quarrelled with his lieutenants and with other Maroon groups. He felt that the only hope for the future was a peace treaty with the enemy which recognized the independence of the Leeward Maroons. In 1742, Cudjoe had to suppress a rebellion of Leeward Maroons against the treaty.
The First Maroon War came to an end with a 1739–1740 agreement between the Maroons and the British government. In exchange, they were asked to agree not to harbour new runaway slaves, but rather to help catch them. This last clause in the treaty naturally caused a split between the Maroons and the mainly mulatto population, although from time to time runaways from the plantations still found their way into maroon settlements, such as those led by Three Fingered Jack (Jamaica). Another provision of the agreement was that the Maroons would serve to protect the island from invaders. The latter was because the Maroons were revered by the British as skilled warriors.
A year later, the even more rebellious Windward Maroons led by Quao also agreed to sign a treaty under pressure from both white Jamaican militias and the Leeward Maroons. Eventually, Queen Nanny agreed to a land patent which meant that her Maroons also accepted peace terms.
The Maroons were to remain in their five main towns (Accompong; Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town); Nanny Town, later known as Moore Town; Scott's Hall (Jamaica); and Charles Town, Jamaica), living under their own rulers and a British supervisor.
In May 1760, Tacky, a slave overseer on the Frontier plantation in Saint Mary Parish, led a group of enslaved Africans in taking over the Frontier and Trinity plantations while killing their enslavers. They then marched to the storeroom at Fort Haldane, where the munitions to defend the town of Port Maria were kept. After killing the storekeeper, Tacky and his men stole nearly 4 barrels of gunpowder and 40 firearms with shot, before marching on to overrun the plantations at Heywood Hall and Esher.
By dawn, hundreds of other slaves had joined Tacky and his followers. At Ballard's Valley, the rebels stopped to rejoice in their success. One slave from Esher decided to slip away and sound the alarm. Obeahmen (Caribbean witch doctors) quickly circulated around the camp dispensing a powder that they claimed would protect the men from injury in battle and loudly proclaimed that an Obeahman could not be killed. The confidence was high. Soon there were 70 to 80 mounted militia on their way along with some Maroons from Scott's Hall, who were bound by treaty to suppress such rebellions. When the militia learned of the Obeahman's boast of not being able to be killed, an Obeahman was captured, killed, and hung with his mask, ornaments of teeth and bone and feather trimmings at a prominent place visible from the encampment of rebels. Many of the rebels, confidence shaken, returned to their plantations. Tacky and 25 or so men decided to fight on. Tacky and his men went running through the woods being chased by the Maroons and their legendary marksman, Davy the Maroon.
While running at full speed, Davy shot Tacky and cut off his head as evidence of his feat, for which he would be richly rewarded. Tacky's head was later displayed on a pole in Spanish Town until a follower took it down in the middle of the night. The rest of Tacky's men were found in a cave near Tacky Falls, having committed suicide rather than going back to slavery.
In 1795, the Second Maroon War was instigated when two Maroons were flogged by a black slave for allegedly stealing two pigs. When six Maroon leaders came to the British to present their grievances, the British took them as prisoners. This sparked an eight-month conflict, spurred by the fact that Maroons felt that they were being mistreated under the terms of Cudjoe's Treaty of 1739, which ended the First Maroon War. The war lasted for five months as a bloody stalemate. The British colonial authorities could muster 5,000 men, outnumbering the Maroons ten to one, but the mountainous and forested topography of Jamaica proved ideal for guerrilla warfare. The Maroons surrendered in December 1795. A treaty signed in December between Major General George Walpole and the Maroon leaders established that the Maroons would beg on their knees for the King's forgiveness, return all runaway slaves, and be relocated elsewhere in Jamaica. The governor of Jamaica ratified the treaty but gave the Maroons only three days to present themselves to beg forgiveness on 1 January 1796. Suspicious of British intentions, most of the Maroons did not surrender until mid-March. The British used the contrived breach of the treaty as a pretext to deport the entire Trelawny Town Maroons to Nova Scotia. After a few years, the Maroons were again deported to the new British settlement of Sierra Leone in West Africa.
Hundreds of runaway slaves secured their freedom by escaping and fighting alongside the Maroons of Trelawny Town. About half of these runaways surrendered with the Maroons, and many were executed or re-sold in slavery to Cuba. However, a few hundred stayed out in the forests of the Cockpit Country, and they joined other runaway communities. In 1798, a slave named Cuffee ran away from a western estate, and established a runaway community which was able to resist attempts by the colonial forces and the Maroons remaining in Jamaica to subdue them. In the early nineteenth century, colonial records describe hundreds of runaway slaves escaping to "Healthshire" where they flourished for several years before they were captured by a party of Maroons.
In 1812, a community of runaways started when a dozen men and some women escaped from the sugar plantations of Trelawny into the Cockpit Country, and they created a village with the curious name of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come. By the 1820s, Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come housed between 50 and 60 runaways. The headmen of the community were escaped slaves named Warren and Forbes. Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come also conducted a thriving trade with slaves from the north coast, who exchanged their salt provisions with the runaways for their ground provisions. In October 1824, the colonial militias tried to destroy this community. However, the community of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come continued to thrive in the Cockpit Country until Emancipation in the 1830s.
In 1831, enslaved Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe led a strike among demanding more freedom and a working wage of "half the going wage rate." Upon refusal of their demands, the strike escalated into a full rebellion, in part because Sharpe had also made military preparations with a rebel military group known as the Black Regiment led by a slave known as Colonel Johnson of Retrieve Estate, about 150 strong with 50 guns among them. Colonel Johnson's Black Regiment clashed with a local militia led by Colonel Grignon at old Montpelier on December 28. The militia retreated to Montego Bay while the Black Regiment advanced an invasion of estates in the hills, inviting more slaves to join while burning houses, fields, and other properties, setting off a trail of fires through the Great River Valley in Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth to St James.
The Baptist War, as it was known, became the largest slave uprising in the British West Indies, lasting 10 days and mobilised as many as 60,000 of Jamaica's 300,000 slaves. The rebellion was suppressed by colonial forces under the control of Sir Willoughby Cotton. The reaction of the Jamaican Government and plantocracy was far more brutal. Approximately five hundred slaves were killed in total: 207 during the revolt and somewhere in the range between 310 and 340 slaves were killed through "various forms of judicial executions" after the rebellion was concluded, at times, for quite minor offenses (one recorded execution indicates the crime being the theft of a pig; another, a cow). An 1853 account by Henry Bleby described how three or four simultaneous executions were commonly observed; bodies would be allowed to pile up until workhouse slaves carted the bodies away at night and buried them in mass graves outside town. The brutality of the plantocracy during the revolt is thought to have accelerated the process of emancipation, with initial measures beginning in 1833.
The British Parliament held two inquires as a result of the loss of property and life in the 1831 Baptist War rebellion. Their reports of the conditions of the slaves contributed greatly to the abolition movement and helped lead to the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, formally ending slavery in Jamaica on August 1, 1834. However, the act stipulated that all slaves above the age of 6 on the date abolition took effect, were bound (indentured) in service to their former owners', albeit with a guarantee of rights, under what was called the "Apprenticeship System". The length of servitude that was required varied based on the former slaves’ responsibilities with "domestic slaves" owing 4 years of service and "agriculture slaves" owing 6. In addition to the apprentice system, former slave owners were to be compensated for the loss of their "property." By 1839, "Twenty Million Pounds Sterling" was paid out to the owners of slaves freed in the Caribbean and Africa under the 1833 Abolition Act, half of whom were absentee landlords residing in Great Britain.
The apprentice system was unpopular amongst Jamaica's "former" slaves — especially elderly slaves — who unlike slave owners were not provided any compensation. This led to protests. In the face of mounting pressure, a resolution was passed on August 1, 1838, releasing all "apprentices" regardless of position from all obligations to their former masters.
With the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 and slavery itself in 1834, the island's sugar- and slave-based economy faltered. The period after emancipation in 1834 initially was marked by a conflict between the plantocracy and elements in the Colonial Office over the extent to which individual freedom should be coupled with political participation for blacks. In 1840 the assembly changed the voting qualifications in a way that enabled a majority of blacks and people of mixed race (browns or mulattos) to vote. But neither change in the political system, nor abolition of slavery, changed the planter's chief interest — which lay in the continued profitability of their estates — and they continued to dominate the elitist assembly. Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, the crown began to allow some Jamaicans – mostly local merchants, urban professionals, and artisans—to hold seats on appointed councils.
Tensions between blacks and whites resulted in the October 1865 Morant Bay rebellion led by Paul Bogle. The rebellion was sparked on 7 October, when a black man was put on trial and imprisoned for allegedly trespassing on a long-abandoned plantation. During the proceedings, James Geoghegon, a black spectator, disrupted the trial, and in the police's attempts to seize him to remove him from the courthouse, a fight broke out between the police and other spectators. While pursuing Geoghegon, two policemen were beaten with sticks and stones. The following Monday, arrest warrants were issued for several men for rioting, resisting arrest, and assaulting the police. Among them was Baptist preacher Paul Bogle. A few days later on 11 October, Mr. Paul Bogle marched with a group of protesters to Morant Bay. When the group arrived at the courthouse they were met by a small and inexperienced volunteer militia. The crowd began pelting the militia with rocks and sticks, and the militia opened fire on the group, killing seven black protesters before retreating.
Governor John Eyre sent government troops, under Brigadier-General Alexander Nelson, to hunt down the poorly armed rebels and bring Paul Bogle back to Morant Bay for trial. The troops met with no organized resistance, yet they killed blacks indiscriminately, most of whom had not been involved in the riot or rebellion. According to one soldier, "We slaughtered all before us... man or woman or child.” In the end, 439 black Jamaicans were killed directly by soldiers, and 354 more (including Paul Bogle) were arrested and later executed, some without proper trials. Paul Bogle was executed "either the same evening he was tried or the next morning." Other punishments included the flogging of over 600 men and women (including some pregnant women), and long prison sentences. Thousands of homes belonging to black Jamaicans were burned down without any justifiable reason.
George William Gordon, Jamaican-born plantation owner, businessman and politician, who was the mixed-race son of Scottish-born plantation owner of Cherry Gardens in St. Andrew, Joseph Gordon, and his black enslaved mistress. Gordon, had been critical of Governor John Eyre and his policies, and was later arrested by the Governor who believed he had been behind the rebellion. Despite having very little to do with the rebellion, Gordon was eventually executed. Though he was arrested in Kingston, he was transferred by Eyre to Morant Bay, where he could be tried under martial law. The execution and trial of Gordon via martial law raised some constitutional issues back in Britain, where concerns emerged about whether British dependencies should be ruled under the government of law, or through a military license. Gordon hanged on 23 October, after a speedy trial — just two days after his trial had begun. He and William Bogle, Paul's brother, "were both tried together, and executed at the same time.”
During most of the 18th century, the monocrop economy based on sugarcane production for export flourished. In the last quarter of the century, however, the Jamaican sugar economy declined as famines, hurricanes, colonial wars, and wars of independence disrupted trade. By the 1820s, Jamaican sugar became less competitive with the high-volume producers like Cuba, and production subsequently declined. By 1882 sugar output was less than half what it was in 1828. A major reason for the decline was the British Parliament's 1807 abolition of the slave trade, under which the transportation of slaves to Jamaica after 1 March 1808 was forbidden. The abolition of the slave trade was followed by the abolition of slavery in 1834 and full emancipation of slaves within four years. Unable to convert the ex-slaves into a sharecropping tenant class similar to the one established in the post-Civil War South of the United States, planters became increasingly dependent on wage labour and began recruiting workers abroad, primarily from India, China, and Sierra Leone. Many of the former slaves settled in peasant or small farm communities in the interior of the island like the "yam belt," where they engaged in subsistence and some cash crop farming.
The second half of the 19th century was a period of severe economic decline for Jamaica. Low crop prices, droughts, and disease led to serious social unrest, culminating in the Morant Bay rebellions of 1865. However, renewed British administration after the 1865 rebellion, in the form of crown colony status, resulted in some social and economic progress as well as investment in the physical infrastructure. Agricultural development was the centrepiece of restored British rule in Jamaica. In 1868 the first large-scale irrigation project was launched. In 1895 the Jamaica Agricultural Society was founded to promote more scientific and profitable methods of farming. Also in the 1890s, the Crown Lands Settlement Scheme was introduced, a land reform program of sorts, which allowed small farmers to purchase two hectares or more of land on favorable terms.
Between 1865 and 1930, the character of landholding in Jamaica changed substantially, as sugar declined in importance. As many former plantations went bankrupt, some land was sold to Jamaican peasants under the Crown Lands Settlement whereas other cane fields were consolidated by dominant British producers, most notably by the British firm Tate and Lyle. Although the concentration of land and wealth in Jamaica was not as drastic as in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, by the 1920s the typical sugar plantation on the island had increased to an average of 266 hectares. But, as noted, smallscale agriculture in Jamaica survived the consolidation of land by sugar powers. The number of small holdings in fact tripled between 1865 and 1930, thus retaining a large portion of the population as peasantry. Most of the expansion in small holdings took place before 1910, with farms averaging between two and twenty hectares.
The rise of the banana trade during the second half of the 19th century also changed production and trade patterns on the island. Bananas were first exported in 1867, and banana farming grew rapidly thereafter. By 1890, bananas had replaced sugar as Jamaica's principal export. Production rose from 5 million stems (32 percent of exports) in 1897 to an average of 20 million stems a year in the 1920s and 1930s, or over half of domestic exports. As with sugar, the presence of American companies, like the well-known United Fruit Company in Jamaica, was a driving force behind renewed agricultural exports. Competition was introduced by the Jamaican-Italian firm Lanasa & Goffe raising the price paid for bananas in 1906. The British also became more interested in Jamaican bananas than in the country's sugar. Expansion of banana production, however, was hampered by serious labour shortages. The rise of the banana economy took place amidst a general exodus of up to 11,000 Jamaicans a year.
In 1846 Jamaican planters — adversely affected by the loss of slave labour — suffered a crushing blow when Britain passed the Sugar Duties Act, eliminating Jamaica's traditionally favoured status as its primary supplier of sugar. The Jamaica House of Assembly stumbled from one crisis to another until the collapse of the sugar trade, when racial and religious tensions came to a head during the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. Although suppressed ruthlessly, the severe rioting so alarmed the planters that the two-centuries-old assembly voted to abolish itself and asked for the establishment of direct British rule. In 1866 the new governor John Peter Grant arrived to implement a series of reforms that accompanied the transition to a crown colony. The government consisted of the Legislative Council and the executive Privy Council containing members of both chambers of the House of Assembly, but the Colonial Office exercised effective power through a presiding British governor. The council included a few handpicked prominent Jamaicans for the sake of appearance only. In the late 19th century, crown colony rule was modified; representation and limited self-rule were reintroduced gradually into Jamaica after 1884. The colony's legal structure was reformed along the lines of English common law and county courts, and a constabulary force was established. The smooth working of the crown colony system depended on a good understanding and an identity of interests between the governing officials, who were British, and most of the nonofficial, nominated members of the Legislative Council, who were Jamaicans. The elected members of this body were in a permanent minority and without any influence or administrative power. The unstated alliance – based on shared color, attitudes, and interest – between the British officials and the Jamaican upper class was reinforced in London, where the West India Committee lobbied for Jamaican interests. Jamaica's white or near-white propertied class continued to hold the dominant position in every respect; the vast majority of the black population remained poor and disenfranchised.
Until it was disestablished in 1870, the Church of England in Jamaica was the established church. It represented the white English community. It received funding from the colonial government and was given responsibility for providing religious instruction to the slaves. It was challenged by Methodist missionaries from England, and the Methodists in turn were denounced as troublemakers. The Church of England in Jamaica established the Jamaica Home and Foreign Missionary Society in 1861; its mission stations multiplied, with financial help from religious organizations in London. The Society sent its own missionaries to West Africa. Baptist missions grew rapidly, thanks to missionaries from England and the United States, and became the largest denomination by 1900. Baptist missionaries denounced the apprentice system as a form of slavery. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Methodists opened a high school and a theological college. Other Protestant groups included the Moravians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Seventh-day Adventist, Church of God, and others. There were several thousand Roman Catholics. The population was largely Christian by 1900, and most families were linked with the church or a Sunday School. Traditional pagan practices persisted in an unorganized fashion, such as witchcraft.
In 1872, the government passed an act to transfer government offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. Kingston had been founded as a refuge for survivors of the 1692 earthquake that destroyed Port Royal. The town did not begin to grow until after the further destruction of Port Royal by fire in 1703. Surveyor John Goffe drew up a plan for the town based on a grid bounded by North, East, West, and Harbour Streets. By 1716 it had become the largest town and the center of trade for Jamaica. The government sold the land to people with the regulation that they purchase no more than the amount of the land that they owned in Port Royal, and the only land on the sea front. Gradually wealthy merchants began to move their residences from above their businesses to the farm lands north on the plains of Liguanea. In 1755 the governor, Sir Charles Knowles, had decided to transfer the government offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. It was thought by some to be an unsuitable location for the Assembly in proximity to the moral distractions of Kingston, and the next governor rescinded the Act. However, by 1780 the population of Kingston was 11,000, and the merchants began lobbying for the administrative capital to be transferred from Spanish Town, which was by then eclipsed by the commercial activity in Kingston. The 1907 Kingston earthquake destroyed much of the city. Considered by many writers of that time one of the world's deadliest earthquakes, it resulted in the death of over eight hundred Jamaicans and destroyed the homes of over ten thousand more.
The earliest modern plantations originated in Jamaica and the related Western Caribbean Zone, including most of Central America. It involved the combination of modern transportation networks of steamships and railroads with the development of refrigeration that allowed more time between harvesting and ripening. North American shippers like Lorenzo Dow Baker and Andrew Preston, the founders of the Boston Fruit Company started this process in the 1870s, but railroad builders like Minor C. Keith also participated, eventually culminating in the multi-national giant corporations like today's Chiquita Brands International and Dole. These companies were monopolistic, vertically integrated (meaning they controlled growing, processing, shipping and marketing) and usually used political manipulation to build enclave economies (economies that were internally self-sufficient, virtually tax exempt, and export-oriented that contribute very little to the host economy). Alfred Constantine Goffe was a Jamaican Businessman whose St. Mary Banana co-op was the first in Jamaica, opposed the larger export companies and by 1909 had the largest Jamaican owned Banana export company. The resurgence of the Baltimore docks and newer, faster boats, refrigeration on board steamships and rail-cars enabled bananas to travel further to meet the demand for the yellow fruit, for which the firm of Lanasa and Goffe excelled .
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a black activist, Trade Unionist, and husband to Amy Jacques Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1914, one of Jamaica's first political parties in 1929, and a workers association in the early 1930s. Garvey also promoted the Back-to-Africa movement, which called for those of African descent to return to the homelands of their ancestors. Garvey, a controversial figure, had been the target of a four-year investigation by the United States government. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and had served most of a five-year term in an Atlanta penitentiary when he was deported to Jamaica in 1927. Garvey left the colony in 1935 to live in the United Kingdom, where he died heavily in debt five years later. He was proclaimed Jamaica's first national hero in the 1960s after Edward P.G. Seaga, then a government minister arranged the return of his remains to Jamaica. In 1987 Jamaica petitioned the United States Congress to pardon Garvey on the basis that the federal charges brought against him were unsubstantiated and unjust.
The Rastafari movement, a new religion, emerged among impoverished and socially disenfranchised Afro-Jamaican communities in 1930s Jamaica. Its Afrocentric ideology was largely a reaction against Jamaica's then-dominant British colonial culture. It was influenced by both Ethiopianism and the Back-to-Africa movement promoted by black nationalist figures like Marcus Garvey. The movement developed after several Christian clergymen, most notably Leonard Howell, proclaimed that the crowning of Haile Selassie as Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 fulfilled a Biblical prophecy. By the 1950s, Rastafari's counter-cultural stance had brought the movement into conflict with wider Jamaican society, including violent clashes with law enforcement. In the 1960s and 1970s, it gained increased respectability within Jamaica and greater visibility abroad through the popularity of Rasta-inspired reggae musicians like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Enthusiasm for Rastafari declined in the 1980s, following the deaths of Haile Selassie and Marley.
The Great Depression caused sugar prices to slump in 1929 and led to the return of many Jamaicans. Economic stagnation, discontent with unemployment, low wages, high prices, and poor living conditions caused social unrest in the 1930s. Uprisings in Jamaica began on the Frome Sugar Estate in the western parish of Westmoreland and quickly spread east to Kingston. Jamaica, in particular, set the pace for the region in its demands for economic development from British colonial rule.
Because of disturbances in Jamaica and the rest of the region, the British in 1938 appointed the Moyne Commission. An immediate result of the commission was the Colonial Development Welfare Act, which provided for the expenditure of approximately Ł1 million a year for twenty years on coordinated development in the British West Indies. Concrete actions, however, were not implemented to deal with Jamaica's massive structural problems.
The rise of nationalism, as distinct from island identification or desire for self-determination, is generally dated to the 1938 labor riots that affected both Jamaica and the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. William Alexander Bustamante (formerly William Alexander Clarke), a moneylender in the capital city of Kingston who had formed the Jamaica Trade Workers and Tradesmen Union (JTWTU) three years earlier, captured the imagination of the black masses with his messianic personality, even though he himself was light-skinned, affluent, and aristocratic. Bustamante emerged from the 1938 strikes and other disturbances as a populist leader and the principal spokesperson for the militant urban working class, and in that year, using the JTWTU as a stepping stone, he founded the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), which inaugurated Jamaica's worker's movement.
A first cousin of Bustamante, Norman W. Manley, concluded as a result of the 1938 riots that the real basis for national unity in Jamaica lay in the masses. Unlike the union-oriented Bustamante, however, Manley was more interested in access to control over state power and political rights for the masses. On 18 September 1938, he inaugurated the People's National Party (PNP), which had begun as a nationalist movement supported by Bustamante and the mixed-race middle class (which included the intelligentsia) and the liberal sector of the business community with leaders who were highly educated members of the upper middle class. The 1938 riots spurred the PNP to unionize labor, although it would be several years before the PNP formed major labor unions. The party concentrated its earliest efforts on establishing a network both in urban areas and in banana-growing rural parishes, later working on building support among small farmers and in areas of bauxite mining.
The PNP adopted a socialist ideology in 1940 and later joined the Socialist International, allying itself formally with the social democratic parties of Western Europe. Guided by socialist principles, Manley was not a doctrinaire socialist. PNP socialism during the 1940s was similar to British Labour Party ideas on state control of the factors of production, equality of opportunity, and a welfare state, although a left-wing element in the PNP held more orthodox Marxist views and worked for the internationalization of the trade union movement through the Caribbean Labour Congress. In those formative years of Jamaican political and union activity, relations between Manley and Bustamante were cordial. Manley defended Bustamante in court against charges brought by the British for his labor activism in the 1938 riots and looked after the BITU during Bustamante's imprisonment.
Bustamante had political ambitions of his own, however. In 1942, while still incarcerated, he founded a political party to rival the PNP, called the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The new party, whose leaders were of a lower class than those of the PNP, was supported by conservative businessmen and 60,000 dues-paying BITU members, who encompassed dock and sugar plantation workers and other unskilled urban laborers. On his release in 1943, Bustamante began building up the JLP. Meanwhile, several PNP leaders organized the leftist-oriented Trade Union Congress (TUC). Thus, from an early stage in modern Jamaica, unionized labor was an integral part of organized political life.
For the next quarter-century, Bustamante and Manley competed for center stage in Jamaican political affairs, the former espousing the cause of the "barefoot man"; the latter, "democratic socialism," a loosely defined political and economic theory aimed at achieving a classless system of government. Jamaica's two founding fathers projected quite different popular images. Bustamante, lacking even a high school diploma, was an autocratic, charismatic, and highly adept politician; Manley was an athletic, Oxford-trained lawyer, Rhodes scholar, humanist, and liberal intellectual. Although considerably more reserved than Bustamante, Manley was well-liked and widely respected. He was also a visionary nationalist who became the driving force behind the crown colony's quest for independence.
Following the 1938 disturbances in the West Indies, London sent the Moyne Commission to study conditions in the British Caribbean territories. Its findings led in the early 1940s to better wages and a new constitution. Issued on 20 November 1944, the Constitution modified the crown colony system and inaugurated limited self-government based on the Westminster model of government and universal adult suffrage. It also embodied the island's principles of ministerial responsibility and the rule of law. Thirty-one percent of the population participated in the 1944 elections. The JLP – helped by its promises to create jobs, its practice of dispensing public funds in pro-JLP parishes, and the PNP's relatively radical platform – won an 18 percent majority of the votes over the PNP, as well as 22 seats in the 32-member House of Representatives, with 5 going to the PNP and 5 to other short-lived parties. In 1945 Bustamante took office as Jamaica's first premier (the pre-independence title for head of government).
Under the new charter, the British governor, assisted by the six-member Privy Council and 10-member Executive Council, remained responsible solely to the crown. The Jamaican Legislative Council became the upper house, or Senate, of the bicameral Parliament. House members were elected by adult suffrage from single-member electoral districts called constituencies. Despite these changes, ultimate power remained concentrated in the hands of the governor and other high officials.
After World War II, Jamaica began a relatively long transition to full political independence. Jamaicans preferred British culture over American, but they had a tumultuous relationship with the British and resented British domination, racism, and the dictatorial Colonial Office. Britain gradually granted the colony more self-government under periodic constitutional changes. Jamaica's political patterns and governmental structure were shaped during two decades of what was called "constitutional decolonisation," the period between 1944 and independence in 1962.
Having seen how little popular appeal the PNP's 1944 campaign position had, the party shifted toward the centre in 1949 and remained there until 1974. The PNP actually won a 0.8-percent majority of the votes over the JLP in the 1949 election, but the JLP won a majority of the House seats. In the 1950s, the PNP and JLP became increasingly similar in their sociological composition and ideological outlook. During the cold war years, socialism became an explosive domestic issue. The JLP exploited it among property owners and churchgoers, attracting more middle-class support. As a result, PNP leaders diluted their socialist rhetoric, and in 1952 the PNP moderated its image by expelling four prominent leftists who had controlled the TUC. The PNP then formed the more conservative National Workers Union (NWU). Henceforth, PNP socialism meant little more than national planning within a framework of private property and foreign capital. The PNP retained, however, a basic commitment to socialist precepts, such as public control of resources and more equitable income distribution. Manley's PNP came to the office for the first time after winning the 1955 elections with an 11-percent majority over the JLP and 50.5 percent of the popular vote.
Amendments to the constitution that took effect in May 1953 reconstituted the Executive Council and provided for eight ministers to be selected from among House members. The first ministries were subsequently established. These amendments also enlarged the limited powers of the House of Representatives and made elected members of the governor's executive council responsible to the legislature. Manley, elected chief minister beginning in January 1955, accelerated the process of decolonisation during his able stewardship. Further progress toward self-government was achieved under constitutional amendments in 1955 and 1956, and cabinet government was established on 11 November 1957.
Assured by British declarations that independence would be granted to a collective West Indian state rather than to individual colonies, Manley supported Jamaica's joining nine other British territories in the West Indies Federation, established on 3 January 1958. Manley became the island's premier after the PNP again won a decisive victory in the general election in July 1959, securing 30 out of 45 House seats.
Membership in the federation remained an issue in Jamaican politics. Bustamante, reversing his previously supportive position on the issue, warned of the financial implications of membership – Jamaica was responsible for 43 percent of its own financing – and inequity in Jamaica's proportional representation in the federation's House of Assembly. Manley's PNP favoured staying in the federation, but he agreed to hold a referendum in September 1961 to decide on the issue. When 54 percent of the electorate voted to withdraw, Jamaica left the federation, which dissolved in 1962 after Trinidad and Tobago also pulled out. Manley believed that the rejection of his pro-federation policy in the 1961 referendum called for a renewed mandate from the electorate, but the JLP won the election of early 1962 by a fraction. Bustamante assumed the premiership that April and Manley spent his remaining few years in politics as leader of the opposition.
Jamaica received its independence on 6 August 1962. The new nation retained, however, its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations and adopted a Westminster-style parliamentary system. Bustamante, at the age of 78, became the nation's first prime minister.
Bustamante subsequently became the first Prime Minister of Jamaica. The island country joined the Commonwealth of Nations, an organisation of ex-British territories. Jamaica continues to be a Commonwealth realm, with the British monarch as King of Jamaica and head of state.
An extensive period of postwar growth transformed Jamaica into an increasingly industrial society. This pattern was accelerated with the export of bauxite beginning in the 1950s. The economic structure shifted from a dependence on agriculture that in 1950 accounted for 30.8 percent of GDP to an agricultural contribution of 12.9 percent in 1960 and 6.7 percent in 1970. During the same period, the contribution to the GDP of mining increased from less than 1 percent in 1950 to 9.3 percent in 1960 and 12.6 percent in 1970.
Bustamante's government also continued the government's repression of Rastafarians. During the Coral Gardens incident, one prominent example of state violence against Rastafarians, where following a violent confrontation between Rastafarians and police forces at a gas station, Bustamante issued the police and military an order to "bring in all Rastas, dead or alive." 54 years later, following a government investigation into the incident, the government of Jamaica issued an apology, taking unequivocal responsibility for the Bustamante government's actions and making significant financial reparations to remaining survivors of the incident.
Bustamante was succeeded as the prime minister in February 1967 by Donald Sangster, who in the same year died in office. Hugh Shearer, a protégé of Bustamante, succeeded Sangster and served from 1967 to 1972. Investments in tourism, bauxite mining, and light manufacturing industries fueled economic growth.
In October 1968 when the Shearer government banned Dr. Walter Rodney from returning to his teaching position at the University of the West Indies, so-called Rodney riots started. They were a part of an emerging black consciousness movement in the Caribbean.
Jamaica's reggae music developed from Ska and rocksteady in the 1960s. The shift from rocksteady to reggae was illustrated by the organ shuffle pioneered by Jamaican musicians like Jackie Mittoo and Winston Wright and featured in transitional singles "Say What You're Saying" (1967) by Clancy Eccles and "People Funny Boy" (1968) by Lee "Scratch" Perry. The Pioneers' 1968 track "Long Shot (Bus' Me Bet)" has been identified as the earliest recorded example of the new rhythm sound that became known as reggae.
Early 1968 was when the first bona fide reggae records were released: "Nanny Goat" by Larry Marshall and "No More Heartaches" by The Beltones. That same year, the newest Jamaican sound began to spawn big-name imitators in other countries. American artist Johnny Nash's 1968 hit "Hold Me Tight" has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts. Around the same time, reggae influences were starting to surface in rock and pop music, one example being 1968's "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by The Beatles. Other significant reggae pioneers include Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker and Ken Boothe.
The Wailers, a band started by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963, is perhaps the most recognised band that made the transition through all three stages of early Jamaican popular music: ska, rocksteady and reggae. The Wailers would go on to release some of the earliest reggae records with producer Lee Scratch Perry. After the Wailers disbanded in 1974, Marley then went on to pursue a solo career that culminated in the release of the album Exodus in 1977, which established his worldwide reputation and produced his status as one of the world's best-selling artists of all time, with sales of more than 75 million records. He was a committed Rastafari who infused his music with a sense of spirituality.
In the election of 1972, the PNP's Michael Manley defeated the JLP's unpopular incumbent Prime Minister Hugh Shearer. Under Manley, Jamaica established a minimum wage for all workers, including domestic workers. In 1974, Manley proposed free education from primary school to university. The introduction of universally free secondary education was a major step in removing the institutional barriers to the private sector and preferred government jobs that required secondary diplomas. The PNP government in 1974 also formed the Jamaica Movement for the Advancement of Literacy (JAMAL), which administered adult education programs with the goal of involving 100,000 adults a year.
Land reform expanded under his administration. Historically, land tenure in Jamaica has been rather inequitable. Project Land Lease (introduced in 1973), attempted an integrated rural development approach, providing tens of thousands of small farmers with land, technical advice, inputs such as fertilisers, and access to credit. An estimated 14 percent of idle land was redistributed through this program, much of which had been abandoned during the post-war urban migration and/or purchased by large bauxite companies.
The minimum voting age was lowered to 18 years, while equal pay for women was introduced. Maternity leave was also introduced, while the government outlawed the stigma of illegitimacy. The Masters and Servants Act was abolished, and a Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act provided workers and their trade unions with enhanced rights. The National Housing Trust was established, providing "the means for most employed people to own their own homes," and greatly stimulated housing construction, with more than 40,000 houses built between 1974 and 1980.
Subsidised meals, transportation and uniforms for schoolchildren from disadvantaged backgrounds were introduced, together with free education at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Special employment programmes were also launched, together with programmes designed to combat illiteracy. Increases in pensions and poor relief were carried out, along with a reform of local government taxation, an increase in youth training, an expansion of day care centres. and an upgrading of hospitals.
A worker's participation program was introduced, together with a new mental health law and the family court. Free health care for all Jamaicans was introduced, while health clinics and a paramedical system in rural areas were established. Various clinics were also set up to facilitate access to medical drugs. Spending on education was significantly increased, while the number of doctors and dentists in the country rose.
The One Love Peace Concert was a large concert held in Kingston on April 22, 1978, during a time of political civil war in Jamaica between opposing parties Jamaican Labour Party and the People's National Party. The concert came to its peak during Bob Marley & The Wailers' performance of "Jammin'", when Marley joined the hands of political rivals Michael Manley (PNP) and Edward Seaga (JLP).
In the 1980 election, Edward Seaga and the JLP won by an overwhelming majority – 57 percent of the popular vote and 51 of the 60 seats in the House of Representatives. Seaga immediately began to reverse the policies of his predecessor by privatising the industry and seeking closer ties with the USA. Seaga was one of the first foreign heads of government to visit newly elected US president Ronald Reagan early the next year and was one of the architects of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which was sponsored by Reagan. He delayed his promise to cut diplomatic relations with Cuba until a year later when he accused the Cuban government of giving asylum to Jamaican criminals.
Seaga supported the collapse of the Marxist regime in Grenada and the subsequent US-led invasion of that island in October 1983. On the back of the Grenada invasion, Seaga called snap elections at the end of 1983, which Manley's PNP boycotted. His party thus controlled all seats in parliament. In an unusual move, because the Jamaican constitution required an opposition in the appointed Senate, Seaga appointed eight independent senators to form an official opposition.
Seaga lost much of his US support when he was unable to deliver on his early promises of removing the bauxite levy, and his domestic support also plummeted. Articles attacking Seaga appeared in the US media and foreign investors left the country. Rioting in 1987 and 1988, the continued high popularity of Michael Manley, and complaints of governmental incompetence in the wake of the devastation of the island by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, also contributed to his defeat in the 1989 elections.
In 1988, Hurricane Gilbert produced a 19 ft (5.8 m) storm surge and brought up to 823 millimetres (32.4 in) of rain in the mountainous areas of Jamaica, causing inland flash flooding. 49 people died. Prime Minister Edward Seaga stated that the hardest hit areas near where Gilbert made landfall looked "like Hiroshima after the atom bomb." The storm left US$4 billion (in 1988 dollars) in damage from destroyed crops, buildings, houses, roads, and small aircraft. Two people eventually had to be rescued because of mudslides triggered by Gilbert and were sent to the hospital. The two people were reported to be fine. No planes were going in and out of Kingston, and telephone lines were jammed from Jamaica to Florida.
As Gilbert lashed Kingston, its winds knocked down power lines, uprooted trees, and flattened fences. On the north coast, 20 feet (6.1 m) waves hit Ocho Rios, a popular tourist resort where hotels were evacuated. Kingston's airport reported severe damage to its aircraft, and all Jamaica-bound flights were cancelled at Miami International Airport. Unofficial estimates state that at least 30 people were killed around the island. Estimated property damage reached more than $200 million. More than 100,000 houses were destroyed or damaged and the country's banana crop was largely destroyed. Hundreds of miles of roads and highways were also heavily damaged. Reconnaissance flights over remote parts of Jamaica reported that 80 percent of the homes on the island had lost their roofs. The poultry industry was also wiped out; the damage from agricultural loss reached $500 million (1988 USD). Hurricane Gilbert was the most destructive storm in the history of Jamaica and the most severe storm since Hurricane Charlie in 1951.
Jamaica's film industry was born in 1972 with the release of The Harder They Come, the first feature-length film made by Jamaicans. It starred reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, was directed by Perry Henzell, and was produced by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. The film is famous for its reggae soundtrack that is said to have "brought reggae to the world". Jamaica's other popular films include 1976's Smile Orange, 1982's Countryman, 1991's The Lunatic, 1997's Dancehall Queen, and 1999's Third World Cop. Major figures in the Jamaican film industry include actors Paul Campbell and Carl Bradshaw, actress Audrey Reid, and producer Chris Blackwell.
The 1989 election. was the first election contested by the People's National Party since 1980, as they had boycotted the 1983 snap election. Prime Minister Edward Seaga announced the election date on January 15, 1989, at a rally in Kingston. He cited emergency conditions caused by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 as the reason for extending the parliamentary term beyond its normal five-year mandate.
The date and tone of the election were shaped in part by Hurricane Gilbert, which made landfall in September 1988 and decimated the island. The hurricane caused almost $1 billion worth of damage to the island, with banana and coffee crops wiped out and thousands of homes destroyed. Both parties engaged in campaigning through the distribution of relief supplies, a hallmark of the Jamaican patronage system. Political commentators noted that prior to the hurricane, Edward Seaga and the JLP trailed Michael Manley and the PNP by twenty points in opinion polls. The ability to provide relief as the party in charge allowed Seaga to improve his standing among voters and erode the inevitability of Manley's victory. However, scandals related to the relief effort cost Seaga and the JLP some of the gains made immediately following the hurricane. Scandals that emerged included National Security Minister Errol Anderson personally controlling a warehouse full of disaster relief supplies and candidate Joan Gordon-Webley distributing American-donated flour in sacks with her picture on them.
The election was characterised by a narrower ideological difference between the two parties on economic issues. Michael Manley facilitated his comeback campaign by moderating his leftist positions and admitting mistakes made as Prime Minister, saying he erred when he involved government in economic production and had abandoned all thoughts of nationalising industry. He cited the PNP's desire to continue the market-oriented policies of the JLP government, but with a more participatory approach. Prime Minister Edward Seaga ran on his record of economic growth and the reduction of unemployment in Jamaica, using the campaign slogan "Don't Let Them Wreck It Again" to refer to Manley's tenure as Prime Minister. Seaga during his tenure as Prime Minister emphasised the need to tighten public sector spending and cut close to 27,000 public sector jobs in 1983 and 1984. He shifted his plans as elections neared with a promise to spend J$1 billion on a five-year Social Well-Being Programme, which would build new hospitals and schools in Jamaica. Foreign policy also played a role in the 1989 election. Prime Minister Edward Seaga emphasised his relations with the United States, a relationship that saw Jamaica receiving considerable economic aid from the U.S. and additional loans from international institutions. Manley pledged better relations with the United States while at the same time pledging to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba that had been cut under Seaga. With Manley as Prime Minister, Jamaican-American relations had significantly frayed as a result of Manley's economic policies and close relations with Cuba.
The PNP was ultimately victorious and Manley's second term focused on liberalising Jamaica's economy, with the pursuit of a free-market programme that stood in marked contrast to the interventionist economic policies pursued by Manley's first government. Various measures were, however, undertaken to cushion the negative effects of liberalisation. A Social Support Programme was introduced to provide welfare assistance for poor Jamaicans. In addition, the programme focused on creating direct employment, training, and credit for much of the population. The government also announced a 50% increase in the number of food stamps for the most vulnerable groups (including pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children) was announced. A small number of community councils were also created. In addition, a limited land reform programme was carried out that leased and sold the land to small farmers, and land plots were granted to hundreds of farmers. The government also had an admirable record in housing provision, while measures were also taken to protect consumers from illegal and unfair business practices.
In 1992, citing health reasons, Manley stepped down as Prime Minister and PNP leader. His former Deputy Prime Minister, Percival Patterson, assumed both offices. Patterson led efforts to strengthen the country's social protection and security systems—a critical element of his economic and social policy agenda to mitigate, reduce poverty and social deprivation. His massive investments in modernisation of Jamaica's infrastructure and restructuring of the country's financial sector are widely credited with having led to Jamaica's greatest period of investment in tourism, mining, ICT and energy since the 1960s. He also ended Jamaica's 18-year borrowing relationship with the International Monetary Fund, allowing the country greater latitude in pursuit of its economic policies.
Patterson led the PNP to resounding victories in the 1993 and 1997 elections. Patterson called the 1997 election in November 1997, when his People's National Party was ahead in the opinion polls, inflation had fallen substantially and the national football team had just qualified for the 1998 World Cup. The previous election in 1993 had seen the People's National Party win 52 of the 60 seats.
A record 197 candidates contested the election, with a new political party, the National Democratic Movement, standing in most of the seats. The National Democratic Movement had been founded in 1995 by a former Labour Party chairman, Bruce Golding, after a dispute over the leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party.
The 1997 election was mainly free of violence as compared to previous elections, although it began with an incident where rival motorcades from the main parties were fired on. The election was the first in Jamaica where a team of international election monitors attended. The monitors were from the Carter Center and included Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell and former heavyweight boxing world champion Evander Holyfield. Just before the election the two main party leaders made a joint appeal for people to avoid marring the election with violence. Election day itself saw one death and four injuries relating to the election, but the 1980 election had seen over 800 deaths.
In winning the election the People's National Party became the first party to win three consecutive terms. The opposition Jamaica Labour Party only had two more seats in Parliament after the election but their leader Edward Seaga held his seat for a ninth time in a row. The National Democratic Movement failed to win any seats despite a pre-election prediction that they would manage to win a seat.
The 2002 election. was a victory for the People's National Party, but their number of seats fell from 50 to 34 (out of 60 total). PNP leader P. J. Patterson retained his position as Prime Minister, becoming the first political leader to win three successive elections. Patterson stepped down on 26 February 2006, and was replaced by Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica's first female Prime Minister.
The 2007 elections. had originally been scheduled for August 27, 2007 but were delayed to September 3 due to Hurricane Dean. The preliminary results indicated a slim victory for the opposition Jamaican Labour Party led by Bruce Golding, which grew by two seats from 31–29 to 33–27 after official recounts. The JLP defeated the People's National Party after 18 years of unbroken governance.
In the 1990s, Jamaica and other Caribbean banana producers argued for the continuation of their preferential access to EU markets, notably the United Kingdom. They feared that otherwise the EU would be flooded with cheap bananas from the Central American plantations, with devastating effects on several Caribbean economies. Negotiations led in 1993 to the EU agreeing to maintain the Caribbean producers' preferential access until the end of Lomé IV, pending possible negotiation on an extension. In 1995, the United States government petitioned to the World Trade Organization to investigate whether the Lomé IV convention had violated WTO rules. Then later in 1996, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, effectively ending the cross-subsidies that had benefited ACP countries for many years. But the US remained unsatisfied and insisted that all preferential trade agreements between the EU and ACP should cease. The WTO Dispute Settlement Body established another panel to discuss the issue and concluded that agreements between the EU and ACP were indeed not compatible with WTO regulations. Finally, the EU negotiated with the US through WTO to reach an agreement.
In tourism, after a decrease in volume following the 11 September attacks in the U.S., the number of tourists going to Jamaica eventually rebounded, with the island now receiving over a million tourists each year. Services now account for over 60 percent of Jamaica's GDP and one of every four workers in Jamaica works in tourism or services. However, according to the World Bank, around 80% of the money tourism makes in Jamaica does not stay on the island, but goes instead to the multinational resorts.
The 2007 Cricket World Cup was the first time the ICC Cricket World Cup had been held in the Caribbean. The Jamaican Government spent US$81 million for "on the pitch" expenses. This included refurbishing Sabina Park and constructing the new multi-purpose facility in Trelawny – through a loan from China. Another US$20 million is budgeted for "off-the-pitch" expenses, putting the tally at more than US$100 million or JM$7 billion. This put the reconstruction cost of Sabina Park at US$46 million whilst the Trelawny Stadium will cost US$35 million. The total amount of money spent on stadiums was at least US$301 million. The 2007 World Cup organisers were criticised for restrictions on outside food, signs, replica kits and musical instruments, despite Caribbean cricketing customs, with authorities being accused of "running [cricket and cricketing traditions] out of town, then sanitising it out of existence". Sir Viv Richards echoed the concerns. The ICC were also condemned for high prices for tickets and concessions, which were considered unaffordable for the local population in many of the locations. In a tragic turn of events, Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was found dead on 18 March 2007, one day after his team's defeat to Ireland put them out of the running for the World Cup. Jamaican police performed an autopsy which was deemed inconclusive. The following day police announced that the death was suspicious and ordered a full investigation. Further investigation revealed the cause of death was "manual strangulation", and that the investigation would be handled as a murder. After a lengthy investigation the Jamaican police rescinded the comments that he was not murdered, and confirmed that he died from natural causes.
In sprinting, Jamaicans had begun their domination of the 100 metres world record in 2005. Jamaica's Asafa Powell set the record in June 2005 and held it until May 2008, with times of 9.77 and 9.74 seconds respectively. However, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Jamaica's athletes reached heights by nearly doubling the country's total gold medal count and breaking the nation's record for the number of medals earned in a single game. Usain Bolt won three of Jamaica's six gold medals at Beijing, breaking an Olympic and world record in all three of the events in which he participated. Shelly-Ann Fraser led an unprecedented Jamaican sweep of the medals in the Women's 100 m.
Although Jamaican dancehall music originated in the late 1970s, it greatly increased in popularity in the late 1980s and 1990s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. Two of the biggest stars of the early dancehall era were Yellowman and Eek-a-Mouse. Dancehall brought a new generation of producers, including Linval Thompson, Gussie Clarke and Jah Thomas. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably, with digital dancehall (or "ragga") becoming increasingly characterised by faster rhythms.
In the early 1990s songs by Dawn Penn, Shabba Ranks, Patra and Chaka Demus and Pliers were the first dancehall megahits in the US and abroad. Other varieties of dancehall achieved crossover success outside of Jamaica during the mid-to-late 1990s. In the 1990s, dancehall came under increasing criticism for anti-gay lyrics such as those found in Buju Banton's 1988 hit "Boom Bye Bye," which is about shooting a gay man in the head: "It's like boom bye bye / Inna batty boy head / Rude boy nah promote no nasty man / Dem haffi dead."
The early 2000s saw the success of newer charting acts such as Elephant Man, Tanya Stephens, and Sean Paul. Dancehall made a resurgence within the pop market in the late 2000s, with songs by Konshens, Mr. Vegas, Popcaan, Mavado, Vybz Kartel, Beenie Man among others. In 2011, Vybz Kartel—at the time, one of dancehall's biggest stars—was arrested for the murder of Clive "Lizard" William. In 2014 he was sentenced to life in prison after a 65-day trial, the longest in Jamaican history.
Politically and socially, the 2010s in Jamaica have been shaped by the Tivoli Incursion—a 2010 gun-battle between police and the gang of Christopher "Dudus" Coke. Over seventy Jamaicans were killed during the gun battle and the inquiry into police actions during the incursion continues today.
Coke took over the "Shower Posse" gang of Tivoli Gardens from his father, Lester “Jim Brown” Coke, in the 1990s. Under Christopher Coke's leadership, the gang trafficked drugs and dabbled in visa fraud (using a high-school athletics team) and extortion, charging small traders in the nearby market for “protection money”. The gang had close political ties. Tivoli Gardens is part of the Kingston Western parliamentary district, a seat was held for years by Edward Seaga, long-time leader of the JLP. That helped Coke expand into construction, with his company winning numerous government contracts. Within Tivoli Gardens, the gang operated as a government unto itself.
On 23 May 2010, Jamaica security forces began searching for Coke after the United States requested his extradition, and the leader of the criminal gang that attacked several police stations. The violence, which largely took place over 24–25 May, killed at least 73 civilians and wounded at least 35 others. Four soldiers/police were also killed and more than 500 arrests were made, as Jamaican police and soldiers fought gunmen in the Tivoli Gardens district of Kingston.
Coke was eventually captured on 23 June, after initial rumours that he was attempting to surrender to the United States. Kingston police arrested Coke on the outskirts of the city, apparently while a local reverend, Reverend Al Miller, was helping negotiate his surrender to the United States Embassy. In 2011, Coke pleaded guilty to racketeering and drug-related charges in a New York Federal court, and was sentenced to 23 years in prison on 8 June 2012.
In the four years following Coke's capture, Jamaica's murder rate decreased by nearly half. However, the murder rate remains one of the highest in the world and Jamaica's morgues have not been able to keep up. The lack of facilities to store and study murder victims has been one of the reasons that few murders are solved, with the conviction rate for homicides standing at around five percent. In 2007, following the botched investigation into the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, who died unexpectedly while the island hosted the sport's world cup, Jamaican politicians debated the need for a modern public morgue.
The Tivoli Incursion and LGBT rights were both major issues in the 2011 election.
Although the JLP survived an election called shortly after the 2010 Tivoli Gardens incident, the following year the date of the 2011 election was set as 29 December, and major local media outlets viewed the election as "too close to call", though as Simpson-Miller campaigned in key constituencies the gap widened to favour the PNP. Days before the election, Simpson-Miller came out fully in favor of LGBT rights in a televised debate, saying that she "has no problem giving certain positions of authority to a homosexual as long as they show the necessary level of competence for the post." However, since taking power her government has not attempted to repeal the laws which criminalise homosexuality.
In 2012, Dane Lewis launched a legal challenge to Jamaica's Offenses Against Persons Act of 1864, commonly known as the "buggery" laws, on the grounds that they are unconstitutional and promote homophobia throughout the Caribbean. The legal challenge was taken to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Offenses Against Persons Act does not formally ban homosexuality, but clause 76 provides for up to 10 years' imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for anyone convicted of the "abominable crime of buggery committed either with mankind or any animal". Two further clauses outlaw attempted buggery and gross indecency between two men.
LGBT rights returned to Jamaican headlines the next year, following the violent murder in July 2013 of a 16-year-old boy who showed up at a party in women's clothing. Advocates called for the repeal of a nearly 150-year-old anti-sodomy law that bans anal sex, legislation which is accused of helping spur anti-LGBT violence.
In 2013, the International Monetary Fund announced a $1 billion loan to help Jamaica meet large debt payments. The loan required the Jamaican government to institute a pay freeze amounting to a 20% real-terms cut in wages. Jamaica is one of the most indebted countries and spends around half of its annual federal budget on debt repayments.
The 2010s look to be a bad time for Jamaica's sugarcane industry. After a brief increase sugar prices, the outlook for Jamaican sugar took a hit in 2015 when the EU began moving towards ending a cap on European sugar beet production. Jamaica exports 25% of the sugar it produces to Britain and prices for Jamaican sugar are expected to fall in the wake of the end of the cap on the EU's subsidised sugar beet industry.
However, marijuana may become a new cash crop and tourist-draw for Jamaica, depending on future legislation. On 25 February 2015, the Jamaican House of Representatives passed a law decriminalizing possession of up to 2 ounces of cannabis. The new law includes provisions legalizing the cultivation for the personal use of up to five plants, as well as setting up regulations for the cultivation and distribution of cannabis for medical and religious purposes
In February 2016, opposition Labour Party won a narrow victory in the general election. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller of the People's National Party was replaced by Andrew Holness, the leader of the Labour Party.
In September 2020, the ruling centre-right Labour Party won a landslide victory in the general election. It took 49 of 63 parliamentary seats, meaning the incumbent Prime Minister Andrew Holness will serve a second term. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Caribbean Island of Jamaica was initially inhabited in approximately 600 AD or 650 AD by the Redware people, often associated with redware pottery. By roughly 800 AD, a second wave of inhabitance occurred by the Arawak tribes, including the Tainos, prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. Early inhabitants of Jamaica named the land \"Xaymaca\", meaning \"land of wood and water\". The Spanish enslaved the Arawak, who were ravaged further by diseases that the Spanish brought with them. Early historians believe that by 1602, the Arawak-speaking Taino tribes were extinct. However, some of the Taino escaped into the forested mountains of the interior, where they mixed with runaway African slaves, and survived free from first Spanish, and then English, rule.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Spanish also captured and transported hundreds of West African people to the island for the purpose of slavery. However, the majority of Africans were brought into Jamaica by the English.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1655, the English invaded Jamaica, and defeated the Spanish. Some African enslaved people took advantage of the political turmoil and escaped to the island's interior mountains, forming independent communities which became known as the Maroons. Meanwhile, on the coast, the English built the settlement of Port Royal, a base of operations where piracy flourished as so many European rebels had been rejected from their countries to serve sentences on the seas. Captain Henry Morgan, a Welsh plantation owner and privateer, raided settlements and shipping bases from Port Royal, earning him his reputation as one of the richest pirates in the Caribbean.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the 18th century, sugar cane replaced piracy as British Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labour-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved black Africans to the island. By 1850, the black and mulatto Jamaican population outnumbered the white population by a ratio of twenty to one. Enslaved Jamaicans mounted over a dozen major uprisings during the 18th century, including Tacky's Revolt in 1760. There were also periodic skirmishes between the British and the mountain communities of the Jamaican Maroons, culminating in the First Maroon War of the 1730s and the Second Maroon War of 1795–1796.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The aftermath of the Baptist War shone a light on the conditions of slaves which contributed greatly to the abolition movement and the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which formally ended slavery in Jamaica in 1834. However, relations between the white and black community remained tense coming into the mid-19th century, with the most notable event being the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865. The latter half of the 19th century saw economic decline, low crop prices, droughts, and disease. When sugar lost its importance, many former plantations went bankrupt, and land was sold to Jamaican peasants and cane fields were consolidated by dominant British producers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Jamaica's first political parties emerged in the late 1920s, while workers association and trade unions emerged in the 1930s. The development of a new Constitution in 1944, universal male suffrage, and limited self-government eventually led to Jamaican Independence in 1962 with Alexander Bustamante serving as its first prime minister. The country saw an extensive period of postwar growth and a smaller reliance on the agricultural sector and a larger reliance on bauxite and mining in the 1960s and 1970s. Political power changed hands between the two dominant parties, the JLP and PNP, from the 1970s to the present day. While Jamaica's murder rate fell by nearly half after the 2010 Tivoli Incursion, the country's murder rate remains one of the highest in the world. Economic troubles hit the country in 2013, the IMF agreed to a $1 billion loan to help Jamaica meet large debt payments, making Jamaica a highly indebted country that spends around half of its annual budget on debt repayments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The first inhabitants of Jamaica probably came from islands to the east in two waves of migration. About 600 CE the culture known as the “Redware people” arrived. Little is known of these people, however, beyond the red pottery they left behind. Alligator Pond in Manchester Parish and Little River in St. Ann Parish are among the earliest known sites of this Ostionoid person, who lived near the coast and extensively hunted turtles and fish.",
"title": "Pre-Columbian Jamaica"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Around 800 CE, the Arawak tribes of the Tainos arrived, eventually settling throughout the island. Living in villages ruled by tribal chiefs called the caciques, they sustained themselves on fishing and the cultivation of maize and cassava. At the height of their civilization, their population is estimated to have numbered as much as 60,000.",
"title": "Pre-Columbian Jamaica"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Arawak brought a South America system of raising yuca known as \"conuco\" to the island. To add nutrients to the soil, the Arawak burned local bushes and trees and heaped the ash into large mounds, into which they then planted yuca cuttings. Most Arawak lived in large circular buildings (bohios), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves. The Arawak spoke an Arawakan language and did not have writing. Some of the words used by them, such as barbacoa (\"barbecue\"), hamaca (\"hammock\"), kanoa (\"canoe\"), tabaco (\"tobacco\"), yuca, batata (\"sweet potato\"), and juracán (\"hurricane\"), have been incorporated into Spanish and English.",
"title": "Pre-Columbian Jamaica"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Christopher Columbus is believed to be the first European to reach Jamaica. He landed on the island on 5 May 1494, during his second voyage to the Americas. Columbus returned to Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the Americas. He had been sailing around the Caribbean for nearly a year when a storm beached his ships in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on 25 June 1503. Columbus and his men remained stranded on the island for one year, finally departing on June 1504.",
"title": "The Spanish period (1494–1655)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Spanish crown granted the island to the Columbus family, but for decades it was something of a backwater, valued chiefly as a supply base for food and animal hides. In 1509 Juan de Esquivel founded the first permanent European settlement, the town of Sevilla la Nueva (New Seville), on the north coast of the island. A decade later, Friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote to Spanish authorities about Esquivel's conduct during the Higüey massacre of 1503.",
"title": "The Spanish period (1494–1655)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1534 the capital was moved to Villa de la Vega (later Santiago de la Vega), now called Spanish Town. This settlement served as the capital of both Spanish and English Jamaica, from its founding until 1872, after which the capital was moved to Kingston.",
"title": "The Spanish period (1494–1655)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Spanish enslaved many of the Arawak. Some escaped to the mountains to join the Maroons. However, most died from European diseases as well as from being overworked. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves into the island. By the early 17th century, when most of the Taino had died out, the population of the island was about 3,000, including a small number of African slaves. Disappointed in the lack of gold on the island, Jamaica was mainly used as a military base to supply colonization efforts in the mainland Americas.",
"title": "The Spanish period (1494–1655)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.",
"title": "The Spanish period (1494–1655)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Although the Taino referred to the island as \"Xaymaca\", the Spanish gradually changed the name to \"Jamaica\". In the so-called Admiral's map of 1507 the island was labeled as \"Jamaiqua\" and in Peter Martyr's work Decades of 1511, he referred to it as both \"Jamaica\" and \"Jamica\".",
"title": "The Spanish period (1494–1655)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In late 1654, English leader Oliver Cromwell launched the Western Design armada against Spain's colonies in the Caribbean. In April 1655, General Robert Venables led the armada in an attack on Spain's fort at Santo Domingo, Hispaniola. After the Spanish repelled this poorly executed attack, the English force then sailed for Jamaica, the only Spanish West Indies island that did not have new defensive works. In May 1655, around 7,000 English soldiers landed near Jamaica's capital, named Spanish Town and soon overwhelmed the small number of Spanish troops (at the time, Jamaica's entire population only numbered around 2,500).",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Spain never recaptured Jamaica, losing the Battle of Ocho Rios in 1657 and the Battle of Rio Nuevo in 1658. In 1660, the turning point was when some Spanish runaway slaves, who settled in the interior mountainous regions of Jamaica, became known as the Jamaican Maroons, under the leadership of Juan de Bolas switched sides from the Spanish to the English. For England, Jamaica was to be the \"dagger pointed at the heart of the Spanish Empire,\" but in fact, it was a possession of little economic value then. England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defence against a Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Cromwell increased the island's European population by sending indentured servants and prisoners to Jamaica. Due to Irish emigration resulting from the wars in Ireland at this time two-thirds of this 17th-century European population was Irish. But tropical diseases kept the number of Europeans under 10,000 until about 1740. Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by the end of the 17th century imports of slaves increased the black population to at least five times greater than the white population. Thereafter, Jamaica's African population did not increase significantly in number until well into the 18th century, in part because ships coming from the west coast of Africa preferred to unload at the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. At the beginning of the 18th century, the number of slaves in Jamaica did not exceed 45,000, but by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "When the English captured Jamaica in 1655, the Spanish colonists fled, leaving a large number of African slaves. These former Spanish slaves organised under the leadership of rival captains Juan de Serras and Juan de Bolas. These Jamaican Maroons intermarried with the Arawak people, and established distinct independent communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica. They survived by subsistence farming and periodic raids of plantations. Over time, the Maroons came to control large areas of the Jamaican interior.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the second half of the seventeenth century, de Serras fought regular campaigns against English colonial forces, even attacking the capital of Spanish Town, and he was never defeated by the English. Throughout the seventeenth century, and in the first few decades of the eighteenth century, Maroon forces frequently defeated the British in small-scale skirmishes. The British colonial authorities dispatched numerous expeditions in an attempt to subdue them, but the Maroons successfully fought a guerrilla campaign against the British in the mountainous interior, and forced the British government to seek peace terms to end the expensive conflict.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the early eighteenth century, English-speaking escaped Akan slaves were at the forefront of the Maroon fighting against the British.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Beginning with the Stuart monarchy's appointment of a civil governor to Jamaica in 1661, political patterns were established that lasted well into the 20th century. The second governor, Lord Windsor, brought with him in 1662 a proclamation from the king giving Jamaica's non-slave populace the same rights as those of English citizens, including the right to make their own laws. Although he spent only ten weeks in Jamaica, Lord Windsor laid the foundations of a governing system that was to last for two centuries — a crown-appointed governor acting with the advice of a nominated council in the legislature. The legislature consisted of the governor and an elected but highly unrepresentative House of Assembly. For years, the planter-dominated Assembly was in continual conflict with the various governors and the Stuart kings; there were also contentious factions within the assembly itself. For much of the 1670s and 1680s, Charles II and James II and the assembly feuded over such matters as the purchase of slaves from ships not run by the royal English trading company. The last Stuart governor, Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, who was more interested in treasure hunting than in planting, turned the planter oligarchy out of office. After the duke's death in 1688, the planters, who had fled Jamaica to London, succeeded in lobbying James II to order a return to the pre-Albemarle political arrangement (the local control of Jamaican planters belonging to the assembly).",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Following the 1655 conquest, Spain repeatedly attempted to recapture Jamaica. In response, in 1657, Governor Edward D'Oyley invited the Brethren of the Coast to come to Port Royal and make it their home port. The Brethren was made up of a group of pirates who were descendants of cattle-hunting boucaniers (later Anglicised to buccaneers), who had turned to piracy after being robbed by the Spanish (and subsequently thrown out of Hispaniola). These pirates concentrated their attacks on Spanish shipping, whose interests were considered the major threat to the town. These pirates later became legal English privateers who were given letters of marque by Jamaica's governor. Around the same time that pirates were invited to Port Royal, England launched a series of attacks against Spanish shipping vessels and coastal towns. By sending the newly appointed privateers after Spanish ships and settlements, England had successfully set up a system of defense for Port Royal. Jamaica became a haven of privateers, buccaneers, and occasionally outright pirates: Christopher Myngs, Edward Mansvelt, and most famously, Henry Morgan.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defense against a Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting. This settlement also improved the supply of slaves and resulted in more protection, including military support, for the planters against foreign competition. As a result, the sugar monoculture and slave-worked plantation society spread across Jamaica throughout the 18th century, decreasing Jamaica's dependence on privateers for protection and funds.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "However, the English colonial authorities continued to have difficulties suppressing the Spanish Maroons, who made their homes in the mountainous interior and mounted periodic raids on estates and towns, such as Spanish Town. The Karmahaly Maroons, led by Juan de Serras, continued to stay in the forested mountains, and periodically fought the English. In the 1670s and 1680s, in his capacity as an owner of a large slave plantation, Morgan led three campaigns against the Jamaican Maroons of Juan de Serras. Morgan achieved some success against the Maroons, who withdrew further into the Blue Mountains, where they were able to stay out of the reach of Morgan and his forces.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Another blow to Jamaica's partnership with privateers was the violent earthquake which destroyed much of Port Royal on 7 June 1692. Two-thirds of the town sank into the sea immediately after the main shock. After the earthquake, the town was partially rebuilt but the colonial government was relocated to Spanish Town, which had been the capital under Spanish rule. Port Royal was further devastated by a fire in 1703 and a hurricane in 1722. Most of the sea trade moved to Kingston. By the late 18th century, Port Royal was largely abandoned.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In the mid-17th century, sugarcane was introduced to the British West Indies by the Dutch, from Brazil. Upon landing in Jamaica and other islands, they quickly urged local growers to change their main crops from cotton and tobacco to sugarcane. With depressed prices of cotton and tobacco, due mainly to stiff competition from the North American colonies, the farmers switched, leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies. Sugarcane was quickly snapped up by the British, who used it in cakes and to sweeten tea. In the 18th century, sugar replaced piracy as Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labor-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans to Jamaica. By 1832, the median-size plantation in Jamaica had about 150 slaves, and nearly one of every four bondsmen lived on units that had at least 250 slaves. In The Book of Night Women, author Marlon James indicates that the ratio of slave owners to enslaved Africans is 1:33. James also depicts atrocities that slave owners subjected slaves to along with violent resistance from the slaves as well as numerous slaves who died in pursuit of freedom. After slavery was abolished in 1834, sugarcane plantations used a variety of forms of labour including workers imported from India under contracts of indenture.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The 18th century saw thousands of slaves imported into Jamaica into the now profitable sugar plantations. From 1740 to 1834, the estimated slave population continued to grow, reaching into the three hundred thousands by the end of the century. The sugar boom of Jamaica would change the dynamics of the slave market and the economics of the West Indies. Towards the end of the 18th century, Jamaica became the leader of sugar production for the British empire, producing up to 66% of the empire's sugar in 1796. With the high demand for sugar out of Jamaica, the demand for slaves increased, leading to an increase in prices for slaves. From 1750 to 1807, the average price for a slave in the Caribbean would continue to steadily rise, reaching a high of £73 in 1805. Prices soared towards the dawn of the new century as a result of the plantation system in Saint-Domingue falling due to the Haitian revolution, putting more emphasis on Jamaica. Interestingly, the most efficient plantations employed fewer slaves per acre of land, which was observed in St. Andrews parish. This created a higher demand for slaves that were efficient and in good health and shape, inflating the prices of those individuals and creating a quality over quantity dynamic. With the increase in traffic of ships and slaves, British merchants implemented the guarantee system, in which a merchant would be appointed to guarantee payment upon the delivery of the enslaved.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Starting in the late seventeenth century, there were periodic skirmishes between the English colonial militia and the Windward Maroons, alongside occasional slave revolts. In 1673 one such revolt in St. Ann's Parish of 200 slaves created the separate group of Leeward Maroons. These Maroons united with a group of Madagascars who had survived the shipwreck of a slave ship and formed their own maroon community in St. George's parish. Several more rebellions strengthened the numbers of this Leeward group. Notably, in 1690 a revolt at Sutton's plantation in Clarendon Parish of 400 slaves considerably strengthened the Leeward Maroons. The Leeward Maroons inhabited \"cockpits,\" caves, or deep ravines that were easily defended, even against troops with superior firepower. Such guerrilla warfare and the use of scouts who blew the abeng (the cow horn, which was used as a trumpet) to warn of approaching enemies allowed the Maroons to evade, thwart, frustrate, and defeat the British.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Early in the 18th century, the Maroons took a heavy toll on British colonial militiamen who sent against them in the interior, in what came to be known as the First Maroon War. In 1728, the British authorities sent Robert Hunter to assume the office of governor of Jamaica; Hunter's arrival led to an intensification of the conflict. However, despite increased numbers, the British colonial authorities were unable to defeat the Windward Maroons.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1739–40, the British government in Jamaica recognised that it could not defeat the Maroons, so they offered them treaties of peace instead. In 1739, the British, led by Governor Edward Trelawny, sued for peace with the Leeward Maroon leader, Cudjoe, described by British planters as a short, almost dwarf-like man who for years fought skilfully and bravely to maintain his people's independence. Some writers maintain that during the conflict, Cudjoe became increasingly disillusioned, and quarrelled with his lieutenants and with other Maroon groups. He felt that the only hope for the future was a peace treaty with the enemy which recognized the independence of the Leeward Maroons. In 1742, Cudjoe had to suppress a rebellion of Leeward Maroons against the treaty.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The First Maroon War came to an end with a 1739–1740 agreement between the Maroons and the British government. In exchange, they were asked to agree not to harbour new runaway slaves, but rather to help catch them. This last clause in the treaty naturally caused a split between the Maroons and the mainly mulatto population, although from time to time runaways from the plantations still found their way into maroon settlements, such as those led by Three Fingered Jack (Jamaica). Another provision of the agreement was that the Maroons would serve to protect the island from invaders. The latter was because the Maroons were revered by the British as skilled warriors.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "A year later, the even more rebellious Windward Maroons led by Quao also agreed to sign a treaty under pressure from both white Jamaican militias and the Leeward Maroons. Eventually, Queen Nanny agreed to a land patent which meant that her Maroons also accepted peace terms.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Maroons were to remain in their five main towns (Accompong; Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town); Nanny Town, later known as Moore Town; Scott's Hall (Jamaica); and Charles Town, Jamaica), living under their own rulers and a British supervisor.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In May 1760, Tacky, a slave overseer on the Frontier plantation in Saint Mary Parish, led a group of enslaved Africans in taking over the Frontier and Trinity plantations while killing their enslavers. They then marched to the storeroom at Fort Haldane, where the munitions to defend the town of Port Maria were kept. After killing the storekeeper, Tacky and his men stole nearly 4 barrels of gunpowder and 40 firearms with shot, before marching on to overrun the plantations at Heywood Hall and Esher.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "By dawn, hundreds of other slaves had joined Tacky and his followers. At Ballard's Valley, the rebels stopped to rejoice in their success. One slave from Esher decided to slip away and sound the alarm. Obeahmen (Caribbean witch doctors) quickly circulated around the camp dispensing a powder that they claimed would protect the men from injury in battle and loudly proclaimed that an Obeahman could not be killed. The confidence was high. Soon there were 70 to 80 mounted militia on their way along with some Maroons from Scott's Hall, who were bound by treaty to suppress such rebellions. When the militia learned of the Obeahman's boast of not being able to be killed, an Obeahman was captured, killed, and hung with his mask, ornaments of teeth and bone and feather trimmings at a prominent place visible from the encampment of rebels. Many of the rebels, confidence shaken, returned to their plantations. Tacky and 25 or so men decided to fight on. Tacky and his men went running through the woods being chased by the Maroons and their legendary marksman, Davy the Maroon.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "While running at full speed, Davy shot Tacky and cut off his head as evidence of his feat, for which he would be richly rewarded. Tacky's head was later displayed on a pole in Spanish Town until a follower took it down in the middle of the night. The rest of Tacky's men were found in a cave near Tacky Falls, having committed suicide rather than going back to slavery.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 1795, the Second Maroon War was instigated when two Maroons were flogged by a black slave for allegedly stealing two pigs. When six Maroon leaders came to the British to present their grievances, the British took them as prisoners. This sparked an eight-month conflict, spurred by the fact that Maroons felt that they were being mistreated under the terms of Cudjoe's Treaty of 1739, which ended the First Maroon War. The war lasted for five months as a bloody stalemate. The British colonial authorities could muster 5,000 men, outnumbering the Maroons ten to one, but the mountainous and forested topography of Jamaica proved ideal for guerrilla warfare. The Maroons surrendered in December 1795. A treaty signed in December between Major General George Walpole and the Maroon leaders established that the Maroons would beg on their knees for the King's forgiveness, return all runaway slaves, and be relocated elsewhere in Jamaica. The governor of Jamaica ratified the treaty but gave the Maroons only three days to present themselves to beg forgiveness on 1 January 1796. Suspicious of British intentions, most of the Maroons did not surrender until mid-March. The British used the contrived breach of the treaty as a pretext to deport the entire Trelawny Town Maroons to Nova Scotia. After a few years, the Maroons were again deported to the new British settlement of Sierra Leone in West Africa.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Hundreds of runaway slaves secured their freedom by escaping and fighting alongside the Maroons of Trelawny Town. About half of these runaways surrendered with the Maroons, and many were executed or re-sold in slavery to Cuba. However, a few hundred stayed out in the forests of the Cockpit Country, and they joined other runaway communities. In 1798, a slave named Cuffee ran away from a western estate, and established a runaway community which was able to resist attempts by the colonial forces and the Maroons remaining in Jamaica to subdue them. In the early nineteenth century, colonial records describe hundreds of runaway slaves escaping to \"Healthshire\" where they flourished for several years before they were captured by a party of Maroons.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 1812, a community of runaways started when a dozen men and some women escaped from the sugar plantations of Trelawny into the Cockpit Country, and they created a village with the curious name of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come. By the 1820s, Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come housed between 50 and 60 runaways. The headmen of the community were escaped slaves named Warren and Forbes. Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come also conducted a thriving trade with slaves from the north coast, who exchanged their salt provisions with the runaways for their ground provisions. In October 1824, the colonial militias tried to destroy this community. However, the community of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come continued to thrive in the Cockpit Country until Emancipation in the 1830s.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1831, enslaved Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe led a strike among demanding more freedom and a working wage of \"half the going wage rate.\" Upon refusal of their demands, the strike escalated into a full rebellion, in part because Sharpe had also made military preparations with a rebel military group known as the Black Regiment led by a slave known as Colonel Johnson of Retrieve Estate, about 150 strong with 50 guns among them. Colonel Johnson's Black Regiment clashed with a local militia led by Colonel Grignon at old Montpelier on December 28. The militia retreated to Montego Bay while the Black Regiment advanced an invasion of estates in the hills, inviting more slaves to join while burning houses, fields, and other properties, setting off a trail of fires through the Great River Valley in Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth to St James.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Baptist War, as it was known, became the largest slave uprising in the British West Indies, lasting 10 days and mobilised as many as 60,000 of Jamaica's 300,000 slaves. The rebellion was suppressed by colonial forces under the control of Sir Willoughby Cotton. The reaction of the Jamaican Government and plantocracy was far more brutal. Approximately five hundred slaves were killed in total: 207 during the revolt and somewhere in the range between 310 and 340 slaves were killed through \"various forms of judicial executions\" after the rebellion was concluded, at times, for quite minor offenses (one recorded execution indicates the crime being the theft of a pig; another, a cow). An 1853 account by Henry Bleby described how three or four simultaneous executions were commonly observed; bodies would be allowed to pile up until workhouse slaves carted the bodies away at night and buried them in mass graves outside town. The brutality of the plantocracy during the revolt is thought to have accelerated the process of emancipation, with initial measures beginning in 1833.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The British Parliament held two inquires as a result of the loss of property and life in the 1831 Baptist War rebellion. Their reports of the conditions of the slaves contributed greatly to the abolition movement and helped lead to the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, formally ending slavery in Jamaica on August 1, 1834. However, the act stipulated that all slaves above the age of 6 on the date abolition took effect, were bound (indentured) in service to their former owners', albeit with a guarantee of rights, under what was called the \"Apprenticeship System\". The length of servitude that was required varied based on the former slaves’ responsibilities with \"domestic slaves\" owing 4 years of service and \"agriculture slaves\" owing 6. In addition to the apprentice system, former slave owners were to be compensated for the loss of their \"property.\" By 1839, \"Twenty Million Pounds Sterling\" was paid out to the owners of slaves freed in the Caribbean and Africa under the 1833 Abolition Act, half of whom were absentee landlords residing in Great Britain.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The apprentice system was unpopular amongst Jamaica's \"former\" slaves — especially elderly slaves — who unlike slave owners were not provided any compensation. This led to protests. In the face of mounting pressure, a resolution was passed on August 1, 1838, releasing all \"apprentices\" regardless of position from all obligations to their former masters.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "With the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 and slavery itself in 1834, the island's sugar- and slave-based economy faltered. The period after emancipation in 1834 initially was marked by a conflict between the plantocracy and elements in the Colonial Office over the extent to which individual freedom should be coupled with political participation for blacks. In 1840 the assembly changed the voting qualifications in a way that enabled a majority of blacks and people of mixed race (browns or mulattos) to vote. But neither change in the political system, nor abolition of slavery, changed the planter's chief interest — which lay in the continued profitability of their estates — and they continued to dominate the elitist assembly. Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, the crown began to allow some Jamaicans – mostly local merchants, urban professionals, and artisans—to hold seats on appointed councils.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Tensions between blacks and whites resulted in the October 1865 Morant Bay rebellion led by Paul Bogle. The rebellion was sparked on 7 October, when a black man was put on trial and imprisoned for allegedly trespassing on a long-abandoned plantation. During the proceedings, James Geoghegon, a black spectator, disrupted the trial, and in the police's attempts to seize him to remove him from the courthouse, a fight broke out between the police and other spectators. While pursuing Geoghegon, two policemen were beaten with sticks and stones. The following Monday, arrest warrants were issued for several men for rioting, resisting arrest, and assaulting the police. Among them was Baptist preacher Paul Bogle. A few days later on 11 October, Mr. Paul Bogle marched with a group of protesters to Morant Bay. When the group arrived at the courthouse they were met by a small and inexperienced volunteer militia. The crowd began pelting the militia with rocks and sticks, and the militia opened fire on the group, killing seven black protesters before retreating.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Governor John Eyre sent government troops, under Brigadier-General Alexander Nelson, to hunt down the poorly armed rebels and bring Paul Bogle back to Morant Bay for trial. The troops met with no organized resistance, yet they killed blacks indiscriminately, most of whom had not been involved in the riot or rebellion. According to one soldier, \"We slaughtered all before us... man or woman or child.” In the end, 439 black Jamaicans were killed directly by soldiers, and 354 more (including Paul Bogle) were arrested and later executed, some without proper trials. Paul Bogle was executed \"either the same evening he was tried or the next morning.\" Other punishments included the flogging of over 600 men and women (including some pregnant women), and long prison sentences. Thousands of homes belonging to black Jamaicans were burned down without any justifiable reason.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "George William Gordon, Jamaican-born plantation owner, businessman and politician, who was the mixed-race son of Scottish-born plantation owner of Cherry Gardens in St. Andrew, Joseph Gordon, and his black enslaved mistress. Gordon, had been critical of Governor John Eyre and his policies, and was later arrested by the Governor who believed he had been behind the rebellion. Despite having very little to do with the rebellion, Gordon was eventually executed. Though he was arrested in Kingston, he was transferred by Eyre to Morant Bay, where he could be tried under martial law. The execution and trial of Gordon via martial law raised some constitutional issues back in Britain, where concerns emerged about whether British dependencies should be ruled under the government of law, or through a military license. Gordon hanged on 23 October, after a speedy trial — just two days after his trial had begun. He and William Bogle, Paul's brother, \"were both tried together, and executed at the same time.”",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "During most of the 18th century, the monocrop economy based on sugarcane production for export flourished. In the last quarter of the century, however, the Jamaican sugar economy declined as famines, hurricanes, colonial wars, and wars of independence disrupted trade. By the 1820s, Jamaican sugar became less competitive with the high-volume producers like Cuba, and production subsequently declined. By 1882 sugar output was less than half what it was in 1828. A major reason for the decline was the British Parliament's 1807 abolition of the slave trade, under which the transportation of slaves to Jamaica after 1 March 1808 was forbidden. The abolition of the slave trade was followed by the abolition of slavery in 1834 and full emancipation of slaves within four years. Unable to convert the ex-slaves into a sharecropping tenant class similar to the one established in the post-Civil War South of the United States, planters became increasingly dependent on wage labour and began recruiting workers abroad, primarily from India, China, and Sierra Leone. Many of the former slaves settled in peasant or small farm communities in the interior of the island like the \"yam belt,\" where they engaged in subsistence and some cash crop farming.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The second half of the 19th century was a period of severe economic decline for Jamaica. Low crop prices, droughts, and disease led to serious social unrest, culminating in the Morant Bay rebellions of 1865. However, renewed British administration after the 1865 rebellion, in the form of crown colony status, resulted in some social and economic progress as well as investment in the physical infrastructure. Agricultural development was the centrepiece of restored British rule in Jamaica. In 1868 the first large-scale irrigation project was launched. In 1895 the Jamaica Agricultural Society was founded to promote more scientific and profitable methods of farming. Also in the 1890s, the Crown Lands Settlement Scheme was introduced, a land reform program of sorts, which allowed small farmers to purchase two hectares or more of land on favorable terms.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Between 1865 and 1930, the character of landholding in Jamaica changed substantially, as sugar declined in importance. As many former plantations went bankrupt, some land was sold to Jamaican peasants under the Crown Lands Settlement whereas other cane fields were consolidated by dominant British producers, most notably by the British firm Tate and Lyle. Although the concentration of land and wealth in Jamaica was not as drastic as in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, by the 1920s the typical sugar plantation on the island had increased to an average of 266 hectares. But, as noted, smallscale agriculture in Jamaica survived the consolidation of land by sugar powers. The number of small holdings in fact tripled between 1865 and 1930, thus retaining a large portion of the population as peasantry. Most of the expansion in small holdings took place before 1910, with farms averaging between two and twenty hectares.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The rise of the banana trade during the second half of the 19th century also changed production and trade patterns on the island. Bananas were first exported in 1867, and banana farming grew rapidly thereafter. By 1890, bananas had replaced sugar as Jamaica's principal export. Production rose from 5 million stems (32 percent of exports) in 1897 to an average of 20 million stems a year in the 1920s and 1930s, or over half of domestic exports. As with sugar, the presence of American companies, like the well-known United Fruit Company in Jamaica, was a driving force behind renewed agricultural exports. Competition was introduced by the Jamaican-Italian firm Lanasa & Goffe raising the price paid for bananas in 1906. The British also became more interested in Jamaican bananas than in the country's sugar. Expansion of banana production, however, was hampered by serious labour shortages. The rise of the banana economy took place amidst a general exodus of up to 11,000 Jamaicans a year.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1846 Jamaican planters — adversely affected by the loss of slave labour — suffered a crushing blow when Britain passed the Sugar Duties Act, eliminating Jamaica's traditionally favoured status as its primary supplier of sugar. The Jamaica House of Assembly stumbled from one crisis to another until the collapse of the sugar trade, when racial and religious tensions came to a head during the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. Although suppressed ruthlessly, the severe rioting so alarmed the planters that the two-centuries-old assembly voted to abolish itself and asked for the establishment of direct British rule. In 1866 the new governor John Peter Grant arrived to implement a series of reforms that accompanied the transition to a crown colony. The government consisted of the Legislative Council and the executive Privy Council containing members of both chambers of the House of Assembly, but the Colonial Office exercised effective power through a presiding British governor. The council included a few handpicked prominent Jamaicans for the sake of appearance only. In the late 19th century, crown colony rule was modified; representation and limited self-rule were reintroduced gradually into Jamaica after 1884. The colony's legal structure was reformed along the lines of English common law and county courts, and a constabulary force was established. The smooth working of the crown colony system depended on a good understanding and an identity of interests between the governing officials, who were British, and most of the nonofficial, nominated members of the Legislative Council, who were Jamaicans. The elected members of this body were in a permanent minority and without any influence or administrative power. The unstated alliance – based on shared color, attitudes, and interest – between the British officials and the Jamaican upper class was reinforced in London, where the West India Committee lobbied for Jamaican interests. Jamaica's white or near-white propertied class continued to hold the dominant position in every respect; the vast majority of the black population remained poor and disenfranchised.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Until it was disestablished in 1870, the Church of England in Jamaica was the established church. It represented the white English community. It received funding from the colonial government and was given responsibility for providing religious instruction to the slaves. It was challenged by Methodist missionaries from England, and the Methodists in turn were denounced as troublemakers. The Church of England in Jamaica established the Jamaica Home and Foreign Missionary Society in 1861; its mission stations multiplied, with financial help from religious organizations in London. The Society sent its own missionaries to West Africa. Baptist missions grew rapidly, thanks to missionaries from England and the United States, and became the largest denomination by 1900. Baptist missionaries denounced the apprentice system as a form of slavery. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Methodists opened a high school and a theological college. Other Protestant groups included the Moravians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Seventh-day Adventist, Church of God, and others. There were several thousand Roman Catholics. The population was largely Christian by 1900, and most families were linked with the church or a Sunday School. Traditional pagan practices persisted in an unorganized fashion, such as witchcraft.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1872, the government passed an act to transfer government offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. Kingston had been founded as a refuge for survivors of the 1692 earthquake that destroyed Port Royal. The town did not begin to grow until after the further destruction of Port Royal by fire in 1703. Surveyor John Goffe drew up a plan for the town based on a grid bounded by North, East, West, and Harbour Streets. By 1716 it had become the largest town and the center of trade for Jamaica. The government sold the land to people with the regulation that they purchase no more than the amount of the land that they owned in Port Royal, and the only land on the sea front. Gradually wealthy merchants began to move their residences from above their businesses to the farm lands north on the plains of Liguanea. In 1755 the governor, Sir Charles Knowles, had decided to transfer the government offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. It was thought by some to be an unsuitable location for the Assembly in proximity to the moral distractions of Kingston, and the next governor rescinded the Act. However, by 1780 the population of Kingston was 11,000, and the merchants began lobbying for the administrative capital to be transferred from Spanish Town, which was by then eclipsed by the commercial activity in Kingston. The 1907 Kingston earthquake destroyed much of the city. Considered by many writers of that time one of the world's deadliest earthquakes, it resulted in the death of over eight hundred Jamaicans and destroyed the homes of over ten thousand more.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The earliest modern plantations originated in Jamaica and the related Western Caribbean Zone, including most of Central America. It involved the combination of modern transportation networks of steamships and railroads with the development of refrigeration that allowed more time between harvesting and ripening. North American shippers like Lorenzo Dow Baker and Andrew Preston, the founders of the Boston Fruit Company started this process in the 1870s, but railroad builders like Minor C. Keith also participated, eventually culminating in the multi-national giant corporations like today's Chiquita Brands International and Dole. These companies were monopolistic, vertically integrated (meaning they controlled growing, processing, shipping and marketing) and usually used political manipulation to build enclave economies (economies that were internally self-sufficient, virtually tax exempt, and export-oriented that contribute very little to the host economy). Alfred Constantine Goffe was a Jamaican Businessman whose St. Mary Banana co-op was the first in Jamaica, opposed the larger export companies and by 1909 had the largest Jamaican owned Banana export company. The resurgence of the Baltimore docks and newer, faster boats, refrigeration on board steamships and rail-cars enabled bananas to travel further to meet the demand for the yellow fruit, for which the firm of Lanasa and Goffe excelled .",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a black activist, Trade Unionist, and husband to Amy Jacques Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1914, one of Jamaica's first political parties in 1929, and a workers association in the early 1930s. Garvey also promoted the Back-to-Africa movement, which called for those of African descent to return to the homelands of their ancestors. Garvey, a controversial figure, had been the target of a four-year investigation by the United States government. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and had served most of a five-year term in an Atlanta penitentiary when he was deported to Jamaica in 1927. Garvey left the colony in 1935 to live in the United Kingdom, where he died heavily in debt five years later. He was proclaimed Jamaica's first national hero in the 1960s after Edward P.G. Seaga, then a government minister arranged the return of his remains to Jamaica. In 1987 Jamaica petitioned the United States Congress to pardon Garvey on the basis that the federal charges brought against him were unsubstantiated and unjust.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Rastafari movement, a new religion, emerged among impoverished and socially disenfranchised Afro-Jamaican communities in 1930s Jamaica. Its Afrocentric ideology was largely a reaction against Jamaica's then-dominant British colonial culture. It was influenced by both Ethiopianism and the Back-to-Africa movement promoted by black nationalist figures like Marcus Garvey. The movement developed after several Christian clergymen, most notably Leonard Howell, proclaimed that the crowning of Haile Selassie as Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 fulfilled a Biblical prophecy. By the 1950s, Rastafari's counter-cultural stance had brought the movement into conflict with wider Jamaican society, including violent clashes with law enforcement. In the 1960s and 1970s, it gained increased respectability within Jamaica and greater visibility abroad through the popularity of Rasta-inspired reggae musicians like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Enthusiasm for Rastafari declined in the 1980s, following the deaths of Haile Selassie and Marley.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The Great Depression caused sugar prices to slump in 1929 and led to the return of many Jamaicans. Economic stagnation, discontent with unemployment, low wages, high prices, and poor living conditions caused social unrest in the 1930s. Uprisings in Jamaica began on the Frome Sugar Estate in the western parish of Westmoreland and quickly spread east to Kingston. Jamaica, in particular, set the pace for the region in its demands for economic development from British colonial rule.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Because of disturbances in Jamaica and the rest of the region, the British in 1938 appointed the Moyne Commission. An immediate result of the commission was the Colonial Development Welfare Act, which provided for the expenditure of approximately Ł1 million a year for twenty years on coordinated development in the British West Indies. Concrete actions, however, were not implemented to deal with Jamaica's massive structural problems.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The rise of nationalism, as distinct from island identification or desire for self-determination, is generally dated to the 1938 labor riots that affected both Jamaica and the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. William Alexander Bustamante (formerly William Alexander Clarke), a moneylender in the capital city of Kingston who had formed the Jamaica Trade Workers and Tradesmen Union (JTWTU) three years earlier, captured the imagination of the black masses with his messianic personality, even though he himself was light-skinned, affluent, and aristocratic. Bustamante emerged from the 1938 strikes and other disturbances as a populist leader and the principal spokesperson for the militant urban working class, and in that year, using the JTWTU as a stepping stone, he founded the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), which inaugurated Jamaica's worker's movement.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "A first cousin of Bustamante, Norman W. Manley, concluded as a result of the 1938 riots that the real basis for national unity in Jamaica lay in the masses. Unlike the union-oriented Bustamante, however, Manley was more interested in access to control over state power and political rights for the masses. On 18 September 1938, he inaugurated the People's National Party (PNP), which had begun as a nationalist movement supported by Bustamante and the mixed-race middle class (which included the intelligentsia) and the liberal sector of the business community with leaders who were highly educated members of the upper middle class. The 1938 riots spurred the PNP to unionize labor, although it would be several years before the PNP formed major labor unions. The party concentrated its earliest efforts on establishing a network both in urban areas and in banana-growing rural parishes, later working on building support among small farmers and in areas of bauxite mining.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The PNP adopted a socialist ideology in 1940 and later joined the Socialist International, allying itself formally with the social democratic parties of Western Europe. Guided by socialist principles, Manley was not a doctrinaire socialist. PNP socialism during the 1940s was similar to British Labour Party ideas on state control of the factors of production, equality of opportunity, and a welfare state, although a left-wing element in the PNP held more orthodox Marxist views and worked for the internationalization of the trade union movement through the Caribbean Labour Congress. In those formative years of Jamaican political and union activity, relations between Manley and Bustamante were cordial. Manley defended Bustamante in court against charges brought by the British for his labor activism in the 1938 riots and looked after the BITU during Bustamante's imprisonment.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Bustamante had political ambitions of his own, however. In 1942, while still incarcerated, he founded a political party to rival the PNP, called the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The new party, whose leaders were of a lower class than those of the PNP, was supported by conservative businessmen and 60,000 dues-paying BITU members, who encompassed dock and sugar plantation workers and other unskilled urban laborers. On his release in 1943, Bustamante began building up the JLP. Meanwhile, several PNP leaders organized the leftist-oriented Trade Union Congress (TUC). Thus, from an early stage in modern Jamaica, unionized labor was an integral part of organized political life.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "For the next quarter-century, Bustamante and Manley competed for center stage in Jamaican political affairs, the former espousing the cause of the \"barefoot man\"; the latter, \"democratic socialism,\" a loosely defined political and economic theory aimed at achieving a classless system of government. Jamaica's two founding fathers projected quite different popular images. Bustamante, lacking even a high school diploma, was an autocratic, charismatic, and highly adept politician; Manley was an athletic, Oxford-trained lawyer, Rhodes scholar, humanist, and liberal intellectual. Although considerably more reserved than Bustamante, Manley was well-liked and widely respected. He was also a visionary nationalist who became the driving force behind the crown colony's quest for independence.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Following the 1938 disturbances in the West Indies, London sent the Moyne Commission to study conditions in the British Caribbean territories. Its findings led in the early 1940s to better wages and a new constitution. Issued on 20 November 1944, the Constitution modified the crown colony system and inaugurated limited self-government based on the Westminster model of government and universal adult suffrage. It also embodied the island's principles of ministerial responsibility and the rule of law. Thirty-one percent of the population participated in the 1944 elections. The JLP – helped by its promises to create jobs, its practice of dispensing public funds in pro-JLP parishes, and the PNP's relatively radical platform – won an 18 percent majority of the votes over the PNP, as well as 22 seats in the 32-member House of Representatives, with 5 going to the PNP and 5 to other short-lived parties. In 1945 Bustamante took office as Jamaica's first premier (the pre-independence title for head of government).",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Under the new charter, the British governor, assisted by the six-member Privy Council and 10-member Executive Council, remained responsible solely to the crown. The Jamaican Legislative Council became the upper house, or Senate, of the bicameral Parliament. House members were elected by adult suffrage from single-member electoral districts called constituencies. Despite these changes, ultimate power remained concentrated in the hands of the governor and other high officials.",
"title": "British rule (1655–1962)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "After World War II, Jamaica began a relatively long transition to full political independence. Jamaicans preferred British culture over American, but they had a tumultuous relationship with the British and resented British domination, racism, and the dictatorial Colonial Office. Britain gradually granted the colony more self-government under periodic constitutional changes. Jamaica's political patterns and governmental structure were shaped during two decades of what was called \"constitutional decolonisation,\" the period between 1944 and independence in 1962.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Having seen how little popular appeal the PNP's 1944 campaign position had, the party shifted toward the centre in 1949 and remained there until 1974. The PNP actually won a 0.8-percent majority of the votes over the JLP in the 1949 election, but the JLP won a majority of the House seats. In the 1950s, the PNP and JLP became increasingly similar in their sociological composition and ideological outlook. During the cold war years, socialism became an explosive domestic issue. The JLP exploited it among property owners and churchgoers, attracting more middle-class support. As a result, PNP leaders diluted their socialist rhetoric, and in 1952 the PNP moderated its image by expelling four prominent leftists who had controlled the TUC. The PNP then formed the more conservative National Workers Union (NWU). Henceforth, PNP socialism meant little more than national planning within a framework of private property and foreign capital. The PNP retained, however, a basic commitment to socialist precepts, such as public control of resources and more equitable income distribution. Manley's PNP came to the office for the first time after winning the 1955 elections with an 11-percent majority over the JLP and 50.5 percent of the popular vote.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Amendments to the constitution that took effect in May 1953 reconstituted the Executive Council and provided for eight ministers to be selected from among House members. The first ministries were subsequently established. These amendments also enlarged the limited powers of the House of Representatives and made elected members of the governor's executive council responsible to the legislature. Manley, elected chief minister beginning in January 1955, accelerated the process of decolonisation during his able stewardship. Further progress toward self-government was achieved under constitutional amendments in 1955 and 1956, and cabinet government was established on 11 November 1957.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Assured by British declarations that independence would be granted to a collective West Indian state rather than to individual colonies, Manley supported Jamaica's joining nine other British territories in the West Indies Federation, established on 3 January 1958. Manley became the island's premier after the PNP again won a decisive victory in the general election in July 1959, securing 30 out of 45 House seats.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Membership in the federation remained an issue in Jamaican politics. Bustamante, reversing his previously supportive position on the issue, warned of the financial implications of membership – Jamaica was responsible for 43 percent of its own financing – and inequity in Jamaica's proportional representation in the federation's House of Assembly. Manley's PNP favoured staying in the federation, but he agreed to hold a referendum in September 1961 to decide on the issue. When 54 percent of the electorate voted to withdraw, Jamaica left the federation, which dissolved in 1962 after Trinidad and Tobago also pulled out. Manley believed that the rejection of his pro-federation policy in the 1961 referendum called for a renewed mandate from the electorate, but the JLP won the election of early 1962 by a fraction. Bustamante assumed the premiership that April and Manley spent his remaining few years in politics as leader of the opposition.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Jamaica received its independence on 6 August 1962. The new nation retained, however, its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations and adopted a Westminster-style parliamentary system. Bustamante, at the age of 78, became the nation's first prime minister.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Bustamante subsequently became the first Prime Minister of Jamaica. The island country joined the Commonwealth of Nations, an organisation of ex-British territories. Jamaica continues to be a Commonwealth realm, with the British monarch as King of Jamaica and head of state.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "An extensive period of postwar growth transformed Jamaica into an increasingly industrial society. This pattern was accelerated with the export of bauxite beginning in the 1950s. The economic structure shifted from a dependence on agriculture that in 1950 accounted for 30.8 percent of GDP to an agricultural contribution of 12.9 percent in 1960 and 6.7 percent in 1970. During the same period, the contribution to the GDP of mining increased from less than 1 percent in 1950 to 9.3 percent in 1960 and 12.6 percent in 1970.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Bustamante's government also continued the government's repression of Rastafarians. During the Coral Gardens incident, one prominent example of state violence against Rastafarians, where following a violent confrontation between Rastafarians and police forces at a gas station, Bustamante issued the police and military an order to \"bring in all Rastas, dead or alive.\" 54 years later, following a government investigation into the incident, the government of Jamaica issued an apology, taking unequivocal responsibility for the Bustamante government's actions and making significant financial reparations to remaining survivors of the incident.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Bustamante was succeeded as the prime minister in February 1967 by Donald Sangster, who in the same year died in office. Hugh Shearer, a protégé of Bustamante, succeeded Sangster and served from 1967 to 1972. Investments in tourism, bauxite mining, and light manufacturing industries fueled economic growth.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In October 1968 when the Shearer government banned Dr. Walter Rodney from returning to his teaching position at the University of the West Indies, so-called Rodney riots started. They were a part of an emerging black consciousness movement in the Caribbean.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Jamaica's reggae music developed from Ska and rocksteady in the 1960s. The shift from rocksteady to reggae was illustrated by the organ shuffle pioneered by Jamaican musicians like Jackie Mittoo and Winston Wright and featured in transitional singles \"Say What You're Saying\" (1967) by Clancy Eccles and \"People Funny Boy\" (1968) by Lee \"Scratch\" Perry. The Pioneers' 1968 track \"Long Shot (Bus' Me Bet)\" has been identified as the earliest recorded example of the new rhythm sound that became known as reggae.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Early 1968 was when the first bona fide reggae records were released: \"Nanny Goat\" by Larry Marshall and \"No More Heartaches\" by The Beltones. That same year, the newest Jamaican sound began to spawn big-name imitators in other countries. American artist Johnny Nash's 1968 hit \"Hold Me Tight\" has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts. Around the same time, reggae influences were starting to surface in rock and pop music, one example being 1968's \"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da\" by The Beatles. Other significant reggae pioneers include Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker and Ken Boothe.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Wailers, a band started by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963, is perhaps the most recognised band that made the transition through all three stages of early Jamaican popular music: ska, rocksteady and reggae. The Wailers would go on to release some of the earliest reggae records with producer Lee Scratch Perry. After the Wailers disbanded in 1974, Marley then went on to pursue a solo career that culminated in the release of the album Exodus in 1977, which established his worldwide reputation and produced his status as one of the world's best-selling artists of all time, with sales of more than 75 million records. He was a committed Rastafari who infused his music with a sense of spirituality.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In the election of 1972, the PNP's Michael Manley defeated the JLP's unpopular incumbent Prime Minister Hugh Shearer. Under Manley, Jamaica established a minimum wage for all workers, including domestic workers. In 1974, Manley proposed free education from primary school to university. The introduction of universally free secondary education was a major step in removing the institutional barriers to the private sector and preferred government jobs that required secondary diplomas. The PNP government in 1974 also formed the Jamaica Movement for the Advancement of Literacy (JAMAL), which administered adult education programs with the goal of involving 100,000 adults a year.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Land reform expanded under his administration. Historically, land tenure in Jamaica has been rather inequitable. Project Land Lease (introduced in 1973), attempted an integrated rural development approach, providing tens of thousands of small farmers with land, technical advice, inputs such as fertilisers, and access to credit. An estimated 14 percent of idle land was redistributed through this program, much of which had been abandoned during the post-war urban migration and/or purchased by large bauxite companies.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The minimum voting age was lowered to 18 years, while equal pay for women was introduced. Maternity leave was also introduced, while the government outlawed the stigma of illegitimacy. The Masters and Servants Act was abolished, and a Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act provided workers and their trade unions with enhanced rights. The National Housing Trust was established, providing \"the means for most employed people to own their own homes,\" and greatly stimulated housing construction, with more than 40,000 houses built between 1974 and 1980.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Subsidised meals, transportation and uniforms for schoolchildren from disadvantaged backgrounds were introduced, together with free education at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Special employment programmes were also launched, together with programmes designed to combat illiteracy. Increases in pensions and poor relief were carried out, along with a reform of local government taxation, an increase in youth training, an expansion of day care centres. and an upgrading of hospitals.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "A worker's participation program was introduced, together with a new mental health law and the family court. Free health care for all Jamaicans was introduced, while health clinics and a paramedical system in rural areas were established. Various clinics were also set up to facilitate access to medical drugs. Spending on education was significantly increased, while the number of doctors and dentists in the country rose.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The One Love Peace Concert was a large concert held in Kingston on April 22, 1978, during a time of political civil war in Jamaica between opposing parties Jamaican Labour Party and the People's National Party. The concert came to its peak during Bob Marley & The Wailers' performance of \"Jammin'\", when Marley joined the hands of political rivals Michael Manley (PNP) and Edward Seaga (JLP).",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In the 1980 election, Edward Seaga and the JLP won by an overwhelming majority – 57 percent of the popular vote and 51 of the 60 seats in the House of Representatives. Seaga immediately began to reverse the policies of his predecessor by privatising the industry and seeking closer ties with the USA. Seaga was one of the first foreign heads of government to visit newly elected US president Ronald Reagan early the next year and was one of the architects of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which was sponsored by Reagan. He delayed his promise to cut diplomatic relations with Cuba until a year later when he accused the Cuban government of giving asylum to Jamaican criminals.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Seaga supported the collapse of the Marxist regime in Grenada and the subsequent US-led invasion of that island in October 1983. On the back of the Grenada invasion, Seaga called snap elections at the end of 1983, which Manley's PNP boycotted. His party thus controlled all seats in parliament. In an unusual move, because the Jamaican constitution required an opposition in the appointed Senate, Seaga appointed eight independent senators to form an official opposition.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Seaga lost much of his US support when he was unable to deliver on his early promises of removing the bauxite levy, and his domestic support also plummeted. Articles attacking Seaga appeared in the US media and foreign investors left the country. Rioting in 1987 and 1988, the continued high popularity of Michael Manley, and complaints of governmental incompetence in the wake of the devastation of the island by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, also contributed to his defeat in the 1989 elections.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In 1988, Hurricane Gilbert produced a 19 ft (5.8 m) storm surge and brought up to 823 millimetres (32.4 in) of rain in the mountainous areas of Jamaica, causing inland flash flooding. 49 people died. Prime Minister Edward Seaga stated that the hardest hit areas near where Gilbert made landfall looked \"like Hiroshima after the atom bomb.\" The storm left US$4 billion (in 1988 dollars) in damage from destroyed crops, buildings, houses, roads, and small aircraft. Two people eventually had to be rescued because of mudslides triggered by Gilbert and were sent to the hospital. The two people were reported to be fine. No planes were going in and out of Kingston, and telephone lines were jammed from Jamaica to Florida.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "As Gilbert lashed Kingston, its winds knocked down power lines, uprooted trees, and flattened fences. On the north coast, 20 feet (6.1 m) waves hit Ocho Rios, a popular tourist resort where hotels were evacuated. Kingston's airport reported severe damage to its aircraft, and all Jamaica-bound flights were cancelled at Miami International Airport. Unofficial estimates state that at least 30 people were killed around the island. Estimated property damage reached more than $200 million. More than 100,000 houses were destroyed or damaged and the country's banana crop was largely destroyed. Hundreds of miles of roads and highways were also heavily damaged. Reconnaissance flights over remote parts of Jamaica reported that 80 percent of the homes on the island had lost their roofs. The poultry industry was also wiped out; the damage from agricultural loss reached $500 million (1988 USD). Hurricane Gilbert was the most destructive storm in the history of Jamaica and the most severe storm since Hurricane Charlie in 1951.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Jamaica's film industry was born in 1972 with the release of The Harder They Come, the first feature-length film made by Jamaicans. It starred reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, was directed by Perry Henzell, and was produced by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. The film is famous for its reggae soundtrack that is said to have \"brought reggae to the world\". Jamaica's other popular films include 1976's Smile Orange, 1982's Countryman, 1991's The Lunatic, 1997's Dancehall Queen, and 1999's Third World Cop. Major figures in the Jamaican film industry include actors Paul Campbell and Carl Bradshaw, actress Audrey Reid, and producer Chris Blackwell.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The 1989 election. was the first election contested by the People's National Party since 1980, as they had boycotted the 1983 snap election. Prime Minister Edward Seaga announced the election date on January 15, 1989, at a rally in Kingston. He cited emergency conditions caused by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 as the reason for extending the parliamentary term beyond its normal five-year mandate.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The date and tone of the election were shaped in part by Hurricane Gilbert, which made landfall in September 1988 and decimated the island. The hurricane caused almost $1 billion worth of damage to the island, with banana and coffee crops wiped out and thousands of homes destroyed. Both parties engaged in campaigning through the distribution of relief supplies, a hallmark of the Jamaican patronage system. Political commentators noted that prior to the hurricane, Edward Seaga and the JLP trailed Michael Manley and the PNP by twenty points in opinion polls. The ability to provide relief as the party in charge allowed Seaga to improve his standing among voters and erode the inevitability of Manley's victory. However, scandals related to the relief effort cost Seaga and the JLP some of the gains made immediately following the hurricane. Scandals that emerged included National Security Minister Errol Anderson personally controlling a warehouse full of disaster relief supplies and candidate Joan Gordon-Webley distributing American-donated flour in sacks with her picture on them.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The election was characterised by a narrower ideological difference between the two parties on economic issues. Michael Manley facilitated his comeback campaign by moderating his leftist positions and admitting mistakes made as Prime Minister, saying he erred when he involved government in economic production and had abandoned all thoughts of nationalising industry. He cited the PNP's desire to continue the market-oriented policies of the JLP government, but with a more participatory approach. Prime Minister Edward Seaga ran on his record of economic growth and the reduction of unemployment in Jamaica, using the campaign slogan \"Don't Let Them Wreck It Again\" to refer to Manley's tenure as Prime Minister. Seaga during his tenure as Prime Minister emphasised the need to tighten public sector spending and cut close to 27,000 public sector jobs in 1983 and 1984. He shifted his plans as elections neared with a promise to spend J$1 billion on a five-year Social Well-Being Programme, which would build new hospitals and schools in Jamaica. Foreign policy also played a role in the 1989 election. Prime Minister Edward Seaga emphasised his relations with the United States, a relationship that saw Jamaica receiving considerable economic aid from the U.S. and additional loans from international institutions. Manley pledged better relations with the United States while at the same time pledging to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba that had been cut under Seaga. With Manley as Prime Minister, Jamaican-American relations had significantly frayed as a result of Manley's economic policies and close relations with Cuba.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The PNP was ultimately victorious and Manley's second term focused on liberalising Jamaica's economy, with the pursuit of a free-market programme that stood in marked contrast to the interventionist economic policies pursued by Manley's first government. Various measures were, however, undertaken to cushion the negative effects of liberalisation. A Social Support Programme was introduced to provide welfare assistance for poor Jamaicans. In addition, the programme focused on creating direct employment, training, and credit for much of the population. The government also announced a 50% increase in the number of food stamps for the most vulnerable groups (including pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children) was announced. A small number of community councils were also created. In addition, a limited land reform programme was carried out that leased and sold the land to small farmers, and land plots were granted to hundreds of farmers. The government also had an admirable record in housing provision, while measures were also taken to protect consumers from illegal and unfair business practices.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "In 1992, citing health reasons, Manley stepped down as Prime Minister and PNP leader. His former Deputy Prime Minister, Percival Patterson, assumed both offices. Patterson led efforts to strengthen the country's social protection and security systems—a critical element of his economic and social policy agenda to mitigate, reduce poverty and social deprivation. His massive investments in modernisation of Jamaica's infrastructure and restructuring of the country's financial sector are widely credited with having led to Jamaica's greatest period of investment in tourism, mining, ICT and energy since the 1960s. He also ended Jamaica's 18-year borrowing relationship with the International Monetary Fund, allowing the country greater latitude in pursuit of its economic policies.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Patterson led the PNP to resounding victories in the 1993 and 1997 elections. Patterson called the 1997 election in November 1997, when his People's National Party was ahead in the opinion polls, inflation had fallen substantially and the national football team had just qualified for the 1998 World Cup. The previous election in 1993 had seen the People's National Party win 52 of the 60 seats.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "A record 197 candidates contested the election, with a new political party, the National Democratic Movement, standing in most of the seats. The National Democratic Movement had been founded in 1995 by a former Labour Party chairman, Bruce Golding, after a dispute over the leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The 1997 election was mainly free of violence as compared to previous elections, although it began with an incident where rival motorcades from the main parties were fired on. The election was the first in Jamaica where a team of international election monitors attended. The monitors were from the Carter Center and included Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell and former heavyweight boxing world champion Evander Holyfield. Just before the election the two main party leaders made a joint appeal for people to avoid marring the election with violence. Election day itself saw one death and four injuries relating to the election, but the 1980 election had seen over 800 deaths.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In winning the election the People's National Party became the first party to win three consecutive terms. The opposition Jamaica Labour Party only had two more seats in Parliament after the election but their leader Edward Seaga held his seat for a ninth time in a row. The National Democratic Movement failed to win any seats despite a pre-election prediction that they would manage to win a seat.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The 2002 election. was a victory for the People's National Party, but their number of seats fell from 50 to 34 (out of 60 total). PNP leader P. J. Patterson retained his position as Prime Minister, becoming the first political leader to win three successive elections. Patterson stepped down on 26 February 2006, and was replaced by Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica's first female Prime Minister.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "The 2007 elections. had originally been scheduled for August 27, 2007 but were delayed to September 3 due to Hurricane Dean. The preliminary results indicated a slim victory for the opposition Jamaican Labour Party led by Bruce Golding, which grew by two seats from 31–29 to 33–27 after official recounts. The JLP defeated the People's National Party after 18 years of unbroken governance.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "In the 1990s, Jamaica and other Caribbean banana producers argued for the continuation of their preferential access to EU markets, notably the United Kingdom. They feared that otherwise the EU would be flooded with cheap bananas from the Central American plantations, with devastating effects on several Caribbean economies. Negotiations led in 1993 to the EU agreeing to maintain the Caribbean producers' preferential access until the end of Lomé IV, pending possible negotiation on an extension. In 1995, the United States government petitioned to the World Trade Organization to investigate whether the Lomé IV convention had violated WTO rules. Then later in 1996, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, effectively ending the cross-subsidies that had benefited ACP countries for many years. But the US remained unsatisfied and insisted that all preferential trade agreements between the EU and ACP should cease. The WTO Dispute Settlement Body established another panel to discuss the issue and concluded that agreements between the EU and ACP were indeed not compatible with WTO regulations. Finally, the EU negotiated with the US through WTO to reach an agreement.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In tourism, after a decrease in volume following the 11 September attacks in the U.S., the number of tourists going to Jamaica eventually rebounded, with the island now receiving over a million tourists each year. Services now account for over 60 percent of Jamaica's GDP and one of every four workers in Jamaica works in tourism or services. However, according to the World Bank, around 80% of the money tourism makes in Jamaica does not stay on the island, but goes instead to the multinational resorts.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The 2007 Cricket World Cup was the first time the ICC Cricket World Cup had been held in the Caribbean. The Jamaican Government spent US$81 million for \"on the pitch\" expenses. This included refurbishing Sabina Park and constructing the new multi-purpose facility in Trelawny – through a loan from China. Another US$20 million is budgeted for \"off-the-pitch\" expenses, putting the tally at more than US$100 million or JM$7 billion. This put the reconstruction cost of Sabina Park at US$46 million whilst the Trelawny Stadium will cost US$35 million. The total amount of money spent on stadiums was at least US$301 million. The 2007 World Cup organisers were criticised for restrictions on outside food, signs, replica kits and musical instruments, despite Caribbean cricketing customs, with authorities being accused of \"running [cricket and cricketing traditions] out of town, then sanitising it out of existence\". Sir Viv Richards echoed the concerns. The ICC were also condemned for high prices for tickets and concessions, which were considered unaffordable for the local population in many of the locations. In a tragic turn of events, Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was found dead on 18 March 2007, one day after his team's defeat to Ireland put them out of the running for the World Cup. Jamaican police performed an autopsy which was deemed inconclusive. The following day police announced that the death was suspicious and ordered a full investigation. Further investigation revealed the cause of death was \"manual strangulation\", and that the investigation would be handled as a murder. After a lengthy investigation the Jamaican police rescinded the comments that he was not murdered, and confirmed that he died from natural causes.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In sprinting, Jamaicans had begun their domination of the 100 metres world record in 2005. Jamaica's Asafa Powell set the record in June 2005 and held it until May 2008, with times of 9.77 and 9.74 seconds respectively. However, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Jamaica's athletes reached heights by nearly doubling the country's total gold medal count and breaking the nation's record for the number of medals earned in a single game. Usain Bolt won three of Jamaica's six gold medals at Beijing, breaking an Olympic and world record in all three of the events in which he participated. Shelly-Ann Fraser led an unprecedented Jamaican sweep of the medals in the Women's 100 m.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Although Jamaican dancehall music originated in the late 1970s, it greatly increased in popularity in the late 1980s and 1990s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. Two of the biggest stars of the early dancehall era were Yellowman and Eek-a-Mouse. Dancehall brought a new generation of producers, including Linval Thompson, Gussie Clarke and Jah Thomas. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably, with digital dancehall (or \"ragga\") becoming increasingly characterised by faster rhythms.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "In the early 1990s songs by Dawn Penn, Shabba Ranks, Patra and Chaka Demus and Pliers were the first dancehall megahits in the US and abroad. Other varieties of dancehall achieved crossover success outside of Jamaica during the mid-to-late 1990s. In the 1990s, dancehall came under increasing criticism for anti-gay lyrics such as those found in Buju Banton's 1988 hit \"Boom Bye Bye,\" which is about shooting a gay man in the head: \"It's like boom bye bye / Inna batty boy head / Rude boy nah promote no nasty man / Dem haffi dead.\"",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "The early 2000s saw the success of newer charting acts such as Elephant Man, Tanya Stephens, and Sean Paul. Dancehall made a resurgence within the pop market in the late 2000s, with songs by Konshens, Mr. Vegas, Popcaan, Mavado, Vybz Kartel, Beenie Man among others. In 2011, Vybz Kartel—at the time, one of dancehall's biggest stars—was arrested for the murder of Clive \"Lizard\" William. In 2014 he was sentenced to life in prison after a 65-day trial, the longest in Jamaican history.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Politically and socially, the 2010s in Jamaica have been shaped by the Tivoli Incursion—a 2010 gun-battle between police and the gang of Christopher \"Dudus\" Coke. Over seventy Jamaicans were killed during the gun battle and the inquiry into police actions during the incursion continues today.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Coke took over the \"Shower Posse\" gang of Tivoli Gardens from his father, Lester “Jim Brown” Coke, in the 1990s. Under Christopher Coke's leadership, the gang trafficked drugs and dabbled in visa fraud (using a high-school athletics team) and extortion, charging small traders in the nearby market for “protection money”. The gang had close political ties. Tivoli Gardens is part of the Kingston Western parliamentary district, a seat was held for years by Edward Seaga, long-time leader of the JLP. That helped Coke expand into construction, with his company winning numerous government contracts. Within Tivoli Gardens, the gang operated as a government unto itself.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "On 23 May 2010, Jamaica security forces began searching for Coke after the United States requested his extradition, and the leader of the criminal gang that attacked several police stations. The violence, which largely took place over 24–25 May, killed at least 73 civilians and wounded at least 35 others. Four soldiers/police were also killed and more than 500 arrests were made, as Jamaican police and soldiers fought gunmen in the Tivoli Gardens district of Kingston.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Coke was eventually captured on 23 June, after initial rumours that he was attempting to surrender to the United States. Kingston police arrested Coke on the outskirts of the city, apparently while a local reverend, Reverend Al Miller, was helping negotiate his surrender to the United States Embassy. In 2011, Coke pleaded guilty to racketeering and drug-related charges in a New York Federal court, and was sentenced to 23 years in prison on 8 June 2012.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "In the four years following Coke's capture, Jamaica's murder rate decreased by nearly half. However, the murder rate remains one of the highest in the world and Jamaica's morgues have not been able to keep up. The lack of facilities to store and study murder victims has been one of the reasons that few murders are solved, with the conviction rate for homicides standing at around five percent. In 2007, following the botched investigation into the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, who died unexpectedly while the island hosted the sport's world cup, Jamaican politicians debated the need for a modern public morgue.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The Tivoli Incursion and LGBT rights were both major issues in the 2011 election.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Although the JLP survived an election called shortly after the 2010 Tivoli Gardens incident, the following year the date of the 2011 election was set as 29 December, and major local media outlets viewed the election as \"too close to call\", though as Simpson-Miller campaigned in key constituencies the gap widened to favour the PNP. Days before the election, Simpson-Miller came out fully in favor of LGBT rights in a televised debate, saying that she \"has no problem giving certain positions of authority to a homosexual as long as they show the necessary level of competence for the post.\" However, since taking power her government has not attempted to repeal the laws which criminalise homosexuality.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "In 2012, Dane Lewis launched a legal challenge to Jamaica's Offenses Against Persons Act of 1864, commonly known as the \"buggery\" laws, on the grounds that they are unconstitutional and promote homophobia throughout the Caribbean. The legal challenge was taken to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Offenses Against Persons Act does not formally ban homosexuality, but clause 76 provides for up to 10 years' imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for anyone convicted of the \"abominable crime of buggery committed either with mankind or any animal\". Two further clauses outlaw attempted buggery and gross indecency between two men.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "LGBT rights returned to Jamaican headlines the next year, following the violent murder in July 2013 of a 16-year-old boy who showed up at a party in women's clothing. Advocates called for the repeal of a nearly 150-year-old anti-sodomy law that bans anal sex, legislation which is accused of helping spur anti-LGBT violence.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "In 2013, the International Monetary Fund announced a $1 billion loan to help Jamaica meet large debt payments. The loan required the Jamaican government to institute a pay freeze amounting to a 20% real-terms cut in wages. Jamaica is one of the most indebted countries and spends around half of its annual federal budget on debt repayments.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "The 2010s look to be a bad time for Jamaica's sugarcane industry. After a brief increase sugar prices, the outlook for Jamaican sugar took a hit in 2015 when the EU began moving towards ending a cap on European sugar beet production. Jamaica exports 25% of the sugar it produces to Britain and prices for Jamaican sugar are expected to fall in the wake of the end of the cap on the EU's subsidised sugar beet industry.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "However, marijuana may become a new cash crop and tourist-draw for Jamaica, depending on future legislation. On 25 February 2015, the Jamaican House of Representatives passed a law decriminalizing possession of up to 2 ounces of cannabis. The new law includes provisions legalizing the cultivation for the personal use of up to five plants, as well as setting up regulations for the cultivation and distribution of cannabis for medical and religious purposes",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In February 2016, opposition Labour Party won a narrow victory in the general election. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller of the People's National Party was replaced by Andrew Holness, the leader of the Labour Party.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In September 2020, the ruling centre-right Labour Party won a landslide victory in the general election. It took 49 of 63 parliamentary seats, meaning the incumbent Prime Minister Andrew Holness will serve a second term.",
"title": "Independent Jamaica (1962–present)"
}
]
| The Caribbean Island of Jamaica was initially inhabited in approximately 600 AD or 650 AD by the Redware people, often associated with redware pottery. By roughly 800 AD, a second wave of inhabitance occurred by the Arawak tribes, including the Tainos, prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. Early inhabitants of Jamaica named the land "Xaymaca", meaning "land of wood and water". The Spanish enslaved the Arawak, who were ravaged further by diseases that the Spanish brought with them. Early historians believe that by 1602, the Arawak-speaking Taino tribes were extinct. However, some of the Taino escaped into the forested mountains of the interior, where they mixed with runaway African slaves, and survived free from first Spanish, and then English, rule. The Spanish also captured and transported hundreds of West African people to the island for the purpose of slavery. However, the majority of Africans were brought into Jamaica by the English. In 1655, the English invaded Jamaica, and defeated the Spanish. Some African enslaved people took advantage of the political turmoil and escaped to the island's interior mountains, forming independent communities which became known as the Maroons. Meanwhile, on the coast, the English built the settlement of Port Royal, a base of operations where piracy flourished as so many European rebels had been rejected from their countries to serve sentences on the seas. Captain Henry Morgan, a Welsh plantation owner and privateer, raided settlements and shipping bases from Port Royal, earning him his reputation as one of the richest pirates in the Caribbean. In the 18th century, sugar cane replaced piracy as British Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labour-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved black Africans to the island. By 1850, the black and mulatto Jamaican population outnumbered the white population by a ratio of twenty to one. Enslaved Jamaicans mounted over a dozen major uprisings during the 18th century, including Tacky's Revolt in 1760. There were also periodic skirmishes between the British and the mountain communities of the Jamaican Maroons, culminating in the First Maroon War of the 1730s and the Second Maroon War of 1795–1796. The aftermath of the Baptist War shone a light on the conditions of slaves which contributed greatly to the abolition movement and the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which formally ended slavery in Jamaica in 1834. However, relations between the white and black community remained tense coming into the mid-19th century, with the most notable event being the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865. The latter half of the 19th century saw economic decline, low crop prices, droughts, and disease. When sugar lost its importance, many former plantations went bankrupt, and land was sold to Jamaican peasants and cane fields were consolidated by dominant British producers. Jamaica's first political parties emerged in the late 1920s, while workers association and trade unions emerged in the 1930s. The development of a new Constitution in 1944, universal male suffrage, and limited self-government eventually led to Jamaican Independence in 1962 with Alexander Bustamante serving as its first prime minister. The country saw an extensive period of postwar growth and a smaller reliance on the agricultural sector and a larger reliance on bauxite and mining in the 1960s and 1970s. Political power changed hands between the two dominant parties, the JLP and PNP, from the 1970s to the present day. While Jamaica's murder rate fell by nearly half after the 2010 Tivoli Incursion, the country's murder rate remains one of the highest in the world. Economic troubles hit the country in 2013, the IMF agreed to a $1 billion loan to help Jamaica meet large debt payments, making Jamaica a highly indebted country that spends around half of its annual budget on debt repayments. | 2001-05-07T20:45:13Z | 2023-12-16T04:44:30Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jamaica |
15,662 | Geography of Jamaica | Jamaica lies 140 km (87 mi) south of Cuba and 190 km (118 mi) west of Haiti. At its greatest extent, Jamaica is 235 km (146 mi) long, and its width varies between 34 and 84 km (21 and 52 mi). Jamaica has a small area of 10,992 km (4,244 sq mi). However, Jamaica is the largest island of the Commonwealth Caribbean and the third largest of the Greater Antilles, after Cuba and Hispaniola. Many small islands are located along the south coast of Jamaica, such as the Port Royal Cays. Southwest of mainland Jamaica lies Pedro Bank, an area of shallow seas, with a number of cays (low islands or reefs), extending generally east to west for over 160 km (99 mi). To the southeast lies Morant Bank, with the Morant Cays, 51 km (32 mi) from Morant Point, the easternmost point of mainland Jamaica. Alice Shoal, 260 km (160 mi) southwest of the main island of Jamaica, falls within the Jamaica–Colombia Joint Regime. It has an Exclusive Economic Zone of 258,137 km (99,667 sq mi).
Jamaica(which is a very mountainous country) and the other islands of the Antilles evolved from an arc of ancient volcanoes that rose from the sea millions of years ago. During periods of submersion, thick layers of limestone were laid down over the old igneous and metamorphic rock. In many places, the limestone is thousands of feet thick. The country can be divided into three landform regions: the eastern mountains, the central valleys and plateaus, and the coastal plains.
The highest area is the Blue Mountains range. These eastern mountains are formed by a central ridge of metamorphic rock running northwest to southeast from which many long spurs jut to the north and south. For a distance of over 3 kilometres (1.9 mi), the crest of the ridge exceeds 1,800 metres (5,900 ft). The highest point is Blue Mountain Peak at 2,256 metres (7,402 ft). The Blue Mountains rise to these elevations from the coastal plain in the space of about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi), thus producing one of the steepest general gradients in the world. In this part of the country, the old metamorphic rock reveals itself through the surrounding limestone. To the north of the Blue Mountains lies the strongly tilted limestone plateau forming the John Crow Mountains. This range rises to elevations of over 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). To the west, in the central part of the country, are two high rolling plateaus: the Dry Harbour Mountains to the north and the Manchester Plateau to the south. Between the two, the land is rugged and here, also, the limestone layers are broken by the older rocks. Streams that rise in the region flow outward and sink soon after reaching the limestone layers.
The limestone plateau covers two-thirds of the country, so that karst formations dominate the island. Karst is formed by the erosion of the limestone in solution. Sinkholes, caves and caverns, disappearing streams, hummocky hills, and terra rosa (residual red) soils in the valleys are distinguishing features of a karst landscape; all these are present in Jamaica. To the west of the mountains is the rugged terrain of the Cockpit Country, one of the world's most dramatic examples of karst topography.
The Cockpit Country is pockmarked with steep-sided hollows, as much as 15 metres (49 ft) deep in places, which are separated by conical hills and ridges. On the north, the main defining feature is the fault-based "Escarpment", a long ridge that extends from Flagstaff in the west, through Windsor in the centre, to Campbells and the start of the Barbecue Bottom Road (B10). The Barbecue Bottom Road, which runs north-south, high along the side of a deep, fault-based valley in the east, is the only drivable route across the Cockpit Country. However, there are two old, historical trails that cross further west, the Troy Trail, and the Quick Step Trail, both of which are seldom used as of 2006 and difficult to find. In the southwest, near Quick Step, is the district known as the "Land of Look Behind," so named because Spanish horsemen venturing into this region of hostile runaway slaves were said to have ridden two to a mount, one rider facing to the rear to keep a precautionary watch. Where the ridges between sinkholes in the plateau area have dissolved, flat-bottomed basins or valleys have been formed that are filled with terra rosa soils, some of the most productive on the island. The largest basin is the Vale of Clarendon, 80 km (50 mi) long and 32 km (20 mi) wide. Queen of Spains Valley, Nassau Valley, and Cave Valley were formed by the same process.
The coastline of Jamaica is one of many contrasts. The northeast shore is severely eroded by the ocean. There are many small inlets in the rugged coastline, but no coastal plain of any extent. A narrow strip of plains along the northern coast offers calm seas and white sand beaches. Behind the beaches is a flat raised plain of uplifted coral reef.
The southern coast has small stretches of plains lined by black sand beaches. These are backed by cliffs of limestone where the plateaus end. In many stretches with no coastal plain, the cliffs drop 300 metres (980 ft) straight to the sea. In the southwest, broad plains stretch inland for a number of kilometres. The Black River courses 70 kilometres (43 mi) through the largest of these plains. The Rio Minho is 92.8 km long and is the longest river in Jamaica (previously, the Black River was thought to be the longest). The swamplands of the Great Morass and the Upper Morass fill much of the plains. The western coastline contains the island's finest beaches.
Two types of climate are found in Jamaica. An upland tropical climate prevails on the windward side of the mountains, whereas a semiarid climate predominates on the leeward side. Warm trade winds from the east and northeast bring rainfall throughout the year. The rainfall is heaviest from May to October, with peaks in those two months. The average rainfall is 1,960 millimetres (77.2 in) per year. Rainfall is much greater in the mountain areas facing the north and east, however. Where the higher elevations of the John Crow Mountains and the Blue Mountains catch the rain from the moisture-laden winds, rainfall exceeds 5,080 millimetres (200 in) per year. Since the southwestern half of the island lies in the rain shadow of the mountains, it has a semiarid climate and receives fewer than 760 millimetres (29.9 in) of rainfall annually.
Temperatures in Jamaica are fairly constant throughout the year, averaging 23.5 to 30 °C (74.3 to 86.0 °F) in the lowlands and 15 to 22 °C (59.0 to 71.6 °F) at higher elevations. Temperatures may dip to below 10 °C (50 °F) at the peaks of the Blue Mountains. The island receives, in addition to the northeast trade winds, refreshing onshore breezes during the day and cooling offshore breezes at night. These are known on Jamaica as the "Doctor Breeze" and the "Undertaker's Breeze," respectively.
Jamaica lies in the Atlantic hurricane belt; as a result, the island sometimes experiences significant storm damage. Powerful hurricanes which have hit the island directly causing death and destruction include Hurricane Charlie in 1951 and Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Several other powerful hurricanes have passed near to the island with damaging effects. In 1980, for example, Hurricane Allen destroyed nearly all Jamaica's banana crop. Hurricane Ivan (2004) swept past the island causing heavy damage and a number of deaths; in 2005, Hurricanes Dennis and Emily brought heavy rains to the island. A Category 4 hurricane, Hurricane Dean, caused some deaths and heavy damage to Jamaica in August 2007.
The first recorded hurricane to hit Jamaica was in 1519. The island has been struck by tropical cyclones regularly. During two of the coldest periods in the last 250 years (1780s and 1810s), the frequency of hurricanes in the Jamaica region was unusually high. Another peak of activity occurred in the 1910s, the coldest decade of the 20th century. On the other hand, hurricane formation was greatly diminished from 1968 to 1994, which for some reason coincides with the great Sahel drought.
Although most of Jamaica's native vegetation has been stripped in order to make room for cultivation, some areas have been left virtually undisturbed since the time of European colonization. Indigenous vegetation can be found along the northern coast, from Rio Bueno to Discovery Bay, in the highest parts of the Blue Mountains, and in the heart of the Cockpit Country.
As in the case of vegetation, considerable loss of wildlife has occurred, beginning with the settlement of the Taíno in the region millennia ago. For example, the Caribbean monk seal (Neomonachus tropicalis) once occurred in Jamaican waters, and has now been driven to extinction. Mongooses (Urva auropunctata), introduced to Jamaica in 1872 to reduce rat populations that damaged commercial sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) crops, prey on several Jamaican species, including the critically endangered Jamaican iguana (Cyclura collei), and have been implicated in the historical population declines and extinctions of many others.
Other wildlife species inhabiting the island include the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus), and the endemic and endangered Homerus swallowtail butterfly (Papilio homerus), which is the largest butterfly species in the Western Hemisphere.
There are policies that are being put into place to help preserve the ocean and the life below water. The goal of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) is to improve the quality of life of human communities who depend on coastal resources while maintaining the biological diversity and productivity of coastal ecosystems. Developing an underdeveloped country can impact the oceans ecosystem because of all the construction that would be done to develop the country. Over-building, driven by powerful market forces as well as poverty among some sectors of the population, and destructive exploitation contribute to the decline of ocean and coastal resources. Developing practices that will contribute to the lives of the people but also to the life of the ocean and its ecosystem. Some of these practices include: Develop sustainable fisheries practices, ensure sustainable mariculture techniques and practices, sustainable management of shipping, and promote sustainable tourism practices. As for tourism, tourism is the number one source of foreign exchange earnings in Jamaica and, as such is vital to the national economy. Tourist typically go to countries unaware of issues and how they impact those issues. Tourist are not going to be used to living in a different style compared to their own country. Practices such as: provide sewage treatment facilities for all tourist areas, determine carrying capacity of the environment prior to planning tourism activities, provide alternative types of tourist activities can help to get desired results such as the development of alternative tourism which will reduce the current pressure on resources that support traditional tourism activities. A study was conducted to see how tourist could help with sustainable financing for ocean and coastal management in Jamaica. Instead of using tourist fees they would call them environmental fees. This study aims to inform the relevant stakeholders of the feasibility of implementing environmental fees as well as the likely impact of such revenue generating instruments on the current tourist visitation rates to the island. The development of a user fee system would help fund environmental management and protection. The results show that tourists have a high consumer surplus associated with a vacation in Jamaica, and have a significantly lower willingness to pay for a tourism tax when compared to an environmental tax. The findings of the study show that the "label" of the tax and as well as the respondent's awareness of the institutional mechanisms for environmental protection and tourism are important to their decision framework. Tourist are more willing to pay for environmental fees rather than tourist tax fees. A tax high enough to fund for environmental management and protection but low enough to continue to bring tourist to Jamaica. It has been shown that if an environmental tax of $1 per person were introduced it would not cause a significant decline in visitation rates and would generate revenues of US$1.7M per year. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jamaica lies 140 km (87 mi) south of Cuba and 190 km (118 mi) west of Haiti. At its greatest extent, Jamaica is 235 km (146 mi) long, and its width varies between 34 and 84 km (21 and 52 mi). Jamaica has a small area of 10,992 km (4,244 sq mi). However, Jamaica is the largest island of the Commonwealth Caribbean and the third largest of the Greater Antilles, after Cuba and Hispaniola. Many small islands are located along the south coast of Jamaica, such as the Port Royal Cays. Southwest of mainland Jamaica lies Pedro Bank, an area of shallow seas, with a number of cays (low islands or reefs), extending generally east to west for over 160 km (99 mi). To the southeast lies Morant Bank, with the Morant Cays, 51 km (32 mi) from Morant Point, the easternmost point of mainland Jamaica. Alice Shoal, 260 km (160 mi) southwest of the main island of Jamaica, falls within the Jamaica–Colombia Joint Regime. It has an Exclusive Economic Zone of 258,137 km (99,667 sq mi).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jamaica(which is a very mountainous country) and the other islands of the Antilles evolved from an arc of ancient volcanoes that rose from the sea millions of years ago. During periods of submersion, thick layers of limestone were laid down over the old igneous and metamorphic rock. In many places, the limestone is thousands of feet thick. The country can be divided into three landform regions: the eastern mountains, the central valleys and plateaus, and the coastal plains.",
"title": "Geology and landforms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The highest area is the Blue Mountains range. These eastern mountains are formed by a central ridge of metamorphic rock running northwest to southeast from which many long spurs jut to the north and south. For a distance of over 3 kilometres (1.9 mi), the crest of the ridge exceeds 1,800 metres (5,900 ft). The highest point is Blue Mountain Peak at 2,256 metres (7,402 ft). The Blue Mountains rise to these elevations from the coastal plain in the space of about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi), thus producing one of the steepest general gradients in the world. In this part of the country, the old metamorphic rock reveals itself through the surrounding limestone. To the north of the Blue Mountains lies the strongly tilted limestone plateau forming the John Crow Mountains. This range rises to elevations of over 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). To the west, in the central part of the country, are two high rolling plateaus: the Dry Harbour Mountains to the north and the Manchester Plateau to the south. Between the two, the land is rugged and here, also, the limestone layers are broken by the older rocks. Streams that rise in the region flow outward and sink soon after reaching the limestone layers.",
"title": "Geology and landforms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The limestone plateau covers two-thirds of the country, so that karst formations dominate the island. Karst is formed by the erosion of the limestone in solution. Sinkholes, caves and caverns, disappearing streams, hummocky hills, and terra rosa (residual red) soils in the valleys are distinguishing features of a karst landscape; all these are present in Jamaica. To the west of the mountains is the rugged terrain of the Cockpit Country, one of the world's most dramatic examples of karst topography.",
"title": "Geology and landforms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Cockpit Country is pockmarked with steep-sided hollows, as much as 15 metres (49 ft) deep in places, which are separated by conical hills and ridges. On the north, the main defining feature is the fault-based \"Escarpment\", a long ridge that extends from Flagstaff in the west, through Windsor in the centre, to Campbells and the start of the Barbecue Bottom Road (B10). The Barbecue Bottom Road, which runs north-south, high along the side of a deep, fault-based valley in the east, is the only drivable route across the Cockpit Country. However, there are two old, historical trails that cross further west, the Troy Trail, and the Quick Step Trail, both of which are seldom used as of 2006 and difficult to find. In the southwest, near Quick Step, is the district known as the \"Land of Look Behind,\" so named because Spanish horsemen venturing into this region of hostile runaway slaves were said to have ridden two to a mount, one rider facing to the rear to keep a precautionary watch. Where the ridges between sinkholes in the plateau area have dissolved, flat-bottomed basins or valleys have been formed that are filled with terra rosa soils, some of the most productive on the island. The largest basin is the Vale of Clarendon, 80 km (50 mi) long and 32 km (20 mi) wide. Queen of Spains Valley, Nassau Valley, and Cave Valley were formed by the same process.",
"title": "Geology and landforms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The coastline of Jamaica is one of many contrasts. The northeast shore is severely eroded by the ocean. There are many small inlets in the rugged coastline, but no coastal plain of any extent. A narrow strip of plains along the northern coast offers calm seas and white sand beaches. Behind the beaches is a flat raised plain of uplifted coral reef.",
"title": "Coasts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The southern coast has small stretches of plains lined by black sand beaches. These are backed by cliffs of limestone where the plateaus end. In many stretches with no coastal plain, the cliffs drop 300 metres (980 ft) straight to the sea. In the southwest, broad plains stretch inland for a number of kilometres. The Black River courses 70 kilometres (43 mi) through the largest of these plains. The Rio Minho is 92.8 km long and is the longest river in Jamaica (previously, the Black River was thought to be the longest). The swamplands of the Great Morass and the Upper Morass fill much of the plains. The western coastline contains the island's finest beaches.",
"title": "Coasts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Two types of climate are found in Jamaica. An upland tropical climate prevails on the windward side of the mountains, whereas a semiarid climate predominates on the leeward side. Warm trade winds from the east and northeast bring rainfall throughout the year. The rainfall is heaviest from May to October, with peaks in those two months. The average rainfall is 1,960 millimetres (77.2 in) per year. Rainfall is much greater in the mountain areas facing the north and east, however. Where the higher elevations of the John Crow Mountains and the Blue Mountains catch the rain from the moisture-laden winds, rainfall exceeds 5,080 millimetres (200 in) per year. Since the southwestern half of the island lies in the rain shadow of the mountains, it has a semiarid climate and receives fewer than 760 millimetres (29.9 in) of rainfall annually.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Temperatures in Jamaica are fairly constant throughout the year, averaging 23.5 to 30 °C (74.3 to 86.0 °F) in the lowlands and 15 to 22 °C (59.0 to 71.6 °F) at higher elevations. Temperatures may dip to below 10 °C (50 °F) at the peaks of the Blue Mountains. The island receives, in addition to the northeast trade winds, refreshing onshore breezes during the day and cooling offshore breezes at night. These are known on Jamaica as the \"Doctor Breeze\" and the \"Undertaker's Breeze,\" respectively.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Jamaica lies in the Atlantic hurricane belt; as a result, the island sometimes experiences significant storm damage. Powerful hurricanes which have hit the island directly causing death and destruction include Hurricane Charlie in 1951 and Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Several other powerful hurricanes have passed near to the island with damaging effects. In 1980, for example, Hurricane Allen destroyed nearly all Jamaica's banana crop. Hurricane Ivan (2004) swept past the island causing heavy damage and a number of deaths; in 2005, Hurricanes Dennis and Emily brought heavy rains to the island. A Category 4 hurricane, Hurricane Dean, caused some deaths and heavy damage to Jamaica in August 2007.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The first recorded hurricane to hit Jamaica was in 1519. The island has been struck by tropical cyclones regularly. During two of the coldest periods in the last 250 years (1780s and 1810s), the frequency of hurricanes in the Jamaica region was unusually high. Another peak of activity occurred in the 1910s, the coldest decade of the 20th century. On the other hand, hurricane formation was greatly diminished from 1968 to 1994, which for some reason coincides with the great Sahel drought.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Although most of Jamaica's native vegetation has been stripped in order to make room for cultivation, some areas have been left virtually undisturbed since the time of European colonization. Indigenous vegetation can be found along the northern coast, from Rio Bueno to Discovery Bay, in the highest parts of the Blue Mountains, and in the heart of the Cockpit Country.",
"title": "Vegetation and wildlife"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "As in the case of vegetation, considerable loss of wildlife has occurred, beginning with the settlement of the Taíno in the region millennia ago. For example, the Caribbean monk seal (Neomonachus tropicalis) once occurred in Jamaican waters, and has now been driven to extinction. Mongooses (Urva auropunctata), introduced to Jamaica in 1872 to reduce rat populations that damaged commercial sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) crops, prey on several Jamaican species, including the critically endangered Jamaican iguana (Cyclura collei), and have been implicated in the historical population declines and extinctions of many others.",
"title": "Vegetation and wildlife"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Other wildlife species inhabiting the island include the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus), and the endemic and endangered Homerus swallowtail butterfly (Papilio homerus), which is the largest butterfly species in the Western Hemisphere.",
"title": "Vegetation and wildlife"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "There are policies that are being put into place to help preserve the ocean and the life below water. The goal of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) is to improve the quality of life of human communities who depend on coastal resources while maintaining the biological diversity and productivity of coastal ecosystems. Developing an underdeveloped country can impact the oceans ecosystem because of all the construction that would be done to develop the country. Over-building, driven by powerful market forces as well as poverty among some sectors of the population, and destructive exploitation contribute to the decline of ocean and coastal resources. Developing practices that will contribute to the lives of the people but also to the life of the ocean and its ecosystem. Some of these practices include: Develop sustainable fisheries practices, ensure sustainable mariculture techniques and practices, sustainable management of shipping, and promote sustainable tourism practices. As for tourism, tourism is the number one source of foreign exchange earnings in Jamaica and, as such is vital to the national economy. Tourist typically go to countries unaware of issues and how they impact those issues. Tourist are not going to be used to living in a different style compared to their own country. Practices such as: provide sewage treatment facilities for all tourist areas, determine carrying capacity of the environment prior to planning tourism activities, provide alternative types of tourist activities can help to get desired results such as the development of alternative tourism which will reduce the current pressure on resources that support traditional tourism activities. A study was conducted to see how tourist could help with sustainable financing for ocean and coastal management in Jamaica. Instead of using tourist fees they would call them environmental fees. This study aims to inform the relevant stakeholders of the feasibility of implementing environmental fees as well as the likely impact of such revenue generating instruments on the current tourist visitation rates to the island. The development of a user fee system would help fund environmental management and protection. The results show that tourists have a high consumer surplus associated with a vacation in Jamaica, and have a significantly lower willingness to pay for a tourism tax when compared to an environmental tax. The findings of the study show that the \"label\" of the tax and as well as the respondent's awareness of the institutional mechanisms for environmental protection and tourism are important to their decision framework. Tourist are more willing to pay for environmental fees rather than tourist tax fees. A tax high enough to fund for environmental management and protection but low enough to continue to bring tourist to Jamaica. It has been shown that if an environmental tax of $1 per person were introduced it would not cause a significant decline in visitation rates and would generate revenues of US$1.7M per year.",
"title": "Environmental policy"
}
]
| Jamaica lies 140 km (87 mi) south of Cuba and 190 km (118 mi) west of Haiti. At its greatest extent, Jamaica is 235 km (146 mi) long, and its width varies between 34 and 84 km. Jamaica has a small area of 10,992 km2 (4,244 sq mi). However, Jamaica is the largest island of the Commonwealth Caribbean and the third largest of the Greater Antilles, after Cuba and Hispaniola. Many small islands are located along the south coast of Jamaica, such as the Port Royal Cays. Southwest of mainland Jamaica lies Pedro Bank, an area of shallow seas, with a number of cays, extending generally east to west for over 160 km (99 mi). To the southeast lies Morant Bank, with the Morant Cays, 51 km (32 mi) from Morant Point, the easternmost point of mainland Jamaica. Alice Shoal, 260 km (160 mi) southwest of the main island of Jamaica, falls within the Jamaica–Colombia Joint Regime. It has an Exclusive Economic Zone of 258,137 km2 (99,667 sq mi). | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-11-24T03:19:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Jamaica |
15,663 | Demographics of Jamaica | Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean. The country had a population of 2,818,596 in 2022, the fourth largest in the region.
Jamaica's annual population growth rate stood at 0.08% in 2022. As of 2011, 92.1% of the population are Afro-Jamaicans, 6.1% mixed and 0.8% Indian. 68.9% of Jamaicans were Christians in 2011, predominantly Protestant.
According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects the total population was 2,827,695 in 2021, compared to only 1,403,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 29%, 63.1% was between 15 and 65 years of age, while 7.8% was 65 years or older.
Source: UN World Population Prospects
Demographic statistics below are based on the 2022 World Population Review.
The following demographic statistics are from The World Factbook by the CIA, unless otherwise referenced.
11.4 births/1,000 population (2022 est.) Country comparison to the world: 103rd
definition: age 15 and over has ever attended school
English, Jamaican Patois
Protestant 64.8% (includes Seventh Day Adventist 12.0%, Pentecostal 11.0%, Other Church of God 9.2%, New Testament Church of God 7.2%, Baptist 6.7%, Church of God in Jamaica 4.8%, Church of God of Prophecy 4.5%, Anglican 2.8%, United Church 2.1%, Methodist 1.6%, Revived 1.4%, Brethren 0.9%, and Moravian 0.7%), Roman Catholic 2.2%, Jehovah's Witness 1.9%, Rastafarian 1.1%, other 6.5%, none 21.3%, unspecified 2.3% (2011 est.)
Black 92.1%, mixed 6.1%, East Indian 0.8%, other 0.4%, unspecified 0.7% (2011 est.)
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean. The country had a population of 2,818,596 in 2022, the fourth largest in the region.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jamaica's annual population growth rate stood at 0.08% in 2022. As of 2011, 92.1% of the population are Afro-Jamaicans, 6.1% mixed and 0.8% Indian. 68.9% of Jamaicans were Christians in 2011, predominantly Protestant.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects the total population was 2,827,695 in 2021, compared to only 1,403,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 29%, 63.1% was between 15 and 65 years of age, while 7.8% was 65 years or older.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Source: UN World Population Prospects",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Demographic statistics below are based on the 2022 World Population Review.",
"title": "Other sources of demographic statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The following demographic statistics are from The World Factbook by the CIA, unless otherwise referenced.",
"title": "Other sources of demographic statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "11.4 births/1,000 population (2022 est.) Country comparison to the world: 103rd",
"title": "Other sources of demographic statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "definition: age 15 and over has ever attended school",
"title": "Other sources of demographic statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "English, Jamaican Patois",
"title": "Other sources of demographic statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Protestant 64.8% (includes Seventh Day Adventist 12.0%, Pentecostal 11.0%, Other Church of God 9.2%, New Testament Church of God 7.2%, Baptist 6.7%, Church of God in Jamaica 4.8%, Church of God of Prophecy 4.5%, Anglican 2.8%, United Church 2.1%, Methodist 1.6%, Revived 1.4%, Brethren 0.9%, and Moravian 0.7%), Roman Catholic 2.2%, Jehovah's Witness 1.9%, Rastafarian 1.1%, other 6.5%, none 21.3%, unspecified 2.3% (2011 est.)",
"title": "Other sources of demographic statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Black 92.1%, mixed 6.1%, East Indian 0.8%, other 0.4%, unspecified 0.7% (2011 est.)",
"title": "Other sources of demographic statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.",
"title": "References"
}
]
| Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean. The country had a population of 2,818,596 in 2022, the fourth largest in the region. Jamaica's annual population growth rate stood at 0.08% in 2022. As of 2011, 92.1% of the population are Afro-Jamaicans, 6.1% mixed and 0.8% Indian. 68.9% of Jamaicans were Christians in 2011, predominantly Protestant. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-08T00:45:24Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Jamaica |
15,664 | Politics of Jamaica | Politics in Jamaica takes place in the framework of a representative parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The 1962 Constitution of Jamaica established a parliamentary system whose political and legal traditions closely follow those of the United Kingdom. As the head of state, King Charles III - on the advice of the Prime Minister of Jamaica - appoints a governor-general as his representative in Jamaica. The governor-general has a largely ceremonial role. Jamaica constitutes an independent Commonwealth realm.
The Constitution vests executive power in the cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested both in the government and in the Parliament of Jamaica.
A bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature drafted Jamaica's current Constitution in 1962. That Constitution came into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which gave Jamaica political independence. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, freedom of movement, and freedom of association.
The judiciary operates independently of the executive and the legislature, with jurisprudence based on English common law.
The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Jamaica a "flawed democracy" in 2022.
Parliament is composed of an appointed Senate and an elected House of Representatives. Thirteen Senators are nominated on the advice of the prime minister and eight on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition; a two-thirds super-majority of both chambers is needed for major constitutional amendments. General elections must be held within five years of the forming of a new government.
The prime minister may ask the governor-general to call elections sooner, however. The Senate may submit bills, and it also reviews legislation submitted by the House. It may not delay budget bills for more than one month or other bills for more than seven months. The prime minister and the Cabinet are selected from the Parliament. No fewer than two nor more than four members of the Cabinet must be selected from the Senate.
The 1962 Constitution established a parliamentary system based on the United Kingdom's Westminster model. As head of state, King Charles III appoints a governor-general, on the advice of the prime minister, as his representative in Jamaica. The governor-general's role is largely ceremonial. Executive power is vested in the King, but exercised mostly by the Cabinet of Jamaica; led by the prime minister, currently Andrew Holness.
General Elections February 25, 2016
The judiciary also is modelled on the British system. The Court of Appeal is the highest appellate court in Jamaica. Under certain circumstances, cases may be appealed to Britain's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Jamaica's parishes have elected councils that exercise limited powers of local government.
Firearms offences, including possession of unlicensed guns and ammunition, are tried before a dedicated Gun Court established in 1974. The Gun Court hears cases in camera and practices jury trial only for cases of treason or murder. All other cases are tried by resident magistrates or justices of the Supreme Court of Jamaica.
Jamaica is divided in 14 parishes: Clarendon, Hanover, Kingston, Manchester, Portland, Saint Andrew, Saint Ann, Saint Catherine, Saint Elizabeth, Saint James, Saint Mary, Saint Thomas, Trelawny, Westmoreland.
Responsibility for water and sanitation policies within the government rests with the Ministry of Water and Housing, and the main service provider is the National Water Commission. An autonomous regulatory agency, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), approves tariffs and establishes targets for efficiency increases, and also oversees the telecommunications industry.
Jamaica has diplomatic relations with most nations and is a member of the United Nations, The Commonwealth and the Organization of American States. Historically, Jamaica has had close ties with the UK. Trade, financial, and cultural relations with the United States are now predominant. Jamaica is linked with the other countries of the English-speaking Caribbean through the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and more broadly through the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Politics in Jamaica takes place in the framework of a representative parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The 1962 Constitution of Jamaica established a parliamentary system whose political and legal traditions closely follow those of the United Kingdom. As the head of state, King Charles III - on the advice of the Prime Minister of Jamaica - appoints a governor-general as his representative in Jamaica. The governor-general has a largely ceremonial role. Jamaica constitutes an independent Commonwealth realm.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Constitution vests executive power in the cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested both in the government and in the Parliament of Jamaica.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature drafted Jamaica's current Constitution in 1962. That Constitution came into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which gave Jamaica political independence. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, freedom of movement, and freedom of association.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The judiciary operates independently of the executive and the legislature, with jurisprudence based on English common law.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Jamaica a \"flawed democracy\" in 2022.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Parliament is composed of an appointed Senate and an elected House of Representatives. Thirteen Senators are nominated on the advice of the prime minister and eight on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition; a two-thirds super-majority of both chambers is needed for major constitutional amendments. General elections must be held within five years of the forming of a new government.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The prime minister may ask the governor-general to call elections sooner, however. The Senate may submit bills, and it also reviews legislation submitted by the House. It may not delay budget bills for more than one month or other bills for more than seven months. The prime minister and the Cabinet are selected from the Parliament. No fewer than two nor more than four members of the Cabinet must be selected from the Senate.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The 1962 Constitution established a parliamentary system based on the United Kingdom's Westminster model. As head of state, King Charles III appoints a governor-general, on the advice of the prime minister, as his representative in Jamaica. The governor-general's role is largely ceremonial. Executive power is vested in the King, but exercised mostly by the Cabinet of Jamaica; led by the prime minister, currently Andrew Holness.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "General Elections February 25, 2016",
"title": "Current composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The judiciary also is modelled on the British system. The Court of Appeal is the highest appellate court in Jamaica. Under certain circumstances, cases may be appealed to Britain's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Jamaica's parishes have elected councils that exercise limited powers of local government.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Firearms offences, including possession of unlicensed guns and ammunition, are tried before a dedicated Gun Court established in 1974. The Gun Court hears cases in camera and practices jury trial only for cases of treason or murder. All other cases are tried by resident magistrates or justices of the Supreme Court of Jamaica.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jamaica is divided in 14 parishes: Clarendon, Hanover, Kingston, Manchester, Portland, Saint Andrew, Saint Ann, Saint Catherine, Saint Elizabeth, Saint James, Saint Mary, Saint Thomas, Trelawny, Westmoreland.",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Responsibility for water and sanitation policies within the government rests with the Ministry of Water and Housing, and the main service provider is the National Water Commission. An autonomous regulatory agency, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), approves tariffs and establishes targets for efficiency increases, and also oversees the telecommunications industry.",
"title": "Regulatory services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Jamaica has diplomatic relations with most nations and is a member of the United Nations, The Commonwealth and the Organization of American States. Historically, Jamaica has had close ties with the UK. Trade, financial, and cultural relations with the United States are now predominant. Jamaica is linked with the other countries of the English-speaking Caribbean through the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and more broadly through the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).",
"title": "Foreign relations"
}
]
| Politics in Jamaica takes place in the framework of a representative parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The 1962 Constitution of Jamaica established a parliamentary system whose political and legal traditions closely follow those of the United Kingdom. As the head of state, King Charles III - on the advice of the Prime Minister of Jamaica - appoints a governor-general as his representative in Jamaica. The governor-general has a largely ceremonial role. Jamaica constitutes an independent Commonwealth realm. The Constitution vests executive power in the cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested both in the government and in the Parliament of Jamaica. A bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature drafted Jamaica's current Constitution in 1962. That Constitution came into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which gave Jamaica political independence. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, freedom of movement, and freedom of association. The judiciary operates independently of the executive and the legislature, with jurisprudence based on English common law. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Jamaica a "flawed democracy" in 2022. | 2001-09-16T18:05:57Z | 2023-10-04T23:47:12Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Jamaica |
15,665 | Economy of Jamaica | The economy of Jamaica is heavily reliant on services, accounting for 70% of the country's GDP. Jamaica has natural resources and a climate conducive to agriculture and tourism. The discovery of bauxite in the 1940s and the subsequent establishment of the bauxite-alumina industry shifted Jamaica's economy from sugar, and bananas.
Weakness in the financial sector, speculation, and lower levels of investment erode confidence in the productive sector. The government continues its efforts to raise new sovereign debt in local and international financial markets in order to meet its U.S. dollar debt obligations, to mop up liquidity to maintain the exchange rate and to help fund the current budget deficit.
The Jamaican government's economic policies encourage foreign investment in areas that earn or save foreign exchange, generate employment, and use local raw materials. The government also provides a wide range of incentives to investors.
Free trade zones have stimulated investment in garment assembly, light manufacturing, and data entry by foreign firms. However, over the last 5 years, the garment industry has suffered from reduced export earnings, continued factory closures, and rising unemployment. The Government of Jamaica hopes to encourage economic activity through a combination of privatization, financial sector restructuring, reduced interest rates, and by boosting tourism and related productive activities.
Before independence, Jamaica's economy was largely focused on agriculture with the vast majority of the labor force engaged in the production of sugar, bananas, and tobacco. According to one study, 18th century Jamaica had the highest wealth inequality in the world, as a very small, slave-owning elite was extremely wealthy while the rest of the population lived on the edge of subsistence.
These products were mainly exported to the United Kingdom, Canada, and to the United States of America. Jamaica's trade relationships expanded substantially from 1938 to 1946, with total imports almost doubling from £6,485,000 to £12,452,000. After 1962, the Jamaican government pushed for economic growth and all sectors excluding bauxite/alumina, energy, and tourism had shrunk between 1998 and 1999. In 2000, Jamaica experienced its first year of positive growth since 1995 due to continued tight macroeconomic policies.
Inflation fell from 25% in 1995 to single digits in 2000, reaching a multidecade low of 4.3% in 2004. Through periodic intervention in the market, the central bank also has prevented any abrupt drop in the exchange rate. The Jamaican dollar has been slipping, despite intervention, resulting in an average exchange rate of J$73.40 per US$1.00 and J136.2 per €1.00 (February 2011). In addition, inflation has been trending upward since 2004 and is projected to once again reach a double digit rate of 12-13% through the year 2008 due to a combination of unfavorable weather damaging crops and increasing agricultural imports and high energy prices.
Over the last 30 years, real per capita GDP increased at an average of just one percent per year, making Jamaica one of the slowest growing developing countries in the world.
To reverse this trajectory, the Government of Jamaica embarked on a comprehensive and ambitious program of reforms for which it has garnered national and international support: a four-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) providing a support package of US$932 million; World Bank Group and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) programs providing US$510 million each to facilitate the GoJ's economic reform agenda to stabilize the economy, reduce debt and create the conditions for growth and resilience.. In addition, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) will continue to support private sector development.
The reform program is beginning to bear fruit: Institutional reforms and measures to improve the environment for the private sector have started to restore confidence in the Jamaican economy. Jamaica jumped 27 places to 58 among 189 economies worldwide in the 2015 Doing Business ranking, the country's credit rating has improved and the Government has successfully raised more than US$2 billion in the international capital in the markets in 2014 and 2015..
Despite some revival, economic growth is still low: the Jamaican Government is forecasting real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1.9 per cent for the fiscal year 2015/2016 and the country continues to be confronted by serious social issues that predominantly affect youth, such as high levels of crime and violence and high unemployment. Jamaica, which had seen its poverty rate drop almost 20 percent over two decades, saw it increase by eight percent in a few years.
The unemployment rate in Jamaica is approximately 6.0% (April 2022, Statistical Institute of Jamaica), with youth unemployment more than twice the national rate, albeit trending downwards (15%). However, among Jamaica's assets are its skilled labor force and strong social and governance indicators.
Agricultural production is an important contributor to Jamaica's economy. However, it is vulnerable to extreme weather, such as hurricanes and to competition from neighbouring countries such as the USA. Other difficulties faced by farmers include thefts from the farm, known as praedial larceny. Agricultural production accounted for 7.4% of GDP in 1997, providing employment for nearly a quarter of the country. Jamaica's agriculture, together with forestry and fishing, accounted for about 6.6% of GDP in 1999. Sugar has been produced in Jamaica for centuries, it is the nation's dominant agricultural export. Sugar is produced in nearly every parish. The production of raw sugar in the year 2000 was estimated at 175,000 tons, a decrease from 290,000 tons in 1978.
Jamaican agriculture has been less prominent in GDP in the 2000s than other industries, hitting an all-time low between 2004 and 2008. This may have been due to a reaction to increased competition as international trade policies were enacted. For example, as NAFTA was enacted in 1993, a significant amount of Caribbean exports to the United States diminished, being out competed by Latin American exports. Another example is the Banana Import Regime's 3rd phase, in which EU nations had first given priority in banana imports to previously colonized nations. Under pressure by the World Trade Organization, the EU policy was altered to provide a non-discriminatory trade agreement. Jamaica's banana industry was easily outpriced by American companies exporting Latin American goods. Jamaica's agriculture industry is now bouncing back, growing from being 6.6% of GDP to 7.2%.
Sugar formed 7.1% of the exports in 1999 and Jamaica made up about 4.8% of the total production of sugar in the Caribbean. Sugar is also used for the production of by-products such as molasses, rum and some wallboard is made from bagasse.
Banana production in 1999 was 130,000 tons. Bananas formed 2.4% of the exports in 1999 and Jamaica formed around 7.5% of the total production of banana in the Caribbean. Jamaica stopped exporting banana in 2008 after suffering from several years of hurricanes that devastated the plantations.
Coffee is mainly grown around the Blue Mountains and in hilly areas. One type in particular, Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, is considered among the best in the world because at those heights in the Blue Mountains, the cooler climate causes the berries to take longer to ripen and the beans develop more of the substances which on roasting give coffee its flavor. Coffee formed 1.9% of exports in 1999. The picking season lasts from August to March. The coffee is exported from Kingston.
Cocoa is grown throughout Jamaica and local sales absorb about 1/3 of the output to be made into instant drinks and confectionery. Citrus fruit is mainly grown in the central parts of Jamaica, particularly between the elevations of 1,000-2,500 feet. The picking season lasts from November to April. Two factories in Bog Walk produce fruit juices, canned fruit, essential oils and marmalade. Coconuts are grown on the northern and eastern coasts, which provide enough copra to supply factories to make butterine, margarine, lard, edible oil and laundry soap.
Vanilla is also grown.
Other export crops are pimento, ginger, tobacco, sisal and other fruit are exported. Rice is grown around swampy areas around the Black River & around Long Bay in Hanover and Westmoreland parishes for local consumption.
As tastes have changed in Jamaica in favor of more meat and packaged food the national food import bill has grown to the point that it threatens the health of the economy. The government has responded by encouraging gardening and farming, a response which has had limited success. For example, the percentage of potatoes grown locally has increased, but imports of french fries have continued at a high level.
Pastures form a good percentage of the land in Jamaica. Many properties specialize in cattle rearing. Livestock holdings were 400,000 head of cattle, 440,000 goats, 180,000 hogs & 30, rs of livestock are increasing, this isn't enough for local requirements for a growing population. Dairying has increased since the erection of a condensed milk factory at Bog Walk in 1940. Even so, the supply of dairy products is not enough for local requirements and there are large imports of powdered milk, butter and cheese.
The fishing industry grew during the 1900s, primarily from the focus on inland fishing. Several thousand fishermen make a living from fishing. The shallow waters and cays off the south coast are richer than the northern waters. Other fishermen live on the Pedro Cays, 80 miles (130 km) to the south of Jamaica. Jamaica supplies about half of its fish requirements; major imports of frozen and salted fish are imported from the United States and Canada.
The total catch in 2000 was 5,676 tons, a decrease from 11,458 tons in 1997; the catch was mainly marine, with freshwater carp, barbel, etc., crustaceans & molluscs.
By the late 1890, only 185,000 hectares (460,000 acres) of Jamaica's original 1,000,000 hectares (2,500,000 acres) of forest remained. Roundwood production was 881,000 cu m (31.1 million cu ft) in 2000. About 68% of the timber cut in 2000 was used as fuel wood while 32% was used for industrial use. The forests that once covered Jamaica now exist only in mountainous areas. They only supply 20% of the island timber requirements. The remaining forest is protected from further exploitation. Other accessible mountain areas are being reforested, mainly with pines, mahoe and mahogany.
Jamaica was the third-leading producer of bauxite and alumina in 1998, producing 12.6 million tons of bauxite, accounting for 10.4% of world production, and 3.46 million tons of alumina, accounting for 7.4% of world production. 8,540 million tons of bauxite was mined in 2012 and 10,200 million tons of bauxite in 2011.
Mining and quarrying made up 4.1% of the nation's gross domestic product in 1999. Bauxite and alumina formed 55.2% of exports in 1999 and are the second-leading money earner after tourism. Jamaica has reserves of over 2 billion tonnes, which are expected to last 100 years. Bauxite is found in the central parishes of St. Elizabeth, Manchester, Clarendon, St. Catherine, St. Ann, and Trelawny. There are four alumina plants and six mines.
Jamaica has deposits of several million tons of gypsum on the southern slopes of the Blue Mountains. Jamaica produced 330,441 tons of gypsum in the year 2000, some of which was used in the local cement industry and in the manufacturing of building materials.
Other minerals present in Jamaica include marble, limestone, and silica, as well as ores of copper, lead, zinc, manganese and iron. Some of these are worked in small quantities. Petroleum has been sought, but so far none has been found.
The manufacturing sector is an essential contributor to the Jamaican economy. Though manufacturing accounted for 13.9% of GDP in 1999. Jamaican companies contribute many manufactures such as food processing; oil refining; produced chemicals, construction materials, plastic goods, paints, pharmaceuticals, cartons, leather goods and cigars & assembled electronics, textiles and apparel. The garment industry is a major job employer for thousands of hundreds of locals and they formed 12.9% of exports in 1999 earning US$159 million. Chemicals formed 3.3% of the exports in 1999 earning US$40 million.
A portion of the bauxite mined on the island is processed into alumina before export.
An oil refinery is located near Kingston converts crude petroleum obtained from Venezuela into gasoline and other products. These are mainly for local use. The construction industry is growing due to new hotels and attractions being built for tourism. Construction and installation formed 10.4% of the GDP in 1999.
Manufactured goods were imported and formed 30.3% of the imports and cost US$877 million in 1999.
Since the launch of the Jamaican Logistics Hub initiative, various economic zones have been proposed throughout the country to assemble goods from other parts of the world for distribution to the Americas.
Tourism is tied with remittances as Jamaica's top source of revenue. The tourism industry earns over 50 percent of the country's total foreign exchange earnings and provides about one-fourth of all jobs in Jamaica. Most tourist activity is centered on the island's northern coast, including the communities of Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, and Port Antonio, as well as in Negril on the island's western tip.
Some destinations include Ocho Rios, Green Grotto Caves, Y.S. Falls and Appleton Estate. Most of the tourist sites are landmarks as well as homes for many Jamaicans. Many of the most frequented tourist sites are located mainly by water such as rivers and beaches where fishermen make a living from seafood. One of the most famous beach towns in Jamaica is Ocho Rios, a located in the parish of Saint Ann on the north coast of Jamaica. It was once a fishing village but now attracts millions of tourists yearly. The site is popular today because of the food and culture that can be found there.
Another famous location in Jamaica that attracts millions yearly is Dunn's River Falls, located in Ocho Rios; this waterfall is approximately 600 feet long and runs off into the sea. Around the location many hotels and restaurants are available and many street vendors sell food around the clock. Another well-known beach town is Negril, the party capital of the country. This beach town has many different factors to add to the night life.
In April 2014, the Governments of Jamaica and China signed the preliminary agreements for the first phase of the Jamaican Logistics Hub (JLH) - the initiative that aims to position Kingston as the fourth node in the global logistics chain, joining Rotterdam, Dubai and Singapore, and serving the Americas. The Project, when completed, is expected to provide many jobs for Jamaicans, Economic Zones for multinational companies and much needed economic growth to alleviate the country's heavy debt-to-GDP ratio. Strict adherence to the IMF's refinancing programme and preparations for the JLH has favourably affected Jamaica's credit rating and outlook from the three biggest rating agencies.
Jamaica has made strides in developing its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure.
As the largest English speaking territory in the Caribbean, Jamaica is the region's leading contact centre location with over 87 information communications technology/business process outsourcing (ICT/BPO) companies operating in the country employing 44,000 full-time agents.
Jamaican tax rates are extremely favourable in world standards, the brackets are as follows:
Separate Tax Rates apply for foreign nationals.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2018. Inflation below 5% is in green. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Jamaica is heavily reliant on services, accounting for 70% of the country's GDP. Jamaica has natural resources and a climate conducive to agriculture and tourism. The discovery of bauxite in the 1940s and the subsequent establishment of the bauxite-alumina industry shifted Jamaica's economy from sugar, and bananas.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Weakness in the financial sector, speculation, and lower levels of investment erode confidence in the productive sector. The government continues its efforts to raise new sovereign debt in local and international financial markets in order to meet its U.S. dollar debt obligations, to mop up liquidity to maintain the exchange rate and to help fund the current budget deficit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Jamaican government's economic policies encourage foreign investment in areas that earn or save foreign exchange, generate employment, and use local raw materials. The government also provides a wide range of incentives to investors.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Free trade zones have stimulated investment in garment assembly, light manufacturing, and data entry by foreign firms. However, over the last 5 years, the garment industry has suffered from reduced export earnings, continued factory closures, and rising unemployment. The Government of Jamaica hopes to encourage economic activity through a combination of privatization, financial sector restructuring, reduced interest rates, and by boosting tourism and related productive activities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Before independence, Jamaica's economy was largely focused on agriculture with the vast majority of the labor force engaged in the production of sugar, bananas, and tobacco. According to one study, 18th century Jamaica had the highest wealth inequality in the world, as a very small, slave-owning elite was extremely wealthy while the rest of the population lived on the edge of subsistence.",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "These products were mainly exported to the United Kingdom, Canada, and to the United States of America. Jamaica's trade relationships expanded substantially from 1938 to 1946, with total imports almost doubling from £6,485,000 to £12,452,000. After 1962, the Jamaican government pushed for economic growth and all sectors excluding bauxite/alumina, energy, and tourism had shrunk between 1998 and 1999. In 2000, Jamaica experienced its first year of positive growth since 1995 due to continued tight macroeconomic policies.",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Inflation fell from 25% in 1995 to single digits in 2000, reaching a multidecade low of 4.3% in 2004. Through periodic intervention in the market, the central bank also has prevented any abrupt drop in the exchange rate. The Jamaican dollar has been slipping, despite intervention, resulting in an average exchange rate of J$73.40 per US$1.00 and J136.2 per €1.00 (February 2011). In addition, inflation has been trending upward since 2004 and is projected to once again reach a double digit rate of 12-13% through the year 2008 due to a combination of unfavorable weather damaging crops and increasing agricultural imports and high energy prices.",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Over the last 30 years, real per capita GDP increased at an average of just one percent per year, making Jamaica one of the slowest growing developing countries in the world.",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "To reverse this trajectory, the Government of Jamaica embarked on a comprehensive and ambitious program of reforms for which it has garnered national and international support: a four-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) providing a support package of US$932 million; World Bank Group and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) programs providing US$510 million each to facilitate the GoJ's economic reform agenda to stabilize the economy, reduce debt and create the conditions for growth and resilience.. In addition, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) will continue to support private sector development.",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The reform program is beginning to bear fruit: Institutional reforms and measures to improve the environment for the private sector have started to restore confidence in the Jamaican economy. Jamaica jumped 27 places to 58 among 189 economies worldwide in the 2015 Doing Business ranking, the country's credit rating has improved and the Government has successfully raised more than US$2 billion in the international capital in the markets in 2014 and 2015..",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Despite some revival, economic growth is still low: the Jamaican Government is forecasting real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1.9 per cent for the fiscal year 2015/2016 and the country continues to be confronted by serious social issues that predominantly affect youth, such as high levels of crime and violence and high unemployment. Jamaica, which had seen its poverty rate drop almost 20 percent over two decades, saw it increase by eight percent in a few years.",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The unemployment rate in Jamaica is approximately 6.0% (April 2022, Statistical Institute of Jamaica), with youth unemployment more than twice the national rate, albeit trending downwards (15%). However, among Jamaica's assets are its skilled labor force and strong social and governance indicators.",
"title": "Economic history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Agricultural production is an important contributor to Jamaica's economy. However, it is vulnerable to extreme weather, such as hurricanes and to competition from neighbouring countries such as the USA. Other difficulties faced by farmers include thefts from the farm, known as praedial larceny. Agricultural production accounted for 7.4% of GDP in 1997, providing employment for nearly a quarter of the country. Jamaica's agriculture, together with forestry and fishing, accounted for about 6.6% of GDP in 1999. Sugar has been produced in Jamaica for centuries, it is the nation's dominant agricultural export. Sugar is produced in nearly every parish. The production of raw sugar in the year 2000 was estimated at 175,000 tons, a decrease from 290,000 tons in 1978.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Jamaican agriculture has been less prominent in GDP in the 2000s than other industries, hitting an all-time low between 2004 and 2008. This may have been due to a reaction to increased competition as international trade policies were enacted. For example, as NAFTA was enacted in 1993, a significant amount of Caribbean exports to the United States diminished, being out competed by Latin American exports. Another example is the Banana Import Regime's 3rd phase, in which EU nations had first given priority in banana imports to previously colonized nations. Under pressure by the World Trade Organization, the EU policy was altered to provide a non-discriminatory trade agreement. Jamaica's banana industry was easily outpriced by American companies exporting Latin American goods. Jamaica's agriculture industry is now bouncing back, growing from being 6.6% of GDP to 7.2%.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Sugar formed 7.1% of the exports in 1999 and Jamaica made up about 4.8% of the total production of sugar in the Caribbean. Sugar is also used for the production of by-products such as molasses, rum and some wallboard is made from bagasse.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Banana production in 1999 was 130,000 tons. Bananas formed 2.4% of the exports in 1999 and Jamaica formed around 7.5% of the total production of banana in the Caribbean. Jamaica stopped exporting banana in 2008 after suffering from several years of hurricanes that devastated the plantations.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Coffee is mainly grown around the Blue Mountains and in hilly areas. One type in particular, Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, is considered among the best in the world because at those heights in the Blue Mountains, the cooler climate causes the berries to take longer to ripen and the beans develop more of the substances which on roasting give coffee its flavor. Coffee formed 1.9% of exports in 1999. The picking season lasts from August to March. The coffee is exported from Kingston.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Cocoa is grown throughout Jamaica and local sales absorb about 1/3 of the output to be made into instant drinks and confectionery. Citrus fruit is mainly grown in the central parts of Jamaica, particularly between the elevations of 1,000-2,500 feet. The picking season lasts from November to April. Two factories in Bog Walk produce fruit juices, canned fruit, essential oils and marmalade. Coconuts are grown on the northern and eastern coasts, which provide enough copra to supply factories to make butterine, margarine, lard, edible oil and laundry soap.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Vanilla is also grown.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Other export crops are pimento, ginger, tobacco, sisal and other fruit are exported. Rice is grown around swampy areas around the Black River & around Long Bay in Hanover and Westmoreland parishes for local consumption.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "As tastes have changed in Jamaica in favor of more meat and packaged food the national food import bill has grown to the point that it threatens the health of the economy. The government has responded by encouraging gardening and farming, a response which has had limited success. For example, the percentage of potatoes grown locally has increased, but imports of french fries have continued at a high level.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Pastures form a good percentage of the land in Jamaica. Many properties specialize in cattle rearing. Livestock holdings were 400,000 head of cattle, 440,000 goats, 180,000 hogs & 30, rs of livestock are increasing, this isn't enough for local requirements for a growing population. Dairying has increased since the erection of a condensed milk factory at Bog Walk in 1940. Even so, the supply of dairy products is not enough for local requirements and there are large imports of powdered milk, butter and cheese.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The fishing industry grew during the 1900s, primarily from the focus on inland fishing. Several thousand fishermen make a living from fishing. The shallow waters and cays off the south coast are richer than the northern waters. Other fishermen live on the Pedro Cays, 80 miles (130 km) to the south of Jamaica. Jamaica supplies about half of its fish requirements; major imports of frozen and salted fish are imported from the United States and Canada.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The total catch in 2000 was 5,676 tons, a decrease from 11,458 tons in 1997; the catch was mainly marine, with freshwater carp, barbel, etc., crustaceans & molluscs.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "By the late 1890, only 185,000 hectares (460,000 acres) of Jamaica's original 1,000,000 hectares (2,500,000 acres) of forest remained. Roundwood production was 881,000 cu m (31.1 million cu ft) in 2000. About 68% of the timber cut in 2000 was used as fuel wood while 32% was used for industrial use. The forests that once covered Jamaica now exist only in mountainous areas. They only supply 20% of the island timber requirements. The remaining forest is protected from further exploitation. Other accessible mountain areas are being reforested, mainly with pines, mahoe and mahogany.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Jamaica was the third-leading producer of bauxite and alumina in 1998, producing 12.6 million tons of bauxite, accounting for 10.4% of world production, and 3.46 million tons of alumina, accounting for 7.4% of world production. 8,540 million tons of bauxite was mined in 2012 and 10,200 million tons of bauxite in 2011.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Mining and quarrying made up 4.1% of the nation's gross domestic product in 1999. Bauxite and alumina formed 55.2% of exports in 1999 and are the second-leading money earner after tourism. Jamaica has reserves of over 2 billion tonnes, which are expected to last 100 years. Bauxite is found in the central parishes of St. Elizabeth, Manchester, Clarendon, St. Catherine, St. Ann, and Trelawny. There are four alumina plants and six mines.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Jamaica has deposits of several million tons of gypsum on the southern slopes of the Blue Mountains. Jamaica produced 330,441 tons of gypsum in the year 2000, some of which was used in the local cement industry and in the manufacturing of building materials.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Other minerals present in Jamaica include marble, limestone, and silica, as well as ores of copper, lead, zinc, manganese and iron. Some of these are worked in small quantities. Petroleum has been sought, but so far none has been found.",
"title": "Primary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The manufacturing sector is an essential contributor to the Jamaican economy. Though manufacturing accounted for 13.9% of GDP in 1999. Jamaican companies contribute many manufactures such as food processing; oil refining; produced chemicals, construction materials, plastic goods, paints, pharmaceuticals, cartons, leather goods and cigars & assembled electronics, textiles and apparel. The garment industry is a major job employer for thousands of hundreds of locals and they formed 12.9% of exports in 1999 earning US$159 million. Chemicals formed 3.3% of the exports in 1999 earning US$40 million.",
"title": "Secondary Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "A portion of the bauxite mined on the island is processed into alumina before export.",
"title": "Secondary Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "An oil refinery is located near Kingston converts crude petroleum obtained from Venezuela into gasoline and other products. These are mainly for local use. The construction industry is growing due to new hotels and attractions being built for tourism. Construction and installation formed 10.4% of the GDP in 1999.",
"title": "Secondary Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Manufactured goods were imported and formed 30.3% of the imports and cost US$877 million in 1999.",
"title": "Secondary Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Since the launch of the Jamaican Logistics Hub initiative, various economic zones have been proposed throughout the country to assemble goods from other parts of the world for distribution to the Americas.",
"title": "Secondary Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Tourism is tied with remittances as Jamaica's top source of revenue. The tourism industry earns over 50 percent of the country's total foreign exchange earnings and provides about one-fourth of all jobs in Jamaica. Most tourist activity is centered on the island's northern coast, including the communities of Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, and Port Antonio, as well as in Negril on the island's western tip.",
"title": "Tertiary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Some destinations include Ocho Rios, Green Grotto Caves, Y.S. Falls and Appleton Estate. Most of the tourist sites are landmarks as well as homes for many Jamaicans. Many of the most frequented tourist sites are located mainly by water such as rivers and beaches where fishermen make a living from seafood. One of the most famous beach towns in Jamaica is Ocho Rios, a located in the parish of Saint Ann on the north coast of Jamaica. It was once a fishing village but now attracts millions of tourists yearly. The site is popular today because of the food and culture that can be found there.",
"title": "Tertiary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Another famous location in Jamaica that attracts millions yearly is Dunn's River Falls, located in Ocho Rios; this waterfall is approximately 600 feet long and runs off into the sea. Around the location many hotels and restaurants are available and many street vendors sell food around the clock. Another well-known beach town is Negril, the party capital of the country. This beach town has many different factors to add to the night life.",
"title": "Tertiary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In April 2014, the Governments of Jamaica and China signed the preliminary agreements for the first phase of the Jamaican Logistics Hub (JLH) - the initiative that aims to position Kingston as the fourth node in the global logistics chain, joining Rotterdam, Dubai and Singapore, and serving the Americas. The Project, when completed, is expected to provide many jobs for Jamaicans, Economic Zones for multinational companies and much needed economic growth to alleviate the country's heavy debt-to-GDP ratio. Strict adherence to the IMF's refinancing programme and preparations for the JLH has favourably affected Jamaica's credit rating and outlook from the three biggest rating agencies.",
"title": "Tertiary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Jamaica has made strides in developing its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure.",
"title": "Tertiary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "As the largest English speaking territory in the Caribbean, Jamaica is the region's leading contact centre location with over 87 information communications technology/business process outsourcing (ICT/BPO) companies operating in the country employing 44,000 full-time agents.",
"title": "Tertiary industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Jamaican tax rates are extremely favourable in world standards, the brackets are as follows:",
"title": "Taxation/Tax Rates"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Separate Tax Rates apply for foreign nationals.",
"title": "Taxation/Tax Rates"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2018. Inflation below 5% is in green.",
"title": "Economic Data"
}
]
| The economy of Jamaica is heavily reliant on services, accounting for 70% of the country's GDP. Jamaica has natural resources and a climate conducive to agriculture and tourism. The discovery of bauxite in the 1940s and the subsequent establishment of the bauxite-alumina industry shifted Jamaica's economy from sugar, and bananas. Weakness in the financial sector, speculation, and lower levels of investment erode confidence in the productive sector. The government continues its efforts to raise new sovereign debt in local and international financial markets in order to meet its U.S. dollar debt obligations, to mop up liquidity to maintain the exchange rate and to help fund the current budget deficit. The Jamaican government's economic policies encourage foreign investment in areas that earn or save foreign exchange, generate employment, and use local raw materials. The government also provides a wide range of incentives to investors. Free trade zones have stimulated investment in garment assembly, light manufacturing, and data entry by foreign firms. However, over the last 5 years, the garment industry has suffered from reduced export earnings, continued factory closures, and rising unemployment. The Government of Jamaica hopes to encourage economic activity through a combination of privatization, financial sector restructuring, reduced interest rates, and by boosting tourism and related productive activities. | 2001-07-06T14:32:17Z | 2023-11-13T23:07:11Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Jamaica |
15,666 | Telecommunications in Jamaica | Telecommunications in Jamaica include the fixed and mobile telephone networks, radio, television, and the Internet.
Jamaica is a member of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). The NANP Administrator (NANPA) has allocated the area codes 876 and 658 for use in the country, which is a single numbering plan area (NPA) with an overlay numbering plan. The national telephone number format is NPA-NXX-XXXX, where N is one of the digits 2 through 9, and X is any digit.
For international dialing to Jamaica, the country code is 1.
For accessing international destinations from within Jamaica, the international call prefix is 011.
Calls from Jamaica to other NANP nations, such as the U.S. and Canada, are dialed as 1 + NANP area code + 7-digit number.
Jamaica has a fully digital telephone communication system.
The country's three mobile operators – Cable and Wireless (once marketed as LIME – Landline, Internet, Mobile and Entertainment now named FLOW), Digicel, and at one point Oceanic Digital (operating as MiPhone and now known as Claro since late 2008) until the carrier was acquired and the relevant spectrum sold to Digicel – have spent millions in network upgrade and expansion. Both Digicel and Oceanic Digital were granted licences in 2001 to operate mobile services in the newly liberalised telecom market that had once been the sole domain of the incumbent Cable and Wireless monopoly. Digicel opted for the more widely used GSM wireless system, while Oceanic opted for the CDMA standard. Cable and Wireless, which had begun with TDMA standard, subsequently upgraded to GSM, and currently utilises both standards on its network.
With wireless usage increasing, landlines supplied by Cable and Wireless have declined from just over half a million to roughly three hundred thousand as of 2006. In a bid to grab more market share, Cable and Wireless recently launched a new land line service called HomeFone Prepaid that would allow customers to pay for minutes they use rather than pay a set monthly fee for service, much like prepaid wireless service.
Two more licenses were auctioned by the Jamaican government to provide mobile services on the island, including one that was previously owned by AT&T Wireless but never utilized, and one new license.
Another entrant to the Jamaican communications market, FLOW, laid a new submarine cable connecting Jamaica to the United States. This new cable increases the total number of submarine cables connecting Jamaica internationally to four. The company's parent was acquired by Cable and Wireless Communications in November 2014 and finalized in March 2015. The new FLOW was re-launched as a successor to LIME and the old Flow on August 31, 2015; offering mobile, fixed voice, fixed broadband and TV services to the market. It has now become the first quad-play provider in Jamaica. The company runs a vast copper network (inherited from LIME) islandwide as well as a Hybrid Fiber and Coaxial network (from the old Flow) in the metropolitan areas of Kingston and Montego Bay. They also have small Fiber-to-the-home operations in certain sections of St. James that began in 2011 (under LIME). On the mobile side, the company had completed its 4G HSPA+ rollout (capable of speeds up to 21 Mbit/s) across the island in November 2015 and has announced plans to move to LTE within the year 2016. However, Digicel has become the first LTE network operator in Jamaica, going live with their network on June 9, 2016.
There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms without judicial oversight.
The law provides for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, generally effective judicial protection, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press. The independent media are active and express a wide variety of views without restriction. Broadcast media were largely state owned, but open to pluralistic points of view. Although the constitution prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, in practice the police conduct searches without warrants.
A law decriminalizing defamation was passed by the Jamaican House of Representatives in November 2013 after being approved unanimously by the Senate the previous July. It took six years to amend the libel and slander laws, which – although little used – made media offences punishable by imprisonment. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Telecommunications in Jamaica include the fixed and mobile telephone networks, radio, television, and the Internet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jamaica is a member of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). The NANP Administrator (NANPA) has allocated the area codes 876 and 658 for use in the country, which is a single numbering plan area (NPA) with an overlay numbering plan. The national telephone number format is NPA-NXX-XXXX, where N is one of the digits 2 through 9, and X is any digit.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "For international dialing to Jamaica, the country code is 1.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "For accessing international destinations from within Jamaica, the international call prefix is 011.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Calls from Jamaica to other NANP nations, such as the U.S. and Canada, are dialed as 1 + NANP area code + 7-digit number.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Jamaica has a fully digital telephone communication system.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The country's three mobile operators – Cable and Wireless (once marketed as LIME – Landline, Internet, Mobile and Entertainment now named FLOW), Digicel, and at one point Oceanic Digital (operating as MiPhone and now known as Claro since late 2008) until the carrier was acquired and the relevant spectrum sold to Digicel – have spent millions in network upgrade and expansion. Both Digicel and Oceanic Digital were granted licences in 2001 to operate mobile services in the newly liberalised telecom market that had once been the sole domain of the incumbent Cable and Wireless monopoly. Digicel opted for the more widely used GSM wireless system, while Oceanic opted for the CDMA standard. Cable and Wireless, which had begun with TDMA standard, subsequently upgraded to GSM, and currently utilises both standards on its network.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "With wireless usage increasing, landlines supplied by Cable and Wireless have declined from just over half a million to roughly three hundred thousand as of 2006. In a bid to grab more market share, Cable and Wireless recently launched a new land line service called HomeFone Prepaid that would allow customers to pay for minutes they use rather than pay a set monthly fee for service, much like prepaid wireless service.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Two more licenses were auctioned by the Jamaican government to provide mobile services on the island, including one that was previously owned by AT&T Wireless but never utilized, and one new license.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Another entrant to the Jamaican communications market, FLOW, laid a new submarine cable connecting Jamaica to the United States. This new cable increases the total number of submarine cables connecting Jamaica internationally to four. The company's parent was acquired by Cable and Wireless Communications in November 2014 and finalized in March 2015. The new FLOW was re-launched as a successor to LIME and the old Flow on August 31, 2015; offering mobile, fixed voice, fixed broadband and TV services to the market. It has now become the first quad-play provider in Jamaica. The company runs a vast copper network (inherited from LIME) islandwide as well as a Hybrid Fiber and Coaxial network (from the old Flow) in the metropolitan areas of Kingston and Montego Bay. They also have small Fiber-to-the-home operations in certain sections of St. James that began in 2011 (under LIME). On the mobile side, the company had completed its 4G HSPA+ rollout (capable of speeds up to 21 Mbit/s) across the island in November 2015 and has announced plans to move to LTE within the year 2016. However, Digicel has become the first LTE network operator in Jamaica, going live with their network on June 9, 2016.",
"title": "Telecommunications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms without judicial oversight.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The law provides for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, generally effective judicial protection, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press. The independent media are active and express a wide variety of views without restriction. Broadcast media were largely state owned, but open to pluralistic points of view. Although the constitution prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, in practice the police conduct searches without warrants.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A law decriminalizing defamation was passed by the Jamaican House of Representatives in November 2013 after being approved unanimously by the Senate the previous July. It took six years to amend the libel and slander laws, which – although little used – made media offences punishable by imprisonment.",
"title": "Internet"
}
]
| Telecommunications in Jamaica include the fixed and mobile telephone networks, radio, television, and the Internet. | 2001-07-06T14:26:58Z | 2023-11-06T21:49:34Z | [
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15,667 | Transport in Jamaica | Transport in Jamaica consists of roadways, railways, ship and air transport, with roadways forming the backbone of the island's internal transport system.
The Jamaican road network consists of almost 21,000 kilometres of roads, of which over 15,000 kilometres are paved. The Jamaican Government has, since the late 1990s and in cooperation with private investors, embarked on a campaign of infrastructural improvement projects, one of which includes the creation of a system of freeways, the first such access-controlled roadways of their kind on the island, connecting the main population centres of the island. This project has so far seen the completion of 33 kilometres of freeway.
The Highway 2000 project, which seeks ultimately to link Kingston with Montego Bay and the north coast, is currently undergoing a series of phases/legs. Phase 1 is the highway network between Kingston and Mandeville, which itself has been divided into sub-phases: Phase 1a (Kingston-Bushy Park (in actuality, Kingston-Sandy Bay) highway and the upgrade of the Portmore Causeway), which was completed June 2006, and Phase 1b (Sandy Bay-Williamsfield). Phase 2a is the highway between Old Harbour and Ocho Rios, and Phase 2b is the highway between Mandeville and Montego Bay.
total: 18,700 km (11,620 mi). paved: 13,100 km (8,140 mi). unpaved: 5,600 km (3,480 mi) (1997 est.).
The Jamaica Omnibus Service (JOS) was a municipal bus system that served the Kingston metropolitan area that ran from 1953 to 1983. After being run by British Electric Traction, the JOS was nationalised by the Jamaican government in 1974. It was replaced by a hodgepodge of privately operated buses, and a national bus system called the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) was established in 1998 after complaints. The JUTC presently oversees more than 70 routes in areas including Kingston and Spanish Town.
Coaches are a notable means of travel in Jamaica; a popular privately operated coach service is the Knutsford Express. The JUTC also provides charter buses. As for minibuses and route taxis, PPV number plates indicate licensed public transport, whereas JUTA plates indicate tourist routes.
Having been proposed in 2019, the JUTC began testing floating solar electric buses in 2022, hoping to gradually introduce electric buses into the fleet and eventually phase out diesel buses.
Railways in Jamaica, as in many other countries, no longer enjoy the prominent position they once did, having been largely replaced by roadways as the primary means of transport. Of the 272 kilometres of railway found in Jamaica, only 57 kilometres remain in operation, currently used to transport bauxite.
In 2008, with increasing traffic congestion, moves are being made to reconstruct old railway lines.
total: 370 km standard gauge: 370 km 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) gauge. Of these, 207 km belong to the Jamaica Railway Corporation in common carrier service but are no longer operational. The other 163 km is privately owned and used to transport bauxite.
There are two international airports in Jamaica with modern terminals, long runways, and the navigational equipment required to accommodate the large jet aircraft used in modern air travel: Norman Manley International Airport in the capital, Kingston and Sangster International Airport in the resort city of Montego Bay. Both airports were once home to the country's (now defunct) national airline, Air Jamaica. In addition there are local commuter airports at Tinson Pen (Kingston), Port Antonio, Ocho Rios, Mandeville, and Negril that cater to internal flights only. The Ian Fleming International Airport opened in February 2011 to serve the Ocho Rios - Port Antonio area. Many other small, rural centres are served by private fields on sugar estates or bauxite mines.
Owing to its location in the Caribbean Sea in the shipping lane to the Panama Canal and relative proximity to large markets in North America and emerging markets in Latin America, Jamaica receives high container traffic. The container terminal at the Port of Kingston has undergone large expansion in capacity in recent years to handle growth both already realised as well as what is projected in coming years.
There are several other ports positioned around the island, including the alumina ports, Port Esquivel in St. Catherine (WINDALCO), Rocky Point in Clarendon and Port Kaiser in St. Elizabeth. Port Rhoades in Discovery Bay is responsible for transporting bauxite dried at the adjacent Kaiser plant. Reynolds Pier in Ocho Rios is responsible for exporting sugar. Montego Freeport in Montego Bay also handles a variety of cargo like (though more limited than) the Port of Kingston, mainly agricultural products. Boundbrook Port in Port Antonio exports bananas. There are also three cruise ship piers along the island, in Ocho Rios, Montego Bay and Port Antonio.
The Kingston port is situated in the Kingston Harbour, which is the 7th largest natural (i.e. not man made) harbour in the world.
As the island is a large exporter of bauxite, there is considerable freighter traffic. To aid navigation, Jamaica operates nine lighthouses
Petroleum products: 10 km (6 mi). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Transport in Jamaica consists of roadways, railways, ship and air transport, with roadways forming the backbone of the island's internal transport system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Jamaican road network consists of almost 21,000 kilometres of roads, of which over 15,000 kilometres are paved. The Jamaican Government has, since the late 1990s and in cooperation with private investors, embarked on a campaign of infrastructural improvement projects, one of which includes the creation of a system of freeways, the first such access-controlled roadways of their kind on the island, connecting the main population centres of the island. This project has so far seen the completion of 33 kilometres of freeway.",
"title": "Roadways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Highway 2000 project, which seeks ultimately to link Kingston with Montego Bay and the north coast, is currently undergoing a series of phases/legs. Phase 1 is the highway network between Kingston and Mandeville, which itself has been divided into sub-phases: Phase 1a (Kingston-Bushy Park (in actuality, Kingston-Sandy Bay) highway and the upgrade of the Portmore Causeway), which was completed June 2006, and Phase 1b (Sandy Bay-Williamsfield). Phase 2a is the highway between Old Harbour and Ocho Rios, and Phase 2b is the highway between Mandeville and Montego Bay.",
"title": "Roadways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "total: 18,700 km (11,620 mi). paved: 13,100 km (8,140 mi). unpaved: 5,600 km (3,480 mi) (1997 est.).",
"title": "Roadways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Jamaica Omnibus Service (JOS) was a municipal bus system that served the Kingston metropolitan area that ran from 1953 to 1983. After being run by British Electric Traction, the JOS was nationalised by the Jamaican government in 1974. It was replaced by a hodgepodge of privately operated buses, and a national bus system called the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) was established in 1998 after complaints. The JUTC presently oversees more than 70 routes in areas including Kingston and Spanish Town.",
"title": "Buses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Coaches are a notable means of travel in Jamaica; a popular privately operated coach service is the Knutsford Express. The JUTC also provides charter buses. As for minibuses and route taxis, PPV number plates indicate licensed public transport, whereas JUTA plates indicate tourist routes.",
"title": "Buses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Having been proposed in 2019, the JUTC began testing floating solar electric buses in 2022, hoping to gradually introduce electric buses into the fleet and eventually phase out diesel buses.",
"title": "Buses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Railways in Jamaica, as in many other countries, no longer enjoy the prominent position they once did, having been largely replaced by roadways as the primary means of transport. Of the 272 kilometres of railway found in Jamaica, only 57 kilometres remain in operation, currently used to transport bauxite.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 2008, with increasing traffic congestion, moves are being made to reconstruct old railway lines.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "total: 370 km standard gauge: 370 km 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) gauge. Of these, 207 km belong to the Jamaica Railway Corporation in common carrier service but are no longer operational. The other 163 km is privately owned and used to transport bauxite.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "There are two international airports in Jamaica with modern terminals, long runways, and the navigational equipment required to accommodate the large jet aircraft used in modern air travel: Norman Manley International Airport in the capital, Kingston and Sangster International Airport in the resort city of Montego Bay. Both airports were once home to the country's (now defunct) national airline, Air Jamaica. In addition there are local commuter airports at Tinson Pen (Kingston), Port Antonio, Ocho Rios, Mandeville, and Negril that cater to internal flights only. The Ian Fleming International Airport opened in February 2011 to serve the Ocho Rios - Port Antonio area. Many other small, rural centres are served by private fields on sugar estates or bauxite mines.",
"title": "Air Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Owing to its location in the Caribbean Sea in the shipping lane to the Panama Canal and relative proximity to large markets in North America and emerging markets in Latin America, Jamaica receives high container traffic. The container terminal at the Port of Kingston has undergone large expansion in capacity in recent years to handle growth both already realised as well as what is projected in coming years.",
"title": "Ports and Shipping"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There are several other ports positioned around the island, including the alumina ports, Port Esquivel in St. Catherine (WINDALCO), Rocky Point in Clarendon and Port Kaiser in St. Elizabeth. Port Rhoades in Discovery Bay is responsible for transporting bauxite dried at the adjacent Kaiser plant. Reynolds Pier in Ocho Rios is responsible for exporting sugar. Montego Freeport in Montego Bay also handles a variety of cargo like (though more limited than) the Port of Kingston, mainly agricultural products. Boundbrook Port in Port Antonio exports bananas. There are also three cruise ship piers along the island, in Ocho Rios, Montego Bay and Port Antonio.",
"title": "Ports and Shipping"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Kingston port is situated in the Kingston Harbour, which is the 7th largest natural (i.e. not man made) harbour in the world.",
"title": "Ports and Shipping"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "As the island is a large exporter of bauxite, there is considerable freighter traffic. To aid navigation, Jamaica operates nine lighthouses",
"title": "Lighthouses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Petroleum products: 10 km (6 mi).",
"title": "Pipelines"
}
]
| Transport in Jamaica consists of roadways, railways, ship and air transport, with roadways forming the backbone of the island's internal transport system. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-09-21T13:34:09Z | [
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15,669 | Foreign relations of Jamaica | Jamaica has diplomatic relations with many nations and is a member of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. Jamaica chairs the Working Group on smaller Economies.
Jamaica is an active member of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement (G-77). Jamaica is a beneficiary of the Lome Conventions, through which the European Union (EU) grants trade preferences to selected states in Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, and has played a leading role in the negotiations of the successor agreement in Fiji in 2000.
Disputes - international: none
Illicit drugs: Transshipment point for cocaine from Central and South America to North America and Europe; illicit cultivation of cannabis; government has an active manual cannabis eradication program
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade is the government ministry responsible for handling Jamaica's external relations and foreign trade.
Historically, Jamaica has had close ties with the UK. Trade, financial, and cultural relations with the United States are now predominant. Jamaica is linked with the other countries of the English-speaking Caribbean through the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and more broadly through the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). Jamaica has served two 2-year terms on the United Nations Security Council, in 1979-80 and 2000-2001.
In the follow-on meetings to the December 1994 Summit of the Americas, Jamaica—together with Uruguay—was given the responsibility of coordinating discussions on invigorating society.
List of countries which Jamaica maintains diplomatic relations with:
Jamaica maintains economic and cultural relations with Taiwan via Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada.
Jamaica has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations since 1962 when it became an independent Commonwealth realm. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jamaica has diplomatic relations with many nations and is a member of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. Jamaica chairs the Working Group on smaller Economies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jamaica is an active member of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement (G-77). Jamaica is a beneficiary of the Lome Conventions, through which the European Union (EU) grants trade preferences to selected states in Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, and has played a leading role in the negotiations of the successor agreement in Fiji in 2000.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Disputes - international: none",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Illicit drugs: Transshipment point for cocaine from Central and South America to North America and Europe; illicit cultivation of cannabis; government has an active manual cannabis eradication program",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade is the government ministry responsible for handling Jamaica's external relations and foreign trade.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Historically, Jamaica has had close ties with the UK. Trade, financial, and cultural relations with the United States are now predominant. Jamaica is linked with the other countries of the English-speaking Caribbean through the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and more broadly through the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). Jamaica has served two 2-year terms on the United Nations Security Council, in 1979-80 and 2000-2001.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the follow-on meetings to the December 1994 Summit of the Americas, Jamaica—together with Uruguay—was given the responsibility of coordinating discussions on invigorating society.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "List of countries which Jamaica maintains diplomatic relations with:",
"title": "Diplomatic Relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Jamaica maintains economic and cultural relations with Taiwan via Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Jamaica has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations since 1962 when it became an independent Commonwealth realm.",
"title": "Jamaica and the Commonwealth"
}
]
| Jamaica has diplomatic relations with many nations and is a member of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. Jamaica chairs the Working Group on smaller Economies. Jamaica is an active member of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement (G-77). Jamaica is a beneficiary of the Lome Conventions, through which the European Union (EU) grants trade preferences to selected states in Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, and has played a leading role in the negotiations of the successor agreement in Fiji in 2000. Disputes - international:
none Illicit drugs:
Transshipment point for cocaine from Central and South America to North America and Europe; illicit cultivation of cannabis; government has an active manual cannabis eradication program The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade is the government ministry responsible for handling Jamaica's external relations and foreign trade. | 2001-05-07T20:47:27Z | 2023-12-19T19:10:05Z | [
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15,670 | Science and technology in Jamaica | The Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) sector is guided by two primary institutions, the National Commission on Science and Technology (NCST) and the Scientific Research Council (SRC). Both are under the direction of the Ministry of Science, Energy, and Technology.
Science and technology in Jamaica has a long history. In 1879, the Governor of Jamaica created the Institute of Jamaica "For the Encouragement of Literature, Science and Art in Jamaica". Jamaica was among the earliest developing countries to craft a scientific law to guide the use of science and technology for the exploitation of domestic natural resources. It was one of the first countries in the western hemisphere to gain electricity, build a railway and to use research results to boost sugar cane production. In 1960, the Scientific Research Council (SRC) was established, with a mandate to "collect, collate and review information concerning scientific research schemes or programmes relevant to the development of the resources of Jamaica (and) to establish and maintain a scientific information centre for collection and dissemination of scientific and technical information".
Since the 1990s, the Jamaican government has set an agenda to push the development of science and technology in Jamaica. Acknowledging the pivotal role of ST&I in national development, the Government of Jamaica formulated a national science and technology policy. The Jamaican Science and Technology Policy (1990) has two missions: 1) to improve science, technology and engineering and 2) to leverage its use to enhance societal needs. The overall goal is to make Jamaica a significant player in the arena of information technology.
In 2009, Jamaica launched Vision 2030, a national development plan that aims to put Jamaica in a position to achieve developed country status by 2030. National Outcome 11 is a "Technology-Enabled Society", to create a more prosperous economy.
Efforts to develop its Science and Technology educative system, through institutions such as The University of Technology, has been successful but it has been difficult to translate the results into domestic technologies, products and services because of national budgetary constraints. Expenditure on research and development (R&D) amounted to just 0.06 per cent of GDP in 2002. For comparison, the world average was 2.044 per cent. In 2018, Jamaica spent just 0.7 per cent. For comparison, the world average was over 2.2 per cent. However, recent improvements in the country's fiscal position, has enabled the government to introduce various policies to boost research expenditure and to encourage innovation. In 2019, the Jamaican government indicated that it would provide funding for research and development as of financial year 2019–20, and that effective from September 2020, it will take research and development spending into account in the calculation of the country's gross domestic product. Concerning counting R&D as a share of GDP, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke said the move will stimulate greater investment in the sector, which will, in turn, drive innovation.
According to the International Property Rights Index, Jamaica has one of the stronger intellectual property (IP) protection regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean (ranked 4th in 2020). In January 2020, the Jamaican Parliament passed the Patents and Designs Act (the "New Act"). The New Act will enable local industrial designers to secure international protection for their work in multiple jurisdictions by means of a single application, filed in one language, with one set of fees. A more efficient and streamlined patents application process will hope to foster innovation and development. The Hon. Pearnel Charles Jr, who piloted the legislation, stated "It will allow us to raise our standards and to have international compliance in several aspects and safeguard the inventors in our country. Through this Bill, [inventors] will receive much more protection, and hence there will be greater promotion of creativity and efforts to find solutions to our challenges".
Jamaica has successfully operated a SLOWPOKE-2 nuclear reactor of 20 kW capacity since the early 1980s. It's the Caribbean's only nuclear reactor. In late 2020, Jamaica launched its Hazardous Substances Regulatory Authority (HSRA), becoming the first country in the English-speaking Caribbean to establish an independent regulatory body to ensure safety and security in the operation of facilities involving ionizing radiation and nuclear technology in the country, including the 20 kW SLOWPOKE research reactor. Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Audley Shaw stated that Jamaica could now "confidently forge ahead with engaging nuclear science and technology in all aspects of national development and wealth creation strategies".
Jamaica has a moderate ranking on the Global Innovation Index. In 2020, tt was ranked 72nd among the 131 featured economies. In 2021, it was ranked 9th among the 18 economies in Latin America and the Caribbean and 74th out of 132 countries overall. The report highlights E-participation and Government's online service as an area of weakness to greater innovation. Broadband penetration in Jamaica stood at 77.7% in March 2021. Via the National Broadband Initiative, the Jamaican government seeks to provide Internet connection to every household by 2025.
Caricom scientists have a modest output in terms of scientific research papers. UNESCO reports that between 2011 and 2019, output has fluctuated for most member states. Between 2017 and 2019, Caricom researchers continued to publish mostly in areas related to health sciences with Jamaica contributing over 20% of articles in this field. In terms of research density, Jamaica produced 114 publications per million inhabitants in 2019. Between 2014 and 2016, Jamaica ranked 4th in terms of average of relative citations (1.36). In terms of scientific co-authorship, between 2017 and 2019, Jamaica produced 379 publications in collaboration with the US, 118 with UK, 95 with Canada, 52 with France and 51 with Mexico.
Notable activities that are geared towards promoting science and innovation:
The Coding in Schools Programme: Launched in 2021, the aim is promote the teaching and learning of coding in public educational institutions across Jamaica.
STEM Ambassador Programme: Launched in early 2021, the programme allows industry experts to encourage STEM students to achieve academic and career goals through consistent mentorship and interactive support.
The Science Resource Centre & Innovation Laboratory: Opened in 2018, the lab is focused on the nurturing and development of revenue-generating clean technology companies within the region. It's the first facility of its kind within the Caribbean.
The Public Wi-Fi Hotspot Programme: Jamaica has thirteen Wi-Fi-hotspots (as of September 2021), providing free public access to Internet services. Seven new locations are planned by March 2022.
Science and Technology Fairs.
There are several institutions involved in undertaking research:
In 2021, two Jamaican scientists won the prestigious International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA) 2020 awards, making Jamaica the first country to take home prizes in the organisation's two award categories in any one year.
Jamaica has produced many internationally awarded scientists. Examples include: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) sector is guided by two primary institutions, the National Commission on Science and Technology (NCST) and the Scientific Research Council (SRC). Both are under the direction of the Ministry of Science, Energy, and Technology.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Science and technology in Jamaica has a long history. In 1879, the Governor of Jamaica created the Institute of Jamaica \"For the Encouragement of Literature, Science and Art in Jamaica\". Jamaica was among the earliest developing countries to craft a scientific law to guide the use of science and technology for the exploitation of domestic natural resources. It was one of the first countries in the western hemisphere to gain electricity, build a railway and to use research results to boost sugar cane production. In 1960, the Scientific Research Council (SRC) was established, with a mandate to \"collect, collate and review information concerning scientific research schemes or programmes relevant to the development of the resources of Jamaica (and) to establish and maintain a scientific information centre for collection and dissemination of scientific and technical information\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Since the 1990s, the Jamaican government has set an agenda to push the development of science and technology in Jamaica. Acknowledging the pivotal role of ST&I in national development, the Government of Jamaica formulated a national science and technology policy. The Jamaican Science and Technology Policy (1990) has two missions: 1) to improve science, technology and engineering and 2) to leverage its use to enhance societal needs. The overall goal is to make Jamaica a significant player in the arena of information technology.",
"title": "Science and technology policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 2009, Jamaica launched Vision 2030, a national development plan that aims to put Jamaica in a position to achieve developed country status by 2030. National Outcome 11 is a \"Technology-Enabled Society\", to create a more prosperous economy.",
"title": "Science and technology policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Efforts to develop its Science and Technology educative system, through institutions such as The University of Technology, has been successful but it has been difficult to translate the results into domestic technologies, products and services because of national budgetary constraints. Expenditure on research and development (R&D) amounted to just 0.06 per cent of GDP in 2002. For comparison, the world average was 2.044 per cent. In 2018, Jamaica spent just 0.7 per cent. For comparison, the world average was over 2.2 per cent. However, recent improvements in the country's fiscal position, has enabled the government to introduce various policies to boost research expenditure and to encourage innovation. In 2019, the Jamaican government indicated that it would provide funding for research and development as of financial year 2019–20, and that effective from September 2020, it will take research and development spending into account in the calculation of the country's gross domestic product. Concerning counting R&D as a share of GDP, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke said the move will stimulate greater investment in the sector, which will, in turn, drive innovation.",
"title": "Science and technology policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "According to the International Property Rights Index, Jamaica has one of the stronger intellectual property (IP) protection regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean (ranked 4th in 2020). In January 2020, the Jamaican Parliament passed the Patents and Designs Act (the \"New Act\"). The New Act will enable local industrial designers to secure international protection for their work in multiple jurisdictions by means of a single application, filed in one language, with one set of fees. A more efficient and streamlined patents application process will hope to foster innovation and development. The Hon. Pearnel Charles Jr, who piloted the legislation, stated \"It will allow us to raise our standards and to have international compliance in several aspects and safeguard the inventors in our country. Through this Bill, [inventors] will receive much more protection, and hence there will be greater promotion of creativity and efforts to find solutions to our challenges\".",
"title": "Science and technology policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Jamaica has successfully operated a SLOWPOKE-2 nuclear reactor of 20 kW capacity since the early 1980s. It's the Caribbean's only nuclear reactor. In late 2020, Jamaica launched its Hazardous Substances Regulatory Authority (HSRA), becoming the first country in the English-speaking Caribbean to establish an independent regulatory body to ensure safety and security in the operation of facilities involving ionizing radiation and nuclear technology in the country, including the 20 kW SLOWPOKE research reactor. Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Audley Shaw stated that Jamaica could now \"confidently forge ahead with engaging nuclear science and technology in all aspects of national development and wealth creation strategies\".",
"title": "Science and technology policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Jamaica has a moderate ranking on the Global Innovation Index. In 2020, tt was ranked 72nd among the 131 featured economies. In 2021, it was ranked 9th among the 18 economies in Latin America and the Caribbean and 74th out of 132 countries overall. The report highlights E-participation and Government's online service as an area of weakness to greater innovation. Broadband penetration in Jamaica stood at 77.7% in March 2021. Via the National Broadband Initiative, the Jamaican government seeks to provide Internet connection to every household by 2025.",
"title": "Science and technology policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Caricom scientists have a modest output in terms of scientific research papers. UNESCO reports that between 2011 and 2019, output has fluctuated for most member states. Between 2017 and 2019, Caricom researchers continued to publish mostly in areas related to health sciences with Jamaica contributing over 20% of articles in this field. In terms of research density, Jamaica produced 114 publications per million inhabitants in 2019. Between 2014 and 2016, Jamaica ranked 4th in terms of average of relative citations (1.36). In terms of scientific co-authorship, between 2017 and 2019, Jamaica produced 379 publications in collaboration with the US, 118 with UK, 95 with Canada, 52 with France and 51 with Mexico.",
"title": "Scientific publications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Notable activities that are geared towards promoting science and innovation:",
"title": "Science activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Coding in Schools Programme: Launched in 2021, the aim is promote the teaching and learning of coding in public educational institutions across Jamaica.",
"title": "Science activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "STEM Ambassador Programme: Launched in early 2021, the programme allows industry experts to encourage STEM students to achieve academic and career goals through consistent mentorship and interactive support.",
"title": "Science activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Science Resource Centre & Innovation Laboratory: Opened in 2018, the lab is focused on the nurturing and development of revenue-generating clean technology companies within the region. It's the first facility of its kind within the Caribbean.",
"title": "Science activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Public Wi-Fi Hotspot Programme: Jamaica has thirteen Wi-Fi-hotspots (as of September 2021), providing free public access to Internet services. Seven new locations are planned by March 2022.",
"title": "Science activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Science and Technology Fairs.",
"title": "Science activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "There are several institutions involved in undertaking research:",
"title": "Institutions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 2021, two Jamaican scientists won the prestigious International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA) 2020 awards, making Jamaica the first country to take home prizes in the organisation's two award categories in any one year.",
"title": "Achievements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jamaica has produced many internationally awarded scientists. Examples include:",
"title": "Achievements"
}
]
| The Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) sector is guided by two primary institutions, the National Commission on Science and Technology (NCST) and the Scientific Research Council (SRC). Both are under the direction of the Ministry of Science, Energy, and Technology. | 2001-09-25T19:04:12Z | 2023-11-28T22:14:15Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Jamaica |
15,673 | Jan Mayen | Jan Mayen (Urban East Norwegian: [jɑn ˈmɑ̀ɪən]) is a Norwegian volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean with no permanent population. It is 55 km (34 mi) long (southwest-northeast) and 373 km (144 sq mi) in area, partly covered by glaciers (an area of 114.2 km (44.1 sq mi) around the Beerenberg volcano). It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by a 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide isthmus. It lies 600 km (370 mi) northeast of Iceland (495 km [305 mi] NE of Kolbeinsey), 500 km (310 mi) east of central Greenland, and 900 km (560 mi) northwest of Vesterålen, Norway. The island is mountainous, the highest summit being the Beerenberg volcano in the north. The isthmus is the location of the two largest lakes of the island, Sørlaguna (South Lagoon) and Nordlaguna (North Lagoon). A third lake is called Ullerenglaguna (Ullereng Lagoon). Jan Mayen was formed by the Jan Mayen hotspot and is defined by geologists as a microcontinent.
Although administered separately, in the ISO 3166-1 standard, Jan Mayen and Svalbard are collectively designated as Svalbard and Jan Mayen, with the two-letter country code "SJ".
Jan Mayen is home to Beerenberg, which is the northernmost active volcano in the world.
Jan Mayen Island has one exploitable natural resource, gravel, from a site located at Trongskaret. Other than this, economic activity is limited to providing services for employees of Norway's radio communications and meteorological stations located on the island. Jan Mayen has one unpaved airstrip, Jan Mayensfield, which is about 1,585 m (5,200 ft) long. The 124.1 km (77.1 mi) coast has no ports or harbours, only offshore anchorages.
There are important fishing resources, and the existence of Jan Mayen establishes a large exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around it. Norway has asserted a 200-nautical-mile (370-kilometre) EEZ around the island since 1980 encompassing more than a quarter of a million square kilometers. The Norwegian Coast Guard is responsible for conducting fishery and other maritime surveillance and enforcement in these waters.
Norway has found large deposits of minerals along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Jan Mayen and southern Svalbard/Bear Island, including copper, zinc, cobalt, gold and silver. The expeditions have also discovered high concentrations of lithium and rare earth metal scandium. In total, it is estimated that the amount of copper could amount to 21.7 million tonnes, but other estimates are around 7 million tonnes. License for deep sea mining is now under consideration. A dispute between Norway and Denmark regarding the fishing exclusion zone between Jan Mayen and Greenland was settled in 1988 granting Denmark the greater area of sovereignty. Geologists suspect significant deposits of petroleum and natural gas lie below Jan Mayen's surrounding seafloors.
Jan Mayen Island is an integral part of the Kingdom of Norway. Since 1995, Jan Mayen has been administered by the County Governor (statsforvalter) of the northern Norwegian county of Nordland, to which it is closest. However, some authority over Jan Mayen has been assigned to the station commander of the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation, a branch of the Norwegian Armed Forces.
The only inhabitants on the island are personnel working for the Norwegian Armed Forces and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. Eighteen people spend the winter on the island, but the population may roughly double (35) during the summer, when heavy maintenance is performed. Personnel serve either six months or one year and are exchanged twice a year in April and October. The support crew, including mechanics, cooks, and a nurse, are among the military personnel. The military personnel operated a Loran-C base until it closed at the end of 2015. Both the LORAN transmitter and the meteorological station are located a few kilometres away from the settlement Olonkinbyen (Olonkin Town), where all personnel live.
Transport to the island is provided by C-130 Hercules military transport planes operated by the Royal Norwegian Air Force which land at Jan Mayensfield's gravel runway. The planes fly in from Bodø Main Air Station eight times a year. Since the airport does not have any instrument landing capabilities, good visibility is required, and it is not uncommon for the planes to have to return to Bodø, two hours away, without landing. For heavy goods, freight ships visit during the summer, but since there are no harbours, the ships must anchor. Tourists arrive with cruise ships which are allowed to bring passengers onshore if weather permits.
The island has no indigenous population but is assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code SJ (together with Svalbard). It uses the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .no (.sj is allocated but not used) and data code JN. Jan Mayen has telephone and internet connection over satellite, using Norwegian telephone numbers (country code 47). Its amateur radio call sign prefix is JX. It has a postal code, NO-8099 JAN MAYEN, but delivery time varies, especially during the winter.
There are no exploitable resources on Jan Mayen, except fish in the surrounding waters of the Island. The economic activity is limited to the operation of the station that is staffed by the Norwegian Cyberdefence and the Meteorological Agency of Norway. There has also been established a reference station for EGNOS. There is also a reference station for the satellite navigation system Galileo on Jan Mayen. There was also an earlier Jan Mayen LORAN-C Transmitter, but the transmitter is now decommissioned and demolished.
Jan Mayen Radio was a Norwegian coastal radio station on Jan Mayen. The first radiostation was built in 1921 on a part of the island called "Eldsmetten - Norwegian" on the eastern side of the Island. The radiostation consisted of a 3 kW Telefunken spark-gap transmitter and a 55 m (180 ft) wooden radiomast. The station was destroyed by Norwegian forces in September 1940, and the crew was sent to Iceland.
In 1941 a new radiostation was constructed on the western side of the island, it was moved to a plateau above. In 1962 this station was again moved to "Helenesanden - Norwegian" about 3 km (1.9 mi) north from the Norwegian army's LORAN-station.
In 1984 the station was moved to the Norwegian army's station. In 1989 there was an VHF-receiver installed, and later in 1994 was a MF-Digital-Selcall-receiver installed and is now controlled remotely from Bodø-Radio. The station is now controlled remotely via satellite, but can be taken in local control by a disconnection against Eik Satellite Earth Station.
Between the fifth and ninth centuries (400–900 AD), numerous communities of monks originating in Ireland (Papar) navigated throughout the north Atlantic in leather boats, exploring and sometimes settling in distant islands where their monastic communities could be separated from close contact with others. Strong indicators exist of their presence in the Faroe Islands and Iceland before the arrival of the Vikings, and medieval Gaelic chronicles such as the famous Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot testify to the extensive interest in exploration at the time. A modern-day trans-Atlantic journey proved the ability of the early navigators to reach all lands of the north Atlantic even further from Ireland than Jan Mayen – and, given favourable winds, at a speed roughly equal to that of modern yachts. Though quite feasible, there is nevertheless no direct physical trace of medieval landings or settlement on Jan Mayen.
The land named Svalbarð ("cold coast") by the Vikings in the early medieval book Landnámabók may have been Jan Mayen (instead of Spitsbergen, renamed Svalbard by the Norwegians in modern times); the distance from Iceland to Svalbarð mentioned in this book is two days' sailing (with favorable winds), consistent with the approximate 550 km (340 mi) to Jan Mayen and not with the minimum 1,550 km (960 mi) to Spitsbergen. However much Jan Mayen may have been known in Europe at that time, it was subsequently forgotten for some centuries.
In the 17th century, many claims of the island's rediscovery were made, spurred by the rivalry on the Arctic whaling grounds, and the island received many names. According to Thomas Edge, an early 17th-century whaling captain who was often inaccurate, "William [sic] Hudson" discovered the island in 1608 and named it "Hudson's Touches" (or "Tutches"). However, the well-known explorer Henry Hudson could only have come by on his voyage in 1607 (if he had made an illogical detour) and he made no mention of it in his journal.
According to William Scoresby (1820: p. 154), referring to the mistaken belief that the Dutch had discovered the island in 1611, Hull whalers discovered the island "about the same time" and named it "Trinity Island". Muller (1874: pp. 190–191) took this to mean they had come upon Jan Mayen in 1611 or 1612, which was repeated by many subsequent authors. There were, in fact, no Hull whalers in either of these years, the first Hull whaling expedition having been sent to the island only in 1616 (see below). As with the previous claim made by Edge, there is no cartographical or written proof for this supposed discovery.
The first verified discoveries of Jan Mayen, by three separate expeditions, occurred in the summer of 1614, probably within one month of each other. The Dutchman Fopp Gerritsz, whilst in command of a whaling expedition sent out by the Englishman John Clarke, of Dunkirk, claimed (in 1631) to have discovered the island on 28 June and named it "Isabella". In January the Noordsche Compagnie (Northern Company), modelled on the Dutch East India Company, had been established to support Dutch whaling in the Arctic. Two of its ships, financed by merchants from Amsterdam and Enkhuizen, reached Jan Mayen in July 1614. The captains of these ships—Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout (after whom the island was ultimately named) on the Gouden Cath (Golden Cat), and Jacob de Gouwenaer on the Orangienboom (Orange Tree)—named it Mr. Joris Eylant after the Dutch cartographer Joris Carolus who was on board and mapped the island. The captains acknowledged that a third Dutch ship, the Cleyn Swaentgen (Little Swan) captained by Jan Jansz Kerckhoff and financed by Noordsche Compagnie shareholders from Delft, had already been at the island when they arrived. They had assumed the latter, who named the island Maurits Eylandt (or Mauritius) after Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, would report their discovery to the States General. However, the Delft merchants had decided to keep the discovery secret and returned in 1615 to hunt for their own profit. The ensuing dispute was only settled in 1617, though both companies were allowed to whale at Jan Mayen in the meantime.
In 1615, the English whaler Robert Fotherby went ashore. Apparently thinking he had made a new discovery, he named the island "Sir Thomas Smith's Island" and the volcano "Mount Hakluyt". On a map of c. 1634, Jean Vrolicq renamed the island Île de Richelieu.
Jan Mayen first appeared on Willem Jansz Blaeu's 1620 edition map of Europe, originally published by Cornelis Doedz in 1606. Blaeu, who lived in Amsterdam, named it "Jan Mayen" after captain Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout of the Amsterdam-financed Gouden Cath. Blaeu made the first detailed map of the island in his famous "Zeespiegel" atlas of 1623, establishing its current name.
From 1615 to 1638, Jan Mayen was used as a whaling base by the Dutch Noordsche Compagnie, which had been given a monopoly on whaling in the Arctic regions by the States General in 1614. Only two ships, one from the Noordsche Compagnie, and the other from the Delft merchants, were off Jan Mayen in 1615. The following year a score of vessels were sent to the island. The Noordsche Compagnie sent eight ships escorted by three warships under Jan Jacobsz. Schrobop; while the Delft merchants sent up five ships under Adriaen Dircksz. Leversteyn, son of one of the above merchants. There were also two ships from Dunkirk sent by John Clarke, as well as a ship each from London and Hull.
Heertje Jansz, master of the Hope, of Enkhuizen, wrote a day-by-day account of the season. The ships took two weeks to reach Jan Mayen, arriving early in June. On 15 June they met the two English ships, which Schrobop allowed to remain, on condition they gave half their catch to the Dutch. The ships from Dunkirk were given the same conditions. By late July the first ship had left with a full cargo of whale oil; the rest left early in August, several filled with oil.
That year 200 men were seasonally living and working on the island at six temporary whaling stations (spread along the northwest coast). During the first decade of whaling, more than ten ships visited Jan Mayen each year, while in the second period (1624 and later) five to ten ships were sent. With the exception of a few ships from Dunkirk, which came to the island in 1617 and were either driven away or forced to give a third of their catch to the Dutch, only the Dutch and merchants from Hull sent up ships to Jan Mayen from 1616 onward. In 1624 ten wooden houses were built in South Bay. About this time the Dutch appear to have abandoned the temporary stations consisting of tents of sail and crude furnaces, replacing them with two semi-permanent stations with wooden storehouses and dwellings and large brick furnaces, one in the above-mentioned South Bay and the other in the North Bay. In 1628 two forts were built to protect the stations. Among the sailors active at Jan Mayen was the later admiral Michiel Adriaensz de Ruyter. In 1633, at the age of 26, he was for the first time listed as an officer aboard de Groene Leeuw (The Green Lion). He again went to Jan Mayen in 1635, aboard the same ship.
In 1632 the Noordsche Compagnie expelled the Danish-employed Basque whalers from Spitsbergen. In revenge, the latter sailed to Jan Mayen, where the Dutch had left for the winter, to plunder the Dutch equipment and burn down the settlements and factories. Captain Outger Jacobsz of Grootebroek was asked to stay the next winter (1633/34) on Jan Mayen with six shipmates to defend the island. While a group with the same task survived the winter on Spitsbergen, all seven on Jan Mayen died of scurvy or trichinosis (from eating raw polar bear meat) combined with the harsh conditions.
During the first phase of whaling the hauls were generally good, some exceptional. For example, Mathijs Jansz. Hoepstock caught 44 whales in Hoepstockbukta in 1619, which produced 2,300 casks of whale oil. During the second phase the hauls were much lower. While 1631 turned out to be a very good season, the following year, due to the weather and ice, only eight whales were caught. In 1633 eleven ships managed to catch just 47 whales; while a meager 42 were caught by the same number in 1635. The bowhead whale was locally hunted to near-extinction around 1640 (approximately 1000 had been killed and processed on the island), at which time Jan Mayen was abandoned and stayed uninhabited for two and a half centuries.
During the International Polar Year 1882–1883 the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition stayed one year at Jan Mayen. The expedition performed extensive mapping of the area, their maps being of such quality that they were used until the 1950s. The Austrian polar station on Jan Mayen Island was built and equipped in 1882 fully at Count Wilczek's own expense.
Polar bears appear on Jan Mayen, although in diminished numbers compared with earlier times. Between 1900 and 1920, there were a number of Norwegian trappers spending winters on Jan Mayen, hunting Arctic foxes in addition to some polar bears. But the exploitation soon made the profits decline, and the hunting ended. Polar bears in this region of the Arctic are genetically distinguishable from those living elsewhere.
The League of Nations gave Norway jurisdiction over the island, and in 1921 Norway opened the first meteorological station. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute annexed the middle part of the island for Norway in 1922 and the whole island in 1926 when Hallvard Devold was head of the weather observations base on the island. On 27 February 1930, the island was made de jure a part of the Kingdom of Norway.
During World War II, continental Norway was invaded and occupied by Germany in spring 1940. The four-man team on Jan Mayen stayed at their posts and in an act of defiance began sending their weather reports to the United Kingdom instead of Norway. The British codenamed Jan Mayen 'Island X' and attempted to reinforce it with troops to counteract any German attack. The Norwegian patrol boat HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen ran aground on Nansenflua, one of the islands' many uncharted lava reefs, and the 68-man crew abandoned ship and joined the Norwegian team on shore. The British expedition commander, prompted by the loss of the gunboat, decided to abandon Jan Mayen until the following spring and radioed for a rescue ship. Within a few days a ship arrived and evacuated the four Norwegians and their would-be reinforcements, after demolishing the weather station to prevent it from falling into German hands. The Germans attempted to land a weather team on the island on 16 November 1940; the German naval trawler carrying the team crashed on the rocks just off Jan Mayen after a patrolling British destroyer had picked them up on radar. The detection was not by chance, as the German plan had been compromised from the beginning with British wireless interceptors of the Radio Security Service following the communications of the Abwehr (the German Intelligence service) concerning the operation, and the destroyer had been waiting. Most of the crew struggled ashore and were taken prisoner by a landing party from the destroyer.
The Allies returned to the island on 10 March 1941, when the Norwegian ship Veslekari, escorted by the patrol boat Honningsvaag, dropped 12 Norwegian weathermen on the island. The team's radio transmissions soon betrayed its presence to the Axis, and German planes from Norway began to bomb and strafe Jan Mayen whenever weather permitted, but did little damage. Soon supplies and reinforcements arrived, and even some anti-aircraft guns, giving the island a garrison of a few dozen weathermen and soldiers. By 1941, Germany had given up hope of evicting the Allies from the island and the constant air raids stopped.
On 7 August 1942, a German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 "Condor", probably on a mission to bomb the station, crashed into the nearby mountainside of Danielssenkrateret in fog, killing its crew of nine. In 1950, the wreck of another German plane with four crew members was discovered on the southwest side of the island. In 1943, the Americans established a radio locating station named Atlantic City in the north to try to locate German radio bases in Greenland.
After the war, the meteorological station was located at Atlantic City, but moved in 1949 to a new location. Radio Jan Mayen also served as an important radio station for ship traffic in the Arctic Ocean. In 1959 NATO started building the LORAN-C network in sites on the Atlantic Ocean; one of the transmitters was to be on Jan Mayen. By 1961 the new military installations, including a new airfield, were operational.
For some time scientists doubted that the Beerenberg volcano would become active, but in 1970 it erupted for about three weeks, adding another 3 km (1.2 sq mi) of land mass to the island. It also erupted in 1973 and 1985. During an eruption, the sea temperature around the island may increase from just above freezing to about 30 °C (86 °F).
Historic stations and huts on the island are Hoyberg, Vera, Olsbu, Puppebu (cabin), Gamlemetten or Gamlestasjonen (the old weather station), Jan Mayen Radio, Helenehytta, Margarethhytta, and Ulla (a cabin at the foot of the Beerenberg).
A regulation dating from 2010 renders the island a nature reserve under Norwegian jurisdiction. The aim of this regulation is to ensure the preservation of a pristine Arctic island and the marine life nearby, including the ocean floor. Landings at Jan Mayen can be done by boat. However, this is permitted only at a small part of the island, named Båtvika (Boat Bay). As there is no commercial airline operating at the island, one cannot get there by plane except by chartering one. Permission for landings by a charter plane has to be obtained in advance. Permission to stay on the island has to be obtained in advance, and is generally limited to a few days (or even hours). Putting up a tent or setting up camp is prohibited. There is a separate regulation for the stay of foreigners.
Jan Mayen consists of two geographically distinct parts. Nord-Jan has a round shape and is dominated by the 2,277 m (7,470 ft) high Beerenberg volcano with its large ice cap (114.2 km or 44 sq mi), which can be divided into twenty individual outlet glaciers. The largest of those is Sørbreen, with an area of 15 km (5.8 sq mi) and a length of 8.7 km (5.41 mi). South-Jan is narrow, comparatively flat and unglaciated. Its highest elevation is Rudolftoppen at 769 m (2,523 ft). The station and living quarters are located on South-Jan. The island lies at the northern end of the Jan Mayen Microcontinent. The microcontinent was originally part of the Greenland Plate, but now forms part of the Eurasian Plate.
The island was identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it is a breeding site for large numbers of seabirds, supporting populations of northern fulmars (78,000–160,000 pairs), little auks (10,000–100,000 pairs), thick-billed guillemot (74,000–147,000 pairs) and black guillemots (100–1,000 pairs).
Jan Mayen has an oceanic polar climate with a Köppen classification of ET, sometimes reckoned as EM (maritime polar). Jan Mayen is situated in between the cold East Greenland Current to the west and the warm Gulf Stream to the east of the island, and is the only landmass in the northern hemisphere where warm and cold ocean currents meet. The surrounding seas makes seasonal temperature variations very small considering the latitude of the island, with ranges from around 6 °C (43 °F) in August to −4 °C (25 °F) in March, but also makes the island extremely cloudy with little sunshine even during the continuous polar day. The deep snow cover prevents any permafrost from developing. As a result of warming, the 1991-2020 temperature normal shows a mean annual temperature 1.9 °C (3.4 °F) warmer than during 1961-1990, pushing the annual temperature above freezing.
Jan Mayen is featured as an easter egg in several grand strategy video games published by Paradox Interactive, such as Europa Universalis IV. In Europa Universalis IV, typing "bearhaslanded" into the command console will spawn Jan Mayen as a country in a random location. Players can also specify where Jan Mayen will spawn by including a province ID in the command.
The island is mentioned by the captain of K-19 The Widowmaker just before the ship's nuclear reactor malfunctions. The captain is concerned that the reactor will explode and cause a nuclear explosion in the vicinity of the NATO base on the island triggering a nuclear war. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jan Mayen (Urban East Norwegian: [jɑn ˈmɑ̀ɪən]) is a Norwegian volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean with no permanent population. It is 55 km (34 mi) long (southwest-northeast) and 373 km (144 sq mi) in area, partly covered by glaciers (an area of 114.2 km (44.1 sq mi) around the Beerenberg volcano). It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by a 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide isthmus. It lies 600 km (370 mi) northeast of Iceland (495 km [305 mi] NE of Kolbeinsey), 500 km (310 mi) east of central Greenland, and 900 km (560 mi) northwest of Vesterålen, Norway. The island is mountainous, the highest summit being the Beerenberg volcano in the north. The isthmus is the location of the two largest lakes of the island, Sørlaguna (South Lagoon) and Nordlaguna (North Lagoon). A third lake is called Ullerenglaguna (Ullereng Lagoon). Jan Mayen was formed by the Jan Mayen hotspot and is defined by geologists as a microcontinent.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Although administered separately, in the ISO 3166-1 standard, Jan Mayen and Svalbard are collectively designated as Svalbard and Jan Mayen, with the two-letter country code \"SJ\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Jan Mayen is home to Beerenberg, which is the northernmost active volcano in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Jan Mayen Island has one exploitable natural resource, gravel, from a site located at Trongskaret. Other than this, economic activity is limited to providing services for employees of Norway's radio communications and meteorological stations located on the island. Jan Mayen has one unpaved airstrip, Jan Mayensfield, which is about 1,585 m (5,200 ft) long. The 124.1 km (77.1 mi) coast has no ports or harbours, only offshore anchorages.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "There are important fishing resources, and the existence of Jan Mayen establishes a large exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around it. Norway has asserted a 200-nautical-mile (370-kilometre) EEZ around the island since 1980 encompassing more than a quarter of a million square kilometers. The Norwegian Coast Guard is responsible for conducting fishery and other maritime surveillance and enforcement in these waters.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Norway has found large deposits of minerals along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Jan Mayen and southern Svalbard/Bear Island, including copper, zinc, cobalt, gold and silver. The expeditions have also discovered high concentrations of lithium and rare earth metal scandium. In total, it is estimated that the amount of copper could amount to 21.7 million tonnes, but other estimates are around 7 million tonnes. License for deep sea mining is now under consideration. A dispute between Norway and Denmark regarding the fishing exclusion zone between Jan Mayen and Greenland was settled in 1988 granting Denmark the greater area of sovereignty. Geologists suspect significant deposits of petroleum and natural gas lie below Jan Mayen's surrounding seafloors.",
"title": "Natural resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Jan Mayen Island is an integral part of the Kingdom of Norway. Since 1995, Jan Mayen has been administered by the County Governor (statsforvalter) of the northern Norwegian county of Nordland, to which it is closest. However, some authority over Jan Mayen has been assigned to the station commander of the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation, a branch of the Norwegian Armed Forces.",
"title": "Status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The only inhabitants on the island are personnel working for the Norwegian Armed Forces and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. Eighteen people spend the winter on the island, but the population may roughly double (35) during the summer, when heavy maintenance is performed. Personnel serve either six months or one year and are exchanged twice a year in April and October. The support crew, including mechanics, cooks, and a nurse, are among the military personnel. The military personnel operated a Loran-C base until it closed at the end of 2015. Both the LORAN transmitter and the meteorological station are located a few kilometres away from the settlement Olonkinbyen (Olonkin Town), where all personnel live.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Transport to the island is provided by C-130 Hercules military transport planes operated by the Royal Norwegian Air Force which land at Jan Mayensfield's gravel runway. The planes fly in from Bodø Main Air Station eight times a year. Since the airport does not have any instrument landing capabilities, good visibility is required, and it is not uncommon for the planes to have to return to Bodø, two hours away, without landing. For heavy goods, freight ships visit during the summer, but since there are no harbours, the ships must anchor. Tourists arrive with cruise ships which are allowed to bring passengers onshore if weather permits.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The island has no indigenous population but is assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code SJ (together with Svalbard). It uses the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .no (.sj is allocated but not used) and data code JN. Jan Mayen has telephone and internet connection over satellite, using Norwegian telephone numbers (country code 47). Its amateur radio call sign prefix is JX. It has a postal code, NO-8099 JAN MAYEN, but delivery time varies, especially during the winter.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "There are no exploitable resources on Jan Mayen, except fish in the surrounding waters of the Island. The economic activity is limited to the operation of the station that is staffed by the Norwegian Cyberdefence and the Meteorological Agency of Norway. There has also been established a reference station for EGNOS. There is also a reference station for the satellite navigation system Galileo on Jan Mayen. There was also an earlier Jan Mayen LORAN-C Transmitter, but the transmitter is now decommissioned and demolished.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jan Mayen Radio was a Norwegian coastal radio station on Jan Mayen. The first radiostation was built in 1921 on a part of the island called \"Eldsmetten - Norwegian\" on the eastern side of the Island. The radiostation consisted of a 3 kW Telefunken spark-gap transmitter and a 55 m (180 ft) wooden radiomast. The station was destroyed by Norwegian forces in September 1940, and the crew was sent to Iceland.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1941 a new radiostation was constructed on the western side of the island, it was moved to a plateau above. In 1962 this station was again moved to \"Helenesanden - Norwegian\" about 3 km (1.9 mi) north from the Norwegian army's LORAN-station.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1984 the station was moved to the Norwegian army's station. In 1989 there was an VHF-receiver installed, and later in 1994 was a MF-Digital-Selcall-receiver installed and is now controlled remotely from Bodø-Radio. The station is now controlled remotely via satellite, but can be taken in local control by a disconnection against Eik Satellite Earth Station.",
"title": "Society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Between the fifth and ninth centuries (400–900 AD), numerous communities of monks originating in Ireland (Papar) navigated throughout the north Atlantic in leather boats, exploring and sometimes settling in distant islands where their monastic communities could be separated from close contact with others. Strong indicators exist of their presence in the Faroe Islands and Iceland before the arrival of the Vikings, and medieval Gaelic chronicles such as the famous Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot testify to the extensive interest in exploration at the time. A modern-day trans-Atlantic journey proved the ability of the early navigators to reach all lands of the north Atlantic even further from Ireland than Jan Mayen – and, given favourable winds, at a speed roughly equal to that of modern yachts. Though quite feasible, there is nevertheless no direct physical trace of medieval landings or settlement on Jan Mayen.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The land named Svalbarð (\"cold coast\") by the Vikings in the early medieval book Landnámabók may have been Jan Mayen (instead of Spitsbergen, renamed Svalbard by the Norwegians in modern times); the distance from Iceland to Svalbarð mentioned in this book is two days' sailing (with favorable winds), consistent with the approximate 550 km (340 mi) to Jan Mayen and not with the minimum 1,550 km (960 mi) to Spitsbergen. However much Jan Mayen may have been known in Europe at that time, it was subsequently forgotten for some centuries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In the 17th century, many claims of the island's rediscovery were made, spurred by the rivalry on the Arctic whaling grounds, and the island received many names. According to Thomas Edge, an early 17th-century whaling captain who was often inaccurate, \"William [sic] Hudson\" discovered the island in 1608 and named it \"Hudson's Touches\" (or \"Tutches\"). However, the well-known explorer Henry Hudson could only have come by on his voyage in 1607 (if he had made an illogical detour) and he made no mention of it in his journal.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "According to William Scoresby (1820: p. 154), referring to the mistaken belief that the Dutch had discovered the island in 1611, Hull whalers discovered the island \"about the same time\" and named it \"Trinity Island\". Muller (1874: pp. 190–191) took this to mean they had come upon Jan Mayen in 1611 or 1612, which was repeated by many subsequent authors. There were, in fact, no Hull whalers in either of these years, the first Hull whaling expedition having been sent to the island only in 1616 (see below). As with the previous claim made by Edge, there is no cartographical or written proof for this supposed discovery.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The first verified discoveries of Jan Mayen, by three separate expeditions, occurred in the summer of 1614, probably within one month of each other. The Dutchman Fopp Gerritsz, whilst in command of a whaling expedition sent out by the Englishman John Clarke, of Dunkirk, claimed (in 1631) to have discovered the island on 28 June and named it \"Isabella\". In January the Noordsche Compagnie (Northern Company), modelled on the Dutch East India Company, had been established to support Dutch whaling in the Arctic. Two of its ships, financed by merchants from Amsterdam and Enkhuizen, reached Jan Mayen in July 1614. The captains of these ships—Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout (after whom the island was ultimately named) on the Gouden Cath (Golden Cat), and Jacob de Gouwenaer on the Orangienboom (Orange Tree)—named it Mr. Joris Eylant after the Dutch cartographer Joris Carolus who was on board and mapped the island. The captains acknowledged that a third Dutch ship, the Cleyn Swaentgen (Little Swan) captained by Jan Jansz Kerckhoff and financed by Noordsche Compagnie shareholders from Delft, had already been at the island when they arrived. They had assumed the latter, who named the island Maurits Eylandt (or Mauritius) after Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, would report their discovery to the States General. However, the Delft merchants had decided to keep the discovery secret and returned in 1615 to hunt for their own profit. The ensuing dispute was only settled in 1617, though both companies were allowed to whale at Jan Mayen in the meantime.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1615, the English whaler Robert Fotherby went ashore. Apparently thinking he had made a new discovery, he named the island \"Sir Thomas Smith's Island\" and the volcano \"Mount Hakluyt\". On a map of c. 1634, Jean Vrolicq renamed the island Île de Richelieu.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Jan Mayen first appeared on Willem Jansz Blaeu's 1620 edition map of Europe, originally published by Cornelis Doedz in 1606. Blaeu, who lived in Amsterdam, named it \"Jan Mayen\" after captain Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout of the Amsterdam-financed Gouden Cath. Blaeu made the first detailed map of the island in his famous \"Zeespiegel\" atlas of 1623, establishing its current name.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "From 1615 to 1638, Jan Mayen was used as a whaling base by the Dutch Noordsche Compagnie, which had been given a monopoly on whaling in the Arctic regions by the States General in 1614. Only two ships, one from the Noordsche Compagnie, and the other from the Delft merchants, were off Jan Mayen in 1615. The following year a score of vessels were sent to the island. The Noordsche Compagnie sent eight ships escorted by three warships under Jan Jacobsz. Schrobop; while the Delft merchants sent up five ships under Adriaen Dircksz. Leversteyn, son of one of the above merchants. There were also two ships from Dunkirk sent by John Clarke, as well as a ship each from London and Hull.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Heertje Jansz, master of the Hope, of Enkhuizen, wrote a day-by-day account of the season. The ships took two weeks to reach Jan Mayen, arriving early in June. On 15 June they met the two English ships, which Schrobop allowed to remain, on condition they gave half their catch to the Dutch. The ships from Dunkirk were given the same conditions. By late July the first ship had left with a full cargo of whale oil; the rest left early in August, several filled with oil.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "That year 200 men were seasonally living and working on the island at six temporary whaling stations (spread along the northwest coast). During the first decade of whaling, more than ten ships visited Jan Mayen each year, while in the second period (1624 and later) five to ten ships were sent. With the exception of a few ships from Dunkirk, which came to the island in 1617 and were either driven away or forced to give a third of their catch to the Dutch, only the Dutch and merchants from Hull sent up ships to Jan Mayen from 1616 onward. In 1624 ten wooden houses were built in South Bay. About this time the Dutch appear to have abandoned the temporary stations consisting of tents of sail and crude furnaces, replacing them with two semi-permanent stations with wooden storehouses and dwellings and large brick furnaces, one in the above-mentioned South Bay and the other in the North Bay. In 1628 two forts were built to protect the stations. Among the sailors active at Jan Mayen was the later admiral Michiel Adriaensz de Ruyter. In 1633, at the age of 26, he was for the first time listed as an officer aboard de Groene Leeuw (The Green Lion). He again went to Jan Mayen in 1635, aboard the same ship.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1632 the Noordsche Compagnie expelled the Danish-employed Basque whalers from Spitsbergen. In revenge, the latter sailed to Jan Mayen, where the Dutch had left for the winter, to plunder the Dutch equipment and burn down the settlements and factories. Captain Outger Jacobsz of Grootebroek was asked to stay the next winter (1633/34) on Jan Mayen with six shipmates to defend the island. While a group with the same task survived the winter on Spitsbergen, all seven on Jan Mayen died of scurvy or trichinosis (from eating raw polar bear meat) combined with the harsh conditions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "During the first phase of whaling the hauls were generally good, some exceptional. For example, Mathijs Jansz. Hoepstock caught 44 whales in Hoepstockbukta in 1619, which produced 2,300 casks of whale oil. During the second phase the hauls were much lower. While 1631 turned out to be a very good season, the following year, due to the weather and ice, only eight whales were caught. In 1633 eleven ships managed to catch just 47 whales; while a meager 42 were caught by the same number in 1635. The bowhead whale was locally hunted to near-extinction around 1640 (approximately 1000 had been killed and processed on the island), at which time Jan Mayen was abandoned and stayed uninhabited for two and a half centuries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "During the International Polar Year 1882–1883 the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition stayed one year at Jan Mayen. The expedition performed extensive mapping of the area, their maps being of such quality that they were used until the 1950s. The Austrian polar station on Jan Mayen Island was built and equipped in 1882 fully at Count Wilczek's own expense.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Polar bears appear on Jan Mayen, although in diminished numbers compared with earlier times. Between 1900 and 1920, there were a number of Norwegian trappers spending winters on Jan Mayen, hunting Arctic foxes in addition to some polar bears. But the exploitation soon made the profits decline, and the hunting ended. Polar bears in this region of the Arctic are genetically distinguishable from those living elsewhere.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The League of Nations gave Norway jurisdiction over the island, and in 1921 Norway opened the first meteorological station. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute annexed the middle part of the island for Norway in 1922 and the whole island in 1926 when Hallvard Devold was head of the weather observations base on the island. On 27 February 1930, the island was made de jure a part of the Kingdom of Norway.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "During World War II, continental Norway was invaded and occupied by Germany in spring 1940. The four-man team on Jan Mayen stayed at their posts and in an act of defiance began sending their weather reports to the United Kingdom instead of Norway. The British codenamed Jan Mayen 'Island X' and attempted to reinforce it with troops to counteract any German attack. The Norwegian patrol boat HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen ran aground on Nansenflua, one of the islands' many uncharted lava reefs, and the 68-man crew abandoned ship and joined the Norwegian team on shore. The British expedition commander, prompted by the loss of the gunboat, decided to abandon Jan Mayen until the following spring and radioed for a rescue ship. Within a few days a ship arrived and evacuated the four Norwegians and their would-be reinforcements, after demolishing the weather station to prevent it from falling into German hands. The Germans attempted to land a weather team on the island on 16 November 1940; the German naval trawler carrying the team crashed on the rocks just off Jan Mayen after a patrolling British destroyer had picked them up on radar. The detection was not by chance, as the German plan had been compromised from the beginning with British wireless interceptors of the Radio Security Service following the communications of the Abwehr (the German Intelligence service) concerning the operation, and the destroyer had been waiting. Most of the crew struggled ashore and were taken prisoner by a landing party from the destroyer.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The Allies returned to the island on 10 March 1941, when the Norwegian ship Veslekari, escorted by the patrol boat Honningsvaag, dropped 12 Norwegian weathermen on the island. The team's radio transmissions soon betrayed its presence to the Axis, and German planes from Norway began to bomb and strafe Jan Mayen whenever weather permitted, but did little damage. Soon supplies and reinforcements arrived, and even some anti-aircraft guns, giving the island a garrison of a few dozen weathermen and soldiers. By 1941, Germany had given up hope of evicting the Allies from the island and the constant air raids stopped.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On 7 August 1942, a German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 \"Condor\", probably on a mission to bomb the station, crashed into the nearby mountainside of Danielssenkrateret in fog, killing its crew of nine. In 1950, the wreck of another German plane with four crew members was discovered on the southwest side of the island. In 1943, the Americans established a radio locating station named Atlantic City in the north to try to locate German radio bases in Greenland.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "After the war, the meteorological station was located at Atlantic City, but moved in 1949 to a new location. Radio Jan Mayen also served as an important radio station for ship traffic in the Arctic Ocean. In 1959 NATO started building the LORAN-C network in sites on the Atlantic Ocean; one of the transmitters was to be on Jan Mayen. By 1961 the new military installations, including a new airfield, were operational.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "For some time scientists doubted that the Beerenberg volcano would become active, but in 1970 it erupted for about three weeks, adding another 3 km (1.2 sq mi) of land mass to the island. It also erupted in 1973 and 1985. During an eruption, the sea temperature around the island may increase from just above freezing to about 30 °C (86 °F).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Historic stations and huts on the island are Hoyberg, Vera, Olsbu, Puppebu (cabin), Gamlemetten or Gamlestasjonen (the old weather station), Jan Mayen Radio, Helenehytta, Margarethhytta, and Ulla (a cabin at the foot of the Beerenberg).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "A regulation dating from 2010 renders the island a nature reserve under Norwegian jurisdiction. The aim of this regulation is to ensure the preservation of a pristine Arctic island and the marine life nearby, including the ocean floor. Landings at Jan Mayen can be done by boat. However, this is permitted only at a small part of the island, named Båtvika (Boat Bay). As there is no commercial airline operating at the island, one cannot get there by plane except by chartering one. Permission for landings by a charter plane has to be obtained in advance. Permission to stay on the island has to be obtained in advance, and is generally limited to a few days (or even hours). Putting up a tent or setting up camp is prohibited. There is a separate regulation for the stay of foreigners.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Jan Mayen consists of two geographically distinct parts. Nord-Jan has a round shape and is dominated by the 2,277 m (7,470 ft) high Beerenberg volcano with its large ice cap (114.2 km or 44 sq mi), which can be divided into twenty individual outlet glaciers. The largest of those is Sørbreen, with an area of 15 km (5.8 sq mi) and a length of 8.7 km (5.41 mi). South-Jan is narrow, comparatively flat and unglaciated. Its highest elevation is Rudolftoppen at 769 m (2,523 ft). The station and living quarters are located on South-Jan. The island lies at the northern end of the Jan Mayen Microcontinent. The microcontinent was originally part of the Greenland Plate, but now forms part of the Eurasian Plate.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The island was identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it is a breeding site for large numbers of seabirds, supporting populations of northern fulmars (78,000–160,000 pairs), little auks (10,000–100,000 pairs), thick-billed guillemot (74,000–147,000 pairs) and black guillemots (100–1,000 pairs).",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Jan Mayen has an oceanic polar climate with a Köppen classification of ET, sometimes reckoned as EM (maritime polar). Jan Mayen is situated in between the cold East Greenland Current to the west and the warm Gulf Stream to the east of the island, and is the only landmass in the northern hemisphere where warm and cold ocean currents meet. The surrounding seas makes seasonal temperature variations very small considering the latitude of the island, with ranges from around 6 °C (43 °F) in August to −4 °C (25 °F) in March, but also makes the island extremely cloudy with little sunshine even during the continuous polar day. The deep snow cover prevents any permafrost from developing. As a result of warming, the 1991-2020 temperature normal shows a mean annual temperature 1.9 °C (3.4 °F) warmer than during 1961-1990, pushing the annual temperature above freezing.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Jan Mayen is featured as an easter egg in several grand strategy video games published by Paradox Interactive, such as Europa Universalis IV. In Europa Universalis IV, typing \"bearhaslanded\" into the command console will spawn Jan Mayen as a country in a random location. Players can also specify where Jan Mayen will spawn by including a province ID in the command.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The island is mentioned by the captain of K-19 The Widowmaker just before the ship's nuclear reactor malfunctions. The captain is concerned that the reactor will explode and cause a nuclear explosion in the vicinity of the NATO base on the island triggering a nuclear war.",
"title": "In popular culture"
}
]
| Jan Mayen is a Norwegian volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean with no permanent population. It is 55 km (34 mi) long (southwest-northeast) and 373 km2 (144 sq mi) in area, partly covered by glaciers. It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by a 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide isthmus. It lies 600 km (370 mi) northeast of Iceland, 500 km (310 mi) east of central Greenland, and 900 km (560 mi) northwest of Vesterålen, Norway. The island is mountainous, the highest summit being the Beerenberg volcano in the north. The isthmus is the location of the two largest lakes of the island, Sørlaguna and Nordlaguna. A third lake is called Ullerenglaguna. Jan Mayen was formed by the Jan Mayen hotspot and is defined by geologists as a microcontinent. Although administered separately, in the ISO 3166-1 standard, Jan Mayen and Svalbard are collectively designated as Svalbard and Jan Mayen, with the two-letter country code "SJ". Jan Mayen is home to Beerenberg, which is the northernmost active volcano in the world. | 2001-08-03T07:43:36Z | 2023-12-29T01:30:53Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mayen |
15,683 | Jarvis Island | Jarvis Island (/ˈdʒɑːrvɪs/; formerly known as Bunker Island or Bunker's Shoal) is an uninhabited 4.5 km (1.7 sq mi) coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Unlike most coral atolls, the lagoon on Jarvis is wholly dry.
Jarvis is one of the Line Islands and for statistical purposes is also grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. Jarvis Island is the largest of three U.S. equatorial possessions, which include Baker Island and Howland Island.
It was claimed by the US in the 19th century and mined for guano, in the 20th century it was the subject of a small settlement. It was attacked during WW2 and evacuated, leaving some buildings and a day beacon. In modern times it is managed as a nature reserve.
While a few offshore anchorage spots are marked on maps, Jarvis island has no ports or harbors, and swift currents are a hazard. There is a boat landing area in the middle of the western shoreline near a crumbling day beacon, and another near the southwest corner of the island. The center of Jarvis island is a dried lagoon where deep guano deposits accumulated, which were mined for about 20 years during the nineteenth century. The island has a tropical desert climate, with high daytime temperatures, constant wind, and strong sun. Nights, however, are quite cool. The ground is mostly sandy and reaches 23 feet (7.0 meters) at its highest point. The low-lying coral island has long been noted as hard to sight from small ships and is surrounded by a narrow fringing reef.
Jarvis Island is one of two United States territories that are in the southern hemisphere (the other is American Samoa). Located only 25 miles (40 km) south of the equator, Jarvis has no known natural freshwater lens and scant rainfall. This creates a very bleak, flat landscape without any plants larger than shrubs. There is no evidence that the island has ever supported a self-sustaining human population. Its sparse bunch grass, prostrate vines and low-growing shrubs are primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds, and marine wildlife.
Jarvis Island was submerged underwater during the latest interglacial period, roughly 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were 5–10 meters (16–33 ft) higher than today. As the sea level declined, the horseshoe-shaped lagoon was formed in the center of Jarvis Island.
Jarvis Island's highest point has a topographic isolation of 380.57 kilometers (236.48 mi; 205.49 nmi), with Joe's Hill on Kiritimati being the nearest higher neighbor.
Jarvis Island is located in the Samoa Time Zone (UTC -11:00), the same time zone as American Samoa, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, and Palmyra Atoll.
Jarvis Island once held some of the largest seabird breeding colonies in the tropical ocean, but guano mining and the introduction of rodents have ruined much of the island's native wildlife. Just eight breeding species were recorded in 1982, compared to thirteen in 1996, and fourteen species in 2004. The Polynesian storm petrel had made its return after over 40 years absence from Jarvis Island, and the number of Brown noddies multiplied from just a few birds in 1982 to nearly 10,000. Just twelve Gray-backed terns were recorded in 1982, but by 2004, over 200 nests were found on there. The island, with its surrounding marine waters, has been recognized as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports colonies of lesser frigatebirds, brown and masked boobies, red-tailed tropicbirds, Polynesian storm petrels, blue noddies and sooty terns, as well as serving as a migratory stopover for bristle-thighed curlews.
Jarvis Island is unlikely to have hosted permanent human occupation prior to its use for guano mining. However, it is possible the island was utilized as a waypoint or stopover island by Polynesian voyagers. The remoteness of the island and a lack of freshwater resources have prevented large scale archaeological survey from taking place.
The island's first known sighting by the British on August 21, 1821, by the British ship Eliza Francis (or Eliza Frances) owned by Edward, Thomas and William Jarvis and commanded by Captain Brown. The island was visited by whaling vessels till the 1870s.
The U.S. Exploring Expedition surveyed the island in 1841. In March 1857 the island was claimed for the United States under the Guano Islands Act and formally annexed on February 27, 1858.
The American Guano Company, which was incorporated in 1857, established claims in respect of Baker Island and Jarvis Island which was recognized under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856. Beginning in 1858, several support structures were built on Jarvis Island, along with a two-story, eight-room "superintendent's house" featuring an observation cupola and wide verandahs. Tram tracks were laid down for bringing mined guano to the western shore. One of the first loads was taken by Samuel Gardner Wilder. Laborers for the mining operations came from around the Pacific, including from Hawaiʻi; the Hawaiian laborers named Baker Island "Paukeaho", meaning 'out of breath' or 'exhausted', which is indicative of the hard work needed.
For the following 21 years, Jarvis was commercially mined for guano, sent to the United States as fertilizer, but the island was abruptly abandoned in 1879, leaving behind about a dozen buildings and 8,000 metric tons (8,800 short tons) of mined guano.
New Zealand entrepreneurs, including photographer Henry Winkelmann, then made unsuccessful attempts to continue guano extraction on Jarvis, and the two-story house was sporadically inhabited during the early 1880s. Squire Flockton was left alone on the island as caretaker for several months and committed suicide there in 1883, apparently from gin-fueled despair. His wooden grave marker was a carved plank which could be seen in the island's tiny four-grave cemetery for decades.
John T. Arundel & Co. resumed mining guano from 1886 to 1899. The United Kingdom annexed the island on June 3, 1889. Phosphate and copra entrepreneur John T. Arundel visited the island in 1909 on maiden voyage of the S.S. Ocean Queen and near the beach landing on the western shore members of the crew built a pyramidal day beacon made from slats of wood, which was painted white. The beacon was standing in 1935, and remained until at least 1942.
On August 30, 1913, the barquentine Amaranth (C. W. Nielson, captain) was carrying a cargo of coal from Newcastle, New South Wales, to San Francisco when it wrecked on Jarvis' southern shore. Ruins of ten wooden guano-mining buildings, the two-story house among them, could still be seen by the Amaranth crew, who left Jarvis aboard two lifeboats. One reached Pago Pago, American Samoa, and the other made Apia in Western Samoa. The ship's scattered remains were noted and scavenged for many years, and rounded fragments of coal from the Amaranth's hold were still being found on the south beach in the late 1930s.
Jarvis Island was reclaimed by the United States government and colonized from March 26, 1935, onwards, under the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project. President Franklin D. Roosevelt assigned administration of the island to the U.S. Department of the Interior on May 13, 1936. Starting out as a cluster of large, open tents pitched next to the still-standing white wooden day beacon, the Millersville settlement on the island's western shore was named after a bureaucrat with the United States Department of Air Commerce. The settlement grew into a group of shacks built mostly with wreckage from the Amaranth (lumber from which was also used by the young Hawaiian colonists to build surfboards), but later, stone and wood dwellings were built and equipped with refrigeration, radio equipment, and a weather station. A crude aircraft landing area was cleared on the northeast side of the island, and a T-shaped marker which was intended to be seen from the air was made from gathered stones, but no airplane is known to have ever landed there. According to the 1940 U.S. Census, Jarvis Island had a population of three people.
At the beginning of World War II, an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine surfaced off the west coast of the island. Believing that it was a U.S. Navy submarine which had come to fetch them, the four young colonists rushed down the steep western beach in front of Millersville towards the shore. The submarine answered their waves with fire from its deck gun, but no one was hurt in the attack. On February 7, 1942, the USCGC Taney evacuated the colonists, then shelled and burned the dwellings. The roughly cleared landing area on the island's northeast end was later shelled by the Japanese, leaving crater holes.
Jarvis was visited by scientists during the International Geophysical Year from July 1957 until November 1958. In January 1958 all scattered building ruins from both the nineteenth century guano diggings and the 1935–1942 colonization attempt were swept away without a trace by a severe storm which lasted several days and was witnessed by the scientists. When the IGY research project ended the island was abandoned again. By the early 1960s a few sheds, a century of accumulated trash, the scientists' house from the late 1950s and a solid, short lighthouse-like day beacon built two decades before were the only signs of human habitation on Jarvis.
On June 27, 1974, Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton created Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge which was expanded in 2009 to add submerged lands within 12 nautical miles (22 km) of the island. The refuge now includes 1,273 acres (5.15 km) of land and 428,580 acres (1,734.4 km) of water. Along with six other islands, the island was administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Pacific Remote Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. In January 2009, that entity was upgraded to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument by President George W. Bush.
A feral cat population, descendants of cats likely brought by colonists in the 1930s, wrought disruption to the island's wildlife and vegetation. These cats were removed through efforts which began in the mid-1960s and lasted until 1990 when they were completely eradicated. Since cats were removed, seabird numbers and diversity have increased.
Nineteenth-century tram track remains can be seen in the dried lagoon bed at the island's center and the late 1930s-era lighthouse-shaped day beacon still stands on the western shore at the site of Millersville.
Public entry to anyone, including U.S. citizens, on Jarvis Island requires a special-use permit and is generally restricted to scientists and educators. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Coast Guard periodically visit Jarvis.
There is no airport on the island, nor does the island contain any large terminal or port. There is a day beacon near the middle of the west coast. Some offshore anchorage is available.
As a U.S. territory, the defense of Jarvis Island is the responsibility of the United States. All laws of the United States are applicable on the island. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jarvis Island (/ˈdʒɑːrvɪs/; formerly known as Bunker Island or Bunker's Shoal) is an uninhabited 4.5 km (1.7 sq mi) coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Unlike most coral atolls, the lagoon on Jarvis is wholly dry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jarvis is one of the Line Islands and for statistical purposes is also grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. Jarvis Island is the largest of three U.S. equatorial possessions, which include Baker Island and Howland Island.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "It was claimed by the US in the 19th century and mined for guano, in the 20th century it was the subject of a small settlement. It was attacked during WW2 and evacuated, leaving some buildings and a day beacon. In modern times it is managed as a nature reserve.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "While a few offshore anchorage spots are marked on maps, Jarvis island has no ports or harbors, and swift currents are a hazard. There is a boat landing area in the middle of the western shoreline near a crumbling day beacon, and another near the southwest corner of the island. The center of Jarvis island is a dried lagoon where deep guano deposits accumulated, which were mined for about 20 years during the nineteenth century. The island has a tropical desert climate, with high daytime temperatures, constant wind, and strong sun. Nights, however, are quite cool. The ground is mostly sandy and reaches 23 feet (7.0 meters) at its highest point. The low-lying coral island has long been noted as hard to sight from small ships and is surrounded by a narrow fringing reef.",
"title": "Geography and ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Jarvis Island is one of two United States territories that are in the southern hemisphere (the other is American Samoa). Located only 25 miles (40 km) south of the equator, Jarvis has no known natural freshwater lens and scant rainfall. This creates a very bleak, flat landscape without any plants larger than shrubs. There is no evidence that the island has ever supported a self-sustaining human population. Its sparse bunch grass, prostrate vines and low-growing shrubs are primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds, and marine wildlife.",
"title": "Geography and ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Jarvis Island was submerged underwater during the latest interglacial period, roughly 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were 5–10 meters (16–33 ft) higher than today. As the sea level declined, the horseshoe-shaped lagoon was formed in the center of Jarvis Island.",
"title": "Geography and ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Jarvis Island's highest point has a topographic isolation of 380.57 kilometers (236.48 mi; 205.49 nmi), with Joe's Hill on Kiritimati being the nearest higher neighbor.",
"title": "Geography and ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Jarvis Island is located in the Samoa Time Zone (UTC -11:00), the same time zone as American Samoa, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, and Palmyra Atoll.",
"title": "Geography and ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Jarvis Island once held some of the largest seabird breeding colonies in the tropical ocean, but guano mining and the introduction of rodents have ruined much of the island's native wildlife. Just eight breeding species were recorded in 1982, compared to thirteen in 1996, and fourteen species in 2004. The Polynesian storm petrel had made its return after over 40 years absence from Jarvis Island, and the number of Brown noddies multiplied from just a few birds in 1982 to nearly 10,000. Just twelve Gray-backed terns were recorded in 1982, but by 2004, over 200 nests were found on there. The island, with its surrounding marine waters, has been recognized as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports colonies of lesser frigatebirds, brown and masked boobies, red-tailed tropicbirds, Polynesian storm petrels, blue noddies and sooty terns, as well as serving as a migratory stopover for bristle-thighed curlews.",
"title": "Geography and ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Jarvis Island is unlikely to have hosted permanent human occupation prior to its use for guano mining. However, it is possible the island was utilized as a waypoint or stopover island by Polynesian voyagers. The remoteness of the island and a lack of freshwater resources have prevented large scale archaeological survey from taking place.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The island's first known sighting by the British on August 21, 1821, by the British ship Eliza Francis (or Eliza Frances) owned by Edward, Thomas and William Jarvis and commanded by Captain Brown. The island was visited by whaling vessels till the 1870s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The U.S. Exploring Expedition surveyed the island in 1841. In March 1857 the island was claimed for the United States under the Guano Islands Act and formally annexed on February 27, 1858.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The American Guano Company, which was incorporated in 1857, established claims in respect of Baker Island and Jarvis Island which was recognized under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856. Beginning in 1858, several support structures were built on Jarvis Island, along with a two-story, eight-room \"superintendent's house\" featuring an observation cupola and wide verandahs. Tram tracks were laid down for bringing mined guano to the western shore. One of the first loads was taken by Samuel Gardner Wilder. Laborers for the mining operations came from around the Pacific, including from Hawaiʻi; the Hawaiian laborers named Baker Island \"Paukeaho\", meaning 'out of breath' or 'exhausted', which is indicative of the hard work needed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "For the following 21 years, Jarvis was commercially mined for guano, sent to the United States as fertilizer, but the island was abruptly abandoned in 1879, leaving behind about a dozen buildings and 8,000 metric tons (8,800 short tons) of mined guano.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "New Zealand entrepreneurs, including photographer Henry Winkelmann, then made unsuccessful attempts to continue guano extraction on Jarvis, and the two-story house was sporadically inhabited during the early 1880s. Squire Flockton was left alone on the island as caretaker for several months and committed suicide there in 1883, apparently from gin-fueled despair. His wooden grave marker was a carved plank which could be seen in the island's tiny four-grave cemetery for decades.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "John T. Arundel & Co. resumed mining guano from 1886 to 1899. The United Kingdom annexed the island on June 3, 1889. Phosphate and copra entrepreneur John T. Arundel visited the island in 1909 on maiden voyage of the S.S. Ocean Queen and near the beach landing on the western shore members of the crew built a pyramidal day beacon made from slats of wood, which was painted white. The beacon was standing in 1935, and remained until at least 1942.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On August 30, 1913, the barquentine Amaranth (C. W. Nielson, captain) was carrying a cargo of coal from Newcastle, New South Wales, to San Francisco when it wrecked on Jarvis' southern shore. Ruins of ten wooden guano-mining buildings, the two-story house among them, could still be seen by the Amaranth crew, who left Jarvis aboard two lifeboats. One reached Pago Pago, American Samoa, and the other made Apia in Western Samoa. The ship's scattered remains were noted and scavenged for many years, and rounded fragments of coal from the Amaranth's hold were still being found on the south beach in the late 1930s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jarvis Island was reclaimed by the United States government and colonized from March 26, 1935, onwards, under the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project. President Franklin D. Roosevelt assigned administration of the island to the U.S. Department of the Interior on May 13, 1936. Starting out as a cluster of large, open tents pitched next to the still-standing white wooden day beacon, the Millersville settlement on the island's western shore was named after a bureaucrat with the United States Department of Air Commerce. The settlement grew into a group of shacks built mostly with wreckage from the Amaranth (lumber from which was also used by the young Hawaiian colonists to build surfboards), but later, stone and wood dwellings were built and equipped with refrigeration, radio equipment, and a weather station. A crude aircraft landing area was cleared on the northeast side of the island, and a T-shaped marker which was intended to be seen from the air was made from gathered stones, but no airplane is known to have ever landed there. According to the 1940 U.S. Census, Jarvis Island had a population of three people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "At the beginning of World War II, an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine surfaced off the west coast of the island. Believing that it was a U.S. Navy submarine which had come to fetch them, the four young colonists rushed down the steep western beach in front of Millersville towards the shore. The submarine answered their waves with fire from its deck gun, but no one was hurt in the attack. On February 7, 1942, the USCGC Taney evacuated the colonists, then shelled and burned the dwellings. The roughly cleared landing area on the island's northeast end was later shelled by the Japanese, leaving crater holes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Jarvis was visited by scientists during the International Geophysical Year from July 1957 until November 1958. In January 1958 all scattered building ruins from both the nineteenth century guano diggings and the 1935–1942 colonization attempt were swept away without a trace by a severe storm which lasted several days and was witnessed by the scientists. When the IGY research project ended the island was abandoned again. By the early 1960s a few sheds, a century of accumulated trash, the scientists' house from the late 1950s and a solid, short lighthouse-like day beacon built two decades before were the only signs of human habitation on Jarvis.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On June 27, 1974, Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton created Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge which was expanded in 2009 to add submerged lands within 12 nautical miles (22 km) of the island. The refuge now includes 1,273 acres (5.15 km) of land and 428,580 acres (1,734.4 km) of water. Along with six other islands, the island was administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Pacific Remote Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. In January 2009, that entity was upgraded to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument by President George W. Bush.",
"title": "National Wildlife Refuge"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A feral cat population, descendants of cats likely brought by colonists in the 1930s, wrought disruption to the island's wildlife and vegetation. These cats were removed through efforts which began in the mid-1960s and lasted until 1990 when they were completely eradicated. Since cats were removed, seabird numbers and diversity have increased.",
"title": "National Wildlife Refuge"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Nineteenth-century tram track remains can be seen in the dried lagoon bed at the island's center and the late 1930s-era lighthouse-shaped day beacon still stands on the western shore at the site of Millersville.",
"title": "National Wildlife Refuge"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Public entry to anyone, including U.S. citizens, on Jarvis Island requires a special-use permit and is generally restricted to scientists and educators. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Coast Guard periodically visit Jarvis.",
"title": "National Wildlife Refuge"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "There is no airport on the island, nor does the island contain any large terminal or port. There is a day beacon near the middle of the west coast. Some offshore anchorage is available.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "As a U.S. territory, the defense of Jarvis Island is the responsibility of the United States. All laws of the United States are applicable on the island.",
"title": "Military"
}
]
| Jarvis Island is an uninhabited 4.5 km2 (1.7 sq mi) coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Unlike most coral atolls, the lagoon on Jarvis is wholly dry. Jarvis is one of the Line Islands and for statistical purposes is also grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. Jarvis Island is the largest of three U.S. equatorial possessions, which include Baker Island and Howland Island. It was claimed by the US in the 19th century and mined for guano, in the 20th century it was the subject of a small settlement. It was attacked during WW2 and evacuated, leaving some buildings and a day beacon. In modern times it is managed as a nature reserve. | 2001-05-07T20:53:53Z | 2023-12-24T05:58:03Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarvis_Island |
15,693 | Jersey | Jersey (/ˈdʒɜːrzi/ JUR-zee; Jèrriais: Jèrri [ʒɛri]), also known as the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an island country and self-governing British Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the largest of the Channel Islands and is 14 miles (23 km) from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy. The Bailiwick consists of the main island of Jersey and some surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks including Les Dirouilles, Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, and Les Pierres de Lecq.
Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy, whose dukes became kings of England from 1066. After Normandy was lost by the kings of England in the 13th century, and the ducal title surrendered to France, Jersey remained loyal to the English Crown, though it never became part of the Kingdom of England. Between then and the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Jersey was at the frontline of Anglo-French wars and was invaded a number of times, leading to the construction of fortifications such as Mont Orgueil Castle and a thriving smuggling industry. During the Second World War, the island was invaded and occupied for five years by Nazi Germany. The island was liberated on 9 May 1945, which is now celebrated as the island's national day.
Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination. Jersey's constitutional relationship is with the Crown; it is not part of the United Kingdom. The Bailiff is the civil head, president of the States and head of the judiciary; the Lieutenant Governor represents the head of state, the British monarch; and the Chief Minister is the head of government. Jersey's defence and international representation – as well as certain policy areas, such as nationality law – are the responsibility of the UK Government, but Jersey still has a separate international identity.
The island has a large financial services industry, which generates 40% of its GVA. British cultural influence on the island is evident in its use of English as the main language and Pound sterling as its primary currency. Additional British cultural similarities include: driving on the left, access to British television and newspapers, a school curriculum following that of England, and the popularity of British sports, including cricket. The island also has a strong Norman-French culture, such as its historic dialect of the Norman language, Jèrriais, being one of only two places in Normandy with government status for the language (the other being Guernsey), as well as the use of standard French in legal matters and officially in use as a government language, strong cultural ties to mainland Normandy as a part of the Normandy region, and place names with French or Norman origins. The island has very close cultural links with its neighbouring islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and they share a good-natured rivalry. Jersey and its people have been described as a nation.
The Channel Islands are mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary as the following: Sarnia, Caesarea, Barsa, Silia and Andium, but Jersey cannot be identified specifically because none corresponds directly to the present names. The name Caesarea has been used as the Latin name for Jersey (also in its French version Césarée) since William Camden's Britannia, and is used in titles of associations and institutions today. The Latin name Caesarea was also applied to the colony of New Jersey as Nova Caesarea.
Andium, Agna and Augia were used in antiquity.
Scholars variously surmise that Jersey and Jèrri derive from jǫrð (Old Norse for 'earth') or jarl ('earl'), or perhaps the Norse personal name Geirr (thus Geirrsey, 'Geirr's Island'). The ending -ey denotes an island (as in Guernsey or Surtsey).
Humans have lived on the island since at least 12000 BCE, with evidence of habitation in the Palaeolithic period (La Cotte de St Brelade) and Neolithic dolmens, such as La Hougue Bie. Evidence of Bronze Age and early Iron Age settlements can be found in many locations around the island.
Archaeological evidence of Roman influence has been found, in particular at Les Landes. Christianity was brought to the island by migrants from Brittany in c. fifth - sixth century CE. In the sixth century, the island's patron saint Helier lived at the Hermitage on L'Islet (now Elizabeth Castle). Legend states that Helier was beheaded by raiders and subsequently lifted his head and walked to shore.
In the ninth century the island was raided by Vikings and in 933 it was annexed to Normandy by William Longsword. When Duke William the Conqueror became King of England in 1066, the island remained part of the Norman possessions. However, in 1204, when Normandy was returned to the French king, the island remained a possession of the English crown, though never incorporated into England.Traditionally it is said that Jersey's self-governance originates from the Constitutions of King John, however this is disputed. Nevertheless, the island continued to follow Norman customs and laws. The King also appointed a Bailiff and a Warden (now Lieutenant-Governor). The period of English rule was marked by wars between England and France, as such a military fortress was built at Mont Orgueil.
During the Tudor period, the split between the Church of England and the Vatican led to islanders adopting the Protestant religion. During the reign of Elizabeth, French refugees brought strict Calvinism to the island, which remained the common religion until 1617. In the late 16th century, islanders travelled across the North Atlantic to participate in the Newfoundland fisheries. In recognition for help given to him during his exile in Jersey in the 1640s, King Charles II of England gave Vice Admiral Sir George Carteret, bailiff and governor, a large grant of land in the American colonies in between the Hudson and Delaware rivers, which he promptly named New Jersey. It is now a state in the United States.
In 1769, the island suffered food supply shortages, leading to an insurrection on 28 September known as the Corn Riots. The States met at Elizabeth Castle and decided to request help from the King. However, in 1771 the Crown demanded reforms to the island's governance, leading to the Code of 1771 and removed the powers of the Royal Court to make laws without the States. In 1781, during the American Wars of Independence, the island was invaded by a French force which captured St Helier, but was defeated by Major Peirson's army at the Battle of Jersey.
The 19th century saw the improvement of the road network under General Don, the construction of two railway lines, the improvement of transport links to England, and the construction of new piers and harbours in St Helier. This grew a tourism industry in the island and led to the immigration of thousands of English residents, leading to a cultural shift towards a more anglicised island culture. Island politics was divisively split between the conservative Laurel party and the progressive Rose party, as the lie of power shifted increasingly to the States from the Crown. In the 1850s, the French author Victor Hugo lived in Jersey, but was expelled for insulting the Queen, so he moved on to Guernsey.
During the Second World War, 6,500 Jersey residents were evacuated by their own choice to the UK out of a total population of 50,000. Jersey was occupied by Germany from 1 July 1940 until 9 May 1945, when Germany surrendered. During this time the Germans constructed many fortifications using slave labour imported onto the island from many different countries occupied or at war with Germany. After 1944, supplies from France were interrupted by the D-Day landings, and food on the island became scarce. The SS Vega was sent to the island carrying Red Cross supplies and news of the success of the Allied advance in Europe. During the Nazi occupation, a resistance cell was created by communist activist Norman Le Brocq and the Jersey Communist Party, whose communist ideology of forming a 'United Front' led to the creation of the Jersey Democratic Movement. The Channel Islands had to wait for the German surrender to be liberated. 9 May is celebrated as the island's Liberation Day, where there are celebrations in Liberation Square. After Liberation, the States was reformed, becoming wholly democratically elected, and universal franchise was implemented. Since liberation, the island has grown in population and adopted new industries, especially the finance industry.
Jersey is a Crown Dependency and is not part of the United Kingdom – it is officially part of the British Islands. As one of the Crown Dependencies, Jersey is autonomous and self-governing, with its own independent legal, administrative and fiscal systems. Jersey's government has described Jersey as a "self-governing, democratic country with the power of self-determination".
Because Jersey is a dependency of the British Crown, King Charles III reigns in Jersey. "The Crown" is defined by the Law Officers of the Crown as the "Crown in right of Jersey". The King's representative and adviser in the island is the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey – Vice-Admiral Jerry Kyd since 8 October 2022. He is a point of contact between Jersey ministers and the UK Government and carries out some functions in relation to immigration control, deportation, naturalisation and the issue of passports.
In 1973, the Royal Commission on the Constitution set out the duties of the Crown as including: ultimate responsibility for the 'good government' of the Crown Dependencies; ratification of island legislation by Order-in-Council (royal assent); international representation, subject to consultation with the island authorities before concluding any agreement which would apply to them; ensuring the islands meet their international obligations; and defence.
Jersey's unicameral legislature is the States Assembly. It includes 49 elected members: 12 Connétables (often called 'constables', heads of parishes) and 37 deputies (representing constituencies), all elected for four-year terms as from the October 2011 elections. Jersey has one of the lowest voter turnouts internationally, with just 33% of the electorate voting in 2005, putting it well below the 77% European average for that year.
From the 2022 elections, the role of Senators was abolished and the eight senators were replaced with an increased number of deputies. The 37 deputies are now elected from nine super constituencies, rather than in individual parishes. Although efforts were made the remove the Connétables, they will continue their historic role as States members.
There are also five non-voting members appointed by the Crown: the Bailiff, the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, the Dean of Jersey, the Attorney General and Solicitor General. The Bailiff is President (presiding officer) of the States Assembly, head of the judiciary and as civic head of the island carries out various ceremonial roles.
The Council of Ministers, consisting of a Chief Minister and nine ministers, makes up the leading body of the Government of Jersey. Each minister may appoint up to two assistant ministers. A Chief Executive is head of the civil service. Some governmental functions are carried out in the island's parishes.
Jersey is a distinct jurisdiction for the purposes of conflict of laws, separate from the other Channel Islands, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Jersey law has been influenced by several different legal traditions, in particular Norman customary law, English common law and modern French civil law. Jersey's legal system is therefore described as 'mixed' or 'pluralistic', and sources of law are in French and English languages, although since the 1950s the main working language of the legal system is English.
The principal court is the Royal Court, with appeals to the Jersey Court of Appeal and, ultimately, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Bailiff is head of the judiciary; the Bailiff and the Deputy Bailiff are appointed by the Crown. Other members of the island's judiciary are appointed by the Bailiff.
The external relations of Jersey are overseen by the External Relations Minister of the Government of Jersey. In 2007, the Chief Minister and the UK Lord Chancellor signed an agreement that established a framework for the development of the international identity of Jersey.
Although diplomatic representation is reserved to the Crown, Jersey has been developing its own international identity over recent years. It negotiates directly with foreign governments on various matters, for example Tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) have been signed directly by the island with several countries. The Government maintains offices (some in partnership with Guernsey) in Caen, London and Brussels.
Jersey is a member of the British-Irish Council, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie.
Jersey Independence has in the past been discussed in the States Assembly. Former External Relations Minister Sir Philip Bailhache has at various times warned that the island may need to go independent. It is not Jersey Government policy to seek independence, but the island is prepared if it needed to do so.
Jersey is a third-party European country to the EU. Since 1 January 2021, Jersey has been part of the UK-EU Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement for the purposes of goods and fishing. Goods exported from the island into Europe are not subject to tariffs and Jersey is solely responsible for management of its territorial waters, however permits may be granted to EU fishermen who have a history of fishing in the Bailiwick's waters. The management of this permit system has caused tension between the French and Jersey authorities, with the French threatening to cut off Jersey's electricity supply in May 2021. Before the end of the transition period after the UK withdrew from the EU in 2020, Jersey had a special relationship with the EU. It was part of the EU customs union and there was free movement of goods between Jersey and the EU but the single market in financial services and free movement of people did not apply to Jersey.
Jersey is divided into twelve parishes (which have civil and religious functions). They are all named after their parish church. The Connétable is the head of the parish. They are elected at island general elections and sit ex oficio in the States Assembly.
The parishes have various civil administrative functions, such as roads (managed by the Road Committee) and policing (through the Honorary Police). Each parish is governed through direct democracy at Parish Assemblies, consisting of all eligible voters resident in the parish. The Procureurs du Bien Public are the legal and financial representatives of these parishes.
The parishes of Jersey are further divided into vingtaines (or, in St. Ouen, cueillettes).
Jersey is an island measuring 46.2 square miles (119.6 km) (or 66,436 vergées), including reclaimed land and intertidal zone. It lies in the English Channel, about 12 nautical miles (22 km; 14 mi) from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, France, and about 87 nautical miles (161 km; 100 mi) south of Great Britain. It is the largest and southernmost of the Channel Islands and part of the British Isles, with a maximum land elevation of 143 m (469 ft) above sea level.
About 24% of the island is built-up. 52% of the land area is dedicated to cultivation and around 18% is the natural environment.
It lies within longitude -2° W and latitude 49° N. It has a coastline that is 43 miles (70 km) long and a total area of 46.2 square miles (119.6 km). It measures roughly 9 miles (14 km) from west to east and 5 miles (8 km) north to south, which gives it the affectionate name among locals of "nine-by-five".
The island is divided into twelve parishes; the largest is St Ouen and the smallest is St Clement. The island is characterised by a number of valleys which generally run north-to-south, such as Waterworks Valley, Grands Vaux, Mont les Vaux, although a few run in other directions, such as Le Mourier Valley. The highest point on the island is Les Platons at 136 m (446 ft).
There are several smaller island groups that are part of the Bailiwick of Jersey, such as Les Minquiers and Les Écrehous, however unlike the smaller islands of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, none of these are permanently inhabited.
The largest settlement is the town of St Helier, including the built-up area of southern St Helier and neighbouring areas such as Georgetown, which also plays host to the island's seat of government. The town is the central business district, hosting a large proportion of the island's retail and employment, such as the finance industry.
Outside of the town, many islanders live in suburban and rural settlements, especially along main roads leading out of town and even the more rural areas of the island have considerable amounts of development (St Ouen, the least densely populated parish still has 270 persons per square kilometre). The south and east coasts from St Aubin to Gorey are largely urbanised. The second smaller urban area is the Les Quennevais area in St Brelade, which is home to a small precinct of shops, a school, a park and a leisure centre.
Most people across Jersey regularly travel from the rural settlements to St Helier and from the town to the rural areas for work and leisure purposes.
Housing costs in Jersey are very high. The Jersey House Price Index has at least doubled between 2002 and 2020. The mix-adjusted house price for Jersey is £567,000, higher than any UK region (UK average: £249,000) including London (average: £497,000; highest of any UK region).
The climate is an oceanic climate with mild winters and mild to warm summers. The highest temperature recorded was 37.9 °C (100.2 °F) on 18 July 2022, and the lowest temperature recorded was −10.3 °C (13.5 °F) on 5 January 1894. 2014 was the warmest year on record; the mean daily air temperature was 13.34 °C. For tourism advertising, Jersey often claims to be "the sunniest place in the British Isles", which is true as Jersey has 342 hours of sunlight more than any place in the UK. In 2011, Jersey received controversy for calling itself "the warmest place in the British Isles" during an advertising campaign.
Average wind speeds vary between 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) and 40 kilometres per hour (25 mph) with gusts over 60 kilometres per hour (37 mph) once every 4-5 years.
The following table contains the official Jersey Airport averages for 1981–2010 for Jersey, being located 4.5 miles (7.2 km) from St. Helier –
Jersey's economy is highly developed and services-focused, with a GDP per capita of £45,320 in 2019. It is a mixed market economy, with free market principles and an advanced social security infrastructure. 53,460 people were employed in Jersey as of December 2010: 24% in financial and legal services; 16% in wholesale and retail trades; 16% in the public sector; 10% in education, health and other private sector services; 10% in construction and quarrying; 9% in hotels, restaurants and bars.
Thanks to specialisation in a few high-return sectors, at purchasing power parity Jersey has high economic output per capita, substantially ahead of all of the world's large developed economies. Gross national income in 2009 was £3.7 billion (approximately £40,000 per head of population). However, this is not indicative of each individual resident's purchasing power and the actual standard of living in Jersey is comparable to that in the UK outside central London.
Jersey is one of the world's largest offshore finance centres. The UK acts as a conduit for financial services between European countries and the island. The growth of this sector however has not been without its controversies as Jersey has been characterised by critics and detractors as a place in which the "leadership has essentially been captured by global finance, and whose members will threaten and intimidate anyone who dissents."
Tourism is an important economic sector for the island, however travel to Jersey is very seasonal. Accommodation occupancy is much higher in the summer months, especially August, than in the winter months (with a low in November). The majority of visitors to the island arrive by air from the UK. On 18 February 2005, Jersey was granted Fairtrade Island status.
In 2017, 52% of the Island's area was agricultural land (a decrease since 2009). Major agricultural products are potatoes and dairy produce. Jersey cattle are a small breed of cow widely known for their rich milk and cream; the quality of their meat is also appreciated on a small scale. The herd total in 2009 was 5,090 animals. Fisheries and aquaculture make use of Jersey's marine resources to a total value of over £6 million in 2009.
Along with Guernsey, Jersey has its own lottery called the Channel Islands Lottery, which was launched in 1975.
Jersey is not a tax-free jurisdiction. Taxes are levied on properties (known as 'rates') and a Personal Income Tax, Corporate Income Tax and goods and services tax exist. Before 2008, Jersey had no value-added tax (VAT). Many companies, such as Amazon and Play.com, took advantage of this and a loophole in European law, known as low-value consignment relief, to establish a tax-free fulfilment industry from Jersey. This loophole was closed by the European Union in 2012, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs.
There is a 20% standard rate for Income Tax and a 5% standard rate for GST. The island has a 0% default tax rate for corporations; however, higher rates apply to financial services, utility companies and large corporate retailers. Jersey is considered to be a tax haven. The island, until March 2019, was on the EU tax haven blacklist, but no longer features. In January 2021, the chair of the EU Tax Matters Subcommittee, Paul Tang, criticised the list for not including such "renowned tax havens" as Jersey. In 2020, Tax Justice ranked Jersey as the 16th on the Financial Secrecy Index, below larger countries such as the UK, however still placing at the lower end of the 'extreme danger zone' for offshore secrecy'. The island accounts of 0.46% of the global offshore finance market, making a small player in the total market. In 2020, the Corporate Tax Haven Index ranked Jersey eighth for 2021 with an haven score (a measure of the jurisdiction's systems to be used for corporate tax abuse) of 100 out of 100; however, the island only has 0.51% on the Global Scale Weight ranking.
The primary mode of transport on the island is the motor vehicle. Jersey has a road network consisting of 346 miles (557 km) of roads and there are a total of 124,737 motor vehicles registered on the island as of 2016. Jersey has a large network of lanes, some of which are classified as green lanes, which have a 15 mph speed limit and where priority is afforded to pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.
The public bus network in Jersey has been regulated by the Government since 2002, replacing a de-regulated, commercial service. It is operated on a sole-operator franchise model, currently contracted to LibertyBus, a company owned by Kelsian Group. LibertyBus also operate the school bus services. There is also a taxi network and an electronic bike scheme (EVie). Jersey has an airport and a number of ports, which are operated by Ports of Jersey.
Jersey's monetary policy is linked to the Bank of England. The official currency of Jersey is the pound sterling. Jersey issues its own postage stamps, banknotes (including a £1 note which is not issued in the UK) and coins that circulate alongside all other sterling coinage. Jersey currency is not legal tender outside Jersey; however it is "acceptable tender" in the UK and can be surrendered at banks in exchange for UK currency.
In July 2014, the Jersey Financial Services Commission approved the establishment of the world's first regulated Bitcoin fund, at a time when the digital currency was being accepted by some local businesses.
Censuses have been undertaken in Jersey since 1821. In the 2021 census, the total resident population was estimated to be 103,267, of whom 35% live in Saint Helier, the island's only town. Approximately half the island's population was born in Jersey; 29% of the population were born elsewhere in the British Isles, 8% in continental Portugal or Madeira, 9% in other European countries and 5% elsewhere.
Jersey people are the native nation on the island, however do not form a majority of the population. Jersey people are often called Islanders or, in individual terms, Jerseyman or Jerseywoman. Jersey people did not generally identify themselves as English prior to the Union of Britain. Jersey was culturally and geographically much closer to Normandy and there were limited cross-Channel links. However, wars with France, including invasions of Jersey, grew loyalty to Britain over time and the French came more and more to be seen as a distinct people. By the start of the 19th century, Jersey people generally identified as British, which can be seen through the treatment of the Breton immigrants of the time as a distinct nation. Furthermore, the growth of the British migrant population strengthened the role of English and the British cultural influence. Finally, the introduction of compulsory education - which was exclusively in English - and the period of the Occupation reduced the traditional and Norman cultural influences and increased British cultural practices and pride in British nationhood among the island population.
Nationality law in Jersey is conferred by the British Nationality Act 1981 extended to the island by an Order in Council with the consent of the States of Jersey. British nationality law confers British citizenship onto those with suitable connections to Jersey. The Lieutenant Governor's office issues British passports (specifically the Jersey variant) to British citizens with a connection to Jersey by residency or birth.
Jersey is constitutionally entitled to restrict immigration by non-Jersey residents, but control of immigration at the point of entry cannot be introduced for British, certain Commonwealth and EEA nationals without change to existing international law.
Jersey is part of the Common Travel Area (CTA), a border control-free zone which encompasses the Crown Dependencies, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. This means a passport is not required to travel from Jersey to any of these territories (or vice versa) though the Government recommends all travellers bring photo ID since it may need to be checked by customs or police officers and is generally required by commercial transport providers into the island. Due to the CTA, Jersey-born British citizens in the rest of the CTA and British and Irish citizens in Jersey have the right to access social benefits, access healthcare, access social housing support and to vote in general elections.
For non-CTA travel, Jersey maintains its own immigration and border controls (although most travel into the Bailiwick is from the rest of the CTA), however UK immigration legislation may be extended to Jersey (subject to exceptions and adaptations) following consultation with Jersey and with Jersey's consent.
To control population numbers, Jersey operates a system of registration which restricts the right to live and work in the island according to certain requirements. In order to move to Jersey or work in Jersey, everyone (including Jersey-born people) must be registered and have a registration card. There are a number of statuses:
Until the 19th centuries, there was generally limited immigration to the island, especially from English people. Jersey was a distant territory to the British mainland (taking days to travel between England and the islands) and culturally distinct (the locals predominantly speaking Norman French). However, from the 16th to 19th centuries, Jersey became home to French religious refugees, particularly Protestants following the Edict of Nantes.
From the early 19th century, the island's economic boom attracted economic migrants. By 1841, of the 47,544 population, 11,338 were born in the British Isles outside of Jersey. From the 1840s onwards, agricultural workers came from neighbouring Brittany and mainland Normandy, both due to the booming economy of Jersey and the economic situation in northern France. Furthermore, the new potato season coincided with the time of least agricultural activity in Brittany and Normandy. While many returned to France, some settled in the island.
Between 1851 and 1921, the Jersey population fell by 12.8% (possibly up to 18%). The economic boom ended in the 1850s leading to significant emigration, including on to British colonies. A 1901 report by the States concluded that by 1921, the number of births to foreign-born fathers would be equal to those to Jersey-born fathers, describing the immigration situation as a 'formidable invasion, although peaceful', and predicted this would have a large impact on the island's socio-political situation.
After World War II, when the island had only 55,244 residents, it saw a period of rapid population increase. By 1991, the population was 84,082. The booming tourism industry required a large volume of relatively low cost labour, so the island turned to Madeira for seasonal staff. Between 1961 and 1981, the Portuguese-born population grew 0.2% to 3.1% of the population. In 2021, this figure was 8%. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the new source of cheap labour for the island has been Polish people, whose population has grown from non-existent to 3%.
Immigration has helped give aspects of Jersey a distinct urban character, particularly in and around the parish of St Helier, which contributes much to ongoing debates between development and sustainability throughout the island.
Jersey's patron saint is St Helier, after whom the capital town is named. From the fifth century, the island was under the Bishop of Coutances, until being transferred to the Diocese of Winchester in 1568. As of 2022, the island is planned to be transferred to the Diocese of Salisbury. The established church is the Church of England, presided over in the island by the Dean, who is ex officio a States Member, but has no vote. The primary churches are the parish churches, which are 12 ancient Anglican churches in each of the parish centre, though other churches do exist.
According to a 2015 survey of islanders, 54% of adults have a religion. Christianity is the predominant religion in the island, with over half of islanders identifying as Christian in some form. The largest religious group is Anglicans, with 23% of the population.
The Battle of Flowers is a carnival, which has been held annually in August since 1902. Other festivals include La Fête dé Noué (Christmas festival), La Faîs'sie d'Cidre (cidermaking festival), the Battle of Britain air display, Weekender Music Festival, food festivals, and parish events.
The Jersey Eisteddfod is an annual festival celebrating local culture. It is split into performing arts (e.g. dance, music, modern languages) and creative arts (e.g. needlework, photography, craft).
Archaeologists have discovered stone planquettes with abstract designs made by the Magdalenians and dating to the Upper Palaeolithic; these are the oldest pieces of art discovered in the British Isles as of 2023.
The island has produced a number of notable artists. John St Helier Lander (1868–1944) was a portrait painter born in St Helier in 1868; he was a portraitist for the Royal Family. Edmund Blampied also lived around the same period; he was known for his etchings and drypoint. Other famous historic artists include John Le Capelain, John Everett Millais and Philip Ouless. There are also several contemporary Jersey artists, such as Ian Rolls, known for painting quirky landscape paintings.
Jersey also has historic connections to French art. French artist René Lalique created the stained glass windows at St Matthew's Church. No similar Lalique commission survives elsewhere in the world. Artist partners Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were born in France but moved to and died in the island.
BBC Radio Jersey provides a radio service, and BBC Channel Islands News provides a joint television news service with Guernsey. ITV Channel Television is a regional ITV franchise shared with the Bailiwick of Guernsey but with its headquarters in Jersey. Radio services are also provided by Channel 103, among other companies.
Bailiwick Express is one of Jersey's digital online news sources. Jersey has only one newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post, which is printed six days a week, and has been in publication since 1890.
Little is known of the history of music in the islands, though fieldwork has recorded folk songs from the Channel Islands, mostly in French. The folk song Chanson de Peirson is unique to the island.
In contemporary music, Guru Josh, who was born in Jersey, produced house and techno music. He was most notable for his internationally successful debut hit Infinity and its re-releases, reaching number one in numerous European countries. Furthermore, rock and pop artist Nerina Pallot was raised on the island and has enjoyed international success, and has written songs for famous artists like Kylie Minogue.
The island has a summer music festival scene stretching from mid-June to late September including Good Vibrations, Out-There, the Weekender (the largest festival in the Channel Islands) and Electric Park.
There are two theatres on the island: the Jersey Opera House and the Jersey Arts Centre. Lillie Langtry is probably the most famous actress from the island. She was born in Jersey and became an actress on the West End in the late 19th century. She was the first socialite to appear on stage and the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product. She was also famous for her relationships with notable figures, including the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. She is buried in St Saviour's Church graveyard.
In 1909, T. J. West established the first cinema in the Royal Hall in St. Helier, which became known as West's Cinema in 1923 and was demolished in 1977. The first talking picture, The Perfect Alibi, was shown on 30 December 1929 at the Picture House in St. Helier. The Jersey Film Society was founded on 11 December 1947 at the Café Bleu, West's Cinema. The large Art Deco Forum Cinema was opened in 1935 – during the German occupation this was used for German propaganda films.
The Odeon Cinema was opened 2 June 1952 and, was later rebranded in the early 21st century as the Forum cinema. Its owners, however, struggled to meet tough competition from the Cineworld Cinemas group, which opened a 10 screen multiplex on the waterfront centre in St. Helier on reclaimed land in December 2002 and the Odeon closed its doors in late 2008. The Odeon is now a listed building.
First held in 2008, the Branchage Jersey International Film Festival attracts filmmakers from all over the world. The 2001 movie The Others was set on the island in 1945 shortly after liberation.
Seafood has traditionally been important to the cuisine of Jersey: mussels (called moules in the island), oysters, lobster and crabs – especially spider crabs – ormers and conger.
Jersey milk being very rich, cream and butter have played a large part in insular cooking. Jersey Royal potatoes are the local variety of new potato, and the island is famous for its early crop of Chats (small potatoes) from the south-facing côtils (steeply sloping fields). They were originally grown using vraic as a natural fertiliser, giving them their own individual taste; only a small portion of those grown in the island still use this method. They are eaten in a variety of ways, often simply boiled and served with butter or when not as fresh fried in butter.
Apples historically were an important crop. Bourdélots are apple dumplings, but the most typical speciality is black butter (lé nièr beurre), a dark spicy spread prepared from apples, cider and spices. Cider used to be an important export. After decline and near-disappearance in the late 20th century, apple production is being increased and promoted. Besides cider, apple brandy is produced. Other production of alcohol drinks includes wine, and in 2013 the first commercial vodkas made from Jersey Royal potatoes were marketed.
Among other traditional dishes are cabbage loaf, Jersey wonders (les mèrvelles), fliottes, bean crock (les pais au fou), nettle (ortchie) soup, and vraic buns.
In its own right Jersey participates in the Commonwealth Games and in the biennial Island Games, which it first hosted in 1997 and more recently in 2015.
The Jersey Football Association supervises football in Jersey. As of 2022, the Jersey Football Combination has nine teams in its top division. Jersey national football team plays in the annual Muratti competition against the other Channel Islands. Rugby union in Jersey comes under the auspices of the Jersey Rugby Association (JRA), which is a member of the Rugby Football Union of England. Jersey Reds compete in the English rugby union system; after four promotions in five seasons, the last three of which were consecutive, they competed in the second-level RFU Championship in 2012–13. Jersey is an associate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC). The Jersey cricket team plays in the Inter-insular match, as well as in ICC tournaments around the world in One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals.
For Horse racing, Les Landes Racecourse can be found at Les Landes in St. Ouen next to the ruins of Grosnez Castle.
Jersey has two public indoor swimming pools: AquaSplash, St Helier and Les Quennevais, St Brelade. Swimming in the sea, windsurfing and other marine sports are practised. Jersey Swimming Club has organised an annual swim from Elizabeth Castle to Saint Helier Harbour for over 50 years. A round-island swim is a major challenge: the record for the swim is Ross Wisby, who circumnavigated the island in 9 hours 26 minutes in 2015. The Royal Channel Island Yacht Club is based in St Brelade.
Two professional golfers from Jersey have won the Open Championship seven times between them; Harry Vardon won six times and Ted Ray won once, both around the turn of the 20th century. Vardon and Ray also won the U.S. Open once each. Harry Vardon's brother, Tom Vardon, had wins on various European tours.
Jersey Sport, an independent body that promotes sports in Jersey and support clubs, was launched in 2017
Until the 19th century, indigenous Jèrriais – a variety of Norman – was the language of the island though French was used for official business. During the 20th century, British cultural influence saw an intense language shift take place and Jersey today is predominantly English-speaking. Jèrriais nonetheless survives; around 2,600 islanders (three per cent) are thought to be habitual speakers, and some 10,000 (12 per cent) in all claim some knowledge of the language, particularly amongst the elderly in rural parishes. There have been efforts to revive Jèrriais in schools.
The dialects of Jèrriais differ in phonology and, to a lesser extent, lexis between parishes, with the most marked differences to be heard between those of the west and east. Many place names are in Jèrriais, and French and English place names are also to be found. Anglicisation of the place names increased apace with the migration of English people to the island.
Wace was a 12th-century poet born in Jersey. He is the earliest known Jersey writer, authoring Roman de Brut and Roman de Rou, among others. Some believe him to be the earliest Jèrriais writer and he is known as the founder of Jersey literature, but the language in which he wrote is very different from modern Jèrriais.
As Jèrriais was not an official language in Jersey, it had no standard written form, which meant that Jersey literature is very varied, written in multiple forms of Jèrriais alongside Standard English and French.
Matthew Le Geyt was the first poet to publish in Jèrriais after the introduction of printing to the island in the 18th century. Philippe Le Sueur Mourant wrote in Jèrriais in the 19th century. Jerseyman George d'la Forge is named the 'Guardian of the Jersey Norman Heritage'. Though he lived in America for most of his life, he felt a strong attachment to Jersey and his native language. His works were turned into books in the 1980s.
After the failure of the 1848 revolution, thirty-nine French revolutionaries were exiled in Jersey, including the famous French author Victor Hugo, as Jersey's culture had a relation to their native French. Gerald Durrell, the famous zoologist who set up Jersey Zoo, was also an author, writing novels, non-fiction and children's books. He was writing as a means to fund and further his conservation work.
Education in the island is managed by the Department for Children, Young People, Education and Skills of the Government of Jersey. The education system in Jersey is based on the English system. Full time education is compulsory for children aged 5 to 16. Furthermore, the Government provides limited pre-school education free to parents. Jersey schools must teach the Jersey Curriculum, which is based on the English National Curriculum, with differences to account for Jersey's unique position.
As of 2022, there are 24 States primary schools, seven private primary or preparatory schools, four comprehensive States secondary schools, two fee-paying States secondary schools, two private secondary schools and one provided grammar school and sixth form, Hautlieu School. Furthermore, Highlands College provides alternative post-16 and all post-18 education available on the island. However, higher education facilities are limited, so many students study off-island. In the UK, Jersey students pay the same rate as Home students.
Three areas of land are protected for their ecological or geological interest as Sites of Special Interest (SSI). Jersey has four designated Ramsar sites: Les Pierres de Lecq, Les Minquiers, Les Écréhous and Les Dirouilles and the south east coast of Jersey (a large area of intertidal zone).
Jersey is the home of the Jersey Zoo (formerly known as the Durrell Wildlife Park) founded by the naturalist, zookeeper and author Gerald Durrell.
Four species of small mammal are considered native: the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), the Jersey bank vole (Myodes glareolus caesarius), the lesser white-toothed shrew (Crocidura suaveolens) and the French shrew (Sorex coronatus). Three wild mammals are well-established introductions: the rabbit (introduced in the mediaeval period), the red squirrel and the hedgehog (both introduced in the 19th century). The stoat (Mustela erminea) became extinct in Jersey between 1976 and 2000. The green lizard (Lacerta bilineata) is a protected species of reptile; Jersey is its only native habitat in the British Isles.
The red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) became extinct in Jersey around 1900, when changes in farming and grazing practices led to a decline in the coastal slope habitat required by this species. Birds on the Edge, a project between the Government of Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and National Trust for Jersey, is working to restore Jersey's coastal habitats and reinstate the red-billed chough (and other bird species) to the island
Jersey is the only place in the British Isles where the agile frog (Rana dalmatina) is found. The remaining population of agile frogs on Jersey is very small and is restricted to the south west of the island. The species is the subject of an ongoing programme to save it from extinction in Jersey via a collaboration between the Government of Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Jersey Amphibian and Reptile Group (JARG), with support and sponsorship from several other organisations. The programme includes captive breeding and release, public awareness and habitat restoration activities.
Trees generally considered native are the alder (Alnus glutinosa), silver birch (Betula pendula), sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), hazel (Corylus avellana), hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), beech (Fagus sylvatica), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), aspen (Populus tremula), wild cherry (Prunus avium), blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), holm oak (Quercus ilex), oak (Quercus robur), sallow (Salix cinerea), elder (Sambucus nigra), elm (Ulmus spp.) and medlar (Mespilus germanica). Among notable introduced species, the cabbage palm (Cordyline australis) has been planted in coastal areas and may be seen in many gardens.
Notable marine species include the ormer, conger, bass, undulate ray, grey mullet, ballan wrasse and garfish. Marine mammals include the bottlenosed dolphin and grey seal.
Historically the island has given its name to a variety of overly-large cabbage, the Jersey cabbage, also known as Jersey kale or cow cabbage.
Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) is an invasive species that threatens Jersey's biodiversity. It is easily recognisable and has hollow stems with small white flowers that are produced in late summer. Other non-native species on the island include the Colorado beetle, burnet rose and oak processionary moth.
Health services on the island are overseen by the Department for Health and Social Care. Jersey does not have a nationalised health service and the service is not part of the National Health Service. Many healthcare treatments are not free at the point of use, however treatment in the accident and emergency department is free. For residents, prescriptions and some hospital treatments are free, but GP services cost money.
Emergency services are provided by the States of Jersey Police with the support of the Honorary Police as necessary, States of Jersey Ambulance Service, Jersey Fire and Rescue Service and the Jersey Coastguard. The Jersey Fire and Rescue Service, Jersey Lifeboat Association and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution operate an inshore rescue and lifeboat service; Channel Islands Air Search provides rapid response airborne search of the surrounding waters.
The States of Jersey Fire Service was formed in 1938 when the States took over the Saint Helier Fire Brigade, which had been formed in 1901. The first lifeboat was equipped, funded by the States, in 1830. The RNLI established a lifeboat station in 1884. Border security and customs controls are undertaken by the States of Jersey Customs and Immigration Service. Jersey has adopted the 112 emergency number alongside its existing 999 emergency number.
Water supplies in Jersey are managed by Jersey Water. Jersey Water supply water from two water treatment works, around 7.2 billion litres in 2018. Water in Jersey is almost exclusively from rainfall-dependent surface water. The water is collected and stored in six reservoirs and there is also a desalination plant that produces up to 10.8 million litres per day (around half of the Island's average daily usage). In 2017, 101 water pollution incidents were reported, an increase of 5% on 2016. Another estimated 515,700 m of water is abstracted for domestic purposes from private sources (around 9% of the population).
Electricity in Jersey is provided by a sole supplier, Jersey Electricity, of which the States of Jersey is the majority shareholder. Jersey imports 95 per cent of its power from France. 35% of the imported power derives from hydro-electric sources and 65% from nuclear sources. Jersey Electricity claims the carbon intensity of its electricity supply is 35g CO2 e / kWh compared to 352g CO2 e / kWh in the UK.
49°11′24″N 2°6′36″W / 49.19000°N 2.11000°W / 49.19000; -2.11000 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jersey (/ˈdʒɜːrzi/ JUR-zee; Jèrriais: Jèrri [ʒɛri]), also known as the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an island country and self-governing British Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the largest of the Channel Islands and is 14 miles (23 km) from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy. The Bailiwick consists of the main island of Jersey and some surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks including Les Dirouilles, Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, and Les Pierres de Lecq.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy, whose dukes became kings of England from 1066. After Normandy was lost by the kings of England in the 13th century, and the ducal title surrendered to France, Jersey remained loyal to the English Crown, though it never became part of the Kingdom of England. Between then and the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Jersey was at the frontline of Anglo-French wars and was invaded a number of times, leading to the construction of fortifications such as Mont Orgueil Castle and a thriving smuggling industry. During the Second World War, the island was invaded and occupied for five years by Nazi Germany. The island was liberated on 9 May 1945, which is now celebrated as the island's national day.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination. Jersey's constitutional relationship is with the Crown; it is not part of the United Kingdom. The Bailiff is the civil head, president of the States and head of the judiciary; the Lieutenant Governor represents the head of state, the British monarch; and the Chief Minister is the head of government. Jersey's defence and international representation – as well as certain policy areas, such as nationality law – are the responsibility of the UK Government, but Jersey still has a separate international identity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The island has a large financial services industry, which generates 40% of its GVA. British cultural influence on the island is evident in its use of English as the main language and Pound sterling as its primary currency. Additional British cultural similarities include: driving on the left, access to British television and newspapers, a school curriculum following that of England, and the popularity of British sports, including cricket. The island also has a strong Norman-French culture, such as its historic dialect of the Norman language, Jèrriais, being one of only two places in Normandy with government status for the language (the other being Guernsey), as well as the use of standard French in legal matters and officially in use as a government language, strong cultural ties to mainland Normandy as a part of the Normandy region, and place names with French or Norman origins. The island has very close cultural links with its neighbouring islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and they share a good-natured rivalry. Jersey and its people have been described as a nation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Channel Islands are mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary as the following: Sarnia, Caesarea, Barsa, Silia and Andium, but Jersey cannot be identified specifically because none corresponds directly to the present names. The name Caesarea has been used as the Latin name for Jersey (also in its French version Césarée) since William Camden's Britannia, and is used in titles of associations and institutions today. The Latin name Caesarea was also applied to the colony of New Jersey as Nova Caesarea.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Andium, Agna and Augia were used in antiquity.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Scholars variously surmise that Jersey and Jèrri derive from jǫrð (Old Norse for 'earth') or jarl ('earl'), or perhaps the Norse personal name Geirr (thus Geirrsey, 'Geirr's Island'). The ending -ey denotes an island (as in Guernsey or Surtsey).",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Humans have lived on the island since at least 12000 BCE, with evidence of habitation in the Palaeolithic period (La Cotte de St Brelade) and Neolithic dolmens, such as La Hougue Bie. Evidence of Bronze Age and early Iron Age settlements can be found in many locations around the island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Archaeological evidence of Roman influence has been found, in particular at Les Landes. Christianity was brought to the island by migrants from Brittany in c. fifth - sixth century CE. In the sixth century, the island's patron saint Helier lived at the Hermitage on L'Islet (now Elizabeth Castle). Legend states that Helier was beheaded by raiders and subsequently lifted his head and walked to shore.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the ninth century the island was raided by Vikings and in 933 it was annexed to Normandy by William Longsword. When Duke William the Conqueror became King of England in 1066, the island remained part of the Norman possessions. However, in 1204, when Normandy was returned to the French king, the island remained a possession of the English crown, though never incorporated into England.Traditionally it is said that Jersey's self-governance originates from the Constitutions of King John, however this is disputed. Nevertheless, the island continued to follow Norman customs and laws. The King also appointed a Bailiff and a Warden (now Lieutenant-Governor). The period of English rule was marked by wars between England and France, as such a military fortress was built at Mont Orgueil.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During the Tudor period, the split between the Church of England and the Vatican led to islanders adopting the Protestant religion. During the reign of Elizabeth, French refugees brought strict Calvinism to the island, which remained the common religion until 1617. In the late 16th century, islanders travelled across the North Atlantic to participate in the Newfoundland fisheries. In recognition for help given to him during his exile in Jersey in the 1640s, King Charles II of England gave Vice Admiral Sir George Carteret, bailiff and governor, a large grant of land in the American colonies in between the Hudson and Delaware rivers, which he promptly named New Jersey. It is now a state in the United States.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1769, the island suffered food supply shortages, leading to an insurrection on 28 September known as the Corn Riots. The States met at Elizabeth Castle and decided to request help from the King. However, in 1771 the Crown demanded reforms to the island's governance, leading to the Code of 1771 and removed the powers of the Royal Court to make laws without the States. In 1781, during the American Wars of Independence, the island was invaded by a French force which captured St Helier, but was defeated by Major Peirson's army at the Battle of Jersey.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The 19th century saw the improvement of the road network under General Don, the construction of two railway lines, the improvement of transport links to England, and the construction of new piers and harbours in St Helier. This grew a tourism industry in the island and led to the immigration of thousands of English residents, leading to a cultural shift towards a more anglicised island culture. Island politics was divisively split between the conservative Laurel party and the progressive Rose party, as the lie of power shifted increasingly to the States from the Crown. In the 1850s, the French author Victor Hugo lived in Jersey, but was expelled for insulting the Queen, so he moved on to Guernsey.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "During the Second World War, 6,500 Jersey residents were evacuated by their own choice to the UK out of a total population of 50,000. Jersey was occupied by Germany from 1 July 1940 until 9 May 1945, when Germany surrendered. During this time the Germans constructed many fortifications using slave labour imported onto the island from many different countries occupied or at war with Germany. After 1944, supplies from France were interrupted by the D-Day landings, and food on the island became scarce. The SS Vega was sent to the island carrying Red Cross supplies and news of the success of the Allied advance in Europe. During the Nazi occupation, a resistance cell was created by communist activist Norman Le Brocq and the Jersey Communist Party, whose communist ideology of forming a 'United Front' led to the creation of the Jersey Democratic Movement. The Channel Islands had to wait for the German surrender to be liberated. 9 May is celebrated as the island's Liberation Day, where there are celebrations in Liberation Square. After Liberation, the States was reformed, becoming wholly democratically elected, and universal franchise was implemented. Since liberation, the island has grown in population and adopted new industries, especially the finance industry.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Jersey is a Crown Dependency and is not part of the United Kingdom – it is officially part of the British Islands. As one of the Crown Dependencies, Jersey is autonomous and self-governing, with its own independent legal, administrative and fiscal systems. Jersey's government has described Jersey as a \"self-governing, democratic country with the power of self-determination\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Because Jersey is a dependency of the British Crown, King Charles III reigns in Jersey. \"The Crown\" is defined by the Law Officers of the Crown as the \"Crown in right of Jersey\". The King's representative and adviser in the island is the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey – Vice-Admiral Jerry Kyd since 8 October 2022. He is a point of contact between Jersey ministers and the UK Government and carries out some functions in relation to immigration control, deportation, naturalisation and the issue of passports.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1973, the Royal Commission on the Constitution set out the duties of the Crown as including: ultimate responsibility for the 'good government' of the Crown Dependencies; ratification of island legislation by Order-in-Council (royal assent); international representation, subject to consultation with the island authorities before concluding any agreement which would apply to them; ensuring the islands meet their international obligations; and defence.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jersey's unicameral legislature is the States Assembly. It includes 49 elected members: 12 Connétables (often called 'constables', heads of parishes) and 37 deputies (representing constituencies), all elected for four-year terms as from the October 2011 elections. Jersey has one of the lowest voter turnouts internationally, with just 33% of the electorate voting in 2005, putting it well below the 77% European average for that year.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "From the 2022 elections, the role of Senators was abolished and the eight senators were replaced with an increased number of deputies. The 37 deputies are now elected from nine super constituencies, rather than in individual parishes. Although efforts were made the remove the Connétables, they will continue their historic role as States members.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "There are also five non-voting members appointed by the Crown: the Bailiff, the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, the Dean of Jersey, the Attorney General and Solicitor General. The Bailiff is President (presiding officer) of the States Assembly, head of the judiciary and as civic head of the island carries out various ceremonial roles.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Council of Ministers, consisting of a Chief Minister and nine ministers, makes up the leading body of the Government of Jersey. Each minister may appoint up to two assistant ministers. A Chief Executive is head of the civil service. Some governmental functions are carried out in the island's parishes.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Jersey is a distinct jurisdiction for the purposes of conflict of laws, separate from the other Channel Islands, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Jersey law has been influenced by several different legal traditions, in particular Norman customary law, English common law and modern French civil law. Jersey's legal system is therefore described as 'mixed' or 'pluralistic', and sources of law are in French and English languages, although since the 1950s the main working language of the legal system is English.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The principal court is the Royal Court, with appeals to the Jersey Court of Appeal and, ultimately, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Bailiff is head of the judiciary; the Bailiff and the Deputy Bailiff are appointed by the Crown. Other members of the island's judiciary are appointed by the Bailiff.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The external relations of Jersey are overseen by the External Relations Minister of the Government of Jersey. In 2007, the Chief Minister and the UK Lord Chancellor signed an agreement that established a framework for the development of the international identity of Jersey.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Although diplomatic representation is reserved to the Crown, Jersey has been developing its own international identity over recent years. It negotiates directly with foreign governments on various matters, for example Tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) have been signed directly by the island with several countries. The Government maintains offices (some in partnership with Guernsey) in Caen, London and Brussels.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Jersey is a member of the British-Irish Council, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Jersey Independence has in the past been discussed in the States Assembly. Former External Relations Minister Sir Philip Bailhache has at various times warned that the island may need to go independent. It is not Jersey Government policy to seek independence, but the island is prepared if it needed to do so.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Jersey is a third-party European country to the EU. Since 1 January 2021, Jersey has been part of the UK-EU Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement for the purposes of goods and fishing. Goods exported from the island into Europe are not subject to tariffs and Jersey is solely responsible for management of its territorial waters, however permits may be granted to EU fishermen who have a history of fishing in the Bailiwick's waters. The management of this permit system has caused tension between the French and Jersey authorities, with the French threatening to cut off Jersey's electricity supply in May 2021. Before the end of the transition period after the UK withdrew from the EU in 2020, Jersey had a special relationship with the EU. It was part of the EU customs union and there was free movement of goods between Jersey and the EU but the single market in financial services and free movement of people did not apply to Jersey.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Jersey is divided into twelve parishes (which have civil and religious functions). They are all named after their parish church. The Connétable is the head of the parish. They are elected at island general elections and sit ex oficio in the States Assembly.",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The parishes have various civil administrative functions, such as roads (managed by the Road Committee) and policing (through the Honorary Police). Each parish is governed through direct democracy at Parish Assemblies, consisting of all eligible voters resident in the parish. The Procureurs du Bien Public are the legal and financial representatives of these parishes.",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The parishes of Jersey are further divided into vingtaines (or, in St. Ouen, cueillettes).",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Jersey is an island measuring 46.2 square miles (119.6 km) (or 66,436 vergées), including reclaimed land and intertidal zone. It lies in the English Channel, about 12 nautical miles (22 km; 14 mi) from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, France, and about 87 nautical miles (161 km; 100 mi) south of Great Britain. It is the largest and southernmost of the Channel Islands and part of the British Isles, with a maximum land elevation of 143 m (469 ft) above sea level.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "About 24% of the island is built-up. 52% of the land area is dedicated to cultivation and around 18% is the natural environment.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "It lies within longitude -2° W and latitude 49° N. It has a coastline that is 43 miles (70 km) long and a total area of 46.2 square miles (119.6 km). It measures roughly 9 miles (14 km) from west to east and 5 miles (8 km) north to south, which gives it the affectionate name among locals of \"nine-by-five\".",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The island is divided into twelve parishes; the largest is St Ouen and the smallest is St Clement. The island is characterised by a number of valleys which generally run north-to-south, such as Waterworks Valley, Grands Vaux, Mont les Vaux, although a few run in other directions, such as Le Mourier Valley. The highest point on the island is Les Platons at 136 m (446 ft).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "There are several smaller island groups that are part of the Bailiwick of Jersey, such as Les Minquiers and Les Écrehous, however unlike the smaller islands of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, none of these are permanently inhabited.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The largest settlement is the town of St Helier, including the built-up area of southern St Helier and neighbouring areas such as Georgetown, which also plays host to the island's seat of government. The town is the central business district, hosting a large proportion of the island's retail and employment, such as the finance industry.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Outside of the town, many islanders live in suburban and rural settlements, especially along main roads leading out of town and even the more rural areas of the island have considerable amounts of development (St Ouen, the least densely populated parish still has 270 persons per square kilometre). The south and east coasts from St Aubin to Gorey are largely urbanised. The second smaller urban area is the Les Quennevais area in St Brelade, which is home to a small precinct of shops, a school, a park and a leisure centre.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Most people across Jersey regularly travel from the rural settlements to St Helier and from the town to the rural areas for work and leisure purposes.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Housing costs in Jersey are very high. The Jersey House Price Index has at least doubled between 2002 and 2020. The mix-adjusted house price for Jersey is £567,000, higher than any UK region (UK average: £249,000) including London (average: £497,000; highest of any UK region).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The climate is an oceanic climate with mild winters and mild to warm summers. The highest temperature recorded was 37.9 °C (100.2 °F) on 18 July 2022, and the lowest temperature recorded was −10.3 °C (13.5 °F) on 5 January 1894. 2014 was the warmest year on record; the mean daily air temperature was 13.34 °C. For tourism advertising, Jersey often claims to be \"the sunniest place in the British Isles\", which is true as Jersey has 342 hours of sunlight more than any place in the UK. In 2011, Jersey received controversy for calling itself \"the warmest place in the British Isles\" during an advertising campaign.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Average wind speeds vary between 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) and 40 kilometres per hour (25 mph) with gusts over 60 kilometres per hour (37 mph) once every 4-5 years.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The following table contains the official Jersey Airport averages for 1981–2010 for Jersey, being located 4.5 miles (7.2 km) from St. Helier –",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Jersey's economy is highly developed and services-focused, with a GDP per capita of £45,320 in 2019. It is a mixed market economy, with free market principles and an advanced social security infrastructure. 53,460 people were employed in Jersey as of December 2010: 24% in financial and legal services; 16% in wholesale and retail trades; 16% in the public sector; 10% in education, health and other private sector services; 10% in construction and quarrying; 9% in hotels, restaurants and bars.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Thanks to specialisation in a few high-return sectors, at purchasing power parity Jersey has high economic output per capita, substantially ahead of all of the world's large developed economies. Gross national income in 2009 was £3.7 billion (approximately £40,000 per head of population). However, this is not indicative of each individual resident's purchasing power and the actual standard of living in Jersey is comparable to that in the UK outside central London.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Jersey is one of the world's largest offshore finance centres. The UK acts as a conduit for financial services between European countries and the island. The growth of this sector however has not been without its controversies as Jersey has been characterised by critics and detractors as a place in which the \"leadership has essentially been captured by global finance, and whose members will threaten and intimidate anyone who dissents.\"",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Tourism is an important economic sector for the island, however travel to Jersey is very seasonal. Accommodation occupancy is much higher in the summer months, especially August, than in the winter months (with a low in November). The majority of visitors to the island arrive by air from the UK. On 18 February 2005, Jersey was granted Fairtrade Island status.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 2017, 52% of the Island's area was agricultural land (a decrease since 2009). Major agricultural products are potatoes and dairy produce. Jersey cattle are a small breed of cow widely known for their rich milk and cream; the quality of their meat is also appreciated on a small scale. The herd total in 2009 was 5,090 animals. Fisheries and aquaculture make use of Jersey's marine resources to a total value of over £6 million in 2009.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Along with Guernsey, Jersey has its own lottery called the Channel Islands Lottery, which was launched in 1975.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Jersey is not a tax-free jurisdiction. Taxes are levied on properties (known as 'rates') and a Personal Income Tax, Corporate Income Tax and goods and services tax exist. Before 2008, Jersey had no value-added tax (VAT). Many companies, such as Amazon and Play.com, took advantage of this and a loophole in European law, known as low-value consignment relief, to establish a tax-free fulfilment industry from Jersey. This loophole was closed by the European Union in 2012, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "There is a 20% standard rate for Income Tax and a 5% standard rate for GST. The island has a 0% default tax rate for corporations; however, higher rates apply to financial services, utility companies and large corporate retailers. Jersey is considered to be a tax haven. The island, until March 2019, was on the EU tax haven blacklist, but no longer features. In January 2021, the chair of the EU Tax Matters Subcommittee, Paul Tang, criticised the list for not including such \"renowned tax havens\" as Jersey. In 2020, Tax Justice ranked Jersey as the 16th on the Financial Secrecy Index, below larger countries such as the UK, however still placing at the lower end of the 'extreme danger zone' for offshore secrecy'. The island accounts of 0.46% of the global offshore finance market, making a small player in the total market. In 2020, the Corporate Tax Haven Index ranked Jersey eighth for 2021 with an haven score (a measure of the jurisdiction's systems to be used for corporate tax abuse) of 100 out of 100; however, the island only has 0.51% on the Global Scale Weight ranking.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The primary mode of transport on the island is the motor vehicle. Jersey has a road network consisting of 346 miles (557 km) of roads and there are a total of 124,737 motor vehicles registered on the island as of 2016. Jersey has a large network of lanes, some of which are classified as green lanes, which have a 15 mph speed limit and where priority is afforded to pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The public bus network in Jersey has been regulated by the Government since 2002, replacing a de-regulated, commercial service. It is operated on a sole-operator franchise model, currently contracted to LibertyBus, a company owned by Kelsian Group. LibertyBus also operate the school bus services. There is also a taxi network and an electronic bike scheme (EVie). Jersey has an airport and a number of ports, which are operated by Ports of Jersey.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Jersey's monetary policy is linked to the Bank of England. The official currency of Jersey is the pound sterling. Jersey issues its own postage stamps, banknotes (including a £1 note which is not issued in the UK) and coins that circulate alongside all other sterling coinage. Jersey currency is not legal tender outside Jersey; however it is \"acceptable tender\" in the UK and can be surrendered at banks in exchange for UK currency.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In July 2014, the Jersey Financial Services Commission approved the establishment of the world's first regulated Bitcoin fund, at a time when the digital currency was being accepted by some local businesses.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Censuses have been undertaken in Jersey since 1821. In the 2021 census, the total resident population was estimated to be 103,267, of whom 35% live in Saint Helier, the island's only town. Approximately half the island's population was born in Jersey; 29% of the population were born elsewhere in the British Isles, 8% in continental Portugal or Madeira, 9% in other European countries and 5% elsewhere.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Jersey people are the native nation on the island, however do not form a majority of the population. Jersey people are often called Islanders or, in individual terms, Jerseyman or Jerseywoman. Jersey people did not generally identify themselves as English prior to the Union of Britain. Jersey was culturally and geographically much closer to Normandy and there were limited cross-Channel links. However, wars with France, including invasions of Jersey, grew loyalty to Britain over time and the French came more and more to be seen as a distinct people. By the start of the 19th century, Jersey people generally identified as British, which can be seen through the treatment of the Breton immigrants of the time as a distinct nation. Furthermore, the growth of the British migrant population strengthened the role of English and the British cultural influence. Finally, the introduction of compulsory education - which was exclusively in English - and the period of the Occupation reduced the traditional and Norman cultural influences and increased British cultural practices and pride in British nationhood among the island population.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Nationality law in Jersey is conferred by the British Nationality Act 1981 extended to the island by an Order in Council with the consent of the States of Jersey. British nationality law confers British citizenship onto those with suitable connections to Jersey. The Lieutenant Governor's office issues British passports (specifically the Jersey variant) to British citizens with a connection to Jersey by residency or birth.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Jersey is constitutionally entitled to restrict immigration by non-Jersey residents, but control of immigration at the point of entry cannot be introduced for British, certain Commonwealth and EEA nationals without change to existing international law.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Jersey is part of the Common Travel Area (CTA), a border control-free zone which encompasses the Crown Dependencies, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. This means a passport is not required to travel from Jersey to any of these territories (or vice versa) though the Government recommends all travellers bring photo ID since it may need to be checked by customs or police officers and is generally required by commercial transport providers into the island. Due to the CTA, Jersey-born British citizens in the rest of the CTA and British and Irish citizens in Jersey have the right to access social benefits, access healthcare, access social housing support and to vote in general elections.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "For non-CTA travel, Jersey maintains its own immigration and border controls (although most travel into the Bailiwick is from the rest of the CTA), however UK immigration legislation may be extended to Jersey (subject to exceptions and adaptations) following consultation with Jersey and with Jersey's consent.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "To control population numbers, Jersey operates a system of registration which restricts the right to live and work in the island according to certain requirements. In order to move to Jersey or work in Jersey, everyone (including Jersey-born people) must be registered and have a registration card. There are a number of statuses:",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Until the 19th centuries, there was generally limited immigration to the island, especially from English people. Jersey was a distant territory to the British mainland (taking days to travel between England and the islands) and culturally distinct (the locals predominantly speaking Norman French). However, from the 16th to 19th centuries, Jersey became home to French religious refugees, particularly Protestants following the Edict of Nantes.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "From the early 19th century, the island's economic boom attracted economic migrants. By 1841, of the 47,544 population, 11,338 were born in the British Isles outside of Jersey. From the 1840s onwards, agricultural workers came from neighbouring Brittany and mainland Normandy, both due to the booming economy of Jersey and the economic situation in northern France. Furthermore, the new potato season coincided with the time of least agricultural activity in Brittany and Normandy. While many returned to France, some settled in the island.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Between 1851 and 1921, the Jersey population fell by 12.8% (possibly up to 18%). The economic boom ended in the 1850s leading to significant emigration, including on to British colonies. A 1901 report by the States concluded that by 1921, the number of births to foreign-born fathers would be equal to those to Jersey-born fathers, describing the immigration situation as a 'formidable invasion, although peaceful', and predicted this would have a large impact on the island's socio-political situation.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "After World War II, when the island had only 55,244 residents, it saw a period of rapid population increase. By 1991, the population was 84,082. The booming tourism industry required a large volume of relatively low cost labour, so the island turned to Madeira for seasonal staff. Between 1961 and 1981, the Portuguese-born population grew 0.2% to 3.1% of the population. In 2021, this figure was 8%. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the new source of cheap labour for the island has been Polish people, whose population has grown from non-existent to 3%.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Immigration has helped give aspects of Jersey a distinct urban character, particularly in and around the parish of St Helier, which contributes much to ongoing debates between development and sustainability throughout the island.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Jersey's patron saint is St Helier, after whom the capital town is named. From the fifth century, the island was under the Bishop of Coutances, until being transferred to the Diocese of Winchester in 1568. As of 2022, the island is planned to be transferred to the Diocese of Salisbury. The established church is the Church of England, presided over in the island by the Dean, who is ex officio a States Member, but has no vote. The primary churches are the parish churches, which are 12 ancient Anglican churches in each of the parish centre, though other churches do exist.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "According to a 2015 survey of islanders, 54% of adults have a religion. Christianity is the predominant religion in the island, with over half of islanders identifying as Christian in some form. The largest religious group is Anglicans, with 23% of the population.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The Battle of Flowers is a carnival, which has been held annually in August since 1902. Other festivals include La Fête dé Noué (Christmas festival), La Faîs'sie d'Cidre (cidermaking festival), the Battle of Britain air display, Weekender Music Festival, food festivals, and parish events.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Jersey Eisteddfod is an annual festival celebrating local culture. It is split into performing arts (e.g. dance, music, modern languages) and creative arts (e.g. needlework, photography, craft).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Archaeologists have discovered stone planquettes with abstract designs made by the Magdalenians and dating to the Upper Palaeolithic; these are the oldest pieces of art discovered in the British Isles as of 2023.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The island has produced a number of notable artists. John St Helier Lander (1868–1944) was a portrait painter born in St Helier in 1868; he was a portraitist for the Royal Family. Edmund Blampied also lived around the same period; he was known for his etchings and drypoint. Other famous historic artists include John Le Capelain, John Everett Millais and Philip Ouless. There are also several contemporary Jersey artists, such as Ian Rolls, known for painting quirky landscape paintings.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Jersey also has historic connections to French art. French artist René Lalique created the stained glass windows at St Matthew's Church. No similar Lalique commission survives elsewhere in the world. Artist partners Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were born in France but moved to and died in the island.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "BBC Radio Jersey provides a radio service, and BBC Channel Islands News provides a joint television news service with Guernsey. ITV Channel Television is a regional ITV franchise shared with the Bailiwick of Guernsey but with its headquarters in Jersey. Radio services are also provided by Channel 103, among other companies.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Bailiwick Express is one of Jersey's digital online news sources. Jersey has only one newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post, which is printed six days a week, and has been in publication since 1890.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Little is known of the history of music in the islands, though fieldwork has recorded folk songs from the Channel Islands, mostly in French. The folk song Chanson de Peirson is unique to the island.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In contemporary music, Guru Josh, who was born in Jersey, produced house and techno music. He was most notable for his internationally successful debut hit Infinity and its re-releases, reaching number one in numerous European countries. Furthermore, rock and pop artist Nerina Pallot was raised on the island and has enjoyed international success, and has written songs for famous artists like Kylie Minogue.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The island has a summer music festival scene stretching from mid-June to late September including Good Vibrations, Out-There, the Weekender (the largest festival in the Channel Islands) and Electric Park.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "There are two theatres on the island: the Jersey Opera House and the Jersey Arts Centre. Lillie Langtry is probably the most famous actress from the island. She was born in Jersey and became an actress on the West End in the late 19th century. She was the first socialite to appear on stage and the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product. She was also famous for her relationships with notable figures, including the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. She is buried in St Saviour's Church graveyard.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 1909, T. J. West established the first cinema in the Royal Hall in St. Helier, which became known as West's Cinema in 1923 and was demolished in 1977. The first talking picture, The Perfect Alibi, was shown on 30 December 1929 at the Picture House in St. Helier. The Jersey Film Society was founded on 11 December 1947 at the Café Bleu, West's Cinema. The large Art Deco Forum Cinema was opened in 1935 – during the German occupation this was used for German propaganda films.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The Odeon Cinema was opened 2 June 1952 and, was later rebranded in the early 21st century as the Forum cinema. Its owners, however, struggled to meet tough competition from the Cineworld Cinemas group, which opened a 10 screen multiplex on the waterfront centre in St. Helier on reclaimed land in December 2002 and the Odeon closed its doors in late 2008. The Odeon is now a listed building.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "First held in 2008, the Branchage Jersey International Film Festival attracts filmmakers from all over the world. The 2001 movie The Others was set on the island in 1945 shortly after liberation.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Seafood has traditionally been important to the cuisine of Jersey: mussels (called moules in the island), oysters, lobster and crabs – especially spider crabs – ormers and conger.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Jersey milk being very rich, cream and butter have played a large part in insular cooking. Jersey Royal potatoes are the local variety of new potato, and the island is famous for its early crop of Chats (small potatoes) from the south-facing côtils (steeply sloping fields). They were originally grown using vraic as a natural fertiliser, giving them their own individual taste; only a small portion of those grown in the island still use this method. They are eaten in a variety of ways, often simply boiled and served with butter or when not as fresh fried in butter.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Apples historically were an important crop. Bourdélots are apple dumplings, but the most typical speciality is black butter (lé nièr beurre), a dark spicy spread prepared from apples, cider and spices. Cider used to be an important export. After decline and near-disappearance in the late 20th century, apple production is being increased and promoted. Besides cider, apple brandy is produced. Other production of alcohol drinks includes wine, and in 2013 the first commercial vodkas made from Jersey Royal potatoes were marketed.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Among other traditional dishes are cabbage loaf, Jersey wonders (les mèrvelles), fliottes, bean crock (les pais au fou), nettle (ortchie) soup, and vraic buns.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In its own right Jersey participates in the Commonwealth Games and in the biennial Island Games, which it first hosted in 1997 and more recently in 2015.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The Jersey Football Association supervises football in Jersey. As of 2022, the Jersey Football Combination has nine teams in its top division. Jersey national football team plays in the annual Muratti competition against the other Channel Islands. Rugby union in Jersey comes under the auspices of the Jersey Rugby Association (JRA), which is a member of the Rugby Football Union of England. Jersey Reds compete in the English rugby union system; after four promotions in five seasons, the last three of which were consecutive, they competed in the second-level RFU Championship in 2012–13. Jersey is an associate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC). The Jersey cricket team plays in the Inter-insular match, as well as in ICC tournaments around the world in One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "For Horse racing, Les Landes Racecourse can be found at Les Landes in St. Ouen next to the ruins of Grosnez Castle.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Jersey has two public indoor swimming pools: AquaSplash, St Helier and Les Quennevais, St Brelade. Swimming in the sea, windsurfing and other marine sports are practised. Jersey Swimming Club has organised an annual swim from Elizabeth Castle to Saint Helier Harbour for over 50 years. A round-island swim is a major challenge: the record for the swim is Ross Wisby, who circumnavigated the island in 9 hours 26 minutes in 2015. The Royal Channel Island Yacht Club is based in St Brelade.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Two professional golfers from Jersey have won the Open Championship seven times between them; Harry Vardon won six times and Ted Ray won once, both around the turn of the 20th century. Vardon and Ray also won the U.S. Open once each. Harry Vardon's brother, Tom Vardon, had wins on various European tours.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Jersey Sport, an independent body that promotes sports in Jersey and support clubs, was launched in 2017",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Until the 19th century, indigenous Jèrriais – a variety of Norman – was the language of the island though French was used for official business. During the 20th century, British cultural influence saw an intense language shift take place and Jersey today is predominantly English-speaking. Jèrriais nonetheless survives; around 2,600 islanders (three per cent) are thought to be habitual speakers, and some 10,000 (12 per cent) in all claim some knowledge of the language, particularly amongst the elderly in rural parishes. There have been efforts to revive Jèrriais in schools.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The dialects of Jèrriais differ in phonology and, to a lesser extent, lexis between parishes, with the most marked differences to be heard between those of the west and east. Many place names are in Jèrriais, and French and English place names are also to be found. Anglicisation of the place names increased apace with the migration of English people to the island.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Wace was a 12th-century poet born in Jersey. He is the earliest known Jersey writer, authoring Roman de Brut and Roman de Rou, among others. Some believe him to be the earliest Jèrriais writer and he is known as the founder of Jersey literature, but the language in which he wrote is very different from modern Jèrriais.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "As Jèrriais was not an official language in Jersey, it had no standard written form, which meant that Jersey literature is very varied, written in multiple forms of Jèrriais alongside Standard English and French.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Matthew Le Geyt was the first poet to publish in Jèrriais after the introduction of printing to the island in the 18th century. Philippe Le Sueur Mourant wrote in Jèrriais in the 19th century. Jerseyman George d'la Forge is named the 'Guardian of the Jersey Norman Heritage'. Though he lived in America for most of his life, he felt a strong attachment to Jersey and his native language. His works were turned into books in the 1980s.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "After the failure of the 1848 revolution, thirty-nine French revolutionaries were exiled in Jersey, including the famous French author Victor Hugo, as Jersey's culture had a relation to their native French. Gerald Durrell, the famous zoologist who set up Jersey Zoo, was also an author, writing novels, non-fiction and children's books. He was writing as a means to fund and further his conservation work.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Education in the island is managed by the Department for Children, Young People, Education and Skills of the Government of Jersey. The education system in Jersey is based on the English system. Full time education is compulsory for children aged 5 to 16. Furthermore, the Government provides limited pre-school education free to parents. Jersey schools must teach the Jersey Curriculum, which is based on the English National Curriculum, with differences to account for Jersey's unique position.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "As of 2022, there are 24 States primary schools, seven private primary or preparatory schools, four comprehensive States secondary schools, two fee-paying States secondary schools, two private secondary schools and one provided grammar school and sixth form, Hautlieu School. Furthermore, Highlands College provides alternative post-16 and all post-18 education available on the island. However, higher education facilities are limited, so many students study off-island. In the UK, Jersey students pay the same rate as Home students.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Three areas of land are protected for their ecological or geological interest as Sites of Special Interest (SSI). Jersey has four designated Ramsar sites: Les Pierres de Lecq, Les Minquiers, Les Écréhous and Les Dirouilles and the south east coast of Jersey (a large area of intertidal zone).",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Jersey is the home of the Jersey Zoo (formerly known as the Durrell Wildlife Park) founded by the naturalist, zookeeper and author Gerald Durrell.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Four species of small mammal are considered native: the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), the Jersey bank vole (Myodes glareolus caesarius), the lesser white-toothed shrew (Crocidura suaveolens) and the French shrew (Sorex coronatus). Three wild mammals are well-established introductions: the rabbit (introduced in the mediaeval period), the red squirrel and the hedgehog (both introduced in the 19th century). The stoat (Mustela erminea) became extinct in Jersey between 1976 and 2000. The green lizard (Lacerta bilineata) is a protected species of reptile; Jersey is its only native habitat in the British Isles.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "The red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) became extinct in Jersey around 1900, when changes in farming and grazing practices led to a decline in the coastal slope habitat required by this species. Birds on the Edge, a project between the Government of Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and National Trust for Jersey, is working to restore Jersey's coastal habitats and reinstate the red-billed chough (and other bird species) to the island",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Jersey is the only place in the British Isles where the agile frog (Rana dalmatina) is found. The remaining population of agile frogs on Jersey is very small and is restricted to the south west of the island. The species is the subject of an ongoing programme to save it from extinction in Jersey via a collaboration between the Government of Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Jersey Amphibian and Reptile Group (JARG), with support and sponsorship from several other organisations. The programme includes captive breeding and release, public awareness and habitat restoration activities.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Trees generally considered native are the alder (Alnus glutinosa), silver birch (Betula pendula), sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), hazel (Corylus avellana), hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), beech (Fagus sylvatica), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), aspen (Populus tremula), wild cherry (Prunus avium), blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), holm oak (Quercus ilex), oak (Quercus robur), sallow (Salix cinerea), elder (Sambucus nigra), elm (Ulmus spp.) and medlar (Mespilus germanica). Among notable introduced species, the cabbage palm (Cordyline australis) has been planted in coastal areas and may be seen in many gardens.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Notable marine species include the ormer, conger, bass, undulate ray, grey mullet, ballan wrasse and garfish. Marine mammals include the bottlenosed dolphin and grey seal.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Historically the island has given its name to a variety of overly-large cabbage, the Jersey cabbage, also known as Jersey kale or cow cabbage.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) is an invasive species that threatens Jersey's biodiversity. It is easily recognisable and has hollow stems with small white flowers that are produced in late summer. Other non-native species on the island include the Colorado beetle, burnet rose and oak processionary moth.",
"title": "Environment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Health services on the island are overseen by the Department for Health and Social Care. Jersey does not have a nationalised health service and the service is not part of the National Health Service. Many healthcare treatments are not free at the point of use, however treatment in the accident and emergency department is free. For residents, prescriptions and some hospital treatments are free, but GP services cost money.",
"title": "Public services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Emergency services are provided by the States of Jersey Police with the support of the Honorary Police as necessary, States of Jersey Ambulance Service, Jersey Fire and Rescue Service and the Jersey Coastguard. The Jersey Fire and Rescue Service, Jersey Lifeboat Association and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution operate an inshore rescue and lifeboat service; Channel Islands Air Search provides rapid response airborne search of the surrounding waters.",
"title": "Public services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "The States of Jersey Fire Service was formed in 1938 when the States took over the Saint Helier Fire Brigade, which had been formed in 1901. The first lifeboat was equipped, funded by the States, in 1830. The RNLI established a lifeboat station in 1884. Border security and customs controls are undertaken by the States of Jersey Customs and Immigration Service. Jersey has adopted the 112 emergency number alongside its existing 999 emergency number.",
"title": "Public services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Water supplies in Jersey are managed by Jersey Water. Jersey Water supply water from two water treatment works, around 7.2 billion litres in 2018. Water in Jersey is almost exclusively from rainfall-dependent surface water. The water is collected and stored in six reservoirs and there is also a desalination plant that produces up to 10.8 million litres per day (around half of the Island's average daily usage). In 2017, 101 water pollution incidents were reported, an increase of 5% on 2016. Another estimated 515,700 m of water is abstracted for domestic purposes from private sources (around 9% of the population).",
"title": "Public services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Electricity in Jersey is provided by a sole supplier, Jersey Electricity, of which the States of Jersey is the majority shareholder. Jersey imports 95 per cent of its power from France. 35% of the imported power derives from hydro-electric sources and 65% from nuclear sources. Jersey Electricity claims the carbon intensity of its electricity supply is 35g CO2 e / kWh compared to 352g CO2 e / kWh in the UK.",
"title": "Public services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "49°11′24″N 2°6′36″W / 49.19000°N 2.11000°W / 49.19000; -2.11000",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Jersey, also known as the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an island country and self-governing British Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the largest of the Channel Islands and is 14 miles (23 km) from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy. The Bailiwick consists of the main island of Jersey and some surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks including Les Dirouilles, Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, and Les Pierres de Lecq. Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy, whose dukes became kings of England from 1066. After Normandy was lost by the kings of England in the 13th century, and the ducal title surrendered to France, Jersey remained loyal to the English Crown, though it never became part of the Kingdom of England. Between then and the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Jersey was at the frontline of Anglo-French wars and was invaded a number of times, leading to the construction of fortifications such as Mont Orgueil Castle and a thriving smuggling industry. During the Second World War, the island was invaded and occupied for five years by Nazi Germany. The island was liberated on 9 May 1945, which is now celebrated as the island's national day. Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination. Jersey's constitutional relationship is with the Crown; it is not part of the United Kingdom. The Bailiff is the civil head, president of the States and head of the judiciary; the Lieutenant Governor represents the head of state, the British monarch; and the Chief Minister is the head of government. Jersey's defence and international representation – as well as certain policy areas, such as nationality law – are the responsibility of the UK Government, but Jersey still has a separate international identity. The island has a large financial services industry, which generates 40% of its GVA. British cultural influence on the island is evident in its use of English as the main language and Pound sterling as its primary currency. Additional British cultural similarities include: driving on the left, access to British television and newspapers, a school curriculum following that of England, and the popularity of British sports, including cricket. The island also has a strong Norman-French culture, such as its historic dialect of the Norman language, Jèrriais, being one of only two places in Normandy with government status for the language, as well as the use of standard French in legal matters and officially in use as a government language, strong cultural ties to mainland Normandy as a part of the Normandy region, and place names with French or Norman origins. The island has very close cultural links with its neighbouring islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and they share a good-natured rivalry. Jersey and its people have been described as a nation. | 2001-05-08T00:07:08Z | 2023-12-18T10:49:25Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey |
15,694 | History of Jersey | Jersey – the largest of the Channel Islands – has been an island for around 6,000 years. Early inhabitation is evidenced by various neolithic monuments and hoards. In the 10th century, Jersey became part of Normandy. When the Normans conquered England in the 11th century, Jersey remained a part of the Duchy of Normandy, but when Normandy and England were finally split in the 13th century, the Channel Islands remained loyal to the English Crown, splitting Jersey politically from mainland Normandy.
Due to the English kings' continuing claim to the Duchy of Normandy, Jersey's Norman political and legal structures remained after the split, which led to the establishment of self-governance as a Crown Dependency. Between the 11th and 15th centuries, political tensions between England and France placed Jersey at the frontline of frequent wars.
During the Tudor period, the English Crown split from the Roman Church and immigration to the island of French religious refugees led to the establishment of Calvinism as the major religion of the island. In 1617, the Privy Council separated the powers of Governor and Bailiff, establishing that the Bailiff had sole jurisdiction over justice and civil affairs in the island. During the English Civil War, Jersey remained more loyal to the Crown due to the loyalties of the de Carteret family, though the island was eventually captured by Parliamentarian forces. After restoration, the de Carterets were gifted land in the American colonies, establishing New Jersey.
In the 18th century, Jersey experienced bouts of unrest, culminating in the Corn Riots of 1769. As a result, legislative power was concentrated in the States in 1771, stripping the Royal Court of its lawmaking abilities. Island politics was then split between the Magot and Charlot parties through much of the 19th century. In 1781, the island was invaded by the French, but was defeated by an army led by Major Francis Peirson in the Battle of Jersey. From 1815, new peace with the French meant the island lost strategic military value. Improvements in transport infrastructure led to non-political increased links with the United Kingdom. Alongside this, a rising sense of British nationalism led to the island's culture, which had previously retained many Norman-French qualities, to be highly anglicised.
The islands were away from the frontline of the First World War, but during the Second World War, the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by enemy forces. From 1940 to 1945, Jersey was occupied by German forces. The islands were liberated on 9 May 1945, which is still celebrated as the island's national day. After liberation, the island became a popular tourist destination and has become a major offshore finance centre.
Although Jersey was part of the Roman world, there is a lack of evidence to give a better understanding of the island during the Gallo-Roman and early Middle Ages. The tradition is that the island was called Caesarea by the Romans as laid down in the Antonine Itinerary, however this is disputed by some, who claim Caesarea, Sarnia and Riduna are the Scilly Isles off the southwestern tip of England, nevertheless Sarnia in particular has a large cultural influence as the historic name of Guernsey (for example the national anthem of Guernsey is Sarnia chérie). Andium however is also mentioned on the list and this name is very often attributed to Jersey. Therefore, it is possible another island, such as the Minquiers were in fact Caesarea and Jersey Andium.
The name is claimed to be the source of the modern name Jersey, -ey being a Norse signification of an island, and Jer- possibly being a contraction of Caesar, similar to Cherbourg, therefore the island meaning Caesar's island. Another claim for the origin of the name is as Geirr's Island from the Norse name Geirr or as the grassy isle from the Frisian gers. The Roman name for the Channel Islands was I. Lenuri (Lenur Islands)
Some claim that the pre-Roman name for the island was Augia (alternatively Andium), and it was given by this name by King Childebert of France to Archbishop Samson of Dol in 550 CE. In the past the island's name has various variations of its spelling, such as Gersey, Jarzé, Gerzai and Gersui (including re-latinisations such as Gersoium and Grisogium) Andium has considerable popularity as the former name for Jersey, being for example the name of the island's social housing corporation.
L'Etacq is of Norse origin, a derivative of L'Estack, from the Norse stakkr, meaning high rock. This word also gives name to various places called Etacquerel.
The earliest evidence of human activity in Jersey dates to about 250,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic (before Jersey became an island) when bands of Neanderthal nomadic hunters used the caves at La Cotte de St Brelade as a base for hunting mammoth and woolly rhinoceros.
Due to rising sea levels, Jersey has been an island for approximately 6,000 years. The geology of the Channel Islands, has its origins in the Hercynian mountain building period, which also accounts for the hills of Brittany and the moors of Devon and Cornwall. At its current extremes it measures 10 miles (16 km) east to west and 6 miles (10 km) north to south. Evidence of Ice Age period engravings dating from at least 12,000 BC has been found, showing occupation by Homo sapiens.
Evidence also exists of settled communities in the Neolithic period, which is marked by the building of the ritual burial sites known as dolmens. The number, size, and visible locations of these megalithic monuments (especially La Hougue Bie) have suggested that social organisation over a wide area, including surrounding coasts, was required for the construction. Archaeological evidence also shows that trading links with Brittany and the south coast of England existed during this time.
Evidence of occupation and wealth has been discovered in the form of hoards. In 1889, during construction of a house in Saint Helier, a 746-gram gold torc of Irish origin was unearthed. A Bronze Age hoard consisting of 110 implements, mostly spears and swords, was discovered in Saint Lawrence in 1976 – probably a smith's stock. Hoards of coins were discovered at La Marquanderie, in Saint Brelade, Le Câtel, in Trinity, and Le Câtillon, in Grouville (1957).
In June 2012, two metal detectorists announced that they had uncovered what could be Europe's largest hoard of Iron Age Celtic coins, 70,000 late Iron Age and Roman coins. The hoard is thought to have belonged to a Curiosolitae tribe fleeing Julius Caesar's armies around 50 to 60 BC.
In October 2012, another metal detectorist reported an earlier Bronze Age find, the Trinity Hoard.
Although there is no evidence of a Roman occupation of Jersey, historians consider that it is entirely feasible it was occupied by the Romans. Various Roman archeological artefacts have been found on the island, such as coins discovered on the north coast at Ile Agois. There are several sites attributed to the Romans on the island, such as Caesar's fort at Mont Orgeuil. Roman influence has been found, in particular at Les Landes, the coastal headland site at Le Pinacle, where remains of a primitive structure are attributed to Gallo-Roman temple worship (fanum).
When Augustus Caesar divided Gaul into four provinces, Jersey was part of the province headquartered at Lyons. Roman influence has a strong grounding in the development of Jersey culture, bringing vernacular Latin to the isle, which would later develop into Standard French and Jèrriais (and influence English).
During the migration of the Britons from Britain to Brittany (c. 5th – 6th century AD), specifically during the invasion led by St Samson, Bishop of Dol, it is believed the Channel Islands came to be settled by them. There are numerous references to the habitation of Jersey by Breton people. This likely brought Christianity to the island. Various saints such as the Celts Samson of Dol and Branwalator (Brelade) were active in the region. Tradition has it that Saint Helier from Tongeren in modern-day Belgium first brought Christianity to the island in the 6th century; part of the walls of the Fishermen's Chapel dates from this period and Charlemagne sent his emissary to the island (at that time called Angia, also spelt Agna) in 803. A chapel built around 911 now forms part of the nave of the Parish Church of St Clement.
From 873, Jersey was affected by the conquests by the Normans of the western coast of France (the Channel Islands were territory of the Kingdom of France at this time). During the reign of Charles III the Simple, the territory of modern Normandy was yielded to Rollo, the leader of the Normans, with the title of the "Duke of Normandy". While the Duchy was held in fief to the French Crown, the Crown only had limited rights in the province.
In around 933, Duke William I (William Longsword), seized Jersey, which until then had been politically linked to Brittany, and it is likely that the pre-Norman form of government and way of life was replaced at this point. The island adopted the Norman law system, still the basis of Jersey law today. During Norman rule, the island redeveloped after the devastation brought by the Vikings and developed agriculture. Immigration from the Norman mainland at this time first brought the modern Norman cultural influences found in the island today.
A key part of the early administrative structure of Jersey was the fief. Alongside the parish, the fief provided a basic framework for rural life; the system began with the Norman system and largely remained similar to it. In Jersey, the dues, services and rents owed by tenants were extensive and often onerous. Jersey peasants retained a degree of freedom lost elsewhere, probably due to the insignificance of the island in the Duchy. More is known of the origins of the fief than of the parishes and early documents show that Jersey was thoroughly feudalised (the majority of the residents were tenants holding land from Seigneurs). The fief of St Ouen, the most senior fief in Jersey's feudal structure, was by 1135 in the hands of the de Carteret family. They held extensive lands in Carteret as well, but these were lost by them after King John's loss of Normandy, so they decided to settle on the island. Between the 12th and 20th centuries, there were an estimated 245 fiefs in Jersey, though not all simultaneously.
In 1066, the Duke William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at Hastings to become the King of England; however, he continued to rule his French possessions, including Jersey, as a separate entity, as fealty was owed to the King of France. This initial association of Jersey with England did not last long, as William split his possessions between his two elder sons: Robert Curthose became Duke of Normandy and William Rufus gained the English Crown. After William Rufus' death his younger brother Henry I claimed the English throne, and recaptured Normandy for England in 1106. The island was then part of the English King's realm (though still part of Normandy and France). Around 1142, it is recorded that Jersey was under the control of the Count of Anjou, who administered Normandy for the Duke.
According to the Rolls of the Norman Exchequer, in 1180 Jersey was divided for administrative purposes into three ministeria: de Gorroic, de Groceio and de Crapoudoit (possibly containing four parishes each). Gorroic is an old spelling for Gorey, containing St Martin, St Saviour, Grouville and St Clement; Groceio could derive from de Gruchy, and contains St John, Trinity, St Lawrence and St Helier; and Crapoudoit, likely referring to the stream of St Peter's Valley, contains the remainder of the parishes in the West. This was a time of building or extending churches with most parish churches in the island being built/rebuilt in a Norman style chosen by the abbey or priory to which each church had been granted. St Mary and St Martin being given to Cerisy Abbey. By Norman times, the parish boundaries were firmly fixed and remain largely unchanged since. It was likely set in place due to the tithe system under Charlemagne, where each property must contribute to the church, so each property would have had to be established within a parish. The parish system is much more important in Jersey than in England or post-Napoleon France.
After the death of Henry II in 1189 and the short reign of Richard I, the island (and the rest of the Empire) fell to King John in 1199. In 1200, John agreed to render homage of his Norman territories to the King Philip Augustus of France, but in 1204, King Philip re-conquered the Duchy. Though the French initially occupied the Channel Islands from 1204 to 1206 (and again in 1216 to 1217), John recognised their strategic importance and recovered them. However, thanks to Pierre de Préaux, a governor of Rouen who possessed the isles, who decided to support King John, the islands remained in the personal possession of the English king and were described as being a Peculiar of the Crown.
It is said, in tradition, that the island's autonomy derives from the Constitutions of King John, however this is disputed. Until King James II, successive English monarchs have then granted to Jersey by charter its certain privileges, likely to ensure the island's continued loyalty, accounting for its advantageous position at the boundary of the European continent. As John (and later Henry III) maintained his title as the rightful Duke of Normandy until 1259, the island's courts were originally established as Norman, not English territory (to use English law would de-legitimise the English Crown's claim to the ducal title), so are based upon traditional Norman laws and customs, such as the Coutumier de Normandie.
Now sited on the French-English border, the Channel Islands ceased to be a peaceful backwater and became a potential flashpoint on the international stage. Under the wardenships of Philippe d'Aubigny (1212-1224, 1232–1234), the island was attacked by Eustace the Monk, a pirate, while the warden was fighting for the King in the Barons' war. In 1217, Louis, the son of Philip II of France, ordered after the Treaty of Lambeth, that the supporters of Eustace should return the islands to England. The same year, Eustace was beheaded after being captured at Sandwich. Therefore, the Warden, de Suligny, constructed a castle at Gorey, known as Mont Orgueil, to serve as a royal fortress and military base. This was needed as the Island had few defences and had previously been suppressed by a fleet commanded by a French exile, Eustace the Monk working with the English King until in 1212 he changed sides and raided the Channel Islands on behalf of the French King.
An inquest was held into the loyalty of the Jersey landowners. Most Jersey landowners had their main estates on the Mainland, so John needed to re-organise the land to remove the unfaithful lords. Most lords forfeited their insular land in favour of their French territory, but some remained, notably the de Carteret family of St Ouen. The old aristocracy gave way to a new one, with landowners drawn from royal officials, who soon came to think of themselves as islanders rather than Englishmen. This saw the firm establishment of the feudal system in Jersey, with fiefs headed by Seigneurs.
In the Treaty of Paris (1259), the King of France gave up claim to the Channel Islands. The claim was based upon his position as feudal overlord of the Duke of Normandy. The King of England gave up claim to mainland Normandy and therefore the Channel Islands were split from the rest of Normandy. The Channel Islands were never absorbed into the Kingdom of England and the island has had self-government since. The administration of the island was handled by an insular government. The King appointed a Warden (later "Capitain" or "Governor", now the Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey), a position largely occupied with the defence of the island. From 1415 until the second half of the 15th century, the islands were governed by a Lord (or Lady). Despite the end to Norman rule, the churches of the island were permitted to continue to be under the Diocese of Coutances for another 300 years to appease islanders, however at times of war the liberties of the clergy were often restricted.
The existing Norman customs and laws were allowed to continue and there was no attempt to introduce English law. The formerly split administrative system was replaced with a centralised legal system, of which the head was the King of England rather than the Duke of Normandy. The law was conducted through 12 jurats, constables (Connétable) and a bailiff (Baillé). These titles have different meanings and duties to those in England. Any oppression by a bailiff or a warden was to be resolved locally or failing that, by appeal to the King who appointed commissioners to report on disputes. In the late 1270s, Jersey was given its own Bailiff and from the 1290s, the duties of Bailiff and Warden were separated. The (Sub-)Warden became responsible for taxation and defence, while the Bailiff became responsible for justice. While probably originally a temporary arrangement by Otto de Grandison, this became permanent and the foundation for Jersey's modern separation of Crown and justice. It also lessened the Warden's authority relative to the Bailiff, who had much more interaction with the community.
The role of the jurats when the King's court was mobile would have been preparatory work for the visit of the Justices in Eyre. It is unknown for how long the position of the jurats has existed, with some claiming the position dates to time immemorial. After the cessation of the visits of the Justices in Eyre (and with the frequent absence of the Warden), the Bailiff and jurats took on a much wider role, from jury to justice.
For geographic reasons, during the thirteenth century, the Channel Islands became a strategic stopping point for fleets carrying goods, particularly wine, across the Channel. This led to an economic boom, islanders becoming highly wealthy, and a population boom. Jersey's population probably numbered around 12,000, beyond what the island's agriculture was able to sustain itself.
In 1294, Philip IV 'the Fair' conquered Gascony, starting an Anglo-French war. Jersey was attacked that year in revenge for the destruction of a French fleet in the Channel, leading to the destruction of churches, homes and crops and the deaths of many islanders.
In 1336, the Scots king David Bruce attacked the Channel Islands, committing arson, murder and other atrocities. Due to this attack, other attacks and the threat of further attacks from the Scots, an Island Militia was formed in 1337, which was compulsory for the next 600 years for all men of military age. In November 1337, King Edward III broke off negotiations with the French, starting the Hundred Year's War.
In March 1338, a French force led by Admiral Béhuchet landed on Jersey, intent on capturing the island. The French devastated the island. In four parishes, all tithe corn was burnt. Although the island was overrun, Mont Orgueil remained in English hands, besieged by Béhuchet. The French remained until September, when they sailed off to conquer Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark. In 1339, the French returned, allegedly with 8,000 men in 17 Genoese galleys and 35 French ships. Led by Robert Bertrand, to whom the islands had been transferred by the French King, the French forces promised islanders their ancient liberties, which had not been ratified by the English King in recent times. A number of senior islanders were pro-French at the time. Again, they failed to take the castle and, after causing damage, withdrew.
In 1341, in recognition of islanders' efforts during the war, Edward III declared that Jerseymen should 'hold and retain all privileges, liberties, immunities and customs granted by our forebares'. This began the tradition of successive Monarchs devolving powers over the island to Islanders, giving them certain privileges and protecting the separation between the Channel Islands and the rest of their royal realm. In 1342, the Warden Sir Thomas of Hampton attempted to recapture Castle Cornet with a contingent of Jerseymen. His Lieutenant Henry de la More however lost the faith gained from the islanders by the King's charter. Islanders petitioned the King to punish de la More and Hampton. The island was thrown in a sullen revolt, which sometimes broke out into fighting.
The change in England to a written language in "English" was not taken up in Jersey, where Norman-French continued until the 20th century.
In 1348, when the Black Death would likely have reached the island, there are no kept records for the number of deaths seen on the island. Coastal France was highly affected by the plague and it is likely that the death toll was around 30-40 percent in Jersey. In the wake of the plague, the island experienced economic stagnation but high levels of employment, with population numbers kept down by late marriage and declining fertility.
In July 1373, Bertrand du Guesclin overran Jersey and besieged Mont Orgueil. His troops succeeded in breaching the outer defences, forcing the garrison back to the keep. The garrison came to an agreement that they would surrender if not relieved by Michaelmas and du Guesclin sailed back to Brittany, leaving a small force to carry on the siege. An English relief fleet arrived in time.
In 1378, the island was placed in an awkward position during the Western Schism. The island was under the Diocese of Coutances in France, while administered politically by England. Therefore, as France supported Clement's claim to the Papal see and England supported Urban's, there was tension in the island between the Government and Church. The Warden ordered the banishment of the Dean, labelled a 'supporter of the anti-Pope'. The island was placed under an Urbanite Administrator, as a separately administered part of the Coutances diocese.
In the 1390s, under Richard II who was eager for peace with France, the island was almost recognised as an integral part of Normandy and returned to the French Crown. He did however in 1394 grant the islands the right of exemption from tolls, duties and customs in England.
However, this matter was interrupted by the usurpation of Henry IV in England in 1399. When he seized the throne, Henry renewed the charters confirming the privileges of Jersey. Henry's much firmer stance on relations with the French caused the war with France to resume. On 7 October 1406, 1,000 French men at arms led by Pedro de Niño, a Castilian nobleman turned corsair, invaded Jersey, landing at St Aubin's Bay and defeated the 3,000 defenders but failed to capture the island. They landed in St Aubin's Bay (at the islet where Elizabeth Castle now stands) at night, then the next morning advanced across the beach towards the town, but lost the battle. The next day they moved towards Mont Orgueil. An agreement was reached with the invaders that the island would pay a hefty ransom and they left on 9 October.
In 1412, Henry V came to the throne with a renewed vigour to reclaim England's former continental possessions. In 1413, Parliament ordered the transfer of all foreign-owned property to the Crown, which led to the closure of six priorities in England and the cessation of tithes to the Church in France. Instead, the tithes from the Church's land in Jersey was reverted to the Crown. Henry's successful campaign against the French involved Jerseymen: in the siege of Cherbourg in 1418, every boat on the island was called out to support the blockade. In 1420, Henry entered Paris, leaving Jersey no longer an outpost of the English realm, leading to years of prosperity and the enlargement of many parish churches. When Henry called the bishops of Normandy to do him homage in Rouen, only Coutances obeyed. As a result, Jersey was returned to his full jurisdiction.
From 1429, animosity towards the English rulers by the French and the subsequent rise of Joan of Arc inspired France to evict the English from mainland France, with the exception of Calais, returning Jersey to the front line. This eviction cemented Jersey's Britishness. Had England not lost its possessions, France would certainly have become the dominant part of the Anglo-French combined realm, and its relative geographic and cultural proximity would have made Jersey markedly part of France.
During the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), the French did not succeed in capturing Jersey. However, during the War of the Roses (1455-1487), Margaret of Anjou, queen consort of England, made a secret deal with Pierre de Brézé to gain French support for the Lancastrians, leading to the French capturing Mont Orgueil in the summer of 1461. In 1462, de Brézé issued ordinances outlining the role of the bailiff and the jurats. Jersey was occupied by French forces until 1468 when Yorkist forces and local militia recaptured the castle.
Edward IV oversaw the administrative separation of Jersey and Guernsey. In 1469, he issued separate charters of privilege for the bailiwicks and from 1478 the islands had different captains (albeit with a common captain in chief).
It may well be during this occupation that the island saw the establishment of the States. Comte Maulevrier, who had led the invasion of the island, ordered the holding of an Assize in the island. Maulevrier confirmed the place of existing institutions, however created the requirement for Jurats to be chosen by Bailiffs, Jurats, Rectors and Constables.
The accession of Henry VII is determined as the 'final separation [of the Channel Islands] from Normandy'. The end of the War of the Roses marked the end of the previously complex, war-torn relationship with Normandy. In 1496, King Henry VII obtained a Papal bull to transfer the islands from the Bishop of Coutances to Salisbury, although for nearly 50 years after, due to the proximity of the isles to Coutances, the Bishop continued to act as the de facto bishop of the islands.
During the 16th century, ideas of the reformation of the church coupled with the split with the Catholic Faith by Henry VIII, resulted in the islanders adopting the Protestant religion, in 1569 the churches moved under the control of the Diocese of Winchester. During the reign of Edward VI, the Government issued a new prayer book, which was translated into French, however did not arrive in the island until the throne had changed hands to Queen Mary, who led the restoration of Catholicism in England. However, Jersey did not have any death sentences issued for Catholicism, due to the island being kept out of the limelight by its Governor Poulet. The island did not become Catholic, with numerous anti-Papists still in position.
During the reign of Elizabeth I, Calvinism took hold in Jersey due to the immigration of French Huguenot refugees. This meant that life became very austere: laws were strictly enforced, punishment for wrong doers was severe, but education was improved - a school was started in every parish and support was given for Jersey boys to attend Oxford. Each elder knew every family within his vingtaine, 'whether they have household prayers morning and evening, say grace after meals and live in peace and concord.' The excommunication of Elizabeth by the Pope increased the military threat to the island and the increasing use of gunpowder on the battlefield meant that the fortifications on the island had to be adapted. A new fortress was built to defend St Aubin's Bay, the new Elizabeth Castle was named after the queen by Sir Walter Raleigh when he was governor. The island militia was reorganised on a parish basis and each parish had two cannon which were usually housed in the church - one of the St Peter cannon can still be seen at the bottom of Beaumont Hill.
In 1540, there was an outbreak of plague on the island, and the Lieutenant Governor, Robert Raymond, ordered the closure of all markets, fairs and public assemblies.
In 1541, the Privy Council, which had recently given a seat to Calais, intended to give two seats in Parliament to Jersey. Seymour, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Island, wrote to the Jurats, instructing them to send two Burgesses for the isle. However, no further steps seemed to have been taken since the letter did not arrive in front of the States Assembly until the day the elected persons were required to arrive in London.
During the Elizabethan Era, Europeans began to explore and establish colonies in the Americas. The Jèrriais were no exception to this. Jersey was a notable trading port, on the route linking the Netherlands to Spain and between England and France. A number of locals were colonialists to Newfoundland from its discovery by Europeans in 1497. By 1591, Jerseymen were sailing small boats across the Atlantic in the spring and not returning to the island until the autumn ploughing. In 1611, St Brelade's Church was allowed to hold Communion early, such that the travellers could communicate before sailing from St Aubin. Southampton was also an important port for the Jersey people, with a number of them settling and taking important roles in the town.
One of the favourable trade deals with England was the ability to import wool (England needing an export market but was at war with most of Europe). The production of knitwear in the island reached such a scale that it threatened the island's ability to produce its own food, so laws were passed regulating who could knit with whom and when. The name jersey being synonymous for a sweater, shows its importance.
James VI of Scotland became King of England, and hence of Jersey, after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. The Governor of the time, Walter Ralegh, was tried and imprisoned for conspiring against the King after the death of Elizabeth and replaced with Sir John Peyton. Peyton strongly disliked Presbyterianism, including Calvinism, and attempted to abolish the religion in Jersey. The king initially allowed the island's to continue under their present faith system. However, Calvinism was increasingly unpopular among islanders, which aided Peyton's caused. When St Peter's rectory became vacant in 1613, Peyton appointed Elie Messervy to the position. The Colloquy called a Synod to meet to discuss, however Peyton banned the meeting. Both sides sent parties to Westminster - the Colloquy sending George Poulet, the Bailiff - however a compromise was found locally, with Messervy agreeing to continue using the Huguenot prayer book.
Peyton was also against democracy in the form of the States and the freedoms of the Courts in Jersey. In 1615, Jean Hérault was appointed Bailiff by the King, having been promised the role by letters patent in 1611. Peyton disputed this appointment, claiming it was the Governor's jurisdiction to appoint the Bailiff. Hérault asserted it was the King's jurisdiction to directly appoint the Bailiff. An Order in Council (dated 9 August 1615) sided with Hérault, which Hérault took to claim the Bailiff was the real head of government and the Governor was simply a military officer. Hérault took steps to assert the precedence of the Bailiff over Governor: he ordered his name to be placed before the Governor's in church prayers and was the first Bailiff to wear red robes (in the style of English judges). To back his claims, he cited that in the Norman administrative tradition, the Bailiffs had "noone above them except the Duke". He frequently reported neglect of duty by Peyton, such as the reduction in the guard at Elizabeth Castle.
This dispute led to one of the most major turning points in Jersey's constitutional history, as the division of powers between the Governor and Bailiff were clearly demarcated. Though the Privy Council did not agree with Hérault's extreme position on the precedence of the Bailiff, on 18 February 1617 it declared that the "charge of military forces be wholly in the Governor, and the care of justice and civil affairs in the Bailiff." This secured for both the Bailiff and the States precedence over the Governor on justice and civil affairs, the constitutional precedent which limits the involvement of the Lieutenant-Governor in domestic affairs today.
In 1617, the Royal Commissioners Sir Edward Conway and Sir William Bird visited the island. This led to the recommendation that the island should have a Dean. The appointment was David Bandinel, the Italian Rector of St Brelade's, taking office in 1620. This was not popular with the States, with some Rectors stating they would not recognise the position of the Dean. He took office nonetheless and, by order of the King, Anglicanism was hence effectively established as the state religion of the island. The Book of Discipline lost its validity and the prayer book was changed to a translated version of the Book of Common Prayer, and all future Ministers had to be appointed from then on by a Bishop. Bandinel enforced these changes, including removing the Rector of St Mary from office for speaking against the prayer book, however the order that Communion should be taken kneeling was not.
Aside from religion, the Commissioners also ordered that the island's garrisons be increased and for better training for the militia. They did not recognise the Bailiff as being the island's true Governor, ordering that the States must receive permission from the Governor before being permitted to meet, however did also affirm the precedence of the Bailiff in the civil administrative spheres.
During the 1640s, England, Ireland and Scotland were embroiled in the War of the Three Kingdoms. The civil war also divided Jersey, and while the sympathy of islanders lay with Parliament, the de Carterets (particularly Sir George Carteret and Sir Philippe de Carteret II) held the island for the king. The Prince of Wales, the future Charles II visited the island in 1646 and again in October 1649 following the trial and execution of his father, Charles I. In the Royal Square in St. Helier on 17 February 1649, Charles was publicly proclaimed king after his father's death (following the first public proclamation in Edinburgh on 5 February 1649). Parliamentarian forces eventually captured the island in 1651 and Elizabeth Castle seven weeks later.
The Puritan Col. James Heane was appointed Governor of Jersey in 1651. There were complaints from islanders about the new resident soldiers. Despite the fact that Heane had prohibited looting, many soldiers stole things from islanders and secularised a number of holy buildings, for example burning all the pews in St Helier's church. Many soldiers attending services at the island's churches disrespected services because they could not understand them, as Jersey services were in the local French language. Printed slips were brought from England which Jerseymen were required to sign, swearing allegiance to the 'Republic of England ... without King or House of Lords'.
The Royalist landowners could redeem their land by pating between one and two years' income. However Jersey's system of rentes were complicated from an English perspective and the process of extracting the value of incomes from the landlords was laborious. The Receiver-General stormed because he could not get enough funds for his department, leading to him affronting the Bailiff and being imprisoned in Mont Orgeuil.
There was concern over the new republican Government's powers to reform Jersey's system of governance. At the time, all but one Jurat had been deposed of office and Parliament had prevented any election in the island until it had control of the situation. The Council recommended that the island's government be fully restored, but that all entrusted with public office should be freely elected and not to enjoy continuance for life. However, before the reforms could be implemented, the English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament in 1653. As such, the replacement Parliament recommended that year that ten new Jurats be elected, provided they were loyal to Parliament and to hold office for two years only. However, this new Parliament was also dissolved, so only one Jurat remained. Attempts were also made to incorporate Jersey into England. In 1652, Parliament had treated it as an English county, appointing a county committee, and in 1653, an Instrument decreed that Jersey should send one member to the House of Commons. In the end, the States never met during the nine years of the Commonwealth as the Bailiff, Lemprière, refused to call on the Rectors.
Instead the island was governed by the Royal Court (called L'État or the Court of the Lord Protector). Cromwell directly appointed - as opposed to the islanders electing - eleven Jurats to serve on the Court, however many of these were absent and neither able to govern nor administer justice.
While Charles was proclaimed King in London on 8 May 1660, it was not until 2 June that that news reached the island, and Charles II was proclaimed King for the second time in the Royal Square. In recognition for all the help given to him during his exile, Charles II gave George Carteret, Bailiff and governor, a large grant of land in the American colonies, which he promptly named New Jersey, now part of the United States of America. Furthermore, Charles II presented to the island a royal mace as a 'perpetual remembrance of [the Bailiffs'] fiedelity'; since then, it has always been carried before the Bailiff at sittings of the Royal Court and the States (even during the Occupation).
Another reward given to the island by Charles was the perquages. These are a series of routes that offered sanctuary to malefactors to leave the island. All except St Ouen and St Martin lead to the south coast. For example, St Mary, St John and St Lawrence leave via St Peter's Valley and Beaumont (today a cycle track leading to the south coast). Where a case did not amount to felony, wrongdoers could request to vider le pays, being entitled to nine days of sanctuary in any of the parish churches and then having to leave the island using a perquage route. This theory of the perquages as being routes of sanctuary is disputed. However, it is likely the clergy used these ancient ways to convey outlaws to the sea and records show sanctions for blocking the perquage way.
In 1666, it was reported by English spies in Paris that Louis XIV intended to invade Jersey after his declaration of war with England. The Governor rallied the militia, intent on dying to defend the island, but peace was agreed before any invasion could happen.
In 1673, there were concerns over the growing number of houses on the island. The construction of houses on arable land was putting the island's self-sustenance and food security at risk. Therefore, the States declared that new houses should only be built in St Aubin and Gorey, or where surrounded by 20 vergées of land.
In 1680, the States voted in favour of requesting the island's first dedicated prison be constructed in town in order to be nearer the Royal Court (previously prisoners had been held at Mont Orgueil, the King's tenants in the east being required to guard them). The building arching over Charing Cross (at the time the entrance to town from the west) was completed by 1699, where the prison would remain until its 1811 relocation to the present site of the General Hospital (on Gloucester Street, not at Westmount).
In 1689, William of Orange became the King of England; and England, as a Dutch ally, went to war against the French. Although due to the scale of the war, the island did not come into much focus, it was at this time the Privilege of Neutrality which had long been enjoyed by the islands was lost. William had banned all trade with France, a proclamation which applied to Jersey as well, however due to corruption in the higher levels of Jersey's government, namely the Lieutenant-Governor himself Edward Harris, a large smuggling trade thrived, operating from the bailiwick. Smugglers would be alerted by a fire set by French merchants on the Écrehous reef, a part of Jersey's bailiwick, to which Jersey boats, under the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor, would travel to conduct illegal trade. Despite attempts from parish authorities to stop the boats, being that the reef was part of Jersey and that these boats had permission from the government to travel to the islets, no action could be taken.
During William's wars with France, Jersey was on the whole at peace, with the notable exception of 1692, when Louis XIV permitted an army to gather at La Hougue on the Cotenin. James II himself also went to the Contenin, however Jersey's allegiance was now against the Stuarts. However, in a naval battle in 1692, the French fleet at La Hougue were destroyed. Although the threat of foreign powers was numb during this period, on island tensions were high. The Governors and Bailiffs were generally absent - the Governor Henry Lumley never visited the island at all during his time in office and after the death of Sir Edouard de Carteret, no bailiff was appointed for five years. The eventual successor Charles de Carteret faced large opposition, especially from his own tenants in St. Ouen. A group of jurats complained to the Privy Council that de Carteret was absent and not well accustomed to the law and culture of the island. Charles attempted to oppose this by blocking sittings of the Jurats in court, claiming they could not sit since they were related to the plaintiff or defendant (which they most often were since everyone in Jersey was somehow related to one another). With Charles ended the male line of de Carteret seigneurs.
Towards the end of the 17th century, Jersey strengthened its links with the Americas when many islanders emigrated to New England and north east Canada. The Jersey merchants built up a thriving business empire in the Newfoundland and Gaspé fisheries. Companies such as Robins and the Le Boutilliers set up thriving businesses.
By the 1720s, a discrepancy in coinage values between Jersey and France was threatening economic stability. The States of Jersey therefore resolved to devalue the liard to six to the sou. The legislation to that effect implemented in 1729 caused popular riots that shook the establishment. The devaluation was therefore cancelled.
In the 1730s, there was sporadic violence against the collectors of Crown tithes, especially in St Ouen, St Brelade and Trinity.
A revolt, known as the Corn Riots or the Jersey Revolution, occurred in 1769. They were centred around the balance of power between the island's parliament, the States, and the Royal Court, both of which had powers to create legislation. An anti-Seigneurial sentiment - opposition to the feudal economic system - also contributed to the popular revolt. The spark for the riots was a corn shortage, in part caused by corruption in the ruling classes, led by the Lieutenant Bailiff Charles Lemprière, whose style of rule was authoritarian.
On 28 September 1769, men from the northern parishes marched into town and rioted, including breaking into the Royal Court in a threatening manner. The States retreated to Elizabeth Castle and called on the Privy Council for help under false pretences. The Council sent five companies of Royal Scots, who discovered the islanders' grievances.
The protestors demands include reductions in price of wheat and the abolition of certain, or all, Seigneurial privileges. In reaction, the Crown issued the Code of 1771, which attempted to separate the island's judiciary and legislature. The Code codified Jersey's laws and removed lawmaking powers from the Royal Court. While the abolition of the Seigneurial system woas not achieved, tighter restrictions were placed on the collection of Crown revenues.
The Chamber of Commerce founded 24 February 1768 is the oldest English-speaking Chamber of Commerce.
The late 18th century was the first time political parties in some form came into existence on the island. Jean Dumaresq was an early Liberal who called for democratic reforms (that the States should be democratically elected Deputies and should have vested in them executive power). His supporters were known as Magots ("maggots", initially an insult from his opponents, which the Magots reclaimed as their own term) and his opponents as the Charlots (supporters of the Lieutenant Baliff Charles Lempière). Dumaresq is quoted as saying "we shall make these Seigneurs bite the dust". In 1776, he was elected as Connétable for St Peter.
Methodism arrived in Jersey in 1774, brought by fishermen returning from Newfoundland. Conflict with the authorities ensued when men refused to attend militia drill when that coincided with chapel meetings. The Royal Court attempted to proscribe Methodist meetings, but King George III refused to countenance such interference with liberty of religion. The first Methodist minister in Jersey was appointed in 1783, and John Wesley preached in Jersey in August 1789, his words being interpreted into the vernacular for the benefit of those from the country parishes. The first building constructed specifically for Methodist worship was erected in St. Ouen in 1809.
The 18th century was a period of political tension between Britain and France, as the two nations clashed all over the world as their ambitions grew. Because of its position, Jersey was more or less on a continuous war footing.
During the American Wars of Independence, two attempted invasions of the island were made. In 1779, the Prince of Orange William V was prevented from landing at St Ouen's Bay; on 6 January 1781, a force led by Baron de Rullecourt captured St Helier in a daring dawn raid, but was defeated by a British army led by Major Francis Peirson in the Battle of Jersey. A short-lived peace was followed by the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars which, when they had ended, had changed Jersey forever. In 1799–1800, over 6000 Russian troops under the command of Charles du Houx de Vioménil were quartered in Jersey after an evacuation of Holland.
The end of war with France and America saw the growth of trade between Jersey and the New World, especially Canada and Newfoundland. By 1763, around a third of the fish being exported from Conception Bay was carried by Jersey vessels. In the 1780s, a number of Jersey families settled permanently, such as the de Quettevilles in Forteau, Labrador. The first printing press was introduced to Jersey in 1784.
Anti-seigneurial attitudes remained in Jersey, despite the reforms of 1771. In 1785, an anti-seigneurial document containing 36 articles was included in St Ouen's Parish Assembly minutes. It included demands for reform such as the abolition of Seigneurial services and an end to the seizure of goods following bankruptcy. These demands were paralleled in St Helier and St John and by an article in La Gazette, the only newspaper at the time. These demands formed the basis for a sustained anti-feudal struggle during the next century.
The 19th century saw massive changes in Jersey society. A large influx of immigrants from England made Jersey a more connected island than ever before, and brought with it cultural changes and the desire for political reform. During this period, the States reformed to become more representative of the population and the Jersey culture became more anglicised and less religious. The island also grew economically and the built-up areas of the island expanded, especially St Helier, with the development of public transport on the island.
The pre-existing road network was an intricate network of roads and lanes. During the nineteenth century, many parishes took on the administration of more and more of these lanes. The network was criticised at the time for being subpar. A common Jèrriais saying is Vieux comme les Quémins, which means 'as old as the roads'. In the early 19th century, the military roads were constructed (on occasion at gunpoint in the face of opposition from landowners) by the governor, General George Don, to link coastal fortifications with the town harbour. Much of the opposition to the plans came from islanders, who thought the country's best defence was its convoluted network of narrow lanes. The new road system was met with considerable opposition, particularly due to its expense. The St Helier Parish Assembly forbade the completion of the Trinity main road within its boundaries. The new network allowed greater communication between disparate parts of the island. These had an unexpected effect on agriculture once peace restored reliable trade links. Farmers in previously isolated valleys were able to swiftly transport crops grown in the island's microclimate to waiting ships and then on to the markets of London and Paris ahead of the competition. In conjunction with the later introduction of steamships and the development of the French and British railway systems, Jersey's agriculture was no longer as isolated as before.
The early 19th century was a period of growth of trade for Jersey. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars after the defeat of France in 1815, the Channel Islands lost their strategic value, as points of conflict between the British and foreign powers moved to the North Sea. The UK had a need to reduce its forces to cut spending, but the Channel Islands defence costs reached £500,000 pa, even in peacetime. The utility of possessing the islands came into question. John Ramsay McCulloch described the advantages the islands provided to the UK as "neither very obvious nor material". However, in 1845, the Duke of Wellington strongly defended the islands in the Memorandum on the Defence of the United Kingdom.
An English Custom House was established in the island in 1810. A key turning point in Jersey history was the introduction of steamships. Previous to that, travel to the island was long and unpredictable. In the mid-1820s, the post office switched to steam as well. The first paddle steamer to visit Jersey was the Medina on 11 June 1823. In 1824, two shipping companies were established, each operating weekly steamship services to England.
This brought thousands of passengers to the country. By 1840, there were 5,000 English residents, who some say did not mix well or interact deeply with the native Jèrriais. The number of English-speaking soldiers stationed in the island and the number of retired officers and English-speaking labourers who came to the islands in the 1820s led to the island gradually moving towards an English-speaking culture in town. This new immigration had a large impact on local architecture, with a number of mainland Georgian-style houses and terraces erected on the main roads out of St Helier. The town also expanded with many new streets, such as Burrard Street, first developed in 1812. In 1831, street lighting was first used. In 1843 it was agreed to erect street names. The rapid growth of St. Helier was one of the most significant changes in the landscape of Jersey during the 19th century. The town developed from a small settlement by the coast to encompassing most of the parish and spreading out into St. Clement and St. Saviour.
An important growth for St Helier in the early 19th century was the construction of the harbour. Previously, ships coming into the town had only a small jetty at the site now called the English Harbour and the French Harbour. The Chamber of Commerce urged the States to build a new harbour, but the States refused, so the Chamber took it into their own hands and paid to upgrade the harbour in 1790. A new breakwater was constructed to shelter the jetty and harbours. In 1814, the merchants constructed the roads now known as Commercial Buildings and Le Quai des Marchands to connect the harbours to the town and in 1832 construction was finished on the Esplanade and its sea wall. A rapid expansion in shipping led the States in 1837 to order the construction of two new piers: the Victoria and Albert Piers.
The post-Napoleonic War period was a divisive period politically for the island. In 1821, there was an election for Jurat. The St Laurentine Laurelites (conservatives, the eventual name for the Charlots) attacked the Inn in their village where Rose men (the progressive descendants of the Magots) were holding a meeting. They damaged the building and injured both the innkeeper and his wife. On election day in St Martin, the a number of Rose voters were attacked, after which most Rose men refrained from voting. Although the Rose candidate won overall, he faced a number of lawsuits over claims of voter fraud, so in the end the Laurel candidate George Bertram took office.
At this time, the national administration system, despite reform, still resembled a feudal system of governance. They also remained dominated by judicial and legislative overlap. In the nineteenth century, the growth of the town shifted economic power from the country parishes to St Helier, where also resided a large English population. During this century, Jersey's power structure shifted from the English Crown to the Jersey States, establishing Jersey as a near-independent state, however ultimate authority over the island shifted from the Crown to the British Parliament, aligning with the shift in the UK's politics towards a purely ceremonial monarch. The Privy Council put pressure of the island to reform its institutions, in the belief these reforms should align the country with a more English model of government and law. In 1883, John Stuart Blackie recounted an Englishman's comment that only one thing was needed to make Jersey perfect, and that was "a full participation in the benefits of English law". However, the Lieutenant Governor at the time stated that the absence of English law was what had brought Jerseymen such prosperity.
Many locals blamed this push for reform on the island's new immigrants, who were unaccustomed to the island's distinct political and legal systems (although a major part of the mainstream reformer movement was in fact made of Jerseymen). Many English who had moved to the island discovered an alien environment, with unfamiliar laws (in a foreign language they could not understand) and no recourse to access the local power to counter them. The reformers of English heritage mostly came from the middle classes, and sought to further their own rights, not necessarily those of the working class. These Englishmen formed a pressure group known as the Civil Assembly of St Helier. This group was effectively split into two, one organised around Abraham Le Cras' hard-code English reformism and the other, a larger looser corpus of English reformists. The former was never representative of a significant proportion of the English community. One thing both shared however was a belief that the English systems were far superior to the historic Norman-based structures.
Abraham Le Cras was an outspoken new resident - though with Jersey heritage - opposed to Jersey's self-government. He not only thought Jersey should be integrated into England fully, but disputed the right of the States to even make its own laws. He is noted as saying, 'the States have no more power to make laws for Jersey than I have'. In 1840 he won a court case challenging the States' ability to naturalise people as citizens. The Privy Council determined that the long-standing precedent of the States doing so had been invalidated since Jersey had been ruled under civil law since 1771. In 1846, he persuaded the MP for Bath to push for a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the law of Jersey, however HM Government instead promised a Royal Commission. The Commission advised the abolition of the Royal Court run by the Jurats and the replacement of it with three Crown-appointed judges and the introduction of a paid police force. Le Cras left the island to live in England in 1850.
In 1852, the island experienced somewhat of a constitutional crisis when the Privy Council issued three Orders in Council: establishing a police court, a petty debts court and a paid police force for St Helier. This sparked controversy locally, with claims that the move threatened Jersey's independence. Both parties united against the move and around 7000 islanders signing a petition. By 1854, the council had agreed to revoke the Orders, on the condition that the States passed most of the council's requirements. In 1856, further constitutional reform brought deputies into the States for the first time, with one deputy from each country parish and three from town.
The threats to Jersey's autonomy continued. In the 1860s, there was raised a threat of an intervention in the island's government by the British Parliament itself, in order to impose change on the island's structures.
Nonconformity challenged traditional Jersey society from within; it had always been a part of Jersey life, and non-conformists such as the Methodists had generally been tolerated during peacetime. This isn't to say there weren't some tensions between the Established Church and non-conformists, but these were generally exceptional. Most country people had at least one non-conformist within their own family, so the othering of non-conformists never took much hold. However, non-conformists were often unable to fully participate in country life as the church played a central role in the secular parish, and were notably absent from honorary roles within the parish. The Established Church had to reassess itself and reform and the parish structure altered itself to become a more civil-focused organisation, preserving itself while allowing its community more religious freedom.
At the start of the 19th century, Jersey people as a nation were British, rather French nor Norman. Due to the cultural divergence between the Island and the Norman mainland, relationships between individual Islanders and Frenchmen were less common. Due to an increase in French immigrants, the differences between the Islanders and the French became more apparent, and thus France and the French people were seen as foreign to the Island's population. Furthermore, increased links between Jersey and mainland Britain, such as through the improvement of St Helier's shipping capabilities and an increase in mainland Brits, made Jersey a more British nation.
This led to a change in the linguistic demography in the Island. In the early parts of the century, mostly due to increased immigration from the rest of the British Isles, the town became a predominantly English-speaking place, though bilingualism was still common. This created a divided linguistic geography, as the people of the countryside continued to use Jèrriais, and many did not even know English. English became seen as 'the language of commercial success and moral and intellectual achievement'.
The growth of English and the decline of French brought about the adoption of more values and social structures from Victorian England. From 1912, the new compulsory education was delivered solely in English, following the cultural norms, and teaching subjects from the perspective, of England. Eventually, this has led to the Island's culture becoming anglicised and much of the traditional Norman-based culture of the Island being disregarded or lost. Kelleher identifies anglicisation as a challenge Le Feuvre argues that this cultural change created a sense of inferiority about native Jersey culture and the language – viewed as a 'corruption, rather than an improvement' of Standard French by the English immigrant population – which only served to accelerate the process of anglicisation.
Anglicisation was supported by the British state. It was suggested that, although the islands had proven themselves loyal to the British Sovereign, that this was out of hereditary impression, rather than affinity towards the English people, and that anglicisation would not only encourage loyalty and congeniality between the nations, but also provide economic prosperity and improved "general happiness". In 1846, through a lens of growing nationalism in the UK, there was concern against sending young islanders to France for education, where they might bring French principles, friendships and views of policy and government to the British Islands. The Jersey gentry adopted this policy of anglicisation, due to the social and economic benefits it would bring. Anglophiles such as John Le Couteur strove to introduce England to Jersey. In 1856, the Jersey Times, an English-language newspaper, was established in Jersey. The use of the English language in the States was first suggested by the Rev. Abraham Le Sueur of Grouville in 1880.
Queen Victoria was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom in the right of Jersey in 1837. The first notable event of the Victorian era for Jersey was the change in currency. The livre tournois had been used as the legal currency for centuries, however it had been abolished during the French Revolutionary period. Although the coins were no longer minted, they remained the legal currency in Jersey until 1837, when dwindling supplies and consequent difficulties in trade and payment obliged the adoption of the pound sterling as legal tender. Keen to prevent a repeat of the Six-sou Revolt, the authorities wanted to ensure a fair exchange rate; 520 sous would be the equivalent of one Pound sterling. Jersey issued its first coins in 1841, including the 1/13 shilling coin, which was closer in value to the old sou than the English penny.
In the 1840s, the Rose leader Pierre Le Sueur was elected as Connétable of St Helier. From 1845, he orchestrated the construction of a complete sewer system for the town. He remained in office for 15 years and on his death an obelisk was erected in the Broad Street square.
The population of Jersey rose rapidly, from 47,544 in 1841 to 56,078 20 years later, despite a 20% mortality rate amongst new born children. Life expectancy was 35 years. Both immigration and emigration increased. In 1851, the English immigrant population numbered around 12,000, compared with a total island population of 57,000 people. In St Helier, they constituted 7,000 of the parish's 30,000 residents. As with in England, the English community in Jersey was not coherent, but divided by social class. At the top of the social ladder were those of independent means, who chose to retire in the island: they did not participate much in the local lifestyle or politics, instead creating a mini-English social life for themselves. While at the bottom, there was the English-born working class, who often lacked basic rights such as accessing welfare.
In 1852, the French author and poet Victor Hugo arrived to seek refuge in Jersey, as had many other revolutionaries and socialists from the Continent, facing exile from France and Belgium. If any of these proscrits died on the island, they were buried in Macpela cemetery in Sion, St John. In 1855, these refugees republished in their weekly paper L'Homme an open letter from a number of French socialists living in London, which stated 'You have sacrificed your dignity as a Queen, your fastidiousness as a woman, your pride as an aristocrat, even your honour.' The Lieutenant-Governor banished the three editors two days later. Although Hugo had disapproved of the letter, he joined a protest against the expulsion, and hence too was exiled from the island. He and his family left for Guernsey.
The Theatre Royal was built, as were Victoria College in 1852 and exhibited 34 items at The Great Exhibition in 1851, the world's first ever Pillar box was installed in 1852 and a paid police force was created in 1854.
This century saw Jersey develop a public transport network. Towards the end of the last century, omnibuses came into use for the first time in the island. Two railways, the Jersey Western Railway in 1870, and the Jersey Eastern Railway in 1874, were opened. The western railway from St Helier (Weighbridge) to La Corbière and the eastern railway from St Helier (Snow Hill) to Gorey Pier. The two railways were never connected.
Jersey was the fourth-largest shipbuilding area in the 19th-century British Isles, building over 900 vessels around the island. Shipbuilding declined with the coming of iron ships and steam. A number of banks on Jersey, guarantors of an industry both onshore and off, failed in 1873 and 1886, even causing strife and discord in far-flung societies. The population fell slightly in the twenty years to 1881.
In the late 19th century, as the former thriving cider and wool industries declined, island farmers benefited from the development of two luxury products - Jersey cattle and Jersey Royal potatoes. The former was the product of careful and selective breeding programmes; the latter was a total fluke.
The anarchist philosopher, Peter Kropotkin, who visited the Channel Islands in 1890, 1896, and 1903, described the agriculture of Jersey in The Conquest of Bread.
The 19th century also saw the rise of tourism as an important industry (linked with the improvement in passenger ships) which reached its climax in the period from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s.
Elementary education became obligatory in 1899, and free in 1907. Queen Victoria died in 1901, and Edward VII was proclaimed as King in the Royal Square. His coronation a year later was marked by the first Battle of Flowers. The years before the First World War saw the foundation of the Jersey Eisteddfod by the Dean of Jersey, Samuel Falle. The first aeroplanes arrived in Jersey in 1912.
In 1914, the British garrison was withdrawn at the start of the First World War and the militia were mobilised. Jersey men served in the British and French armed forces. Numbers of German prisoners of war were interned in Jersey. The influenza epidemic of 1918 added to the toll of war.
In 1919, imperial measurements replaced, for the most part, the traditional Jersey system of weights and measures; women aged over 30 were given the vote; and the endowments of the ancient grammar schools were repurposed as scholarships for Victoria College.
In 1921, the visit of King George V was the occasion for the design of the parish crests.
In 1923, the British government asked Jersey to contribute an annual sum towards the costs of the Empire. The States of Jersey refused and offered instead a one-off contribution to war costs. After negotiations, Jersey's one-off contribution was accepted.
The first motor car had arrived in 1899 and buses started running on the island in the 1920s, and by the 1930s, competition from motor buses had rendered the railways unprofitable, with final closure coming in 1935 after a fire disaster (except for the later German reintroduction of rail during the military occupation). Jersey Airport was opened in 1937 to replace the use of the beach of Saint Aubin's bay as an airstrip at low tide, and the railways could not cope with the competition.
English was first permitted in debates in the States of Jersey in 1901, and the first legislation to be drawn up primarily in English was the Income Tax Law of 1928.
Following the withdrawal of defences by the British government and German bombardment, Jersey was occupied by German troops between 1940 and 1945. The Channel Islands were the only British soil occupied by German troops in World War II. This period of occupation had about 8,000 islanders evacuated, 1,200 islanders deported to camps in Germany, and over 300 islanders sentenced to the prison and concentration camps of mainland Europe. Twenty died as a result. The islanders endured near-starvation in the winter of 1944–45, after the Channel Islands had been cut off from German-occupied Europe by Allied forces advancing from the Normandy beachheads, avoided only by the arrival of the Red Cross supply ship Vega in December 1944. Liberation Day - 9 May is marked as a public holiday.
After five years of occupation, the people of Jersey began to rebuild the island. In 1944, a group of exiled islanders, called Nos Iles, set out what the Channel Islands would need after the war. Examples include better education, development of the economy, especially tourism, and greater cooperation between the islands. They also emphasised the need for efficient land management.
We have a limited amount of space and much to fit into it.
Some Jersey men were enlisted in national service in occupied Germany. The UK donated more than £4 million to clear Jersey's occupation debt, as well as sending gifts of essential items. There were over 50,000 mines to be cleared. Sir Edward Grasett was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor in August 1945.
The 1945 census showed that 44,382 people were resident in the island (an increase of 4000 since Liberation). By the next year, there were 50,749, and the majority lived in St Helier. Many returned to their pre-war homes to find them in a state of dereliction and were given grants to repair the damage.
Many islanders called for the reform and modernisation of the States: a poll by the JEP showed that only 88 of the 1,784 surveyed thought Rectors should stay in the States and a vast majority wanted the legislature and judiciary separated. The Jersey Democratic Movement campaigned for either the incorporation of the island as a county of England or at least the abolition of the States. The other political party to emerge during this period was the Progressive Party, consisting of some present States members, who opposed the JDM. In the 1945 Deputies' election, the Progressives won a landslide victory, giving a mandate for change.
The franchise was extended to all British adults, previously voting rights in Jersey had only been to men and women over 30 according to property ownership. The largest reform came in the form of the 1948 States reform. Jurats were no longer States members and were to be elected by an Electoral College. It also introduced a retirement age for Jurats of 70. In all cases, the Bailiff shall be the judge of the law, and the Jurats the "judge of fact". The Jurats' role in the States was replaced by 12 senators, four of whom would retire every three years. The Church also lost most of its representation in the States, with the role of Rector being abolished and the number of Deputies increased to 28.
The island adopted free, universal secondary education and a social security system. The bill for the social security system was passed in May 1950. A paid police force to cover the whole island was established to work alongside the honorary police. Divorce was legalised in 1949. In 1952, a state secondary school for boys was opened at Hautlieu and a girls' secondary was opened at Rouge Bouillon. Ten years later these would combine to form a single co-ed grammar school at Hautlieu, and two other schools: one for boys (d'Hautrée) and another for girls (at the Rouge Bouillon site) were opened. Later the two St Helier schools were combined into one comprehensive school and two other comprehensives were opened at Les Quennevais and Le Rocquier. Highlands College was purchased by the States in 1973 to provide further education.
There was an expansion of housing to deal with growing population and to improve the quality of existing housing. There was also a slum clearance programme involving States-funded homes (either for social housing or sale) and States-funded mortgages. By 1948, since the end of the war, two estates had been built: Grasett Park and Princess Place. A sum of £52,000 was agreed to build more houses on land already owned by the States.
The population saw growth from wealthy immigrants looking for lower taxes and seasonal essential workers from the Continent and mainland. Jersey was particularly attractive to retired civil servants in former British colonies as these obtained independence throughout the 20th century. This created a need for new infrastructure. Street lighting began to spread to the country parishes and a new sewage farm was built at Bellozane. Mains drainage was extended beyond St Helier and new water production facilities were constructed. The island saw a growth in tourism and the reopening of the Battle of Flowers parade (for the first time since World War I) as well as new cinemas and the International Road Race.
The military establishments of the island were handed over by the British Government to the Island and Jersey's Militia abolished. For the first time since Edward III, there was no permanent military presence on the island. The arsenals, forts are castles were converted to museums and housing (or in the case of Fort Regent, into the main leisure centre for town). There was a dispute over the ownership of Jersey's islets - the Minquiers and the Ecréhous - between the UK and France. The International Court of Justice ruled in favour of British ownership of the reefs.
Between 1945 and the Queen's coronation in 1952, there were outbreaks of polio and tuberculosis and the opening of the Jersey Maternity hospital and St John Ambulance headquarters. Agriculture was hit by a series of foot-and-mouth outbreaks.
The first senatorial election was brief. Each Senator was elected for either nine, six or three years depending on where they came in the polling list. Philip Le Feuvre topped the poll and was elected for nine years. On 8 December 1945 at the Deputies' election, Ivy Forster of the Progressive Party became the first woman to ever be elected to the States. Other notable successful candidates include John Le Marquand Jr. (whose father has recently been returned as Senator) and Cyril Le Marquand.
The event which has had the most far-reaching effect on Jersey in modern times is the growth of the finance industry in the island from the 1960s onwards, which has led to debate that Jersey constitutes a tax haven. Jersey's role as a finance centre has occasionally brought the island global media attention. For example in 2017, the Paradise Papers – a global leak of confidential documents relating to offshore investments – revealed that Apple had made two international subsidiaries tax resident in Jersey in 2015.
In 2008, a police investigation at Haut de la Garenne children's home found a record of abuse at the home dating back since liberation. More than 500 alleged offences were recorded and eight people were prosecuted.
The most widely regarded history of Jersey is Balleine's History of the Island of Jersey, written by G. R. Balleine in 1959, and later adapted by the Société Jersiaise, most notably two of its members Marguerite Syvret and Joan Stevens. | [
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{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Due to the English kings' continuing claim to the Duchy of Normandy, Jersey's Norman political and legal structures remained after the split, which led to the establishment of self-governance as a Crown Dependency. Between the 11th and 15th centuries, political tensions between England and France placed Jersey at the frontline of frequent wars.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "During the Tudor period, the English Crown split from the Roman Church and immigration to the island of French religious refugees led to the establishment of Calvinism as the major religion of the island. In 1617, the Privy Council separated the powers of Governor and Bailiff, establishing that the Bailiff had sole jurisdiction over justice and civil affairs in the island. During the English Civil War, Jersey remained more loyal to the Crown due to the loyalties of the de Carteret family, though the island was eventually captured by Parliamentarian forces. After restoration, the de Carterets were gifted land in the American colonies, establishing New Jersey.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the 18th century, Jersey experienced bouts of unrest, culminating in the Corn Riots of 1769. As a result, legislative power was concentrated in the States in 1771, stripping the Royal Court of its lawmaking abilities. Island politics was then split between the Magot and Charlot parties through much of the 19th century. In 1781, the island was invaded by the French, but was defeated by an army led by Major Francis Peirson in the Battle of Jersey. From 1815, new peace with the French meant the island lost strategic military value. Improvements in transport infrastructure led to non-political increased links with the United Kingdom. Alongside this, a rising sense of British nationalism led to the island's culture, which had previously retained many Norman-French qualities, to be highly anglicised.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The islands were away from the frontline of the First World War, but during the Second World War, the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by enemy forces. From 1940 to 1945, Jersey was occupied by German forces. The islands were liberated on 9 May 1945, which is still celebrated as the island's national day. After liberation, the island became a popular tourist destination and has become a major offshore finance centre.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Although Jersey was part of the Roman world, there is a lack of evidence to give a better understanding of the island during the Gallo-Roman and early Middle Ages. The tradition is that the island was called Caesarea by the Romans as laid down in the Antonine Itinerary, however this is disputed by some, who claim Caesarea, Sarnia and Riduna are the Scilly Isles off the southwestern tip of England, nevertheless Sarnia in particular has a large cultural influence as the historic name of Guernsey (for example the national anthem of Guernsey is Sarnia chérie). Andium however is also mentioned on the list and this name is very often attributed to Jersey. Therefore, it is possible another island, such as the Minquiers were in fact Caesarea and Jersey Andium.",
"title": "Name of the island"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The name is claimed to be the source of the modern name Jersey, -ey being a Norse signification of an island, and Jer- possibly being a contraction of Caesar, similar to Cherbourg, therefore the island meaning Caesar's island. Another claim for the origin of the name is as Geirr's Island from the Norse name Geirr or as the grassy isle from the Frisian gers. The Roman name for the Channel Islands was I. Lenuri (Lenur Islands)",
"title": "Name of the island"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Some claim that the pre-Roman name for the island was Augia (alternatively Andium), and it was given by this name by King Childebert of France to Archbishop Samson of Dol in 550 CE. In the past the island's name has various variations of its spelling, such as Gersey, Jarzé, Gerzai and Gersui (including re-latinisations such as Gersoium and Grisogium) Andium has considerable popularity as the former name for Jersey, being for example the name of the island's social housing corporation.",
"title": "Name of the island"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "L'Etacq is of Norse origin, a derivative of L'Estack, from the Norse stakkr, meaning high rock. This word also gives name to various places called Etacquerel.",
"title": "Name of the island"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The earliest evidence of human activity in Jersey dates to about 250,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic (before Jersey became an island) when bands of Neanderthal nomadic hunters used the caves at La Cotte de St Brelade as a base for hunting mammoth and woolly rhinoceros.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Due to rising sea levels, Jersey has been an island for approximately 6,000 years. The geology of the Channel Islands, has its origins in the Hercynian mountain building period, which also accounts for the hills of Brittany and the moors of Devon and Cornwall. At its current extremes it measures 10 miles (16 km) east to west and 6 miles (10 km) north to south. Evidence of Ice Age period engravings dating from at least 12,000 BC has been found, showing occupation by Homo sapiens.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Evidence also exists of settled communities in the Neolithic period, which is marked by the building of the ritual burial sites known as dolmens. The number, size, and visible locations of these megalithic monuments (especially La Hougue Bie) have suggested that social organisation over a wide area, including surrounding coasts, was required for the construction. Archaeological evidence also shows that trading links with Brittany and the south coast of England existed during this time.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Evidence of occupation and wealth has been discovered in the form of hoards. In 1889, during construction of a house in Saint Helier, a 746-gram gold torc of Irish origin was unearthed. A Bronze Age hoard consisting of 110 implements, mostly spears and swords, was discovered in Saint Lawrence in 1976 – probably a smith's stock. Hoards of coins were discovered at La Marquanderie, in Saint Brelade, Le Câtel, in Trinity, and Le Câtillon, in Grouville (1957).",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In June 2012, two metal detectorists announced that they had uncovered what could be Europe's largest hoard of Iron Age Celtic coins, 70,000 late Iron Age and Roman coins. The hoard is thought to have belonged to a Curiosolitae tribe fleeing Julius Caesar's armies around 50 to 60 BC.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In October 2012, another metal detectorist reported an earlier Bronze Age find, the Trinity Hoard.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Although there is no evidence of a Roman occupation of Jersey, historians consider that it is entirely feasible it was occupied by the Romans. Various Roman archeological artefacts have been found on the island, such as coins discovered on the north coast at Ile Agois. There are several sites attributed to the Romans on the island, such as Caesar's fort at Mont Orgeuil. Roman influence has been found, in particular at Les Landes, the coastal headland site at Le Pinacle, where remains of a primitive structure are attributed to Gallo-Roman temple worship (fanum).",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "When Augustus Caesar divided Gaul into four provinces, Jersey was part of the province headquartered at Lyons. Roman influence has a strong grounding in the development of Jersey culture, bringing vernacular Latin to the isle, which would later develop into Standard French and Jèrriais (and influence English).",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "During the migration of the Britons from Britain to Brittany (c. 5th – 6th century AD), specifically during the invasion led by St Samson, Bishop of Dol, it is believed the Channel Islands came to be settled by them. There are numerous references to the habitation of Jersey by Breton people. This likely brought Christianity to the island. Various saints such as the Celts Samson of Dol and Branwalator (Brelade) were active in the region. Tradition has it that Saint Helier from Tongeren in modern-day Belgium first brought Christianity to the island in the 6th century; part of the walls of the Fishermen's Chapel dates from this period and Charlemagne sent his emissary to the island (at that time called Angia, also spelt Agna) in 803. A chapel built around 911 now forms part of the nave of the Parish Church of St Clement.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "From 873, Jersey was affected by the conquests by the Normans of the western coast of France (the Channel Islands were territory of the Kingdom of France at this time). During the reign of Charles III the Simple, the territory of modern Normandy was yielded to Rollo, the leader of the Normans, with the title of the \"Duke of Normandy\". While the Duchy was held in fief to the French Crown, the Crown only had limited rights in the province.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In around 933, Duke William I (William Longsword), seized Jersey, which until then had been politically linked to Brittany, and it is likely that the pre-Norman form of government and way of life was replaced at this point. The island adopted the Norman law system, still the basis of Jersey law today. During Norman rule, the island redeveloped after the devastation brought by the Vikings and developed agriculture. Immigration from the Norman mainland at this time first brought the modern Norman cultural influences found in the island today.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "A key part of the early administrative structure of Jersey was the fief. Alongside the parish, the fief provided a basic framework for rural life; the system began with the Norman system and largely remained similar to it. In Jersey, the dues, services and rents owed by tenants were extensive and often onerous. Jersey peasants retained a degree of freedom lost elsewhere, probably due to the insignificance of the island in the Duchy. More is known of the origins of the fief than of the parishes and early documents show that Jersey was thoroughly feudalised (the majority of the residents were tenants holding land from Seigneurs). The fief of St Ouen, the most senior fief in Jersey's feudal structure, was by 1135 in the hands of the de Carteret family. They held extensive lands in Carteret as well, but these were lost by them after King John's loss of Normandy, so they decided to settle on the island. Between the 12th and 20th centuries, there were an estimated 245 fiefs in Jersey, though not all simultaneously.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1066, the Duke William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at Hastings to become the King of England; however, he continued to rule his French possessions, including Jersey, as a separate entity, as fealty was owed to the King of France. This initial association of Jersey with England did not last long, as William split his possessions between his two elder sons: Robert Curthose became Duke of Normandy and William Rufus gained the English Crown. After William Rufus' death his younger brother Henry I claimed the English throne, and recaptured Normandy for England in 1106. The island was then part of the English King's realm (though still part of Normandy and France). Around 1142, it is recorded that Jersey was under the control of the Count of Anjou, who administered Normandy for the Duke.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "According to the Rolls of the Norman Exchequer, in 1180 Jersey was divided for administrative purposes into three ministeria: de Gorroic, de Groceio and de Crapoudoit (possibly containing four parishes each). Gorroic is an old spelling for Gorey, containing St Martin, St Saviour, Grouville and St Clement; Groceio could derive from de Gruchy, and contains St John, Trinity, St Lawrence and St Helier; and Crapoudoit, likely referring to the stream of St Peter's Valley, contains the remainder of the parishes in the West. This was a time of building or extending churches with most parish churches in the island being built/rebuilt in a Norman style chosen by the abbey or priory to which each church had been granted. St Mary and St Martin being given to Cerisy Abbey. By Norman times, the parish boundaries were firmly fixed and remain largely unchanged since. It was likely set in place due to the tithe system under Charlemagne, where each property must contribute to the church, so each property would have had to be established within a parish. The parish system is much more important in Jersey than in England or post-Napoleon France.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "After the death of Henry II in 1189 and the short reign of Richard I, the island (and the rest of the Empire) fell to King John in 1199. In 1200, John agreed to render homage of his Norman territories to the King Philip Augustus of France, but in 1204, King Philip re-conquered the Duchy. Though the French initially occupied the Channel Islands from 1204 to 1206 (and again in 1216 to 1217), John recognised their strategic importance and recovered them. However, thanks to Pierre de Préaux, a governor of Rouen who possessed the isles, who decided to support King John, the islands remained in the personal possession of the English king and were described as being a Peculiar of the Crown.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "It is said, in tradition, that the island's autonomy derives from the Constitutions of King John, however this is disputed. Until King James II, successive English monarchs have then granted to Jersey by charter its certain privileges, likely to ensure the island's continued loyalty, accounting for its advantageous position at the boundary of the European continent. As John (and later Henry III) maintained his title as the rightful Duke of Normandy until 1259, the island's courts were originally established as Norman, not English territory (to use English law would de-legitimise the English Crown's claim to the ducal title), so are based upon traditional Norman laws and customs, such as the Coutumier de Normandie.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Now sited on the French-English border, the Channel Islands ceased to be a peaceful backwater and became a potential flashpoint on the international stage. Under the wardenships of Philippe d'Aubigny (1212-1224, 1232–1234), the island was attacked by Eustace the Monk, a pirate, while the warden was fighting for the King in the Barons' war. In 1217, Louis, the son of Philip II of France, ordered after the Treaty of Lambeth, that the supporters of Eustace should return the islands to England. The same year, Eustace was beheaded after being captured at Sandwich. Therefore, the Warden, de Suligny, constructed a castle at Gorey, known as Mont Orgueil, to serve as a royal fortress and military base. This was needed as the Island had few defences and had previously been suppressed by a fleet commanded by a French exile, Eustace the Monk working with the English King until in 1212 he changed sides and raided the Channel Islands on behalf of the French King.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "An inquest was held into the loyalty of the Jersey landowners. Most Jersey landowners had their main estates on the Mainland, so John needed to re-organise the land to remove the unfaithful lords. Most lords forfeited their insular land in favour of their French territory, but some remained, notably the de Carteret family of St Ouen. The old aristocracy gave way to a new one, with landowners drawn from royal officials, who soon came to think of themselves as islanders rather than Englishmen. This saw the firm establishment of the feudal system in Jersey, with fiefs headed by Seigneurs.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the Treaty of Paris (1259), the King of France gave up claim to the Channel Islands. The claim was based upon his position as feudal overlord of the Duke of Normandy. The King of England gave up claim to mainland Normandy and therefore the Channel Islands were split from the rest of Normandy. The Channel Islands were never absorbed into the Kingdom of England and the island has had self-government since. The administration of the island was handled by an insular government. The King appointed a Warden (later \"Capitain\" or \"Governor\", now the Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey), a position largely occupied with the defence of the island. From 1415 until the second half of the 15th century, the islands were governed by a Lord (or Lady). Despite the end to Norman rule, the churches of the island were permitted to continue to be under the Diocese of Coutances for another 300 years to appease islanders, however at times of war the liberties of the clergy were often restricted.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The existing Norman customs and laws were allowed to continue and there was no attempt to introduce English law. The formerly split administrative system was replaced with a centralised legal system, of which the head was the King of England rather than the Duke of Normandy. The law was conducted through 12 jurats, constables (Connétable) and a bailiff (Baillé). These titles have different meanings and duties to those in England. Any oppression by a bailiff or a warden was to be resolved locally or failing that, by appeal to the King who appointed commissioners to report on disputes. In the late 1270s, Jersey was given its own Bailiff and from the 1290s, the duties of Bailiff and Warden were separated. The (Sub-)Warden became responsible for taxation and defence, while the Bailiff became responsible for justice. While probably originally a temporary arrangement by Otto de Grandison, this became permanent and the foundation for Jersey's modern separation of Crown and justice. It also lessened the Warden's authority relative to the Bailiff, who had much more interaction with the community.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The role of the jurats when the King's court was mobile would have been preparatory work for the visit of the Justices in Eyre. It is unknown for how long the position of the jurats has existed, with some claiming the position dates to time immemorial. After the cessation of the visits of the Justices in Eyre (and with the frequent absence of the Warden), the Bailiff and jurats took on a much wider role, from jury to justice.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "For geographic reasons, during the thirteenth century, the Channel Islands became a strategic stopping point for fleets carrying goods, particularly wine, across the Channel. This led to an economic boom, islanders becoming highly wealthy, and a population boom. Jersey's population probably numbered around 12,000, beyond what the island's agriculture was able to sustain itself.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 1294, Philip IV 'the Fair' conquered Gascony, starting an Anglo-French war. Jersey was attacked that year in revenge for the destruction of a French fleet in the Channel, leading to the destruction of churches, homes and crops and the deaths of many islanders.",
"title": "13th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1336, the Scots king David Bruce attacked the Channel Islands, committing arson, murder and other atrocities. Due to this attack, other attacks and the threat of further attacks from the Scots, an Island Militia was formed in 1337, which was compulsory for the next 600 years for all men of military age. In November 1337, King Edward III broke off negotiations with the French, starting the Hundred Year's War.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In March 1338, a French force led by Admiral Béhuchet landed on Jersey, intent on capturing the island. The French devastated the island. In four parishes, all tithe corn was burnt. Although the island was overrun, Mont Orgueil remained in English hands, besieged by Béhuchet. The French remained until September, when they sailed off to conquer Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark. In 1339, the French returned, allegedly with 8,000 men in 17 Genoese galleys and 35 French ships. Led by Robert Bertrand, to whom the islands had been transferred by the French King, the French forces promised islanders their ancient liberties, which had not been ratified by the English King in recent times. A number of senior islanders were pro-French at the time. Again, they failed to take the castle and, after causing damage, withdrew.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 1341, in recognition of islanders' efforts during the war, Edward III declared that Jerseymen should 'hold and retain all privileges, liberties, immunities and customs granted by our forebares'. This began the tradition of successive Monarchs devolving powers over the island to Islanders, giving them certain privileges and protecting the separation between the Channel Islands and the rest of their royal realm. In 1342, the Warden Sir Thomas of Hampton attempted to recapture Castle Cornet with a contingent of Jerseymen. His Lieutenant Henry de la More however lost the faith gained from the islanders by the King's charter. Islanders petitioned the King to punish de la More and Hampton. The island was thrown in a sullen revolt, which sometimes broke out into fighting.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The change in England to a written language in \"English\" was not taken up in Jersey, where Norman-French continued until the 20th century.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 1348, when the Black Death would likely have reached the island, there are no kept records for the number of deaths seen on the island. Coastal France was highly affected by the plague and it is likely that the death toll was around 30-40 percent in Jersey. In the wake of the plague, the island experienced economic stagnation but high levels of employment, with population numbers kept down by late marriage and declining fertility.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In July 1373, Bertrand du Guesclin overran Jersey and besieged Mont Orgueil. His troops succeeded in breaching the outer defences, forcing the garrison back to the keep. The garrison came to an agreement that they would surrender if not relieved by Michaelmas and du Guesclin sailed back to Brittany, leaving a small force to carry on the siege. An English relief fleet arrived in time.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 1378, the island was placed in an awkward position during the Western Schism. The island was under the Diocese of Coutances in France, while administered politically by England. Therefore, as France supported Clement's claim to the Papal see and England supported Urban's, there was tension in the island between the Government and Church. The Warden ordered the banishment of the Dean, labelled a 'supporter of the anti-Pope'. The island was placed under an Urbanite Administrator, as a separately administered part of the Coutances diocese.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In the 1390s, under Richard II who was eager for peace with France, the island was almost recognised as an integral part of Normandy and returned to the French Crown. He did however in 1394 grant the islands the right of exemption from tolls, duties and customs in England.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "However, this matter was interrupted by the usurpation of Henry IV in England in 1399. When he seized the throne, Henry renewed the charters confirming the privileges of Jersey. Henry's much firmer stance on relations with the French caused the war with France to resume. On 7 October 1406, 1,000 French men at arms led by Pedro de Niño, a Castilian nobleman turned corsair, invaded Jersey, landing at St Aubin's Bay and defeated the 3,000 defenders but failed to capture the island. They landed in St Aubin's Bay (at the islet where Elizabeth Castle now stands) at night, then the next morning advanced across the beach towards the town, but lost the battle. The next day they moved towards Mont Orgueil. An agreement was reached with the invaders that the island would pay a hefty ransom and they left on 9 October.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 1412, Henry V came to the throne with a renewed vigour to reclaim England's former continental possessions. In 1413, Parliament ordered the transfer of all foreign-owned property to the Crown, which led to the closure of six priorities in England and the cessation of tithes to the Church in France. Instead, the tithes from the Church's land in Jersey was reverted to the Crown. Henry's successful campaign against the French involved Jerseymen: in the siege of Cherbourg in 1418, every boat on the island was called out to support the blockade. In 1420, Henry entered Paris, leaving Jersey no longer an outpost of the English realm, leading to years of prosperity and the enlargement of many parish churches. When Henry called the bishops of Normandy to do him homage in Rouen, only Coutances obeyed. As a result, Jersey was returned to his full jurisdiction.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "From 1429, animosity towards the English rulers by the French and the subsequent rise of Joan of Arc inspired France to evict the English from mainland France, with the exception of Calais, returning Jersey to the front line. This eviction cemented Jersey's Britishness. Had England not lost its possessions, France would certainly have become the dominant part of the Anglo-French combined realm, and its relative geographic and cultural proximity would have made Jersey markedly part of France.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "During the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), the French did not succeed in capturing Jersey. However, during the War of the Roses (1455-1487), Margaret of Anjou, queen consort of England, made a secret deal with Pierre de Brézé to gain French support for the Lancastrians, leading to the French capturing Mont Orgueil in the summer of 1461. In 1462, de Brézé issued ordinances outlining the role of the bailiff and the jurats. Jersey was occupied by French forces until 1468 when Yorkist forces and local militia recaptured the castle.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Edward IV oversaw the administrative separation of Jersey and Guernsey. In 1469, he issued separate charters of privilege for the bailiwicks and from 1478 the islands had different captains (albeit with a common captain in chief).",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "It may well be during this occupation that the island saw the establishment of the States. Comte Maulevrier, who had led the invasion of the island, ordered the holding of an Assize in the island. Maulevrier confirmed the place of existing institutions, however created the requirement for Jurats to be chosen by Bailiffs, Jurats, Rectors and Constables.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The accession of Henry VII is determined as the 'final separation [of the Channel Islands] from Normandy'. The end of the War of the Roses marked the end of the previously complex, war-torn relationship with Normandy. In 1496, King Henry VII obtained a Papal bull to transfer the islands from the Bishop of Coutances to Salisbury, although for nearly 50 years after, due to the proximity of the isles to Coutances, the Bishop continued to act as the de facto bishop of the islands.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "During the 16th century, ideas of the reformation of the church coupled with the split with the Catholic Faith by Henry VIII, resulted in the islanders adopting the Protestant religion, in 1569 the churches moved under the control of the Diocese of Winchester. During the reign of Edward VI, the Government issued a new prayer book, which was translated into French, however did not arrive in the island until the throne had changed hands to Queen Mary, who led the restoration of Catholicism in England. However, Jersey did not have any death sentences issued for Catholicism, due to the island being kept out of the limelight by its Governor Poulet. The island did not become Catholic, with numerous anti-Papists still in position.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "During the reign of Elizabeth I, Calvinism took hold in Jersey due to the immigration of French Huguenot refugees. This meant that life became very austere: laws were strictly enforced, punishment for wrong doers was severe, but education was improved - a school was started in every parish and support was given for Jersey boys to attend Oxford. Each elder knew every family within his vingtaine, 'whether they have household prayers morning and evening, say grace after meals and live in peace and concord.' The excommunication of Elizabeth by the Pope increased the military threat to the island and the increasing use of gunpowder on the battlefield meant that the fortifications on the island had to be adapted. A new fortress was built to defend St Aubin's Bay, the new Elizabeth Castle was named after the queen by Sir Walter Raleigh when he was governor. The island militia was reorganised on a parish basis and each parish had two cannon which were usually housed in the church - one of the St Peter cannon can still be seen at the bottom of Beaumont Hill.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 1540, there was an outbreak of plague on the island, and the Lieutenant Governor, Robert Raymond, ordered the closure of all markets, fairs and public assemblies.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In 1541, the Privy Council, which had recently given a seat to Calais, intended to give two seats in Parliament to Jersey. Seymour, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Island, wrote to the Jurats, instructing them to send two Burgesses for the isle. However, no further steps seemed to have been taken since the letter did not arrive in front of the States Assembly until the day the elected persons were required to arrive in London.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "During the Elizabethan Era, Europeans began to explore and establish colonies in the Americas. The Jèrriais were no exception to this. Jersey was a notable trading port, on the route linking the Netherlands to Spain and between England and France. A number of locals were colonialists to Newfoundland from its discovery by Europeans in 1497. By 1591, Jerseymen were sailing small boats across the Atlantic in the spring and not returning to the island until the autumn ploughing. In 1611, St Brelade's Church was allowed to hold Communion early, such that the travellers could communicate before sailing from St Aubin. Southampton was also an important port for the Jersey people, with a number of them settling and taking important roles in the town.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "One of the favourable trade deals with England was the ability to import wool (England needing an export market but was at war with most of Europe). The production of knitwear in the island reached such a scale that it threatened the island's ability to produce its own food, so laws were passed regulating who could knit with whom and when. The name jersey being synonymous for a sweater, shows its importance.",
"title": "14th and 15th centuries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "James VI of Scotland became King of England, and hence of Jersey, after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. The Governor of the time, Walter Ralegh, was tried and imprisoned for conspiring against the King after the death of Elizabeth and replaced with Sir John Peyton. Peyton strongly disliked Presbyterianism, including Calvinism, and attempted to abolish the religion in Jersey. The king initially allowed the island's to continue under their present faith system. However, Calvinism was increasingly unpopular among islanders, which aided Peyton's caused. When St Peter's rectory became vacant in 1613, Peyton appointed Elie Messervy to the position. The Colloquy called a Synod to meet to discuss, however Peyton banned the meeting. Both sides sent parties to Westminster - the Colloquy sending George Poulet, the Bailiff - however a compromise was found locally, with Messervy agreeing to continue using the Huguenot prayer book.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Peyton was also against democracy in the form of the States and the freedoms of the Courts in Jersey. In 1615, Jean Hérault was appointed Bailiff by the King, having been promised the role by letters patent in 1611. Peyton disputed this appointment, claiming it was the Governor's jurisdiction to appoint the Bailiff. Hérault asserted it was the King's jurisdiction to directly appoint the Bailiff. An Order in Council (dated 9 August 1615) sided with Hérault, which Hérault took to claim the Bailiff was the real head of government and the Governor was simply a military officer. Hérault took steps to assert the precedence of the Bailiff over Governor: he ordered his name to be placed before the Governor's in church prayers and was the first Bailiff to wear red robes (in the style of English judges). To back his claims, he cited that in the Norman administrative tradition, the Bailiffs had \"noone above them except the Duke\". He frequently reported neglect of duty by Peyton, such as the reduction in the guard at Elizabeth Castle.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "This dispute led to one of the most major turning points in Jersey's constitutional history, as the division of powers between the Governor and Bailiff were clearly demarcated. Though the Privy Council did not agree with Hérault's extreme position on the precedence of the Bailiff, on 18 February 1617 it declared that the \"charge of military forces be wholly in the Governor, and the care of justice and civil affairs in the Bailiff.\" This secured for both the Bailiff and the States precedence over the Governor on justice and civil affairs, the constitutional precedent which limits the involvement of the Lieutenant-Governor in domestic affairs today.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In 1617, the Royal Commissioners Sir Edward Conway and Sir William Bird visited the island. This led to the recommendation that the island should have a Dean. The appointment was David Bandinel, the Italian Rector of St Brelade's, taking office in 1620. This was not popular with the States, with some Rectors stating they would not recognise the position of the Dean. He took office nonetheless and, by order of the King, Anglicanism was hence effectively established as the state religion of the island. The Book of Discipline lost its validity and the prayer book was changed to a translated version of the Book of Common Prayer, and all future Ministers had to be appointed from then on by a Bishop. Bandinel enforced these changes, including removing the Rector of St Mary from office for speaking against the prayer book, however the order that Communion should be taken kneeling was not.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Aside from religion, the Commissioners also ordered that the island's garrisons be increased and for better training for the militia. They did not recognise the Bailiff as being the island's true Governor, ordering that the States must receive permission from the Governor before being permitted to meet, however did also affirm the precedence of the Bailiff in the civil administrative spheres.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "During the 1640s, England, Ireland and Scotland were embroiled in the War of the Three Kingdoms. The civil war also divided Jersey, and while the sympathy of islanders lay with Parliament, the de Carterets (particularly Sir George Carteret and Sir Philippe de Carteret II) held the island for the king. The Prince of Wales, the future Charles II visited the island in 1646 and again in October 1649 following the trial and execution of his father, Charles I. In the Royal Square in St. Helier on 17 February 1649, Charles was publicly proclaimed king after his father's death (following the first public proclamation in Edinburgh on 5 February 1649). Parliamentarian forces eventually captured the island in 1651 and Elizabeth Castle seven weeks later.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Puritan Col. James Heane was appointed Governor of Jersey in 1651. There were complaints from islanders about the new resident soldiers. Despite the fact that Heane had prohibited looting, many soldiers stole things from islanders and secularised a number of holy buildings, for example burning all the pews in St Helier's church. Many soldiers attending services at the island's churches disrespected services because they could not understand them, as Jersey services were in the local French language. Printed slips were brought from England which Jerseymen were required to sign, swearing allegiance to the 'Republic of England ... without King or House of Lords'.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The Royalist landowners could redeem their land by pating between one and two years' income. However Jersey's system of rentes were complicated from an English perspective and the process of extracting the value of incomes from the landlords was laborious. The Receiver-General stormed because he could not get enough funds for his department, leading to him affronting the Bailiff and being imprisoned in Mont Orgeuil.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "There was concern over the new republican Government's powers to reform Jersey's system of governance. At the time, all but one Jurat had been deposed of office and Parliament had prevented any election in the island until it had control of the situation. The Council recommended that the island's government be fully restored, but that all entrusted with public office should be freely elected and not to enjoy continuance for life. However, before the reforms could be implemented, the English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament in 1653. As such, the replacement Parliament recommended that year that ten new Jurats be elected, provided they were loyal to Parliament and to hold office for two years only. However, this new Parliament was also dissolved, so only one Jurat remained. Attempts were also made to incorporate Jersey into England. In 1652, Parliament had treated it as an English county, appointing a county committee, and in 1653, an Instrument decreed that Jersey should send one member to the House of Commons. In the end, the States never met during the nine years of the Commonwealth as the Bailiff, Lemprière, refused to call on the Rectors.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Instead the island was governed by the Royal Court (called L'État or the Court of the Lord Protector). Cromwell directly appointed - as opposed to the islanders electing - eleven Jurats to serve on the Court, however many of these were absent and neither able to govern nor administer justice.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "While Charles was proclaimed King in London on 8 May 1660, it was not until 2 June that that news reached the island, and Charles II was proclaimed King for the second time in the Royal Square. In recognition for all the help given to him during his exile, Charles II gave George Carteret, Bailiff and governor, a large grant of land in the American colonies, which he promptly named New Jersey, now part of the United States of America. Furthermore, Charles II presented to the island a royal mace as a 'perpetual remembrance of [the Bailiffs'] fiedelity'; since then, it has always been carried before the Bailiff at sittings of the Royal Court and the States (even during the Occupation).",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Another reward given to the island by Charles was the perquages. These are a series of routes that offered sanctuary to malefactors to leave the island. All except St Ouen and St Martin lead to the south coast. For example, St Mary, St John and St Lawrence leave via St Peter's Valley and Beaumont (today a cycle track leading to the south coast). Where a case did not amount to felony, wrongdoers could request to vider le pays, being entitled to nine days of sanctuary in any of the parish churches and then having to leave the island using a perquage route. This theory of the perquages as being routes of sanctuary is disputed. However, it is likely the clergy used these ancient ways to convey outlaws to the sea and records show sanctions for blocking the perquage way.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In 1666, it was reported by English spies in Paris that Louis XIV intended to invade Jersey after his declaration of war with England. The Governor rallied the militia, intent on dying to defend the island, but peace was agreed before any invasion could happen.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In 1673, there were concerns over the growing number of houses on the island. The construction of houses on arable land was putting the island's self-sustenance and food security at risk. Therefore, the States declared that new houses should only be built in St Aubin and Gorey, or where surrounded by 20 vergées of land.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In 1680, the States voted in favour of requesting the island's first dedicated prison be constructed in town in order to be nearer the Royal Court (previously prisoners had been held at Mont Orgueil, the King's tenants in the east being required to guard them). The building arching over Charing Cross (at the time the entrance to town from the west) was completed by 1699, where the prison would remain until its 1811 relocation to the present site of the General Hospital (on Gloucester Street, not at Westmount).",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In 1689, William of Orange became the King of England; and England, as a Dutch ally, went to war against the French. Although due to the scale of the war, the island did not come into much focus, it was at this time the Privilege of Neutrality which had long been enjoyed by the islands was lost. William had banned all trade with France, a proclamation which applied to Jersey as well, however due to corruption in the higher levels of Jersey's government, namely the Lieutenant-Governor himself Edward Harris, a large smuggling trade thrived, operating from the bailiwick. Smugglers would be alerted by a fire set by French merchants on the Écrehous reef, a part of Jersey's bailiwick, to which Jersey boats, under the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor, would travel to conduct illegal trade. Despite attempts from parish authorities to stop the boats, being that the reef was part of Jersey and that these boats had permission from the government to travel to the islets, no action could be taken.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "During William's wars with France, Jersey was on the whole at peace, with the notable exception of 1692, when Louis XIV permitted an army to gather at La Hougue on the Cotenin. James II himself also went to the Contenin, however Jersey's allegiance was now against the Stuarts. However, in a naval battle in 1692, the French fleet at La Hougue were destroyed. Although the threat of foreign powers was numb during this period, on island tensions were high. The Governors and Bailiffs were generally absent - the Governor Henry Lumley never visited the island at all during his time in office and after the death of Sir Edouard de Carteret, no bailiff was appointed for five years. The eventual successor Charles de Carteret faced large opposition, especially from his own tenants in St. Ouen. A group of jurats complained to the Privy Council that de Carteret was absent and not well accustomed to the law and culture of the island. Charles attempted to oppose this by blocking sittings of the Jurats in court, claiming they could not sit since they were related to the plaintiff or defendant (which they most often were since everyone in Jersey was somehow related to one another). With Charles ended the male line of de Carteret seigneurs.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Towards the end of the 17th century, Jersey strengthened its links with the Americas when many islanders emigrated to New England and north east Canada. The Jersey merchants built up a thriving business empire in the Newfoundland and Gaspé fisheries. Companies such as Robins and the Le Boutilliers set up thriving businesses.",
"title": "17th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "By the 1720s, a discrepancy in coinage values between Jersey and France was threatening economic stability. The States of Jersey therefore resolved to devalue the liard to six to the sou. The legislation to that effect implemented in 1729 caused popular riots that shook the establishment. The devaluation was therefore cancelled.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In the 1730s, there was sporadic violence against the collectors of Crown tithes, especially in St Ouen, St Brelade and Trinity.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "A revolt, known as the Corn Riots or the Jersey Revolution, occurred in 1769. They were centred around the balance of power between the island's parliament, the States, and the Royal Court, both of which had powers to create legislation. An anti-Seigneurial sentiment - opposition to the feudal economic system - also contributed to the popular revolt. The spark for the riots was a corn shortage, in part caused by corruption in the ruling classes, led by the Lieutenant Bailiff Charles Lemprière, whose style of rule was authoritarian.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "On 28 September 1769, men from the northern parishes marched into town and rioted, including breaking into the Royal Court in a threatening manner. The States retreated to Elizabeth Castle and called on the Privy Council for help under false pretences. The Council sent five companies of Royal Scots, who discovered the islanders' grievances.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The protestors demands include reductions in price of wheat and the abolition of certain, or all, Seigneurial privileges. In reaction, the Crown issued the Code of 1771, which attempted to separate the island's judiciary and legislature. The Code codified Jersey's laws and removed lawmaking powers from the Royal Court. While the abolition of the Seigneurial system woas not achieved, tighter restrictions were placed on the collection of Crown revenues.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The Chamber of Commerce founded 24 February 1768 is the oldest English-speaking Chamber of Commerce.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The late 18th century was the first time political parties in some form came into existence on the island. Jean Dumaresq was an early Liberal who called for democratic reforms (that the States should be democratically elected Deputies and should have vested in them executive power). His supporters were known as Magots (\"maggots\", initially an insult from his opponents, which the Magots reclaimed as their own term) and his opponents as the Charlots (supporters of the Lieutenant Baliff Charles Lempière). Dumaresq is quoted as saying \"we shall make these Seigneurs bite the dust\". In 1776, he was elected as Connétable for St Peter.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Methodism arrived in Jersey in 1774, brought by fishermen returning from Newfoundland. Conflict with the authorities ensued when men refused to attend militia drill when that coincided with chapel meetings. The Royal Court attempted to proscribe Methodist meetings, but King George III refused to countenance such interference with liberty of religion. The first Methodist minister in Jersey was appointed in 1783, and John Wesley preached in Jersey in August 1789, his words being interpreted into the vernacular for the benefit of those from the country parishes. The first building constructed specifically for Methodist worship was erected in St. Ouen in 1809.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The 18th century was a period of political tension between Britain and France, as the two nations clashed all over the world as their ambitions grew. Because of its position, Jersey was more or less on a continuous war footing.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "During the American Wars of Independence, two attempted invasions of the island were made. In 1779, the Prince of Orange William V was prevented from landing at St Ouen's Bay; on 6 January 1781, a force led by Baron de Rullecourt captured St Helier in a daring dawn raid, but was defeated by a British army led by Major Francis Peirson in the Battle of Jersey. A short-lived peace was followed by the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars which, when they had ended, had changed Jersey forever. In 1799–1800, over 6000 Russian troops under the command of Charles du Houx de Vioménil were quartered in Jersey after an evacuation of Holland.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The end of war with France and America saw the growth of trade between Jersey and the New World, especially Canada and Newfoundland. By 1763, around a third of the fish being exported from Conception Bay was carried by Jersey vessels. In the 1780s, a number of Jersey families settled permanently, such as the de Quettevilles in Forteau, Labrador. The first printing press was introduced to Jersey in 1784.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Anti-seigneurial attitudes remained in Jersey, despite the reforms of 1771. In 1785, an anti-seigneurial document containing 36 articles was included in St Ouen's Parish Assembly minutes. It included demands for reform such as the abolition of Seigneurial services and an end to the seizure of goods following bankruptcy. These demands were paralleled in St Helier and St John and by an article in La Gazette, the only newspaper at the time. These demands formed the basis for a sustained anti-feudal struggle during the next century.",
"title": "18th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The 19th century saw massive changes in Jersey society. A large influx of immigrants from England made Jersey a more connected island than ever before, and brought with it cultural changes and the desire for political reform. During this period, the States reformed to become more representative of the population and the Jersey culture became more anglicised and less religious. The island also grew economically and the built-up areas of the island expanded, especially St Helier, with the development of public transport on the island.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The pre-existing road network was an intricate network of roads and lanes. During the nineteenth century, many parishes took on the administration of more and more of these lanes. The network was criticised at the time for being subpar. A common Jèrriais saying is Vieux comme les Quémins, which means 'as old as the roads'. In the early 19th century, the military roads were constructed (on occasion at gunpoint in the face of opposition from landowners) by the governor, General George Don, to link coastal fortifications with the town harbour. Much of the opposition to the plans came from islanders, who thought the country's best defence was its convoluted network of narrow lanes. The new road system was met with considerable opposition, particularly due to its expense. The St Helier Parish Assembly forbade the completion of the Trinity main road within its boundaries. The new network allowed greater communication between disparate parts of the island. These had an unexpected effect on agriculture once peace restored reliable trade links. Farmers in previously isolated valleys were able to swiftly transport crops grown in the island's microclimate to waiting ships and then on to the markets of London and Paris ahead of the competition. In conjunction with the later introduction of steamships and the development of the French and British railway systems, Jersey's agriculture was no longer as isolated as before.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The early 19th century was a period of growth of trade for Jersey. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars after the defeat of France in 1815, the Channel Islands lost their strategic value, as points of conflict between the British and foreign powers moved to the North Sea. The UK had a need to reduce its forces to cut spending, but the Channel Islands defence costs reached £500,000 pa, even in peacetime. The utility of possessing the islands came into question. John Ramsay McCulloch described the advantages the islands provided to the UK as \"neither very obvious nor material\". However, in 1845, the Duke of Wellington strongly defended the islands in the Memorandum on the Defence of the United Kingdom.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "An English Custom House was established in the island in 1810. A key turning point in Jersey history was the introduction of steamships. Previous to that, travel to the island was long and unpredictable. In the mid-1820s, the post office switched to steam as well. The first paddle steamer to visit Jersey was the Medina on 11 June 1823. In 1824, two shipping companies were established, each operating weekly steamship services to England.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "This brought thousands of passengers to the country. By 1840, there were 5,000 English residents, who some say did not mix well or interact deeply with the native Jèrriais. The number of English-speaking soldiers stationed in the island and the number of retired officers and English-speaking labourers who came to the islands in the 1820s led to the island gradually moving towards an English-speaking culture in town. This new immigration had a large impact on local architecture, with a number of mainland Georgian-style houses and terraces erected on the main roads out of St Helier. The town also expanded with many new streets, such as Burrard Street, first developed in 1812. In 1831, street lighting was first used. In 1843 it was agreed to erect street names. The rapid growth of St. Helier was one of the most significant changes in the landscape of Jersey during the 19th century. The town developed from a small settlement by the coast to encompassing most of the parish and spreading out into St. Clement and St. Saviour.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "An important growth for St Helier in the early 19th century was the construction of the harbour. Previously, ships coming into the town had only a small jetty at the site now called the English Harbour and the French Harbour. The Chamber of Commerce urged the States to build a new harbour, but the States refused, so the Chamber took it into their own hands and paid to upgrade the harbour in 1790. A new breakwater was constructed to shelter the jetty and harbours. In 1814, the merchants constructed the roads now known as Commercial Buildings and Le Quai des Marchands to connect the harbours to the town and in 1832 construction was finished on the Esplanade and its sea wall. A rapid expansion in shipping led the States in 1837 to order the construction of two new piers: the Victoria and Albert Piers.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The post-Napoleonic War period was a divisive period politically for the island. In 1821, there was an election for Jurat. The St Laurentine Laurelites (conservatives, the eventual name for the Charlots) attacked the Inn in their village where Rose men (the progressive descendants of the Magots) were holding a meeting. They damaged the building and injured both the innkeeper and his wife. On election day in St Martin, the a number of Rose voters were attacked, after which most Rose men refrained from voting. Although the Rose candidate won overall, he faced a number of lawsuits over claims of voter fraud, so in the end the Laurel candidate George Bertram took office.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "At this time, the national administration system, despite reform, still resembled a feudal system of governance. They also remained dominated by judicial and legislative overlap. In the nineteenth century, the growth of the town shifted economic power from the country parishes to St Helier, where also resided a large English population. During this century, Jersey's power structure shifted from the English Crown to the Jersey States, establishing Jersey as a near-independent state, however ultimate authority over the island shifted from the Crown to the British Parliament, aligning with the shift in the UK's politics towards a purely ceremonial monarch. The Privy Council put pressure of the island to reform its institutions, in the belief these reforms should align the country with a more English model of government and law. In 1883, John Stuart Blackie recounted an Englishman's comment that only one thing was needed to make Jersey perfect, and that was \"a full participation in the benefits of English law\". However, the Lieutenant Governor at the time stated that the absence of English law was what had brought Jerseymen such prosperity.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Many locals blamed this push for reform on the island's new immigrants, who were unaccustomed to the island's distinct political and legal systems (although a major part of the mainstream reformer movement was in fact made of Jerseymen). Many English who had moved to the island discovered an alien environment, with unfamiliar laws (in a foreign language they could not understand) and no recourse to access the local power to counter them. The reformers of English heritage mostly came from the middle classes, and sought to further their own rights, not necessarily those of the working class. These Englishmen formed a pressure group known as the Civil Assembly of St Helier. This group was effectively split into two, one organised around Abraham Le Cras' hard-code English reformism and the other, a larger looser corpus of English reformists. The former was never representative of a significant proportion of the English community. One thing both shared however was a belief that the English systems were far superior to the historic Norman-based structures.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Abraham Le Cras was an outspoken new resident - though with Jersey heritage - opposed to Jersey's self-government. He not only thought Jersey should be integrated into England fully, but disputed the right of the States to even make its own laws. He is noted as saying, 'the States have no more power to make laws for Jersey than I have'. In 1840 he won a court case challenging the States' ability to naturalise people as citizens. The Privy Council determined that the long-standing precedent of the States doing so had been invalidated since Jersey had been ruled under civil law since 1771. In 1846, he persuaded the MP for Bath to push for a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the law of Jersey, however HM Government instead promised a Royal Commission. The Commission advised the abolition of the Royal Court run by the Jurats and the replacement of it with three Crown-appointed judges and the introduction of a paid police force. Le Cras left the island to live in England in 1850.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In 1852, the island experienced somewhat of a constitutional crisis when the Privy Council issued three Orders in Council: establishing a police court, a petty debts court and a paid police force for St Helier. This sparked controversy locally, with claims that the move threatened Jersey's independence. Both parties united against the move and around 7000 islanders signing a petition. By 1854, the council had agreed to revoke the Orders, on the condition that the States passed most of the council's requirements. In 1856, further constitutional reform brought deputies into the States for the first time, with one deputy from each country parish and three from town.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The threats to Jersey's autonomy continued. In the 1860s, there was raised a threat of an intervention in the island's government by the British Parliament itself, in order to impose change on the island's structures.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Nonconformity challenged traditional Jersey society from within; it had always been a part of Jersey life, and non-conformists such as the Methodists had generally been tolerated during peacetime. This isn't to say there weren't some tensions between the Established Church and non-conformists, but these were generally exceptional. Most country people had at least one non-conformist within their own family, so the othering of non-conformists never took much hold. However, non-conformists were often unable to fully participate in country life as the church played a central role in the secular parish, and were notably absent from honorary roles within the parish. The Established Church had to reassess itself and reform and the parish structure altered itself to become a more civil-focused organisation, preserving itself while allowing its community more religious freedom.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "At the start of the 19th century, Jersey people as a nation were British, rather French nor Norman. Due to the cultural divergence between the Island and the Norman mainland, relationships between individual Islanders and Frenchmen were less common. Due to an increase in French immigrants, the differences between the Islanders and the French became more apparent, and thus France and the French people were seen as foreign to the Island's population. Furthermore, increased links between Jersey and mainland Britain, such as through the improvement of St Helier's shipping capabilities and an increase in mainland Brits, made Jersey a more British nation.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "This led to a change in the linguistic demography in the Island. In the early parts of the century, mostly due to increased immigration from the rest of the British Isles, the town became a predominantly English-speaking place, though bilingualism was still common. This created a divided linguistic geography, as the people of the countryside continued to use Jèrriais, and many did not even know English. English became seen as 'the language of commercial success and moral and intellectual achievement'.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The growth of English and the decline of French brought about the adoption of more values and social structures from Victorian England. From 1912, the new compulsory education was delivered solely in English, following the cultural norms, and teaching subjects from the perspective, of England. Eventually, this has led to the Island's culture becoming anglicised and much of the traditional Norman-based culture of the Island being disregarded or lost. Kelleher identifies anglicisation as a challenge Le Feuvre argues that this cultural change created a sense of inferiority about native Jersey culture and the language – viewed as a 'corruption, rather than an improvement' of Standard French by the English immigrant population – which only served to accelerate the process of anglicisation.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Anglicisation was supported by the British state. It was suggested that, although the islands had proven themselves loyal to the British Sovereign, that this was out of hereditary impression, rather than affinity towards the English people, and that anglicisation would not only encourage loyalty and congeniality between the nations, but also provide economic prosperity and improved \"general happiness\". In 1846, through a lens of growing nationalism in the UK, there was concern against sending young islanders to France for education, where they might bring French principles, friendships and views of policy and government to the British Islands. The Jersey gentry adopted this policy of anglicisation, due to the social and economic benefits it would bring. Anglophiles such as John Le Couteur strove to introduce England to Jersey. In 1856, the Jersey Times, an English-language newspaper, was established in Jersey. The use of the English language in the States was first suggested by the Rev. Abraham Le Sueur of Grouville in 1880.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Queen Victoria was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom in the right of Jersey in 1837. The first notable event of the Victorian era for Jersey was the change in currency. The livre tournois had been used as the legal currency for centuries, however it had been abolished during the French Revolutionary period. Although the coins were no longer minted, they remained the legal currency in Jersey until 1837, when dwindling supplies and consequent difficulties in trade and payment obliged the adoption of the pound sterling as legal tender. Keen to prevent a repeat of the Six-sou Revolt, the authorities wanted to ensure a fair exchange rate; 520 sous would be the equivalent of one Pound sterling. Jersey issued its first coins in 1841, including the 1/13 shilling coin, which was closer in value to the old sou than the English penny.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In the 1840s, the Rose leader Pierre Le Sueur was elected as Connétable of St Helier. From 1845, he orchestrated the construction of a complete sewer system for the town. He remained in office for 15 years and on his death an obelisk was erected in the Broad Street square.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The population of Jersey rose rapidly, from 47,544 in 1841 to 56,078 20 years later, despite a 20% mortality rate amongst new born children. Life expectancy was 35 years. Both immigration and emigration increased. In 1851, the English immigrant population numbered around 12,000, compared with a total island population of 57,000 people. In St Helier, they constituted 7,000 of the parish's 30,000 residents. As with in England, the English community in Jersey was not coherent, but divided by social class. At the top of the social ladder were those of independent means, who chose to retire in the island: they did not participate much in the local lifestyle or politics, instead creating a mini-English social life for themselves. While at the bottom, there was the English-born working class, who often lacked basic rights such as accessing welfare.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "In 1852, the French author and poet Victor Hugo arrived to seek refuge in Jersey, as had many other revolutionaries and socialists from the Continent, facing exile from France and Belgium. If any of these proscrits died on the island, they were buried in Macpela cemetery in Sion, St John. In 1855, these refugees republished in their weekly paper L'Homme an open letter from a number of French socialists living in London, which stated 'You have sacrificed your dignity as a Queen, your fastidiousness as a woman, your pride as an aristocrat, even your honour.' The Lieutenant-Governor banished the three editors two days later. Although Hugo had disapproved of the letter, he joined a protest against the expulsion, and hence too was exiled from the island. He and his family left for Guernsey.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "The Theatre Royal was built, as were Victoria College in 1852 and exhibited 34 items at The Great Exhibition in 1851, the world's first ever Pillar box was installed in 1852 and a paid police force was created in 1854.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "This century saw Jersey develop a public transport network. Towards the end of the last century, omnibuses came into use for the first time in the island. Two railways, the Jersey Western Railway in 1870, and the Jersey Eastern Railway in 1874, were opened. The western railway from St Helier (Weighbridge) to La Corbière and the eastern railway from St Helier (Snow Hill) to Gorey Pier. The two railways were never connected.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Jersey was the fourth-largest shipbuilding area in the 19th-century British Isles, building over 900 vessels around the island. Shipbuilding declined with the coming of iron ships and steam. A number of banks on Jersey, guarantors of an industry both onshore and off, failed in 1873 and 1886, even causing strife and discord in far-flung societies. The population fell slightly in the twenty years to 1881.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In the late 19th century, as the former thriving cider and wool industries declined, island farmers benefited from the development of two luxury products - Jersey cattle and Jersey Royal potatoes. The former was the product of careful and selective breeding programmes; the latter was a total fluke.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The anarchist philosopher, Peter Kropotkin, who visited the Channel Islands in 1890, 1896, and 1903, described the agriculture of Jersey in The Conquest of Bread.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "The 19th century also saw the rise of tourism as an important industry (linked with the improvement in passenger ships) which reached its climax in the period from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Elementary education became obligatory in 1899, and free in 1907. Queen Victoria died in 1901, and Edward VII was proclaimed as King in the Royal Square. His coronation a year later was marked by the first Battle of Flowers. The years before the First World War saw the foundation of the Jersey Eisteddfod by the Dean of Jersey, Samuel Falle. The first aeroplanes arrived in Jersey in 1912.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In 1914, the British garrison was withdrawn at the start of the First World War and the militia were mobilised. Jersey men served in the British and French armed forces. Numbers of German prisoners of war were interned in Jersey. The influenza epidemic of 1918 added to the toll of war.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In 1919, imperial measurements replaced, for the most part, the traditional Jersey system of weights and measures; women aged over 30 were given the vote; and the endowments of the ancient grammar schools were repurposed as scholarships for Victoria College.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In 1921, the visit of King George V was the occasion for the design of the parish crests.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "In 1923, the British government asked Jersey to contribute an annual sum towards the costs of the Empire. The States of Jersey refused and offered instead a one-off contribution to war costs. After negotiations, Jersey's one-off contribution was accepted.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "The first motor car had arrived in 1899 and buses started running on the island in the 1920s, and by the 1930s, competition from motor buses had rendered the railways unprofitable, with final closure coming in 1935 after a fire disaster (except for the later German reintroduction of rail during the military occupation). Jersey Airport was opened in 1937 to replace the use of the beach of Saint Aubin's bay as an airstrip at low tide, and the railways could not cope with the competition.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "English was first permitted in debates in the States of Jersey in 1901, and the first legislation to be drawn up primarily in English was the Income Tax Law of 1928.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Following the withdrawal of defences by the British government and German bombardment, Jersey was occupied by German troops between 1940 and 1945. The Channel Islands were the only British soil occupied by German troops in World War II. This period of occupation had about 8,000 islanders evacuated, 1,200 islanders deported to camps in Germany, and over 300 islanders sentenced to the prison and concentration camps of mainland Europe. Twenty died as a result. The islanders endured near-starvation in the winter of 1944–45, after the Channel Islands had been cut off from German-occupied Europe by Allied forces advancing from the Normandy beachheads, avoided only by the arrival of the Red Cross supply ship Vega in December 1944. Liberation Day - 9 May is marked as a public holiday.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "After five years of occupation, the people of Jersey began to rebuild the island. In 1944, a group of exiled islanders, called Nos Iles, set out what the Channel Islands would need after the war. Examples include better education, development of the economy, especially tourism, and greater cooperation between the islands. They also emphasised the need for efficient land management.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "We have a limited amount of space and much to fit into it.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Some Jersey men were enlisted in national service in occupied Germany. The UK donated more than £4 million to clear Jersey's occupation debt, as well as sending gifts of essential items. There were over 50,000 mines to be cleared. Sir Edward Grasett was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor in August 1945.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "The 1945 census showed that 44,382 people were resident in the island (an increase of 4000 since Liberation). By the next year, there were 50,749, and the majority lived in St Helier. Many returned to their pre-war homes to find them in a state of dereliction and were given grants to repair the damage.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Many islanders called for the reform and modernisation of the States: a poll by the JEP showed that only 88 of the 1,784 surveyed thought Rectors should stay in the States and a vast majority wanted the legislature and judiciary separated. The Jersey Democratic Movement campaigned for either the incorporation of the island as a county of England or at least the abolition of the States. The other political party to emerge during this period was the Progressive Party, consisting of some present States members, who opposed the JDM. In the 1945 Deputies' election, the Progressives won a landslide victory, giving a mandate for change.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "The franchise was extended to all British adults, previously voting rights in Jersey had only been to men and women over 30 according to property ownership. The largest reform came in the form of the 1948 States reform. Jurats were no longer States members and were to be elected by an Electoral College. It also introduced a retirement age for Jurats of 70. In all cases, the Bailiff shall be the judge of the law, and the Jurats the \"judge of fact\". The Jurats' role in the States was replaced by 12 senators, four of whom would retire every three years. The Church also lost most of its representation in the States, with the role of Rector being abolished and the number of Deputies increased to 28.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "The island adopted free, universal secondary education and a social security system. The bill for the social security system was passed in May 1950. A paid police force to cover the whole island was established to work alongside the honorary police. Divorce was legalised in 1949. In 1952, a state secondary school for boys was opened at Hautlieu and a girls' secondary was opened at Rouge Bouillon. Ten years later these would combine to form a single co-ed grammar school at Hautlieu, and two other schools: one for boys (d'Hautrée) and another for girls (at the Rouge Bouillon site) were opened. Later the two St Helier schools were combined into one comprehensive school and two other comprehensives were opened at Les Quennevais and Le Rocquier. Highlands College was purchased by the States in 1973 to provide further education.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "There was an expansion of housing to deal with growing population and to improve the quality of existing housing. There was also a slum clearance programme involving States-funded homes (either for social housing or sale) and States-funded mortgages. By 1948, since the end of the war, two estates had been built: Grasett Park and Princess Place. A sum of £52,000 was agreed to build more houses on land already owned by the States.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "The population saw growth from wealthy immigrants looking for lower taxes and seasonal essential workers from the Continent and mainland. Jersey was particularly attractive to retired civil servants in former British colonies as these obtained independence throughout the 20th century. This created a need for new infrastructure. Street lighting began to spread to the country parishes and a new sewage farm was built at Bellozane. Mains drainage was extended beyond St Helier and new water production facilities were constructed. The island saw a growth in tourism and the reopening of the Battle of Flowers parade (for the first time since World War I) as well as new cinemas and the International Road Race.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "The military establishments of the island were handed over by the British Government to the Island and Jersey's Militia abolished. For the first time since Edward III, there was no permanent military presence on the island. The arsenals, forts are castles were converted to museums and housing (or in the case of Fort Regent, into the main leisure centre for town). There was a dispute over the ownership of Jersey's islets - the Minquiers and the Ecréhous - between the UK and France. The International Court of Justice ruled in favour of British ownership of the reefs.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "Between 1945 and the Queen's coronation in 1952, there were outbreaks of polio and tuberculosis and the opening of the Jersey Maternity hospital and St John Ambulance headquarters. Agriculture was hit by a series of foot-and-mouth outbreaks.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "The first senatorial election was brief. Each Senator was elected for either nine, six or three years depending on where they came in the polling list. Philip Le Feuvre topped the poll and was elected for nine years. On 8 December 1945 at the Deputies' election, Ivy Forster of the Progressive Party became the first woman to ever be elected to the States. Other notable successful candidates include John Le Marquand Jr. (whose father has recently been returned as Senator) and Cyril Le Marquand.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The event which has had the most far-reaching effect on Jersey in modern times is the growth of the finance industry in the island from the 1960s onwards, which has led to debate that Jersey constitutes a tax haven. Jersey's role as a finance centre has occasionally brought the island global media attention. For example in 2017, the Paradise Papers – a global leak of confidential documents relating to offshore investments – revealed that Apple had made two international subsidiaries tax resident in Jersey in 2015.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "In 2008, a police investigation at Haut de la Garenne children's home found a record of abuse at the home dating back since liberation. More than 500 alleged offences were recorded and eight people were prosecuted.",
"title": "20th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "The most widely regarded history of Jersey is Balleine's History of the Island of Jersey, written by G. R. Balleine in 1959, and later adapted by the Société Jersiaise, most notably two of its members Marguerite Syvret and Joan Stevens.",
"title": "Further reading"
}
]
| Jersey – the largest of the Channel Islands – has been an island for around 6,000 years. Early inhabitation is evidenced by various neolithic monuments and hoards. In the 10th century, Jersey became part of Normandy. When the Normans conquered England in the 11th century, Jersey remained a part of the Duchy of Normandy, but when Normandy and England were finally split in the 13th century, the Channel Islands remained loyal to the English Crown, splitting Jersey politically from mainland Normandy. Due to the English kings' continuing claim to the Duchy of Normandy, Jersey's Norman political and legal structures remained after the split, which led to the establishment of self-governance as a Crown Dependency. Between the 11th and 15th centuries, political tensions between England and France placed Jersey at the frontline of frequent wars. During the Tudor period, the English Crown split from the Roman Church and immigration to the island of French religious refugees led to the establishment of Calvinism as the major religion of the island. In 1617, the Privy Council separated the powers of Governor and Bailiff, establishing that the Bailiff had sole jurisdiction over justice and civil affairs in the island. During the English Civil War, Jersey remained more loyal to the Crown due to the loyalties of the de Carteret family, though the island was eventually captured by Parliamentarian forces. After restoration, the de Carterets were gifted land in the American colonies, establishing New Jersey. In the 18th century, Jersey experienced bouts of unrest, culminating in the Corn Riots of 1769. As a result, legislative power was concentrated in the States in 1771, stripping the Royal Court of its lawmaking abilities. Island politics was then split between the Magot and Charlot parties through much of the 19th century. In 1781, the island was invaded by the French, but was defeated by an army led by Major Francis Peirson in the Battle of Jersey. From 1815, new peace with the French meant the island lost strategic military value. Improvements in transport infrastructure led to non-political increased links with the United Kingdom. Alongside this, a rising sense of British nationalism led to the island's culture, which had previously retained many Norman-French qualities, to be highly anglicised. The islands were away from the frontline of the First World War, but during the Second World War, the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by enemy forces. From 1940 to 1945, Jersey was occupied by German forces. The islands were liberated on 9 May 1945, which is still celebrated as the island's national day. After liberation, the island became a popular tourist destination and has become a major offshore finance centre. | 2001-05-08T00:07:59Z | 2023-12-30T06:53:22Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jersey |
15,695 | Geography of Jersey | Jersey (Jèrriais: Jèrri) is the largest of the Channel Islands, an island archipelago in the St. Malo bight in the western English Channel. It has a total area of 120 square kilometres (46 sq mi) and is part of the British Isles archipelago. It lies 22 kilometres (12 nmi; 14 mi) from the Cotenin Peninsula in Normandy, France and about 161 kilometres (87 nmi; 100 mi) from the south coast of Great Britain. Jersey lies within longitude -2° W and latitude 49° N.
It has a coastline of 70 kilometres and no land connections to any other territories. Jersey claims a territorial sea of 3 nmi (5.6 km; 3.5 mi) and an exclusive fishing zone of 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) and shares maritime borders with the Bailiwick of Guernsey to the north and France to the south and east.
Jersey is the main island of the Bailiwick of Jersey, which also consists of islet groups known as Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Dirouilles and Les Pierres de Lecq.
It is a highly densely populated territory, being the 13th most densely populated country or territory. About 30% of the population of the island is concentrated in the parish of Saint Helier, which contains the main town of the island.
Jersey has a generally mild, temperature and oceanic climate. The mean daily air temperature for 2019 was 12.79 °C - the eighth warmest year since 1894. The record warmest year was 2014, with a mean daily air temperature of 13.34 °C.
There are very few extreme weather events in Jersey, however there are regular heatwaves and storm periods. This can lead to disruption across the island. For example, in February 2020, Storm Ciara led to the closure of a number of roads (especially Victoria Avenue).
Besides the main island, the bailiwick includes other islets and reefs with no permanent population: Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Pierres de Lecq, Les Dirouilles.
The highest point in the island is Les Platons on the north coast, at 136 metres (446 ft). Parts of the parish of St Clement in the south were previously below sea-level but the construction of a seawall and infilling of low land has probably left only a few pockets of land below mean sea level. The terrain is generally low-lying on the south coast, with some rocky headlands, rising gradually to rugged cliffs along the north coast. On the west coast there are sand dunes. Small valleys run north to south across the island. Very large tidal variation exposes large expanses of sand and rock to the southeast at low tide.
Snow falls rarely in Jersey; some years will pass with no snow fall at all.
The main natural resource on this island is arable land. 66% of the island's land is used as such, and the remaining 34% is used for other purposes.
There are two laws that govern agricultural land in Jersey: Agricultural Land (Control of Sales and Leases) (Jersey) Law 1947 and Protection of Agricultural Land (Jersey) Law 1964. Temporary changes of land use can be granted by the Land Controls scheme, which means land over 2 vergées (0.36 ha) can be used for an alternative purpose, however permanent changes require planning permission.
The Channel Islands are located in an area with a large tidal range. The development of tidal energy in the archipelago has long been suggested. Studies suggest the primary sites for tidal energy development would be located in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, especially in the Alderney Race, which could potentially produce up to 5.10 GW of energy.
Jersey is facing localised impacts due to anthropogenic climate change. The island is party to the Kyoto Protocol but does not have an emissions cap. In 2017, Jersey has emissions of around 400 ktCO2 eq., a decrease of around 350 ktCO2 eq since the peak in 1998. Under a 3 °C rise in temperature, Jersey may have four to five times the number of hot days in summer and a 45% decrease in summer rainfall.
Climate change could have impacts on Jersey's economy. Climate change will increase soil temperatures, shifting growing seasons more to winter seasons, impacting the current husbandry practices. Being at the boundary of two marine regions, Jersey's waters could see a change in fish species. A rise in temperature could be beneficial to the island's tourist industry, with more annual warm days and less rainfall in the summer attracting longer and more frequent stays from travellers.
In May 2019, the States Assembly declared the island was undergoing a climate emergency. This commits the island to carbon neutrality by 2030. On 31 Dec 2019, the Government of Jersey published the Carbon Neutral Strategy which aims to meet the island's carbon neutrality target. Plans of the Carbon Neutral Strategy include:
In order to adapt to the effects of sea level rise on the island, the Government has prepared a Shoreline Management Plan.
Jersey has a population of 107,800 and a population density of roughly 917 people per square kilometre. The population is spread out throughout Jersey's twelve parishes, with population concentrated in the seven southern parishes.
Outside of the town, the land is largely separated into small closes, dissimilar to the larger fields found on Great Britain or the European continent. This land division structure has a long history in the island. In 1815, Quayle stated "no country is more strongly enclosed than Jersey".
The settlement geography of Jersey has always been dispersed across the island, though with a much smaller population in the past. In the 19th century, Jersey had no tendency towards village or centralised settlement, except in the growing town of St. Helier. On the 1795 Richmond Map, the land appears "excessively divided" into small closes and even around the parish churches, the houses are no denser than elsewhere.
Jersey can be defined as an urban island. The 2011 Island Plan defines the island's built-up areas as three main entities. The island effectively operates as a single conurbation, consisting of an urban core, suburbs and exurban rural communities.
The largest settlement is the town of St Helier, which also plays host to the island's seat of government. The town consists of the built-up area of southern St Helier, including First Tower, and some adjoining parts of St Saviour and St Clement, such as Georgetown. The town is the central business district, hosting a large proportion of the island's retail and employment, such as the finance industry.
The primary suburban areas of St Helier consist of the Five Oaks area in St Saviour, and developments along the coast, primarily along main roads to east and west of the town. The south and east coasts from St Aubin to Gorey are largely urbanised, with only small gaps in their development, such as the Royal Golf Course in Grouville.
Outside of the town, many islanders live in rural and village settlements and even the more rural areas of the island have considerable amounts of development (even St Ouen, the least densely populated parish still has 270 persons per square kilometre). The most notable exurban development is the Les Quennevais area, which is home to a small precinct of shops, a park and a leisure centre. Many people in these communities regularly travel to St Helier for work and leisure purposes.
Most of the villages are the namesake settlement of their parish, for example St John's Village in St John, however some are not, such as Maufant Village on the border of St Saviour and St Martin. Another semantic term used for smaller settlements are villes (different in meaning from the term with the same name meaning 'Town') such as La Ville au Bas in St. Lawrence.
Housing costs in Jersey are very high. The Jersey House Price Index has at least doubled between 2002 and 2020. The mix-adjusted house price for Jersey is £567,000, higher than any UK region (UK average: £249,000) including London (average: £497,000; highest of any UK region).
Land use is tightly controlled in Jersey, especially due to the high density population. The Planning Team of the Customer and Local Services Department manages planning applications, but approval is granted by the Planning Committee, made of States Members.
The governing development plan for the island is the Island Plan, last published in 2011 and voted on by the States Assembly. The plan decides the overall vision for development on the island as well as issuing baseline planning guidance. The current Island Plan was issued in 2011 and revised in 2014. In 2021, the Island Plan is under review, with a bridging Island Plan expected to be in place from 2022.
The Revised 2011 Island Plan is centred of three simple concepts of countryside protection, the wise use of resources and urban regeneration. It aims to meet most development needs in the existing built-up areas, especially the town of St Helier.
Jersey has a single national park known as the Coastal National Park, formed of a number of separate areas. The park includes St Ouen's Bay, Gorey Common, the north and south-west coast and certain valleys such as St Catherine's Woods. It also includes the offshore reefs part of the Bailiwick. In the national park, most forms of development are not permitted.
Jersey has a green belt policy known as the Green Zone. This consists of most rural areas on the island except the national park. There is a general presumption against development in the zone. According to the plan the policy has "vigorous" public support.
The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency. It is self-governing with its own legislature, the States Assembly, and government. It is sovereign territory of the Crown and not part of the United Kingdom, however the UK is internationally responsible for Jersey. The Jersey government is "with some important caveats, content with their relationship with the Ministry of Justice".
Jersey is part of the British-Irish Council, which is formed of the national governments of each of the countries and dependencies in the British Isles. Jersey is neither a member of the United Nations nor the European Union.
The island is divided into twelve administrative regions, known as parishes, the largest of which is St Ouen and the smallest of which is St Clement.
Jersey has a highly developed economy driven by international financial and legal services, which accounted for 40.5% of total GVA in 2010. Its gross national income per capita is among the highest in the world. The island has been criticised by some as a tax haven as it attracts deposits from customers outside the island seeking lower taxes. However, the Jersey financial sector disputes this claim. Other important sectors to the Jersey economy include construction, retail and wholesale, agriculture and tourism. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jersey (Jèrriais: Jèrri) is the largest of the Channel Islands, an island archipelago in the St. Malo bight in the western English Channel. It has a total area of 120 square kilometres (46 sq mi) and is part of the British Isles archipelago. It lies 22 kilometres (12 nmi; 14 mi) from the Cotenin Peninsula in Normandy, France and about 161 kilometres (87 nmi; 100 mi) from the south coast of Great Britain. Jersey lies within longitude -2° W and latitude 49° N.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "It has a coastline of 70 kilometres and no land connections to any other territories. Jersey claims a territorial sea of 3 nmi (5.6 km; 3.5 mi) and an exclusive fishing zone of 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) and shares maritime borders with the Bailiwick of Guernsey to the north and France to the south and east.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Jersey is the main island of the Bailiwick of Jersey, which also consists of islet groups known as Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Dirouilles and Les Pierres de Lecq.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "It is a highly densely populated territory, being the 13th most densely populated country or territory. About 30% of the population of the island is concentrated in the parish of Saint Helier, which contains the main town of the island.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Jersey has a generally mild, temperature and oceanic climate. The mean daily air temperature for 2019 was 12.79 °C - the eighth warmest year since 1894. The record warmest year was 2014, with a mean daily air temperature of 13.34 °C.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "There are very few extreme weather events in Jersey, however there are regular heatwaves and storm periods. This can lead to disruption across the island. For example, in February 2020, Storm Ciara led to the closure of a number of roads (especially Victoria Avenue).",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Besides the main island, the bailiwick includes other islets and reefs with no permanent population: Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Pierres de Lecq, Les Dirouilles.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The highest point in the island is Les Platons on the north coast, at 136 metres (446 ft). Parts of the parish of St Clement in the south were previously below sea-level but the construction of a seawall and infilling of low land has probably left only a few pockets of land below mean sea level. The terrain is generally low-lying on the south coast, with some rocky headlands, rising gradually to rugged cliffs along the north coast. On the west coast there are sand dunes. Small valleys run north to south across the island. Very large tidal variation exposes large expanses of sand and rock to the southeast at low tide.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Snow falls rarely in Jersey; some years will pass with no snow fall at all.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The main natural resource on this island is arable land. 66% of the island's land is used as such, and the remaining 34% is used for other purposes.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "There are two laws that govern agricultural land in Jersey: Agricultural Land (Control of Sales and Leases) (Jersey) Law 1947 and Protection of Agricultural Land (Jersey) Law 1964. Temporary changes of land use can be granted by the Land Controls scheme, which means land over 2 vergées (0.36 ha) can be used for an alternative purpose, however permanent changes require planning permission.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Channel Islands are located in an area with a large tidal range. The development of tidal energy in the archipelago has long been suggested. Studies suggest the primary sites for tidal energy development would be located in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, especially in the Alderney Race, which could potentially produce up to 5.10 GW of energy.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jersey is facing localised impacts due to anthropogenic climate change. The island is party to the Kyoto Protocol but does not have an emissions cap. In 2017, Jersey has emissions of around 400 ktCO2 eq., a decrease of around 350 ktCO2 eq since the peak in 1998. Under a 3 °C rise in temperature, Jersey may have four to five times the number of hot days in summer and a 45% decrease in summer rainfall.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Climate change could have impacts on Jersey's economy. Climate change will increase soil temperatures, shifting growing seasons more to winter seasons, impacting the current husbandry practices. Being at the boundary of two marine regions, Jersey's waters could see a change in fish species. A rise in temperature could be beneficial to the island's tourist industry, with more annual warm days and less rainfall in the summer attracting longer and more frequent stays from travellers.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In May 2019, the States Assembly declared the island was undergoing a climate emergency. This commits the island to carbon neutrality by 2030. On 31 Dec 2019, the Government of Jersey published the Carbon Neutral Strategy which aims to meet the island's carbon neutrality target. Plans of the Carbon Neutral Strategy include:",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In order to adapt to the effects of sea level rise on the island, the Government has prepared a Shoreline Management Plan.",
"title": "Physical geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Jersey has a population of 107,800 and a population density of roughly 917 people per square kilometre. The population is spread out throughout Jersey's twelve parishes, with population concentrated in the seven southern parishes.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Outside of the town, the land is largely separated into small closes, dissimilar to the larger fields found on Great Britain or the European continent. This land division structure has a long history in the island. In 1815, Quayle stated \"no country is more strongly enclosed than Jersey\".",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The settlement geography of Jersey has always been dispersed across the island, though with a much smaller population in the past. In the 19th century, Jersey had no tendency towards village or centralised settlement, except in the growing town of St. Helier. On the 1795 Richmond Map, the land appears \"excessively divided\" into small closes and even around the parish churches, the houses are no denser than elsewhere.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Jersey can be defined as an urban island. The 2011 Island Plan defines the island's built-up areas as three main entities. The island effectively operates as a single conurbation, consisting of an urban core, suburbs and exurban rural communities.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The largest settlement is the town of St Helier, which also plays host to the island's seat of government. The town consists of the built-up area of southern St Helier, including First Tower, and some adjoining parts of St Saviour and St Clement, such as Georgetown. The town is the central business district, hosting a large proportion of the island's retail and employment, such as the finance industry.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The primary suburban areas of St Helier consist of the Five Oaks area in St Saviour, and developments along the coast, primarily along main roads to east and west of the town. The south and east coasts from St Aubin to Gorey are largely urbanised, with only small gaps in their development, such as the Royal Golf Course in Grouville.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Outside of the town, many islanders live in rural and village settlements and even the more rural areas of the island have considerable amounts of development (even St Ouen, the least densely populated parish still has 270 persons per square kilometre). The most notable exurban development is the Les Quennevais area, which is home to a small precinct of shops, a park and a leisure centre. Many people in these communities regularly travel to St Helier for work and leisure purposes.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Most of the villages are the namesake settlement of their parish, for example St John's Village in St John, however some are not, such as Maufant Village on the border of St Saviour and St Martin. Another semantic term used for smaller settlements are villes (different in meaning from the term with the same name meaning 'Town') such as La Ville au Bas in St. Lawrence.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Housing costs in Jersey are very high. The Jersey House Price Index has at least doubled between 2002 and 2020. The mix-adjusted house price for Jersey is £567,000, higher than any UK region (UK average: £249,000) including London (average: £497,000; highest of any UK region).",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Land use is tightly controlled in Jersey, especially due to the high density population. The Planning Team of the Customer and Local Services Department manages planning applications, but approval is granted by the Planning Committee, made of States Members.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The governing development plan for the island is the Island Plan, last published in 2011 and voted on by the States Assembly. The plan decides the overall vision for development on the island as well as issuing baseline planning guidance. The current Island Plan was issued in 2011 and revised in 2014. In 2021, the Island Plan is under review, with a bridging Island Plan expected to be in place from 2022.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Revised 2011 Island Plan is centred of three simple concepts of countryside protection, the wise use of resources and urban regeneration. It aims to meet most development needs in the existing built-up areas, especially the town of St Helier.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Jersey has a single national park known as the Coastal National Park, formed of a number of separate areas. The park includes St Ouen's Bay, Gorey Common, the north and south-west coast and certain valleys such as St Catherine's Woods. It also includes the offshore reefs part of the Bailiwick. In the national park, most forms of development are not permitted.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Jersey has a green belt policy known as the Green Zone. This consists of most rural areas on the island except the national park. There is a general presumption against development in the zone. According to the plan the policy has \"vigorous\" public support.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency. It is self-governing with its own legislature, the States Assembly, and government. It is sovereign territory of the Crown and not part of the United Kingdom, however the UK is internationally responsible for Jersey. The Jersey government is \"with some important caveats, content with their relationship with the Ministry of Justice\".",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Jersey is part of the British-Irish Council, which is formed of the national governments of each of the countries and dependencies in the British Isles. Jersey is neither a member of the United Nations nor the European Union.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The island is divided into twelve administrative regions, known as parishes, the largest of which is St Ouen and the smallest of which is St Clement.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Jersey has a highly developed economy driven by international financial and legal services, which accounted for 40.5% of total GVA in 2010. Its gross national income per capita is among the highest in the world. The island has been criticised by some as a tax haven as it attracts deposits from customers outside the island seeking lower taxes. However, the Jersey financial sector disputes this claim. Other important sectors to the Jersey economy include construction, retail and wholesale, agriculture and tourism.",
"title": "Human geography"
}
]
| Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands, an island archipelago in the St. Malo bight in the western English Channel. It has a total area of 120 square kilometres (46 sq mi) and is part of the British Isles archipelago. It lies 22 kilometres from the Cotenin Peninsula in Normandy, France and about 161 kilometres from the south coast of Great Britain. Jersey lies within longitude -2° W and latitude 49° N. It has a coastline of 70 kilometres and no land connections to any other territories. Jersey claims a territorial sea of 3 nmi and an exclusive fishing zone of 12 nmi and shares maritime borders with the Bailiwick of Guernsey to the north and France to the south and east. Jersey is the main island of the Bailiwick of Jersey, which also consists of islet groups known as Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Dirouilles and Les Pierres de Lecq. It is a highly densely populated territory, being the 13th most densely populated country or territory. About 30% of the population of the island is concentrated in the parish of Saint Helier, which contains the main town of the island. | 2002-06-15T00:43:09Z | 2023-12-30T06:51:54Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Jersey |
15,696 | Demography of Jersey | Jersey is the most populated of the crown dependencies and of the Channel Islands. The Demographic statistics of the island includes population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The population of Jersey has grown in each census record since 1931 (although those did not include records during the Occupation by Nazi Germany).
The resident population of Jersey has been increasing during the last 60 years. The resident population increased by 9,100 between 2010 and 2011. The estimated 2020 growth rate is 0.72%.
Pre-census data, there are a number of estimates for Jersey's population. It was around 2,000 in 4000-3000 BC; 6,000 in 1050; 10,000 in 1331; and between 10,000 and 20,000 in the 16th and 17th centuries.
From the 16th to 19th centuries, Jersey was home to a number of French religious refugees, possibly up to 4,000 at a time. In the first half of the 19th century, tax advantages and a better climate saw a boom in Jersey's population. This also needed a large immigrant population, with significant movement from Scotland and Ireland.
Before 1851 and 1921, Jersey's population fell significantly, but the number of French people rose by more than 3,000. These were mostly agricultural workers (not replacing the British migrants).
From 1821, Jersey conducted an annual census (figures to the right). In 1951, the population was 55,244. It has grown every decade since then, and the rate of growth now is very high (1% per year in 2019). This is due to the growth of the finance industry and tourism.
In 2021, the total resident population of Jersey is 103,267, although the CIA World Factbook estimates it as 101,073 (this may be due to a different estimate).
Jersey is divided into twelve parishes. The most populous parish is St Helier, with 35% of the island's population. In 1798, around 6,000 people lived in St. Helier, or one-fifth of the island's population at the time.
In 2011, there were 64,353 people of working age (16 to 64 for men, and 16 to 59 for women; 66% of the population). The dependency ratio for Jersey was 52% (similar to 2011); the dependency ratio is around the same value as that in 1931, however was higher (60%) in 1971, and lower (47%) in 1991.
Half of the population of Jersey was born on the island, with the majority of the remainder from elsewhere in the British Islands. 7% of the population was born in Portugal, conspicuously from Madeira Autonomous Region, a sister province, the largest overseas place of birth. In 1981, only 3% of the population was born in Portugal and 5% elsewhere.
Of the category 'Other European country', the primary countries were France and Romania and for 'Elsewhere in the world', the primary countries were South Africa and India.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
11.0 births/1,000 population (2005)
8.5 deaths/1,000 population (2005)
2.81 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2000 est.)
4 deaths/1,000 live births (2005)
total population: 78.48 years male: 76.07 years female: 81.07 years (2000 est.)
1.56 children born/woman (2000 est.)
noun: Jerseyman, Jerseywoman, Jèrriais, Jèrriaise adjective: Jersey
Indigenous Jersey-Normans and those of British and French descent. Portuguese, Polish, Irish and Romanian minorities.
Anglican, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian.
English (official), French (official), Jèrriais (official: though only spoken by a few native elderly in rural areas, used as a first language by around 1,900 people). Portuguese commonly spoken by migrant workers and is sometimes found in written form, e.g. government informational signs.
82% of children in state schools achieve their reading targets – the UK average is 90%. This leads to some cases of illiteracy in Jersey. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jersey is the most populated of the crown dependencies and of the Channel Islands. The Demographic statistics of the island includes population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The population of Jersey has grown in each census record since 1931 (although those did not include records during the Occupation by Nazi Germany).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The resident population of Jersey has been increasing during the last 60 years. The resident population increased by 9,100 between 2010 and 2011. The estimated 2020 growth rate is 0.72%.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Pre-census data, there are a number of estimates for Jersey's population. It was around 2,000 in 4000-3000 BC; 6,000 in 1050; 10,000 in 1331; and between 10,000 and 20,000 in the 16th and 17th centuries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "From the 16th to 19th centuries, Jersey was home to a number of French religious refugees, possibly up to 4,000 at a time. In the first half of the 19th century, tax advantages and a better climate saw a boom in Jersey's population. This also needed a large immigrant population, with significant movement from Scotland and Ireland.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Before 1851 and 1921, Jersey's population fell significantly, but the number of French people rose by more than 3,000. These were mostly agricultural workers (not replacing the British migrants).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "From 1821, Jersey conducted an annual census (figures to the right). In 1951, the population was 55,244. It has grown every decade since then, and the rate of growth now is very high (1% per year in 2019). This is due to the growth of the finance industry and tourism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 2021, the total resident population of Jersey is 103,267, although the CIA World Factbook estimates it as 101,073 (this may be due to a different estimate).",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Jersey is divided into twelve parishes. The most populous parish is St Helier, with 35% of the island's population. In 1798, around 6,000 people lived in St. Helier, or one-fifth of the island's population at the time.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2011, there were 64,353 people of working age (16 to 64 for men, and 16 to 59 for women; 66% of the population). The dependency ratio for Jersey was 52% (similar to 2011); the dependency ratio is around the same value as that in 1931, however was higher (60%) in 1971, and lower (47%) in 1991.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Half of the population of Jersey was born on the island, with the majority of the remainder from elsewhere in the British Islands. 7% of the population was born in Portugal, conspicuously from Madeira Autonomous Region, a sister province, the largest overseas place of birth. In 1981, only 3% of the population was born in Portugal and 5% elsewhere.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Of the category 'Other European country', the primary countries were France and Romania and for 'Elsewhere in the world', the primary countries were South Africa and India.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "11.0 births/1,000 population (2005)",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "8.5 deaths/1,000 population (2005)",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "2.81 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2000 est.)",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "4 deaths/1,000 live births (2005)",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "total population: 78.48 years male: 76.07 years female: 81.07 years (2000 est.)",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "1.56 children born/woman (2000 est.)",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "noun: Jerseyman, Jerseywoman, Jèrriais, Jèrriaise adjective: Jersey",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Indigenous Jersey-Normans and those of British and French descent. Portuguese, Polish, Irish and Romanian minorities.",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Anglican, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian.",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "English (official), French (official), Jèrriais (official: though only spoken by a few native elderly in rural areas, used as a first language by around 1,900 people). Portuguese commonly spoken by migrant workers and is sometimes found in written form, e.g. government informational signs.",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "82% of children in state schools achieve their reading targets – the UK average is 90%. This leads to some cases of illiteracy in Jersey.",
"title": "Statistics"
}
]
| Jersey is the most populated of the crown dependencies and of the Channel Islands. The Demographic statistics of the island includes population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. The population of Jersey has grown in each census record since 1931. | 2001-05-08T17:52:01Z | 2023-08-16T06:38:35Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Jersey |
15,697 | Politics of Jersey | The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown dependency, unitary state and parliamentary representative democracy and constitutional monarchy. The head of the civil administration and judiciary is the Bailiff Timothy Le Cocq, while the Chief Minister Kristina Moore is the head of government. The current monarch and head of state is King Charles III.
Legislative and executive power is vested in the States of Jersey, which is composed of the Assembly of States members (States Assembly, French: Assemblé des États). Elected States members appoint the Council of Ministers (including the Chief Minister and other Ministers), which is the decision-making body of the island's government, the Government of Jersey.
Other powers are exercised by the Connétable and Parish Assembly in each of the twelve parishes.
As one of the Crown dependencies, Jersey is sovereign territory of the Crown, but is not part of the United Kingdom. Jersey can be best described as "neither a colony nor a conquest, but a peculiar and immediate dependency of the Crown." The island is part of the British Islands, a political term encompassing the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies. This island is for the most part self-governing, with its own independent legal, administrative and fiscal systems.
The link between the island and the monarchy, rather than through Parliament, has led to an effectively independent political development on the island. In medieval times, the island was treated as a possession of the King by the English government, rather than part of the English state.
When Augustus Caesar divided Gaul into four provinces, Jersey was part of the province headquartered at Lyons.
In around 933, Duke William I (William Longsword), seized Jersey, which until then had been politically linked to Brittany, and it is likely that the pre-Norman form of government and way of life was replaced at this point. The island adopted the Norman law system, still the basis of Jersey law today.
A key part of the early administrative structure of Jersey was the fief. Alongside the parish, the fief provided a basic framework for rural life; the system began with the Norman system and largely remained similar to it. In Jersey, the dues, services and rents owed by tenants were extensive and often onerous. Jersey peasants retained a degree of freedom lost elsewhere, probably due to the insignificance of the island in the Duchy. More is known of the origins of the fief than of the parishes and early documents show that Jersey was thoroughly feudalised (the majority of the residents were tenants holding land from Seigneurs). The fief of St Ouen, the most senior fief in Jersey's feudal structure, was by 1135 in the hands of the de Carteret family. They held extensive lands in Carteret as well, but these were lost by them after King John's loss of Normandy, so they decided to settle on the island. Between the 12th and 20th centuries, there were an estimated 245 fiefs in Jersey, though not all simultaneously.
In 1066, the Duke William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at Hastings to become the King of England; however, he continued to rule his French possessions, including Jersey, as a separate entity, as fealty was owed to the King of France. This initial association of Jersey with England did not last long, as William split his possessions between his sons: Robert Curthose became Duke of Normandy and William Rufus gained the English Crown. William Rufus' son Henry I recaptured Normandy for England in 1106. The island was then part of the English King's realm (though still part of Normandy and France). Around 1142, it is recorded that Jersey was under the control of the Count of Anjou, who administered Normandy for the Duke.
According to the Rolls of the Norman Exchequer, in 1180 Jersey was divided for administrative purposes into three ministeria: de Gorroic, de Groceio and de Crapoudoit (possibly containing four parishes each). Gorroic is an old spelling for Gorey, containing St Martin, St Saviour, Grouville and St Clement; Groceio could derive from de Gruchy, and contains St John, Trinity, St Lawrence and St Helier; and Crapoudoit, likely referring to the stream of St Peter's Valley, contains the remainder of the parishes in the West. By Norman times, the parish boundaries were firmly fixed and remain largely unchanged since. It was likely set in place due to the tithe system under Charlemagne, where each property must contribute to the church, so each property would have had to be established within a parish.
It is said, in tradition, that the island's autonomy derives from the Constitutions of King John, however this is disputed. Until King James II, successive English monarchs have then granted to Jersey by charter its certain privileges, likely to ensure the island's continued loyalty, accounting for its advantageous position at the boundary of the European continent. As John (and later Henry III) maintained his claim to the title as the rightful Duke of Normandy until 1259, the island's courts were originally established as Norman, not English territory (to use English law would de-legitimise the English Crown's claim to the ducal title), so are based upon traditional Norman laws and customs, such as the Coutumier de Normandie. Legislative power was vested in 12 jurats, the twelve "senior men" of the island. Along with the Bailiff, they would form the Royal Court, which determined all civil and criminal causes (except treason).
Most lords forfeited their insular land in favour of their French territory, but some remained, notably the de Carteret family of St Ouen. The old aristocracy gave way to a new one, with landowners drawn from royal officials, who soon came to think of themselves as islanders rather than Englishmen. This saw the firm establishment of the feudal system in Jersey, with fiefs headed by Seigneurs. In the Treaty of Paris (1259), the King of France gave up claim to the Channel Islands. The claim was based upon his position as feudal overlord of the Duke of Normandy. The King of England gave up claim to mainland Normandy and therefore the Channel Islands were split from the rest of Normandy. The Channel Islands were never absorbed into the Kingdom of England and the island has had self-government since. In medieval times, the island was treated as a possession of the King by the English government, rather than part of the English state.
The administration of the island was handled by an insular government. The King appointed a Warden (later "Capitain" or "Governor", now the Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey), a position largely occupied with the defence of the island. From 1415 until the second half of the 15th century, the islands were governed by a Lord (or Lady).
The existing Norman customs and laws were allowed to continue and there was no attempt to introduce English law. The formerly split administrative system was replaced with a centralised legal system, of which the head was the King of England rather than the Duke of Normandy. The law was conducted through 12 jurats, constables (Connétable) and a bailiff (Baillé). These titles have different meanings and duties to those in England. Any oppression by a bailiff or a warden was to be resolved locally or failing that, by appeal to the King who appointed commissioners to report on disputes. In the late 1270s, Jersey was given its own Bailiff and from the 1290s, the duties of Bailiff and Warden were separated. The (Sub-)Warden became responsible for taxation and defence, while the Bailiff became responsible for justice. While probably originally a temporary arrangement by Otto de Grandison, this became permanent and the foundation for Jersey's modern separation of Crown and justice. It also lessened the Warden's authority relative to the Bailiff, who had much more interaction with the community.
The role of the jurats when the King's court was mobile would have been preparatory work for the visit of the Justices in Eyre. It is unknown for how long the position of the jurats has existed, with some claiming the position dates to time immemorial. After the cessation of the visits of the Justices in Eyre (and with the frequent absence of the Warden), the Bailiff and jurats took on a much wider role, from jury to justice.
In 1341, in recognition of islanders' efforts during the war, King Edward III declared that Jerseymen should 'hold and retain all privileges, liberties, immunities and customs granted by our forebares'. This began the tradition of successive monarchs devolving powers over the island to Islanders, giving them certain privileges and protecting the separation between the Channel Islands and the rest of their royal realm.
In 1462, the occupying French Governor de Brézé issued ordinances outlining the role of the Bailiff and the Jurats. It may well be during this occupation that the island saw the establishment of the States. Comte Maulevrier, who had led the invasion of the island, ordered the holding of an Assize in the island. Maulevrier confirmed the place of existing institutions, however created the requirement for Jurats to be chosen by Bailiffs, Jurats, Rectors and Constables. The earliest extant Act of the States dates from 1524.
In 1541, the Privy Council, which had recently given a seat to Calais, intended to give two seats in Parliament to Jersey. Seymour, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Island, wrote to the Jurats, instructing them to send two Burgesses for the isle. However, no further steps seemed to have been taken since the letter did not arrive in front of the States Assembly until the day the elected persons were required to arrive in London.
Sir John Peyton became the Governor in 1603 after the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Peyton struggled with the Bailiff over converting the island from the dominant Calvinist religion to Anglicanism. In 1615, Jean Hérault was appointed Bailiff by the King, having been promised the role by letters patent in 1611. Peyton disputed this appointment, claiming it was the Governor's jurisdiction to appoint the Bailiff. Hérault asserted it was the King's jurisdiction to directly appoint the Bailiff. An Order in Council (dated 9 August 1615) sided with Hérault, which Hérault took to claim the Bailiff was the real head of government and the Governor was simply a military officer. To back his claims, he also cited that in the Norman administrative tradition, the Bailiffs had "noone above them except the Duke".
This dispute led to one of the most major turning points in Jersey's constitutional history, as the division of powers between the Governor and Bailiff were clearly demarcated. Though the Privy Council did not agree with Hérault's extreme position on the precedence of the Bailiff, on 18 February 1617 it declared that the "charge of military forces be wholly in the Governor, and the care of justice and civil affairs in the Bailiff." This secured for both the Bailiff and the States precedence over the Governor on justice and civil affairs, the constitutional precedent which limits the involvement of the Lieutenant-Governor in domestic affairs today.
During the late 17th century, the Governors and Bailiffs were generally absent - the Governor Henry Lumley never visited the island at all during his time in office and after the death of Sir Edouard de Carteret, no bailiff was appointed for five years. The eventual successor Charles de Carteret faced large opposition, especially from his own tenants in St. Ouen. A group of jurats complained to the Privy Council that de Carteret was absent and not well accustomed to the law and culture of the island. Charles attempted to oppose this by blocking sittings of the Jurats in court, claiming they could not sit since they were related to the plaintiff or defendant (which they most often were since everyone in Jersey was somehow related to one another). By 1750, the Bailiffship had de facto become a hereditary position in the de Carteret family. Absences of the de Carterets and all other high-ranking posts left Charles Lempière, the Lieutenant Bailiff, in effective full control over the island. Lempière was a Parliamentarian, but by temperament was autocratic. His family had significant power with a number of high-ranking roles in the island and he issued ordinances and quashed protest through his court. Democratic representation was not present in the island's political system, with only wealthier men able to vote for Connétables, with those men filling the roles with their relatives.
A revolt, known as the Corn Riots or the Jersey Revolution, occurred in 1769. They were centred around the balance of power between the island's parliament, the States, and the Royal Court, both of which had powers to create legislation. An anti-Seigneurial sentiment - opposition to the feudal economic system - also contributed to the popular revolt. The spark for the riots was a corn shortage, in part caused by corruption in the ruling classes, led by the Lieutenant Bailiff Charles Lemprière, whose style of rule was authoritarian. On 28 September 1769, men from the northern parishes marched into town and rioted, including breaking into the Royal Court in a threatening manner. The States retreated to Elizabeth Castle and called on the Privy Council for help under false pretences. The Council sent five companies of Royal Scots, who discovered the islanders' grievances.
The protestors demands include reductions in price of wheat and the abolition of certain, or all, Seigneurial privileges. In reaction, the Crown issued the Code of 1771, which attempted to separate the island's judiciary and legislature. After the petitions of Le Geyt, the English authorities instructed that peace and reform should be brought to the island. Bentinck became Lieutenant Governor and introduced important reforms. The Royal Court was no longer a lawmaking body and all legislative power was vested in the States. With the fixing in 1771 of the Code des Lois it was established that the States had a legislative monopoly, and the lawmaking powers of the Royal Court were removed (see quote below). The Code of 1771 laid down for the first time in one place the extant laws of Jersey.
"no Laws or Ordinances whatsoever, which may be made provisionally or in view of being afterwards asserted to by His Majesty in Council, shall be passed but by the whole Assembly of the States of [Jersey]"
The late 18th century was the first time political parties in some form came into existence on the island. Jean Dumaresq was an early Liberal who called for democratic reforms (that the States should be democratically elected Deputies and should have vested in them executive power). His supporters were known as Magots ("maggots", initially an insult from his opponents, which the Magots reclaimed as their own term) and his opponents as the Charlots (supporters of the Lieutenant Baliff Charles Lempière). Dumaresq is quoted as saying "we shall make these Seigneurs bite the dust". In 1776, he was elected as Connétable for St Peter.
The post-Napoleonic War period was a divisive period politically for the island. In 1821, there was an election for Jurat. The St Laurentine Laurelites (conservatives, the eventual name for the Charlots) attacked the Inn in their village where Rose men (the progressive descendants of the Magots) were holding a meeting. They damaged the building and injured both the innkeeper and his wife. On election day in St Martin, the a number of Rose voters were attacked, after which most Rose men refrained from voting. Although the Rose candidate won overall, he faced a number of lawsuits over claims of voter fraud, so in the end the Laurel candidate George Bertram took office.
During the 19th century, the administration system, despite reform, still resembled a feudal system of governance. At the start of the century, Jersey had achieved a high degree of self-government through delegation of Crown powers to the States, though the Bailiff, Governor and Jurats were all still Crown appointees. During the century, Jersey's power structure shifted more and more from the Crown to the States, establishing Jersey as a near-independent state, however ultimate authority over the island shifted from the Crown to the British Parliament, aligning with the shift in the UK's politics towards a purely ceremonial monarchy. The Privy Council put pressure of the island to reform its institutions, in the belief these reforms should align the country with a more English model of government and law. In 1883, John Stuart Blackie recounted an Englishman's comment that only one thing was needed to make Jersey perfect, and that was "a full participation in the benefits of English law". However, the Lieutenant Governor at the time stated that the absence of English law was what had brought Jerseymen such prosperity.
Many locals blamed this push for reform on the island's new immigrants, who were unaccustomed to the island's distinct political and legal systems (although a major part of the mainstream reformer movement was in fact made of Jerseymen). Many English who had moved to the island discovered an alien environment, with unfamiliar laws (in a foreign language they could not understand) and no recourse to access the local power to counter them. The reformers of English heritage mostly came from the middle classes, and sought to further their own rights, not necessarily those of the working class. These Englishmen formed a pressure group known as the Civil Assembly of St Helier. This group was effectively split into two, one organised around Abraham Le Cras' hard-code English reformism and the other, a larger looser corpus of English reformists. The former was never representative of a significant proportion of the English community. One thing both shared however was a belief that the English systems were far superior to the historic Norman-based structures.
Abraham Le Cras was an outspoken new resident - though with Jersey heritage - opposed to Jersey's self-government. He not only thought Jersey should be integrated into England fully, but disputed the right of the States to even make its own laws. He is noted as saying, 'the States have no more power to make laws for Jersey than I have'. In 1840, he won a court case challenging the States' ability to naturalise people as citizens. The Privy Council determined that the long-standing precedent of the States doing so had been invalidated since Jersey had been ruled under civil law since 1771. In 1846, he persuaded the MP for Bath to push for a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the law of Jersey, however HM Government instead promised a Royal Commission. The Commission advised the abolition of the Royal Court run by the Jurats and the replacement of it with three Crown-appointed judges and the introduction of a paid police force. Le Cras left the island to live in England in 1850.
In 1852, the island experienced somewhat of a constitutional crisis when the Privy Council issued three Orders in Council: establishing a police court, a petty debts court and a paid police force for St Helier. This sparked controversy locally, with claims that the move threatened Jersey's independence. Both parties united against the move and around 7000 islanders signing a petition. By 1854, the council had agreed to revoke the Orders, on the condition that the States passed most of the council's requirements. In 1856, further constitutional reform brought deputies into the States for the first time, with one deputy from each country parish and three from town.
The threats to Jersey's autonomy continued. In the 1860s, there was raised a threat of an intervention in the island's government by the British Parliament itself, in order to impose change on the island's structures.
After the Occupation, many islanders called for the reform and modernisation of the States: a poll by the JEP showed that only 88 of the 1,784 surveyed thought Rectors should stay in the States and a vast majority wanted the legislature and judiciary separated. The Jersey Democratic Movement campaigned for either the incorporation of the island as a county of England or at least the abolition of the States. The other political party to emerge during this period was the Progressive Party, consisting of some present States members, who opposed the JDM. In the 1945 Deputies' election, the Progressives won a landslide victory, giving a mandate for change. The franchise was extended to all British adults, previously voting rights in Jersey had only been to men and women over 30 according to property ownership. The largest reform came in the form of the 1948 States reform. Jurats were no longer States members and were to be elected by an Electoral College. It also introduced a retirement age for Jurats of 70. In all cases, the Bailiff shall be the judge of the law, and the Jurats the "judge of fact". The Jurats' role in the States was replaced by 12 senators, four of whom would retire every three years. The Church also lost most of its representation in the States, with the role of Rector being abolished and the number of Deputies increased to 28. The first senatorial election was brief. Each Senator was elected for either nine, six or three years depending on where they came in the polling list. Philip Le Feuvre topped the poll and was elected for nine years. On 8 December 1945 in the Deputies' election, Ivy Forster of the Progressive Party became the first woman to ever be elected to the States. Other notable successful candidates include John Le Marquand Jr. (whose father had recently been returned as Senator) and Cyril Le Marquand.
Jersey has an unwritten constitution arising from the Treaty of Paris (1259). This peculiar political position has often been to the benefit of islanders. Until the 19th century, the island was generally able to be exempt from the harsher parts of Westminster legislation, while being included in favourable policies, such as protectionist economic policies. Over time, there have been calls for reforms to Jersey's constitution, such as the 2000 Clothier report.
Jersey has never been part of the United Kingdom or its predecessors, however it has been a dependency of the monarch of each of these states at their time of existence. The government in Westminster has played an important role in Jersey's lawmaking and political landscape. Since the island is linked with the monarch, not the UK Parliament, there is dispute over the competency of Parliament to legislate for the island without the States' consent. The Crown retains residual responsibility for the "good government" of the island and the UK Government has a "non-interventionist policy" to supervising the Bailiwick.
The 1973 Kilbrandon Report stated that "In international law the United Kingdom Government is responsible for the Islands' international relations" and "also responsible for the defence of the Islands".
The United Kingdom is responsible for Jersey's international relations as an aspect of the island's status as a Crown dependency. It is now normal practice for the UK to consult the Jersey government and seek their consent before entering into treaty obligations affecting the island.
Since 2000, Jersey's "external personality" has developed, recognised in the preamble to the States of Jersey Law 2005 which refers to "an increasing need for Jersey to participate in matters of international affairs". In 2007, the Chief Minister of Jersey and the UK government agreed an "International Identity Framework", setting out the modern relationship between the United Kingdom and Jersey. The United Kingdom now issues "Letters of Entrustment" to the Jersey government, which delegate power to Jersey to negotiate international agreements on its own behalf and sign treaties in Jersey's own name rather than through the United Kingdom. This development was "strongly supported" by the House of Commons Justice Committee in its March 2010 report on the Crown Dependencies. In January 2011 Senator Freddie Cohen was appointed as Assistant Chief Minister with responsibility for UK and International Relations (in effect, Jersey's first Foreign Minister).
Jersey was neither a Member State nor an Associate Member of European Union. It did, however, have a relationship with the EU governed by Protocol 3 to the UK's Treaty of Accession in 1972.
In relation to the Council of Europe, Jersey – as a territory the United Kingdom is responsible for in international law– has been bound by the European Convention on Human Rights since the UK acceded to the treaty in 1951. The Human Rights (Jersey) Law 2000 makes Convention rights part of Jersey law and is based closely on the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act 1998.
During the 1980s, the question of Jersey making an annual contribution towards the United Kingdom's costs of defence and international representation undertaken on behalf of Jersey was raised. In 1987, the States of Jersey made an interim payment of £8 million while the matter was discussed. The outcome of debates within the island was that the contribution should take the form of maintaining a Territorial Army unit in Jersey. The Jersey Field Squadron (Militia), attached to the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia), deploys individuals on operations in support of British Forces.
As a Crown dependency, the head of state of Jersey is the British monarch and Jersey is a self-governing possession of the Crown. The present monarch, whose traditional title in the Channel Islands is the Duke of Normandy, is King Charles III.
"The Crown" is defined by the Law Officers of the Crown as the "Crown in right of Jersey". The King's representative and adviser in the island is the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, appointed for a five-year term. He is a point of contact between Jersey ministers and the United Kingdom government and carries out executive functions in relation to immigration control, deportation, naturalisation and the issue of passports. Since 2017, the incumbent Lieutenant Governor has been Sir Stephen Dalton.
The Crown (not the government or parliament of Jersey) appoints the Lieutenant Governor, the Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff, Attorney General and Solicitor General. In practice, the process of appointment involves a panel in Jersey which selects a preferred candidate whose name is communicated to the UK Ministry of Justice for approval before a formal recommendation is made to the King.
The parliamentary body responsible for adopting legislation and scrutinising the Council of Ministers is the States Assembly. 49 elected members (37 Deputies and 12 Connétables) sit in the unicameral assembly. There are also five non-elected, non-voting members appointed by the Crown (the Bailiff, the Lieutenant Governor, the Dean of Jersey, the Attorney General and the Solicitor General).
Elections for Senators and Deputies occur at fixed four-yearly intervals, historically in October. From 2018, elections will be held in May every fourth year.
At a local level, the Connétables (or 'constables') are elected for four years. Other posts in parish municipalities vary in length from one to three years and elections take place at a Parish Assembly on a majority basis. It has been some time since parties contested elections at this level, other than for the position of Connétable who uniquely has a role in both the national assembly and in local government.
Decisions in the States are taken by majority vote of the elected members present and voting. The States of Jersey Law 2005 removed the Bailiff's a casting vote and the Lieutenant Governor's power of veto. Although formally organised party politics plays no role in the States of Jersey assembly, members often vote together in two main blocs – a minority of members, holding broadly progressive views and critical of the Council of Ministers versus a majority of members, of conservative ideology, who support the Council of Ministers.
Scrutiny panels of backbench members of the assembly have been established to examine (i) economic affairs, (ii) environment, (iii) corporate services, (iv) education and home affairs and (v) health, social security and housing. The real utility of the panels is said to be "that of independent critique which holds ministers to account and constructively engages with policy which is deficient".
According to constitutional convention United Kingdom legislation may be extended to Jersey by Order in Council at the request of the Island's government. Whether an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament may expressly apply to the Island as regards matters of self-government, or whether this historic power is now in abeyance, is a matter of legal debate. The States of Jersey Law 2005 established that no United Kingdom Act or Order in Council may apply to the Bailiwick without being referred to the States of Jersey.
Previously, both executive and legislative powers were vested in a single body: the States of Jersey. A committee system managed government affairs and policy, with committees formed of States members. A report of a review committee chaired by Sir Cecil Clothier criticised this system of government, finding it incapable of developing high-level strategy, efficient policy coordination or effective political leadership.
The States of Jersey Law 2005 introduced a ministerial system of government. Executive powers are now vested in the Council of Ministers – formed of the Chief Minister and other ministers (all elected directly by the States). The council is the leading decision-making body of the wider Government of Jersey.
The Chief Minister is elected from among the elected members of the States. Ministers are then proposed both by the Chief Minister and any other elected member, the final decision being made by the States Assembly.
The overall direction of government as agreed by the Council of Ministers is published periodically as a "strategic plan", the current one being the Common Strategic Policy 2018 to 2022. These plans are debated and approved by the States Assembly and translated into action by a series of business plans for each department.
Cabinet collective responsibility among members of the Council of Ministers is a feature of the 2015 Code of Conduct for Ministers. However, ministers retain the right to present their own policy to the States in their capacity as a member of the assembly in domains not concerning Council policy.
In recent years, former Chief Executive Charlie Parker introduced a number of reforms to the government's administrative structure. Moving away from a system whereby each minister heads a single department, the One Government structure focuses on more efficient governmental organisation. As of 2022, the government departments are:
Since the 1950s, politics in Jersey has been dominated by independent representatives. Historically, the island had two parties: the conservative Roses (Charlots) and the progressive Laurels (Magot). Due to the 2022 electoral reform, Jersey may be moving towards a politics dominated by parties. As of February 2022, there are four political parties in Jersey, which hold around a third of the States:
Jersey's political system has often been criticised over the centuries, both within and without the island. The 'Jersey Way' is a term used in critiques to describe a political culture that enforces conformity, ignores perversion of the course of justice and suppresses political dissent. The Tax Justice Network states the Jersey Way allows for the island's political system to be abused by financial services sector companies.
The Tax Justice Network criticises the political system for its absence of judicial independence (due to 'close relations between the legal and financial services' and 'the intimate relations between legal professionals who grew up together'); lack of second chamber in its parliament (for scrutiny purposes); no political parties; no formalised government and opposition and the lack of a wide range of independent news sources, or research capabilities.
Criticism of the political system is no modern development. In the nineteenth century, Abraham Le Cras was an outspoken new resident of the island. A retired colonel, Le Cras was opposed to Jersey's historic self-government and represented a group of people who not only thought Jersey should be integrated into England fully, but disputed the right of the States to even make its own laws. He is noted as saying 'The States have no more power to make laws for Jersey than I have'. In 1840 he won a court case challenging the States' ability to naturalise people as citizens. The Privy Council determined that the long-standing precedent of the States doing so had been invalidated since Jersey had been ruled under civil law since 1771. In 1846, he persuaded the MP for Bath to push for a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the law of Jersey, however HM Government instead promised a Royal Commission. The Commission advised the abolition of the Royal Court run by the Jurats and the replacement of it with three Crown-appointed judges and the introduction of a paid police force. Le Cras left the island to live in England in 1850.
Jersey is divided into twelve administrative districts known as parishes. All have access to the sea and are named after the saints to whom their ancient parish churches are dedicated.
The parishes of Jersey are further divided into vingtaines (or, in St. Ouen, cueillettes), divisions which are historic and nowadays mostly used for purposes of electoral constituency in municipal elections. These elections are held to elect the members of the Parish municipality. Each parish has an Honorary Police force of elected, unpaid civilians who exercise police and prosecution powers.
The separation issue came up in the House of Commons in a debate on Jersey's constitution in 1969. According to Sir Cyril Black, Member of Parliament for Wimbledon, Jersey was on the verge of declaring independence from the British Government after the Queen's speech stated HM Government would examine the relationships with the Channel Islands. Jersey opposed its inclusion in the Royal Commission on the Constitution and the complete lack of consultation surrounding it. The Home Secretary later stated that there was no intention to change the relationship.
The question of Jersey's independence has been discussed from time to time in the States Assembly. In 1999, a member of the government said that 'Independence is an option open to the Island if the circumstances should justify this' but the government 'does not believe independence is appropriate in the present circumstances and does not see the circumstances arising in the foreseeable future when it would be appropriate'. In 2000, Senator Paul Le Claire called for a referendum on independence, a proposal which failed to win any significant support.
The Policy and Resources Committee of the States of Jersey established the Constitutional Review Group in July 2005, chaired by Sir Philip Bailhache, with terms of reference 'to conduct a review and evaluation of the potential advantages and disadvantages for Jersey in seeking independence from the United Kingdom or other incremental change in the constitutional relationship, while retaining the Queen as Head of State'.
Proposals for Jersey independence have subsequently been discussed at an international conference held in Jersey, organised by the Jersey and Guernsey Law Review. The former Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache has called for changes to the Channel Islands' relationship with the United Kingdom government, arguing that 'at the very least, we should be ready for independence if we are placed in a position where that course was the only sensible option'.
In October 2012, the Council of Ministers issued a "Common policy for external relations" that set out a number of principles for the conduct of external relations in accordance with existing undertakings and agreements. This document noted that Jersey "is a self-governing, democratic country with the power of self-determination" and "that it is not Government policy to seek independence from the United Kingdom, but rather to ensure that Jersey is prepared if it were in the best interests of Islanders to do so". On the basis of the established principles the Council of Ministers decided to "ensure that Jersey is prepared for external change that may affect the Island's formal relationship with the United Kingdom and/or European Union".
The Group's Second Interim Report was presented to the States by the Council of Ministers in June 2008. The report made a number of recommendations about Jersey independence, including the benefits and costs of independence and the social and cultural consequences. The island would need to be recognised as a sovereign state on a country by country basis. The report concluded that 'Jersey is equipped to face the challenges of independence' but 'whether those steps should be taken is not within the remit of this paper'.
At present the island is protected by the British Armed Forces. Upon independence the island would need to develop its own capacity to entirely handle defensive and security affairs. It established that Jersey could seek membership of a defensive alliance (e.g. NATO); negotiate a defence agreement with a sovereign state (e.g. the UK) - San Marino, for example have a defence agreement with Italy that cost 700,000 USD in 2000/01 - or establish an independent defence force (in a similar manner to Antigua and Barbuda, which spends around £2.5 million). Furthermore, it is unlikely that any major European power would allow the island to be invaded, but the island could not feasibly protect itself from a major external threat without securing defensive agreements.
Independence would require the establishment of a Foreign Affairs Department within the Government of Jersey, or other similar steps. At present, the island's international affairs are formally governed by the UK Government. The report recommended the island join 'essential' global organisations, such as the UN and IMF; the Commonwealth and the WTO. At the time, independence would have brought an end to Jersey's relationship with the EU, which was mediated through the UK's accession treaty protocol 3. The report suggests a minimum requirement of the establishment of three overseas missions: London, New York and Brussels (the Government has an office in London and shares an office in Brussels already), to provide contact with major organisations such as the Commonwealth, UN and EU, as well as the UK, US and EU, and also to allow use of them for tourism and trade-related purposes.
Consideration would need to be given to the questions of the internal organisation of Jersey's constitution, as well as citizenship and passports. The report assumes the Queen would continue to be the Head of State, appointing a Governor-General on the advice of the British Government. The report recommended the need for a codified constitution, which should contain a basic human rights statement. The current States Assembly could be replaced by a States Parliament, which would need to replace the checks and balances provided by the Privy Council.
Jersey, as a polity predominated by independents has always had a number of pressure groups. Many ad-hoc lobby groups form in response to a single issue and then dissolve once the concerns have been dealt with. However, there are a number of pressure groups actively working to influence government decisions on a number of issues. For example, in 2012 the National Trust engaged in pressure campaign against development of the Plemont headland. The Trust was supported by the majority of the islands senior politicians, including the Chief Minister, but a proposition made in the States of Jersey for the States to compulsorily purchase the headland and sell it to the Trust was defeated in a vote on 13 December 2012. The outcome of the vote was 24 in favour of acquisition, 25 against, with one absent and one declaring an interest.
The following groups are funded by their members.
The following groups are, at least, partially funded by government. Appointments are made by the States Assembly. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown dependency, unitary state and parliamentary representative democracy and constitutional monarchy. The head of the civil administration and judiciary is the Bailiff Timothy Le Cocq, while the Chief Minister Kristina Moore is the head of government. The current monarch and head of state is King Charles III.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Legislative and executive power is vested in the States of Jersey, which is composed of the Assembly of States members (States Assembly, French: Assemblé des États). Elected States members appoint the Council of Ministers (including the Chief Minister and other Ministers), which is the decision-making body of the island's government, the Government of Jersey.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Other powers are exercised by the Connétable and Parish Assembly in each of the twelve parishes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "As one of the Crown dependencies, Jersey is sovereign territory of the Crown, but is not part of the United Kingdom. Jersey can be best described as \"neither a colony nor a conquest, but a peculiar and immediate dependency of the Crown.\" The island is part of the British Islands, a political term encompassing the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies. This island is for the most part self-governing, with its own independent legal, administrative and fiscal systems.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The link between the island and the monarchy, rather than through Parliament, has led to an effectively independent political development on the island. In medieval times, the island was treated as a possession of the King by the English government, rather than part of the English state.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "When Augustus Caesar divided Gaul into four provinces, Jersey was part of the province headquartered at Lyons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In around 933, Duke William I (William Longsword), seized Jersey, which until then had been politically linked to Brittany, and it is likely that the pre-Norman form of government and way of life was replaced at this point. The island adopted the Norman law system, still the basis of Jersey law today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A key part of the early administrative structure of Jersey was the fief. Alongside the parish, the fief provided a basic framework for rural life; the system began with the Norman system and largely remained similar to it. In Jersey, the dues, services and rents owed by tenants were extensive and often onerous. Jersey peasants retained a degree of freedom lost elsewhere, probably due to the insignificance of the island in the Duchy. More is known of the origins of the fief than of the parishes and early documents show that Jersey was thoroughly feudalised (the majority of the residents were tenants holding land from Seigneurs). The fief of St Ouen, the most senior fief in Jersey's feudal structure, was by 1135 in the hands of the de Carteret family. They held extensive lands in Carteret as well, but these were lost by them after King John's loss of Normandy, so they decided to settle on the island. Between the 12th and 20th centuries, there were an estimated 245 fiefs in Jersey, though not all simultaneously.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1066, the Duke William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at Hastings to become the King of England; however, he continued to rule his French possessions, including Jersey, as a separate entity, as fealty was owed to the King of France. This initial association of Jersey with England did not last long, as William split his possessions between his sons: Robert Curthose became Duke of Normandy and William Rufus gained the English Crown. William Rufus' son Henry I recaptured Normandy for England in 1106. The island was then part of the English King's realm (though still part of Normandy and France). Around 1142, it is recorded that Jersey was under the control of the Count of Anjou, who administered Normandy for the Duke.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "According to the Rolls of the Norman Exchequer, in 1180 Jersey was divided for administrative purposes into three ministeria: de Gorroic, de Groceio and de Crapoudoit (possibly containing four parishes each). Gorroic is an old spelling for Gorey, containing St Martin, St Saviour, Grouville and St Clement; Groceio could derive from de Gruchy, and contains St John, Trinity, St Lawrence and St Helier; and Crapoudoit, likely referring to the stream of St Peter's Valley, contains the remainder of the parishes in the West. By Norman times, the parish boundaries were firmly fixed and remain largely unchanged since. It was likely set in place due to the tithe system under Charlemagne, where each property must contribute to the church, so each property would have had to be established within a parish.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "It is said, in tradition, that the island's autonomy derives from the Constitutions of King John, however this is disputed. Until King James II, successive English monarchs have then granted to Jersey by charter its certain privileges, likely to ensure the island's continued loyalty, accounting for its advantageous position at the boundary of the European continent. As John (and later Henry III) maintained his claim to the title as the rightful Duke of Normandy until 1259, the island's courts were originally established as Norman, not English territory (to use English law would de-legitimise the English Crown's claim to the ducal title), so are based upon traditional Norman laws and customs, such as the Coutumier de Normandie. Legislative power was vested in 12 jurats, the twelve \"senior men\" of the island. Along with the Bailiff, they would form the Royal Court, which determined all civil and criminal causes (except treason).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Most lords forfeited their insular land in favour of their French territory, but some remained, notably the de Carteret family of St Ouen. The old aristocracy gave way to a new one, with landowners drawn from royal officials, who soon came to think of themselves as islanders rather than Englishmen. This saw the firm establishment of the feudal system in Jersey, with fiefs headed by Seigneurs. In the Treaty of Paris (1259), the King of France gave up claim to the Channel Islands. The claim was based upon his position as feudal overlord of the Duke of Normandy. The King of England gave up claim to mainland Normandy and therefore the Channel Islands were split from the rest of Normandy. The Channel Islands were never absorbed into the Kingdom of England and the island has had self-government since. In medieval times, the island was treated as a possession of the King by the English government, rather than part of the English state.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The administration of the island was handled by an insular government. The King appointed a Warden (later \"Capitain\" or \"Governor\", now the Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey), a position largely occupied with the defence of the island. From 1415 until the second half of the 15th century, the islands were governed by a Lord (or Lady).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The existing Norman customs and laws were allowed to continue and there was no attempt to introduce English law. The formerly split administrative system was replaced with a centralised legal system, of which the head was the King of England rather than the Duke of Normandy. The law was conducted through 12 jurats, constables (Connétable) and a bailiff (Baillé). These titles have different meanings and duties to those in England. Any oppression by a bailiff or a warden was to be resolved locally or failing that, by appeal to the King who appointed commissioners to report on disputes. In the late 1270s, Jersey was given its own Bailiff and from the 1290s, the duties of Bailiff and Warden were separated. The (Sub-)Warden became responsible for taxation and defence, while the Bailiff became responsible for justice. While probably originally a temporary arrangement by Otto de Grandison, this became permanent and the foundation for Jersey's modern separation of Crown and justice. It also lessened the Warden's authority relative to the Bailiff, who had much more interaction with the community.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The role of the jurats when the King's court was mobile would have been preparatory work for the visit of the Justices in Eyre. It is unknown for how long the position of the jurats has existed, with some claiming the position dates to time immemorial. After the cessation of the visits of the Justices in Eyre (and with the frequent absence of the Warden), the Bailiff and jurats took on a much wider role, from jury to justice.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1341, in recognition of islanders' efforts during the war, King Edward III declared that Jerseymen should 'hold and retain all privileges, liberties, immunities and customs granted by our forebares'. This began the tradition of successive monarchs devolving powers over the island to Islanders, giving them certain privileges and protecting the separation between the Channel Islands and the rest of their royal realm.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1462, the occupying French Governor de Brézé issued ordinances outlining the role of the Bailiff and the Jurats. It may well be during this occupation that the island saw the establishment of the States. Comte Maulevrier, who had led the invasion of the island, ordered the holding of an Assize in the island. Maulevrier confirmed the place of existing institutions, however created the requirement for Jurats to be chosen by Bailiffs, Jurats, Rectors and Constables. The earliest extant Act of the States dates from 1524.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1541, the Privy Council, which had recently given a seat to Calais, intended to give two seats in Parliament to Jersey. Seymour, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Island, wrote to the Jurats, instructing them to send two Burgesses for the isle. However, no further steps seemed to have been taken since the letter did not arrive in front of the States Assembly until the day the elected persons were required to arrive in London.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Sir John Peyton became the Governor in 1603 after the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Peyton struggled with the Bailiff over converting the island from the dominant Calvinist religion to Anglicanism. In 1615, Jean Hérault was appointed Bailiff by the King, having been promised the role by letters patent in 1611. Peyton disputed this appointment, claiming it was the Governor's jurisdiction to appoint the Bailiff. Hérault asserted it was the King's jurisdiction to directly appoint the Bailiff. An Order in Council (dated 9 August 1615) sided with Hérault, which Hérault took to claim the Bailiff was the real head of government and the Governor was simply a military officer. To back his claims, he also cited that in the Norman administrative tradition, the Bailiffs had \"noone above them except the Duke\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "This dispute led to one of the most major turning points in Jersey's constitutional history, as the division of powers between the Governor and Bailiff were clearly demarcated. Though the Privy Council did not agree with Hérault's extreme position on the precedence of the Bailiff, on 18 February 1617 it declared that the \"charge of military forces be wholly in the Governor, and the care of justice and civil affairs in the Bailiff.\" This secured for both the Bailiff and the States precedence over the Governor on justice and civil affairs, the constitutional precedent which limits the involvement of the Lieutenant-Governor in domestic affairs today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During the late 17th century, the Governors and Bailiffs were generally absent - the Governor Henry Lumley never visited the island at all during his time in office and after the death of Sir Edouard de Carteret, no bailiff was appointed for five years. The eventual successor Charles de Carteret faced large opposition, especially from his own tenants in St. Ouen. A group of jurats complained to the Privy Council that de Carteret was absent and not well accustomed to the law and culture of the island. Charles attempted to oppose this by blocking sittings of the Jurats in court, claiming they could not sit since they were related to the plaintiff or defendant (which they most often were since everyone in Jersey was somehow related to one another). By 1750, the Bailiffship had de facto become a hereditary position in the de Carteret family. Absences of the de Carterets and all other high-ranking posts left Charles Lempière, the Lieutenant Bailiff, in effective full control over the island. Lempière was a Parliamentarian, but by temperament was autocratic. His family had significant power with a number of high-ranking roles in the island and he issued ordinances and quashed protest through his court. Democratic representation was not present in the island's political system, with only wealthier men able to vote for Connétables, with those men filling the roles with their relatives.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A revolt, known as the Corn Riots or the Jersey Revolution, occurred in 1769. They were centred around the balance of power between the island's parliament, the States, and the Royal Court, both of which had powers to create legislation. An anti-Seigneurial sentiment - opposition to the feudal economic system - also contributed to the popular revolt. The spark for the riots was a corn shortage, in part caused by corruption in the ruling classes, led by the Lieutenant Bailiff Charles Lemprière, whose style of rule was authoritarian. On 28 September 1769, men from the northern parishes marched into town and rioted, including breaking into the Royal Court in a threatening manner. The States retreated to Elizabeth Castle and called on the Privy Council for help under false pretences. The Council sent five companies of Royal Scots, who discovered the islanders' grievances.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The protestors demands include reductions in price of wheat and the abolition of certain, or all, Seigneurial privileges. In reaction, the Crown issued the Code of 1771, which attempted to separate the island's judiciary and legislature. After the petitions of Le Geyt, the English authorities instructed that peace and reform should be brought to the island. Bentinck became Lieutenant Governor and introduced important reforms. The Royal Court was no longer a lawmaking body and all legislative power was vested in the States. With the fixing in 1771 of the Code des Lois it was established that the States had a legislative monopoly, and the lawmaking powers of the Royal Court were removed (see quote below). The Code of 1771 laid down for the first time in one place the extant laws of Jersey.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "\"no Laws or Ordinances whatsoever, which may be made provisionally or in view of being afterwards asserted to by His Majesty in Council, shall be passed but by the whole Assembly of the States of [Jersey]\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The late 18th century was the first time political parties in some form came into existence on the island. Jean Dumaresq was an early Liberal who called for democratic reforms (that the States should be democratically elected Deputies and should have vested in them executive power). His supporters were known as Magots (\"maggots\", initially an insult from his opponents, which the Magots reclaimed as their own term) and his opponents as the Charlots (supporters of the Lieutenant Baliff Charles Lempière). Dumaresq is quoted as saying \"we shall make these Seigneurs bite the dust\". In 1776, he was elected as Connétable for St Peter.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The post-Napoleonic War period was a divisive period politically for the island. In 1821, there was an election for Jurat. The St Laurentine Laurelites (conservatives, the eventual name for the Charlots) attacked the Inn in their village where Rose men (the progressive descendants of the Magots) were holding a meeting. They damaged the building and injured both the innkeeper and his wife. On election day in St Martin, the a number of Rose voters were attacked, after which most Rose men refrained from voting. Although the Rose candidate won overall, he faced a number of lawsuits over claims of voter fraud, so in the end the Laurel candidate George Bertram took office.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "During the 19th century, the administration system, despite reform, still resembled a feudal system of governance. At the start of the century, Jersey had achieved a high degree of self-government through delegation of Crown powers to the States, though the Bailiff, Governor and Jurats were all still Crown appointees. During the century, Jersey's power structure shifted more and more from the Crown to the States, establishing Jersey as a near-independent state, however ultimate authority over the island shifted from the Crown to the British Parliament, aligning with the shift in the UK's politics towards a purely ceremonial monarchy. The Privy Council put pressure of the island to reform its institutions, in the belief these reforms should align the country with a more English model of government and law. In 1883, John Stuart Blackie recounted an Englishman's comment that only one thing was needed to make Jersey perfect, and that was \"a full participation in the benefits of English law\". However, the Lieutenant Governor at the time stated that the absence of English law was what had brought Jerseymen such prosperity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Many locals blamed this push for reform on the island's new immigrants, who were unaccustomed to the island's distinct political and legal systems (although a major part of the mainstream reformer movement was in fact made of Jerseymen). Many English who had moved to the island discovered an alien environment, with unfamiliar laws (in a foreign language they could not understand) and no recourse to access the local power to counter them. The reformers of English heritage mostly came from the middle classes, and sought to further their own rights, not necessarily those of the working class. These Englishmen formed a pressure group known as the Civil Assembly of St Helier. This group was effectively split into two, one organised around Abraham Le Cras' hard-code English reformism and the other, a larger looser corpus of English reformists. The former was never representative of a significant proportion of the English community. One thing both shared however was a belief that the English systems were far superior to the historic Norman-based structures.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Abraham Le Cras was an outspoken new resident - though with Jersey heritage - opposed to Jersey's self-government. He not only thought Jersey should be integrated into England fully, but disputed the right of the States to even make its own laws. He is noted as saying, 'the States have no more power to make laws for Jersey than I have'. In 1840, he won a court case challenging the States' ability to naturalise people as citizens. The Privy Council determined that the long-standing precedent of the States doing so had been invalidated since Jersey had been ruled under civil law since 1771. In 1846, he persuaded the MP for Bath to push for a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the law of Jersey, however HM Government instead promised a Royal Commission. The Commission advised the abolition of the Royal Court run by the Jurats and the replacement of it with three Crown-appointed judges and the introduction of a paid police force. Le Cras left the island to live in England in 1850.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1852, the island experienced somewhat of a constitutional crisis when the Privy Council issued three Orders in Council: establishing a police court, a petty debts court and a paid police force for St Helier. This sparked controversy locally, with claims that the move threatened Jersey's independence. Both parties united against the move and around 7000 islanders signing a petition. By 1854, the council had agreed to revoke the Orders, on the condition that the States passed most of the council's requirements. In 1856, further constitutional reform brought deputies into the States for the first time, with one deputy from each country parish and three from town.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The threats to Jersey's autonomy continued. In the 1860s, there was raised a threat of an intervention in the island's government by the British Parliament itself, in order to impose change on the island's structures.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "After the Occupation, many islanders called for the reform and modernisation of the States: a poll by the JEP showed that only 88 of the 1,784 surveyed thought Rectors should stay in the States and a vast majority wanted the legislature and judiciary separated. The Jersey Democratic Movement campaigned for either the incorporation of the island as a county of England or at least the abolition of the States. The other political party to emerge during this period was the Progressive Party, consisting of some present States members, who opposed the JDM. In the 1945 Deputies' election, the Progressives won a landslide victory, giving a mandate for change. The franchise was extended to all British adults, previously voting rights in Jersey had only been to men and women over 30 according to property ownership. The largest reform came in the form of the 1948 States reform. Jurats were no longer States members and were to be elected by an Electoral College. It also introduced a retirement age for Jurats of 70. In all cases, the Bailiff shall be the judge of the law, and the Jurats the \"judge of fact\". The Jurats' role in the States was replaced by 12 senators, four of whom would retire every three years. The Church also lost most of its representation in the States, with the role of Rector being abolished and the number of Deputies increased to 28. The first senatorial election was brief. Each Senator was elected for either nine, six or three years depending on where they came in the polling list. Philip Le Feuvre topped the poll and was elected for nine years. On 8 December 1945 in the Deputies' election, Ivy Forster of the Progressive Party became the first woman to ever be elected to the States. Other notable successful candidates include John Le Marquand Jr. (whose father had recently been returned as Senator) and Cyril Le Marquand.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Jersey has an unwritten constitution arising from the Treaty of Paris (1259). This peculiar political position has often been to the benefit of islanders. Until the 19th century, the island was generally able to be exempt from the harsher parts of Westminster legislation, while being included in favourable policies, such as protectionist economic policies. Over time, there have been calls for reforms to Jersey's constitution, such as the 2000 Clothier report.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Jersey has never been part of the United Kingdom or its predecessors, however it has been a dependency of the monarch of each of these states at their time of existence. The government in Westminster has played an important role in Jersey's lawmaking and political landscape. Since the island is linked with the monarch, not the UK Parliament, there is dispute over the competency of Parliament to legislate for the island without the States' consent. The Crown retains residual responsibility for the \"good government\" of the island and the UK Government has a \"non-interventionist policy\" to supervising the Bailiwick.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The 1973 Kilbrandon Report stated that \"In international law the United Kingdom Government is responsible for the Islands' international relations\" and \"also responsible for the defence of the Islands\".",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The United Kingdom is responsible for Jersey's international relations as an aspect of the island's status as a Crown dependency. It is now normal practice for the UK to consult the Jersey government and seek their consent before entering into treaty obligations affecting the island.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Since 2000, Jersey's \"external personality\" has developed, recognised in the preamble to the States of Jersey Law 2005 which refers to \"an increasing need for Jersey to participate in matters of international affairs\". In 2007, the Chief Minister of Jersey and the UK government agreed an \"International Identity Framework\", setting out the modern relationship between the United Kingdom and Jersey. The United Kingdom now issues \"Letters of Entrustment\" to the Jersey government, which delegate power to Jersey to negotiate international agreements on its own behalf and sign treaties in Jersey's own name rather than through the United Kingdom. This development was \"strongly supported\" by the House of Commons Justice Committee in its March 2010 report on the Crown Dependencies. In January 2011 Senator Freddie Cohen was appointed as Assistant Chief Minister with responsibility for UK and International Relations (in effect, Jersey's first Foreign Minister).",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Jersey was neither a Member State nor an Associate Member of European Union. It did, however, have a relationship with the EU governed by Protocol 3 to the UK's Treaty of Accession in 1972.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In relation to the Council of Europe, Jersey – as a territory the United Kingdom is responsible for in international law– has been bound by the European Convention on Human Rights since the UK acceded to the treaty in 1951. The Human Rights (Jersey) Law 2000 makes Convention rights part of Jersey law and is based closely on the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act 1998.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During the 1980s, the question of Jersey making an annual contribution towards the United Kingdom's costs of defence and international representation undertaken on behalf of Jersey was raised. In 1987, the States of Jersey made an interim payment of £8 million while the matter was discussed. The outcome of debates within the island was that the contribution should take the form of maintaining a Territorial Army unit in Jersey. The Jersey Field Squadron (Militia), attached to the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia), deploys individuals on operations in support of British Forces.",
"title": "Constitution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "As a Crown dependency, the head of state of Jersey is the British monarch and Jersey is a self-governing possession of the Crown. The present monarch, whose traditional title in the Channel Islands is the Duke of Normandy, is King Charles III.",
"title": "The Crown"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "\"The Crown\" is defined by the Law Officers of the Crown as the \"Crown in right of Jersey\". The King's representative and adviser in the island is the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, appointed for a five-year term. He is a point of contact between Jersey ministers and the United Kingdom government and carries out executive functions in relation to immigration control, deportation, naturalisation and the issue of passports. Since 2017, the incumbent Lieutenant Governor has been Sir Stephen Dalton.",
"title": "The Crown"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Crown (not the government or parliament of Jersey) appoints the Lieutenant Governor, the Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff, Attorney General and Solicitor General. In practice, the process of appointment involves a panel in Jersey which selects a preferred candidate whose name is communicated to the UK Ministry of Justice for approval before a formal recommendation is made to the King.",
"title": "The Crown"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The parliamentary body responsible for adopting legislation and scrutinising the Council of Ministers is the States Assembly. 49 elected members (37 Deputies and 12 Connétables) sit in the unicameral assembly. There are also five non-elected, non-voting members appointed by the Crown (the Bailiff, the Lieutenant Governor, the Dean of Jersey, the Attorney General and the Solicitor General).",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Elections for Senators and Deputies occur at fixed four-yearly intervals, historically in October. From 2018, elections will be held in May every fourth year.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "At a local level, the Connétables (or 'constables') are elected for four years. Other posts in parish municipalities vary in length from one to three years and elections take place at a Parish Assembly on a majority basis. It has been some time since parties contested elections at this level, other than for the position of Connétable who uniquely has a role in both the national assembly and in local government.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Decisions in the States are taken by majority vote of the elected members present and voting. The States of Jersey Law 2005 removed the Bailiff's a casting vote and the Lieutenant Governor's power of veto. Although formally organised party politics plays no role in the States of Jersey assembly, members often vote together in two main blocs – a minority of members, holding broadly progressive views and critical of the Council of Ministers versus a majority of members, of conservative ideology, who support the Council of Ministers.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Scrutiny panels of backbench members of the assembly have been established to examine (i) economic affairs, (ii) environment, (iii) corporate services, (iv) education and home affairs and (v) health, social security and housing. The real utility of the panels is said to be \"that of independent critique which holds ministers to account and constructively engages with policy which is deficient\".",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "According to constitutional convention United Kingdom legislation may be extended to Jersey by Order in Council at the request of the Island's government. Whether an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament may expressly apply to the Island as regards matters of self-government, or whether this historic power is now in abeyance, is a matter of legal debate. The States of Jersey Law 2005 established that no United Kingdom Act or Order in Council may apply to the Bailiwick without being referred to the States of Jersey.",
"title": "Legislature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Previously, both executive and legislative powers were vested in a single body: the States of Jersey. A committee system managed government affairs and policy, with committees formed of States members. A report of a review committee chaired by Sir Cecil Clothier criticised this system of government, finding it incapable of developing high-level strategy, efficient policy coordination or effective political leadership.",
"title": "Executive"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The States of Jersey Law 2005 introduced a ministerial system of government. Executive powers are now vested in the Council of Ministers – formed of the Chief Minister and other ministers (all elected directly by the States). The council is the leading decision-making body of the wider Government of Jersey.",
"title": "Executive"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The Chief Minister is elected from among the elected members of the States. Ministers are then proposed both by the Chief Minister and any other elected member, the final decision being made by the States Assembly.",
"title": "Executive"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The overall direction of government as agreed by the Council of Ministers is published periodically as a \"strategic plan\", the current one being the Common Strategic Policy 2018 to 2022. These plans are debated and approved by the States Assembly and translated into action by a series of business plans for each department.",
"title": "Executive"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Cabinet collective responsibility among members of the Council of Ministers is a feature of the 2015 Code of Conduct for Ministers. However, ministers retain the right to present their own policy to the States in their capacity as a member of the assembly in domains not concerning Council policy.",
"title": "Executive"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In recent years, former Chief Executive Charlie Parker introduced a number of reforms to the government's administrative structure. Moving away from a system whereby each minister heads a single department, the One Government structure focuses on more efficient governmental organisation. As of 2022, the government departments are:",
"title": "Executive"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Since the 1950s, politics in Jersey has been dominated by independent representatives. Historically, the island had two parties: the conservative Roses (Charlots) and the progressive Laurels (Magot). Due to the 2022 electoral reform, Jersey may be moving towards a politics dominated by parties. As of February 2022, there are four political parties in Jersey, which hold around a third of the States:",
"title": "Political parties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Jersey's political system has often been criticised over the centuries, both within and without the island. The 'Jersey Way' is a term used in critiques to describe a political culture that enforces conformity, ignores perversion of the course of justice and suppresses political dissent. The Tax Justice Network states the Jersey Way allows for the island's political system to be abused by financial services sector companies.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Tax Justice Network criticises the political system for its absence of judicial independence (due to 'close relations between the legal and financial services' and 'the intimate relations between legal professionals who grew up together'); lack of second chamber in its parliament (for scrutiny purposes); no political parties; no formalised government and opposition and the lack of a wide range of independent news sources, or research capabilities.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Criticism of the political system is no modern development. In the nineteenth century, Abraham Le Cras was an outspoken new resident of the island. A retired colonel, Le Cras was opposed to Jersey's historic self-government and represented a group of people who not only thought Jersey should be integrated into England fully, but disputed the right of the States to even make its own laws. He is noted as saying 'The States have no more power to make laws for Jersey than I have'. In 1840 he won a court case challenging the States' ability to naturalise people as citizens. The Privy Council determined that the long-standing precedent of the States doing so had been invalidated since Jersey had been ruled under civil law since 1771. In 1846, he persuaded the MP for Bath to push for a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the law of Jersey, however HM Government instead promised a Royal Commission. The Commission advised the abolition of the Royal Court run by the Jurats and the replacement of it with three Crown-appointed judges and the introduction of a paid police force. Le Cras left the island to live in England in 1850.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Jersey is divided into twelve administrative districts known as parishes. All have access to the sea and are named after the saints to whom their ancient parish churches are dedicated.",
"title": "Local government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The parishes of Jersey are further divided into vingtaines (or, in St. Ouen, cueillettes), divisions which are historic and nowadays mostly used for purposes of electoral constituency in municipal elections. These elections are held to elect the members of the Parish municipality. Each parish has an Honorary Police force of elected, unpaid civilians who exercise police and prosecution powers.",
"title": "Local government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The separation issue came up in the House of Commons in a debate on Jersey's constitution in 1969. According to Sir Cyril Black, Member of Parliament for Wimbledon, Jersey was on the verge of declaring independence from the British Government after the Queen's speech stated HM Government would examine the relationships with the Channel Islands. Jersey opposed its inclusion in the Royal Commission on the Constitution and the complete lack of consultation surrounding it. The Home Secretary later stated that there was no intention to change the relationship.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The question of Jersey's independence has been discussed from time to time in the States Assembly. In 1999, a member of the government said that 'Independence is an option open to the Island if the circumstances should justify this' but the government 'does not believe independence is appropriate in the present circumstances and does not see the circumstances arising in the foreseeable future when it would be appropriate'. In 2000, Senator Paul Le Claire called for a referendum on independence, a proposal which failed to win any significant support.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Policy and Resources Committee of the States of Jersey established the Constitutional Review Group in July 2005, chaired by Sir Philip Bailhache, with terms of reference 'to conduct a review and evaluation of the potential advantages and disadvantages for Jersey in seeking independence from the United Kingdom or other incremental change in the constitutional relationship, while retaining the Queen as Head of State'.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Proposals for Jersey independence have subsequently been discussed at an international conference held in Jersey, organised by the Jersey and Guernsey Law Review. The former Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache has called for changes to the Channel Islands' relationship with the United Kingdom government, arguing that 'at the very least, we should be ready for independence if we are placed in a position where that course was the only sensible option'.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In October 2012, the Council of Ministers issued a \"Common policy for external relations\" that set out a number of principles for the conduct of external relations in accordance with existing undertakings and agreements. This document noted that Jersey \"is a self-governing, democratic country with the power of self-determination\" and \"that it is not Government policy to seek independence from the United Kingdom, but rather to ensure that Jersey is prepared if it were in the best interests of Islanders to do so\". On the basis of the established principles the Council of Ministers decided to \"ensure that Jersey is prepared for external change that may affect the Island's formal relationship with the United Kingdom and/or European Union\".",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The Group's Second Interim Report was presented to the States by the Council of Ministers in June 2008. The report made a number of recommendations about Jersey independence, including the benefits and costs of independence and the social and cultural consequences. The island would need to be recognised as a sovereign state on a country by country basis. The report concluded that 'Jersey is equipped to face the challenges of independence' but 'whether those steps should be taken is not within the remit of this paper'.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "At present the island is protected by the British Armed Forces. Upon independence the island would need to develop its own capacity to entirely handle defensive and security affairs. It established that Jersey could seek membership of a defensive alliance (e.g. NATO); negotiate a defence agreement with a sovereign state (e.g. the UK) - San Marino, for example have a defence agreement with Italy that cost 700,000 USD in 2000/01 - or establish an independent defence force (in a similar manner to Antigua and Barbuda, which spends around £2.5 million). Furthermore, it is unlikely that any major European power would allow the island to be invaded, but the island could not feasibly protect itself from a major external threat without securing defensive agreements.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Independence would require the establishment of a Foreign Affairs Department within the Government of Jersey, or other similar steps. At present, the island's international affairs are formally governed by the UK Government. The report recommended the island join 'essential' global organisations, such as the UN and IMF; the Commonwealth and the WTO. At the time, independence would have brought an end to Jersey's relationship with the EU, which was mediated through the UK's accession treaty protocol 3. The report suggests a minimum requirement of the establishment of three overseas missions: London, New York and Brussels (the Government has an office in London and shares an office in Brussels already), to provide contact with major organisations such as the Commonwealth, UN and EU, as well as the UK, US and EU, and also to allow use of them for tourism and trade-related purposes.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Consideration would need to be given to the questions of the internal organisation of Jersey's constitution, as well as citizenship and passports. The report assumes the Queen would continue to be the Head of State, appointing a Governor-General on the advice of the British Government. The report recommended the need for a codified constitution, which should contain a basic human rights statement. The current States Assembly could be replaced by a States Parliament, which would need to replace the checks and balances provided by the Privy Council.",
"title": "Separation debate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Jersey, as a polity predominated by independents has always had a number of pressure groups. Many ad-hoc lobby groups form in response to a single issue and then dissolve once the concerns have been dealt with. However, there are a number of pressure groups actively working to influence government decisions on a number of issues. For example, in 2012 the National Trust engaged in pressure campaign against development of the Plemont headland. The Trust was supported by the majority of the islands senior politicians, including the Chief Minister, but a proposition made in the States of Jersey for the States to compulsorily purchase the headland and sell it to the Trust was defeated in a vote on 13 December 2012. The outcome of the vote was 24 in favour of acquisition, 25 against, with one absent and one declaring an interest.",
"title": "Political pressure groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The following groups are funded by their members.",
"title": "Political pressure groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The following groups are, at least, partially funded by government. Appointments are made by the States Assembly.",
"title": "Political pressure groups"
}
]
| The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown dependency, unitary state and parliamentary representative democracy and constitutional monarchy. The head of the civil administration and judiciary is the Bailiff Timothy Le Cocq, while the Chief Minister Kristina Moore is the head of government. The current monarch and head of state is King Charles III. Legislative and executive power is vested in the States of Jersey, which is composed of the Assembly of States members. Elected States members appoint the Council of Ministers, which is the decision-making body of the island's government, the Government of Jersey. Other powers are exercised by the Connétable and Parish Assembly in each of the twelve parishes. As one of the Crown dependencies, Jersey is sovereign territory of the Crown, but is not part of the United Kingdom. Jersey can be best described as "neither a colony nor a conquest, but a peculiar and immediate dependency of the Crown." The island is part of the British Islands, a political term encompassing the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies. This island is for the most part self-governing, with its own independent legal, administrative and fiscal systems. The link between the island and the monarchy, rather than through Parliament, has led to an effectively independent political development on the island. In medieval times, the island was treated as a possession of the King by the English government, rather than part of the English state. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-22T02:43:42Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Jersey |
15,698 | Economy of Jersey | The economy of Jersey is a highly developed social market economy. It is largely driven by international financial services and legal services, which accounted for 39.5% of total GVA in 2019, a 4% increase on 2018. Jersey is considered to be an offshore financial centre. Jersey has the preconditions to be a microstate, but it is a self-governing Crown dependency of the UK. It is considered to be a corporate tax haven by many organisations.
Other sectors include construction, retail, agriculture, tourism and telecommunications. Before the Second World War, Jersey's economy was dominated by agriculture, however after liberation, tourism to the island became popular. More recently, the finance industry recognised worth in operating in Jersey, which has now become the island's dominant industry.
In 2017, Jersey's GDP per capita was one of the highest in the world at $55,324. In 2019, the island's economy, as measured by GVA, grew by 2.1% in real terms to £4.97 billion. In December 2020, there were 1,350 people actively seeking work.
Until the 16th century, the economy of Jersey was based on feudalism and open-field self-sustenance agriculture. The main crop, wheat, was exported and sold to Spanish merchants in St Malo.
Enclosure happened in Jersey around the end of the 16th century. Unlike in England, enclosure was done by the peasantry in order to make profit from producing cider, the production of which moved Jersey's economy from self-sufficiency to cash-crop agriculture. From then until the 19th century, cider was the largest agricultural export; in 1795, 20 percent of the island was orchard. In 1839 for example, 268,199 imperial gallons (1,219,260 L) of cider were exported from Jersey to England alone, but by 1870 exports from Jersey had slumped to 4,632 imperial gallons (21,060 L). Beer had replaced cider as a fashionable drink in the main export markets, and even the home market had switched to beer as the population became more urban.
Enclosure and the subsequent transition to cash-crop agriculture can be blamed for shortages in essential crops, particularly corn, which caused political instability in the island, such as the 1769 Corn Riots.
Potatoes overtook cider as the most important crop in Jersey in the 1840s. Small-scale cider production on farms for domestic consumption, particularly by seasonal workers from Brittany and mainland Normandy, was maintained, but by the mid-20th century production dwindled until only eight farms were producing cider for their own consumption in 1983. The number of orchards had been reduced to such a level that the destruction of trees in the Great Storm of 1987 demonstrated how close the Islands had come to losing many of its traditional cider apple varieties. A concerted effort was made to identify and preserve surviving varieties and new orchards were planted. As part of diversification, farmers have moved into commercial cider production, and the cider tradition is celebrated and marketed as a heritage experience.
Since the 1800s a significant portion of the Jersey economy has been greenhouse agriculture raising fruits, vegetables and flowers under glass. In the twenty first century this has been a declining activity with many greenhouses now unused and some in derelict condition. There was a motion in the Jersey legislature in early 2022 to repurpose unused greenhouses as construction sites for housing. A compromise proposal was that half the unused greenhouses be used for other purposes. The measures failed to pass
The textile industry became a popular export industry for islanders, particularly women. In fact, the trade became so popular that in 1608 the States had to ban knitting during harvest and vraicing season. This industry connected rural Jerseymen to the wider global economy. The knitting of woollen garments was a thriving industry for Jersey during the 17th and 18th centuries. The knitting industry died sometime after 1750.
Jersey was the 4th largest ship building area in the 19th century British Isles. See History of Jersey.
Jersey pounds per US dollar - 0.55 (2005), 0.6981 (January 2002), 0.6944 (2001), 0.6596 (2000), 0.6180 (1999), 0.6037 (1998), 0.6106 (1997); the Jersey pound is at par with the British pound.
Jersey is fiscally independent from the UK. UK public money is not ordinarily spent in the island, and Jersey residents do not pay tax or national insurance contributions to HMRC. As the UK is responsible for Jersey's defence and international representation, the cost of Jersey to the British taxpayer could be seen at around £55 million, though this is a notional cost; it is unlikely that, if Jersey were independent, that money would be saved on costs to the armed forces. The States make, upon agreement with Westminster, a contribution to the costs of its relationship in the form of a territorial army on the island.
Jersey has a 'simple and stable' tax system, which does not change much over time. This is reflected in States policies, which call for a 'low, broad, simple and fair' system. The country collects income tax on its ordinary residents, with allowances and exemptions available for both low-income and very high-income residents (the latter through the 2(1)(e) policy). Corporate income tax is charged through the zero-ten policy, through which most businesses do not pay any corporation tax. Jersey does not have inheritance, wealth, corporate or capital gains tax.
Impôts are charged on road fuel, vehicles, alcohol and tobacco and are similar to UK excise duties.
The social protection system in Jersey is known as Social Security. In 2004, Jersey spent less than any EU country on social protection at 12.3 per cent of GDP, though the island's per capita GDP was higher than the European average. Social security contributions are funded by both employees and employers on monthly earnings.
Jersey is considered a 'tax haven' by some sources (e.g. the Tax Justice Network), but this label is contested. Jersey has a long history of tax avoidance and smuggling due to its special constitutional status. The EU's tax haven blacklist does not include Jersey in the list dated February 2023, though has in the past and the list has been criticised for leaving out jurisdictions such as Jersey. The Government of Jersey and UK Government have argued that Jersey is a cooperative jurisdiction and the local finance industry rejects the tax haven label.
A value-added tax system is in place known as Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is set at 5 per cent. Some items are zero-rated - but not food - and imported products below £135 are exempt.
The difference between the GST and UK/EU VAT systems previously led to VAT avoidance facilitated through the island. This included fulfilment by Play.com and Amazon, among other large retailers. Low-value consignment relief provided the mechanism for VAT-free imports from the Channel Islands to the UK. In April 2012, the EU closed this loophole, leading to the closure of many island businesses and the loss of a number of jobs on the island.
Jersey-based financial organisations provide services to customers worldwide. In December 2020, it was reported that there were 13,510 jobs within this sector. The finance sector profits were about £1.18 billion in 2015.
Jersey is one of the top worldwide offshore financial centers It has been criticised for its tax practices, with many calling the island a tax haven. It attracts deposits from customers outside of the island, seeking the advantages such places offer, like reduced tax burdens. In 2020, Tax Justice ranked Jersey as the 16th on the Financial Secrecy Index, below larger countries such as the UK, however still placing at the lower end of the 'extreme danger zone' for offshore secrecy'.
However The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) have all endorsed Jersey as a top international finance centre. In 2017's OECD Rating, Jersey scored top marks from the OECD on tax transparency, receiving a "fully compliant" rating and as recently as 2019 The European Council of Finance Ministers (ECOFIN) have formally confirmed Jersey a Co-operative Jurisdiction. In addition, a MONEYVAL Assessment by the Council of Europe rated Jersey compliant or largely compliant in 48 of their 49 assessment areas, the highest score amongst all states assessed.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, the total value of banking deposits held in Jersey decreased from £137.8bn to £131.6bn while the net asset value of regulated funds under administration increased by £12.6bn to £378.1bn. There were 33,626 live companies on Jersey's register.
Jersey shares The International Stock Exchange (TISE) with Guernsey, where it is based.
Construction represented 7% of GVA during 2019. In June 2020 it was reported that 5,970 people were employed full-time in the construction and quarrying sector.
St Helier has a lot of ongoing construction projects. The reclamation of land opened in the 1980s new land for development in the town centre. This has led to development projects such as the Jersey International Finance Centre, Horizon and the new St Helier Waterfront project.
The GVA of the construction sector declined by 1% between 2018 and 2019.
As of June 2020 there were 6,940 jobs within Jersey's wholesale and retail trades. Retail and wholesale declined by 1% between 2018 and 2019.
Jersey has a large range of local and national shops. SandpiperCI Limited operate a chain of stores in Jersey, their franchises include well-known names, such as Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Iceland, and Costa Coffee.
A number of online retailers, and fulfillment houses operate from the Channel Islands, including Jersey, supplying a variety of low-value goods such as CDs, DVDs, video games, and gadgets. Residents of the EU were choosing to order goods from Jersey, so as to benefit from a tax relief known as Low-value consignment relief (LVCR). UK residents, in particular, were taking advantage of this situation.
A local company, play.com grew substantially during the time that LVCR applied to Jersey. Notably, Amazon UK also took advantage of this by dispatching some low-value items from Jersey.
In April 2012 the UK Government made law changes to prevent the Channel Islands continued exploitation of LVCR, meaning that UK residents would have to pay the full VAT amount on items imported from the Channel Islands. Some goods are still sold and distributed from Jersey, despite these changes.
In 2017, 33,301 vergées were dedicated to agriculture, with each holding having an average area of 78 vergées. Since 2006, there has been a reduction in the number of smaller holding areas, as have the number of larger holdings (64 in 2006 to 53 in 2017).
The Rural Support Scheme was introduced in 2017 to replace the Single Area Payment. 75% of agricultural areas by surface area are subject to RSS.
There has been a reduction in the total number of agricultural workers since 2007.
The total value of all export crops has increased since 2013. In 2017, it is £42.5 million. The primary exported crops are potatoes (£31.6m), narcissus flowers (£891k), courgettes (£184k) and cauliflowers (£22k). The number of Jersey Royal potatoes cultivated has increased by 18% between 2007 and 2017.
The total area dedicated to glasshouses from 2013 to 2017 has reduced from 275.8k m to 174.3k m.
The Jersey breed of dairy cattle is known worldwide. In 2017, there were 4,842 cattle in Jersey. The gross sales value of the milk delivered to Jersey Dairy in 2017-18 was £13.9 million. Milk products go to the UK and other EU countries.
Hospitality (hotels, restaurants and bars) made up 4.2% of Jersey's GVA in 2019. It is estimated that the wider contribution of tourism in particular is 8.3% (2017). Tourism is important for Jersey's taxation, making £12.5 million in GST (15% of the total). However, total spend is much higher, around £250 million. This creates 6,470 jobs.
Most tourist attractions are operated by private companies and nonprofit organisations, including companies owned, or funded by the States of Jersey. Elizabeth Castle, for example, is controlled by Jersey Heritage. Some other attractions are owned by the National Trust for Jersey. One notable attraction is Jersey Zoo in Trinity, a wildlife park founded by conservationist Gerald Durrell.
This sector accounted for 3.5% of GVA during 2019. In December 2020, this sector had 1,950 private sector jobs in transport and storage and 1,810 private sector jobs in information and communications.
Most of the telecoms infrastructure is owned by Jersey Telecom.
In December 2020, there were 154,300 vehicles registered in Jersey.
In 2008, most goods imported and exported were transported by Huelin-Renouf, Condor Logistics, and other smaller operators, via either Saint Helier harbour, or Jersey Airport.
During the period 1984 to 1994, British Channel Island Ferries were responsible for much shipping to and from the United Kingdom.
Genuine Jersey is a brand icon found on products made locally within the island. The brand was launched in 2001 by local businessmen who wanted to differentiate their products from imported goods and is now particularly visible island-based brand that supports local businesses and promotes island products broadly to locals and visitors. Jersey holds an enviable positions amongst island jurisdictions for its internationally famous products such as Jersey milk and the Jersey Royal potato. The use of the word "Jersey" in the name of these products helps to connect place with product branding and to build the recognition of the island brand. The Genuine Jersey organisation has various links with the Government of Jersey and the organisation exists in a public-private sphere in Jersey's small island political and commercial landscape. In restaurants, Genuine Jersey dishes can have 20% non-local ingredients. Contemporary green politics allows the Genuine Jersey brand to align itself with environmental goals in the modern age of buying local.
Jersey has a high cost of living, due to transport costs and a lack of competition. In January 2021, Numbeo, an online cost-of-living index, reported that Jersey was the "world's 'most expensive place to live'."
In Jersey, inflation is based on the All Items Retail Prices Index (RPI). In March 2020, this stood at 182.1, where June 2000 is 100. The largest increases in RPI were in housing, household services, leisure services. Underlying inflation, as measured by the annual change in RPI(Y), increased by 2.3% over the twelve months to March 2020.
Historically, the highest RPI change was in September 2008 at 6.4% and the lowest was in September 2009 at -0.6%.
The workforce in Jersey tends to increase during the summer months, with around 3,500 more people employed in the summer of 2008 than in the winter of 2007. These seasonal workers are mostly employed in agriculture, hotels, restaurants and bars.
Jersey has long been part of the UK's customs area. When the UK was part of the European Union, Jersey was part of the European Union Customs Union. In 2018, Jersey became part of a customs union with the United Kingdom. Therefore, there are no tariffs between the territories and a common external tariff on places outside the customs union. However Jersey retains the ability to impose specific prohibitions and restrictions at its border and retain autonomy in customs systems and fiscal matters.
Most of Jersey's physical linkages are with southern Great Britain, rather than the geographically nearer northern France. Almost all freight capacity is UK-related, not EU-related. Despite this, the finance industry means Jersey has economic (particularly financial) linkages with countries all over the world, particularly with emerging markets. In 2014, Jersey had a global trade surplus of £600 million (18% of national output), but a trade deficit with the UK of £500 million. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Jersey is a highly developed social market economy. It is largely driven by international financial services and legal services, which accounted for 39.5% of total GVA in 2019, a 4% increase on 2018. Jersey is considered to be an offshore financial centre. Jersey has the preconditions to be a microstate, but it is a self-governing Crown dependency of the UK. It is considered to be a corporate tax haven by many organisations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Other sectors include construction, retail, agriculture, tourism and telecommunications. Before the Second World War, Jersey's economy was dominated by agriculture, however after liberation, tourism to the island became popular. More recently, the finance industry recognised worth in operating in Jersey, which has now become the island's dominant industry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 2017, Jersey's GDP per capita was one of the highest in the world at $55,324. In 2019, the island's economy, as measured by GVA, grew by 2.1% in real terms to £4.97 billion. In December 2020, there were 1,350 people actively seeking work.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Until the 16th century, the economy of Jersey was based on feudalism and open-field self-sustenance agriculture. The main crop, wheat, was exported and sold to Spanish merchants in St Malo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Enclosure happened in Jersey around the end of the 16th century. Unlike in England, enclosure was done by the peasantry in order to make profit from producing cider, the production of which moved Jersey's economy from self-sufficiency to cash-crop agriculture. From then until the 19th century, cider was the largest agricultural export; in 1795, 20 percent of the island was orchard. In 1839 for example, 268,199 imperial gallons (1,219,260 L) of cider were exported from Jersey to England alone, but by 1870 exports from Jersey had slumped to 4,632 imperial gallons (21,060 L). Beer had replaced cider as a fashionable drink in the main export markets, and even the home market had switched to beer as the population became more urban.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Enclosure and the subsequent transition to cash-crop agriculture can be blamed for shortages in essential crops, particularly corn, which caused political instability in the island, such as the 1769 Corn Riots.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Potatoes overtook cider as the most important crop in Jersey in the 1840s. Small-scale cider production on farms for domestic consumption, particularly by seasonal workers from Brittany and mainland Normandy, was maintained, but by the mid-20th century production dwindled until only eight farms were producing cider for their own consumption in 1983. The number of orchards had been reduced to such a level that the destruction of trees in the Great Storm of 1987 demonstrated how close the Islands had come to losing many of its traditional cider apple varieties. A concerted effort was made to identify and preserve surviving varieties and new orchards were planted. As part of diversification, farmers have moved into commercial cider production, and the cider tradition is celebrated and marketed as a heritage experience.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Since the 1800s a significant portion of the Jersey economy has been greenhouse agriculture raising fruits, vegetables and flowers under glass. In the twenty first century this has been a declining activity with many greenhouses now unused and some in derelict condition. There was a motion in the Jersey legislature in early 2022 to repurpose unused greenhouses as construction sites for housing. A compromise proposal was that half the unused greenhouses be used for other purposes. The measures failed to pass",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The textile industry became a popular export industry for islanders, particularly women. In fact, the trade became so popular that in 1608 the States had to ban knitting during harvest and vraicing season. This industry connected rural Jerseymen to the wider global economy. The knitting of woollen garments was a thriving industry for Jersey during the 17th and 18th centuries. The knitting industry died sometime after 1750.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Jersey was the 4th largest ship building area in the 19th century British Isles. See History of Jersey.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Jersey pounds per US dollar - 0.55 (2005), 0.6981 (January 2002), 0.6944 (2001), 0.6596 (2000), 0.6180 (1999), 0.6037 (1998), 0.6106 (1997); the Jersey pound is at par with the British pound.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jersey is fiscally independent from the UK. UK public money is not ordinarily spent in the island, and Jersey residents do not pay tax or national insurance contributions to HMRC. As the UK is responsible for Jersey's defence and international representation, the cost of Jersey to the British taxpayer could be seen at around £55 million, though this is a notional cost; it is unlikely that, if Jersey were independent, that money would be saved on costs to the armed forces. The States make, upon agreement with Westminster, a contribution to the costs of its relationship in the form of a territorial army on the island.",
"title": "Fiscal policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jersey has a 'simple and stable' tax system, which does not change much over time. This is reflected in States policies, which call for a 'low, broad, simple and fair' system. The country collects income tax on its ordinary residents, with allowances and exemptions available for both low-income and very high-income residents (the latter through the 2(1)(e) policy). Corporate income tax is charged through the zero-ten policy, through which most businesses do not pay any corporation tax. Jersey does not have inheritance, wealth, corporate or capital gains tax.",
"title": "Fiscal policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Impôts are charged on road fuel, vehicles, alcohol and tobacco and are similar to UK excise duties.",
"title": "Fiscal policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The social protection system in Jersey is known as Social Security. In 2004, Jersey spent less than any EU country on social protection at 12.3 per cent of GDP, though the island's per capita GDP was higher than the European average. Social security contributions are funded by both employees and employers on monthly earnings.",
"title": "Fiscal policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Jersey is considered a 'tax haven' by some sources (e.g. the Tax Justice Network), but this label is contested. Jersey has a long history of tax avoidance and smuggling due to its special constitutional status. The EU's tax haven blacklist does not include Jersey in the list dated February 2023, though has in the past and the list has been criticised for leaving out jurisdictions such as Jersey. The Government of Jersey and UK Government have argued that Jersey is a cooperative jurisdiction and the local finance industry rejects the tax haven label.",
"title": "Fiscal policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A value-added tax system is in place known as Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is set at 5 per cent. Some items are zero-rated - but not food - and imported products below £135 are exempt.",
"title": "Fiscal policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The difference between the GST and UK/EU VAT systems previously led to VAT avoidance facilitated through the island. This included fulfilment by Play.com and Amazon, among other large retailers. Low-value consignment relief provided the mechanism for VAT-free imports from the Channel Islands to the UK. In April 2012, the EU closed this loophole, leading to the closure of many island businesses and the loss of a number of jobs on the island.",
"title": "Fiscal policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Jersey-based financial organisations provide services to customers worldwide. In December 2020, it was reported that there were 13,510 jobs within this sector. The finance sector profits were about £1.18 billion in 2015.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Jersey is one of the top worldwide offshore financial centers It has been criticised for its tax practices, with many calling the island a tax haven. It attracts deposits from customers outside of the island, seeking the advantages such places offer, like reduced tax burdens. In 2020, Tax Justice ranked Jersey as the 16th on the Financial Secrecy Index, below larger countries such as the UK, however still placing at the lower end of the 'extreme danger zone' for offshore secrecy'.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "However The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) have all endorsed Jersey as a top international finance centre. In 2017's OECD Rating, Jersey scored top marks from the OECD on tax transparency, receiving a \"fully compliant\" rating and as recently as 2019 The European Council of Finance Ministers (ECOFIN) have formally confirmed Jersey a Co-operative Jurisdiction. In addition, a MONEYVAL Assessment by the Council of Europe rated Jersey compliant or largely compliant in 48 of their 49 assessment areas, the highest score amongst all states assessed.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the fourth quarter of 2020, the total value of banking deposits held in Jersey decreased from £137.8bn to £131.6bn while the net asset value of regulated funds under administration increased by £12.6bn to £378.1bn. There were 33,626 live companies on Jersey's register.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Jersey shares The International Stock Exchange (TISE) with Guernsey, where it is based.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Construction represented 7% of GVA during 2019. In June 2020 it was reported that 5,970 people were employed full-time in the construction and quarrying sector.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "St Helier has a lot of ongoing construction projects. The reclamation of land opened in the 1980s new land for development in the town centre. This has led to development projects such as the Jersey International Finance Centre, Horizon and the new St Helier Waterfront project.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The GVA of the construction sector declined by 1% between 2018 and 2019.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "As of June 2020 there were 6,940 jobs within Jersey's wholesale and retail trades. Retail and wholesale declined by 1% between 2018 and 2019.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Jersey has a large range of local and national shops. SandpiperCI Limited operate a chain of stores in Jersey, their franchises include well-known names, such as Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Iceland, and Costa Coffee.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A number of online retailers, and fulfillment houses operate from the Channel Islands, including Jersey, supplying a variety of low-value goods such as CDs, DVDs, video games, and gadgets. Residents of the EU were choosing to order goods from Jersey, so as to benefit from a tax relief known as Low-value consignment relief (LVCR). UK residents, in particular, were taking advantage of this situation.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A local company, play.com grew substantially during the time that LVCR applied to Jersey. Notably, Amazon UK also took advantage of this by dispatching some low-value items from Jersey.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In April 2012 the UK Government made law changes to prevent the Channel Islands continued exploitation of LVCR, meaning that UK residents would have to pay the full VAT amount on items imported from the Channel Islands. Some goods are still sold and distributed from Jersey, despite these changes.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 2017, 33,301 vergées were dedicated to agriculture, with each holding having an average area of 78 vergées. Since 2006, there has been a reduction in the number of smaller holding areas, as have the number of larger holdings (64 in 2006 to 53 in 2017).",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Rural Support Scheme was introduced in 2017 to replace the Single Area Payment. 75% of agricultural areas by surface area are subject to RSS.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "There has been a reduction in the total number of agricultural workers since 2007.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The total value of all export crops has increased since 2013. In 2017, it is £42.5 million. The primary exported crops are potatoes (£31.6m), narcissus flowers (£891k), courgettes (£184k) and cauliflowers (£22k). The number of Jersey Royal potatoes cultivated has increased by 18% between 2007 and 2017.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The total area dedicated to glasshouses from 2013 to 2017 has reduced from 275.8k m to 174.3k m.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Jersey breed of dairy cattle is known worldwide. In 2017, there were 4,842 cattle in Jersey. The gross sales value of the milk delivered to Jersey Dairy in 2017-18 was £13.9 million. Milk products go to the UK and other EU countries.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Hospitality (hotels, restaurants and bars) made up 4.2% of Jersey's GVA in 2019. It is estimated that the wider contribution of tourism in particular is 8.3% (2017). Tourism is important for Jersey's taxation, making £12.5 million in GST (15% of the total). However, total spend is much higher, around £250 million. This creates 6,470 jobs.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Most tourist attractions are operated by private companies and nonprofit organisations, including companies owned, or funded by the States of Jersey. Elizabeth Castle, for example, is controlled by Jersey Heritage. Some other attractions are owned by the National Trust for Jersey. One notable attraction is Jersey Zoo in Trinity, a wildlife park founded by conservationist Gerald Durrell.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "This sector accounted for 3.5% of GVA during 2019. In December 2020, this sector had 1,950 private sector jobs in transport and storage and 1,810 private sector jobs in information and communications.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Most of the telecoms infrastructure is owned by Jersey Telecom.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In December 2020, there were 154,300 vehicles registered in Jersey.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 2008, most goods imported and exported were transported by Huelin-Renouf, Condor Logistics, and other smaller operators, via either Saint Helier harbour, or Jersey Airport.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "During the period 1984 to 1994, British Channel Island Ferries were responsible for much shipping to and from the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Sectors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Genuine Jersey is a brand icon found on products made locally within the island. The brand was launched in 2001 by local businessmen who wanted to differentiate their products from imported goods and is now particularly visible island-based brand that supports local businesses and promotes island products broadly to locals and visitors. Jersey holds an enviable positions amongst island jurisdictions for its internationally famous products such as Jersey milk and the Jersey Royal potato. The use of the word \"Jersey\" in the name of these products helps to connect place with product branding and to build the recognition of the island brand. The Genuine Jersey organisation has various links with the Government of Jersey and the organisation exists in a public-private sphere in Jersey's small island political and commercial landscape. In restaurants, Genuine Jersey dishes can have 20% non-local ingredients. Contemporary green politics allows the Genuine Jersey brand to align itself with environmental goals in the modern age of buying local.",
"title": "Genuine Jersey"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Jersey has a high cost of living, due to transport costs and a lack of competition. In January 2021, Numbeo, an online cost-of-living index, reported that Jersey was the \"world's 'most expensive place to live'.\"",
"title": "Cost of living"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In Jersey, inflation is based on the All Items Retail Prices Index (RPI). In March 2020, this stood at 182.1, where June 2000 is 100. The largest increases in RPI were in housing, household services, leisure services. Underlying inflation, as measured by the annual change in RPI(Y), increased by 2.3% over the twelve months to March 2020.",
"title": "Cost of living"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Historically, the highest RPI change was in September 2008 at 6.4% and the lowest was in September 2009 at -0.6%.",
"title": "Cost of living"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The workforce in Jersey tends to increase during the summer months, with around 3,500 more people employed in the summer of 2008 than in the winter of 2007. These seasonal workers are mostly employed in agriculture, hotels, restaurants and bars.",
"title": "Seasonal workers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Jersey has long been part of the UK's customs area. When the UK was part of the European Union, Jersey was part of the European Union Customs Union. In 2018, Jersey became part of a customs union with the United Kingdom. Therefore, there are no tariffs between the territories and a common external tariff on places outside the customs union. However Jersey retains the ability to impose specific prohibitions and restrictions at its border and retain autonomy in customs systems and fiscal matters.",
"title": "International economic relationships"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Most of Jersey's physical linkages are with southern Great Britain, rather than the geographically nearer northern France. Almost all freight capacity is UK-related, not EU-related. Despite this, the finance industry means Jersey has economic (particularly financial) linkages with countries all over the world, particularly with emerging markets. In 2014, Jersey had a global trade surplus of £600 million (18% of national output), but a trade deficit with the UK of £500 million.",
"title": "International economic relationships"
}
]
| The economy of Jersey is a highly developed social market economy. It is largely driven by international financial services and legal services, which accounted for 39.5% of total GVA in 2019, a 4% increase on 2018. Jersey is considered to be an offshore financial centre. Jersey has the preconditions to be a microstate, but it is a self-governing Crown dependency of the UK. It is considered to be a corporate tax haven by many organisations. Other sectors include construction, retail, agriculture, tourism and telecommunications. Before the Second World War, Jersey's economy was dominated by agriculture, however after liberation, tourism to the island became popular. More recently, the finance industry recognised worth in operating in Jersey, which has now become the island's dominant industry. In 2017, Jersey's GDP per capita was one of the highest in the world at $55,324. In 2019, the island's economy, as measured by GVA, grew by 2.1% in real terms to £4.97 billion. In December 2020, there were 1,350 people actively seeking work. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-10-17T11:12:05Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Jersey |
15,699 | Telecommunications in Jersey | The services of communication in Jersey comprise Internet, telephone, broadcasting and postal services, which allow islanders to contact people and receive information.
As of 2018, three companies provide fixed-line services to the island -
As all services are based on JT's infrastructure, there is limited competition. Nevertheless, islanders enjoy average fixed broadband download speedswhich outstrip the UK and other small countries. As of 2021, Jersey has the highest broadband speeds of any country in the world, with an average rate of 274.27 Mbit/s, compared with Liechtenstein, which only had speeds of 211.26 Mbit/s, and the global average of just 9.10 Mbit/s.
JT has dominance over the broadband sector, with 68% broadband market share in 2015, however this is declining relative to the competition. In terms of value for money on high-speed internet services, Jersey broadband consumers pay lower prices than nations like Bermuda, but higher prices than in the UK or the Isle of Man, but for lower-speed services islanders pay far lower prices than other small islands (and less than UK consumers).
Internet connectivity to the rest of the world is provided by undersea cables linked to Guernsey, the UK and France. In 2016, a ship – believed to be the King Arthur owned by Mediterranea di Navigazione – dragging its anchor on the seabed in the English Channel cut the three main internet cables to Jersey and Guersey. As a result, all communications traffic had to travel via cables to France.
Jersey is part of the UK's National Telephone Numbering Plan, which means the island shares the UK's international dialling code +44.
4G license operators in the island are obligated to provide a 2 Mbit/s download speed to 95% of the island population 90% of the time. In 2016, the island had 95% 4G coverage and higher average mobile data speeds than (7 major cities in) the UK.
In 2020, JT retains the majority mobile market share of 52%, compared with 24% for Airtel-Vodafone and 23% for Sure, the island's other mobile operators. In 2020, there were 124,262 mobile subscriptions, of which 2,845 were mobile only.
Mobile data prices are lower in Jersey than other similarly sized countries, such as Bermuda and Malta, but slightly higher than the major operators in the UK. In 2020, the following mobile usage statistics were recorded: 202.0 million mobile minutes, 48.3 million SMS messages and 9.56 million GB of data used.
Jersey is part of the UK's National Telephone Numbering Plan, which means the island shares the UK's international dialling code +44. Landline telephone numbers have the area code (0)1534.
The Government of Jersey has a telecommunications development strategy called A telecoms strategy for Jersey.
Jersey is incorporated into the UK National Telephone Numbering Plan, using the following area codes:
Fixed PSTN lines in use; approx 57,700 (2009).
With over 120 mobile phone masts, in 2012, spread across its 119 km (46 sq mi) area, the island has a phone mast density almost five times that of the United Kingdom as a whole but similar to any urban area.
Jersey Telecom:
Digital DAB+ broadcasts started in Jersey on 1 August 2021.
Not available
Not available | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The services of communication in Jersey comprise Internet, telephone, broadcasting and postal services, which allow islanders to contact people and receive information.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "As of 2018, three companies provide fixed-line services to the island -",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "As all services are based on JT's infrastructure, there is limited competition. Nevertheless, islanders enjoy average fixed broadband download speedswhich outstrip the UK and other small countries. As of 2021, Jersey has the highest broadband speeds of any country in the world, with an average rate of 274.27 Mbit/s, compared with Liechtenstein, which only had speeds of 211.26 Mbit/s, and the global average of just 9.10 Mbit/s.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "JT has dominance over the broadband sector, with 68% broadband market share in 2015, however this is declining relative to the competition. In terms of value for money on high-speed internet services, Jersey broadband consumers pay lower prices than nations like Bermuda, but higher prices than in the UK or the Isle of Man, but for lower-speed services islanders pay far lower prices than other small islands (and less than UK consumers).",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Internet connectivity to the rest of the world is provided by undersea cables linked to Guernsey, the UK and France. In 2016, a ship – believed to be the King Arthur owned by Mediterranea di Navigazione – dragging its anchor on the seabed in the English Channel cut the three main internet cables to Jersey and Guersey. As a result, all communications traffic had to travel via cables to France.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Jersey is part of the UK's National Telephone Numbering Plan, which means the island shares the UK's international dialling code +44.",
"title": "Mobile telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "4G license operators in the island are obligated to provide a 2 Mbit/s download speed to 95% of the island population 90% of the time. In 2016, the island had 95% 4G coverage and higher average mobile data speeds than (7 major cities in) the UK.",
"title": "Mobile telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 2020, JT retains the majority mobile market share of 52%, compared with 24% for Airtel-Vodafone and 23% for Sure, the island's other mobile operators. In 2020, there were 124,262 mobile subscriptions, of which 2,845 were mobile only.",
"title": "Mobile telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Mobile data prices are lower in Jersey than other similarly sized countries, such as Bermuda and Malta, but slightly higher than the major operators in the UK. In 2020, the following mobile usage statistics were recorded: 202.0 million mobile minutes, 48.3 million SMS messages and 9.56 million GB of data used.",
"title": "Mobile telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Jersey is part of the UK's National Telephone Numbering Plan, which means the island shares the UK's international dialling code +44. Landline telephone numbers have the area code (0)1534.",
"title": "Landline telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Government of Jersey has a telecommunications development strategy called A telecoms strategy for Jersey.",
"title": "Future"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jersey is incorporated into the UK National Telephone Numbering Plan, using the following area codes:",
"title": "Telephony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Fixed PSTN lines in use; approx 57,700 (2009).",
"title": "Telephony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "With over 120 mobile phone masts, in 2012, spread across its 119 km (46 sq mi) area, the island has a phone mast density almost five times that of the United Kingdom as a whole but similar to any urban area.",
"title": "Telephony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Jersey Telecom:",
"title": "Telephony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Digital DAB+ broadcasts started in Jersey on 1 August 2021.",
"title": "Mass media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Not available",
"title": "Mass media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Not available",
"title": "Mass media"
}
]
| The services of communication in Jersey comprise Internet, telephone, broadcasting and postal services, which allow islanders to contact people and receive information. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-09-27T00:46:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Jersey |
15,700 | Transport in Jersey | Transport in Jersey is primarily through the motor vehicle. The island, which is the largest of the Channel Islands has 124,737 registered vehicles (2016). The island is committed to combatting climate change, having declared a climate emergency, and policy is focused on reducing dependence on the car. The island has a cycle network and bus service. The primary modes of transport for leaving the island are by air or sea.
Road transport is the primary form of both private and public transport in Jersey.
Vehicles in Jersey drive on the left side of the road. The island has a default speed limit of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) with slower limits on certain stretches of road, such as 20/30 mph (32/48 km/h) in built up areas and 15 mph (24 km/h) on roads designated as green lanes.
The island is home to longest dual carriageway in the Channel Islands, consisting of Victoria Avenue (A2), and the Esplanade/Route de la Liberation (A1). Roads in Jersey are often named in French or Jèrriais, except in St Helier, where they are often named in English.
Public highways are state-owned and managed by public highways authorities. Main roads are maintained by the Government of Jersey and funded through general taxation. By-roads (chemins vinciaux) are managed by the relevant parish through a Roads Committee. Roads Inspectors are elected to report on roads in their vingtaine.
Roads in Jersey are classified using two systems. The first is the signposted system for classifying main roads, consisting of an "A", "B" and "C" system as used in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. These are often signed on directional signs, however some are inaccurate.
The second is a system used privately by the Government of Jersey to classify both main roads and by-roads. The system consists of Class 1, 2 and 3 roads (main roads) and Class 4 roads (by-roads). Class 1 roads include Victoria Avenue.
A Visite du Branchage is an inspection of roads to ensure property owners have complied with the laws against vegetation encroaching on the highway.
Until the 19th century, Jersey's highway system were narrow and muddy tracks connecting homes and fields to the churches, mills and beaches. Around the turn of the 18th century, the number of roads are described as "[holding] no Proportion with the Bigness [of the island]". The sides of the road, unlike in England had "great Bulwarks of Earth ... from 6 to 8, and sometimes 10 Foot high". At the time there were three types of road: Les Chemins du Roi, which, including the banks, were 16 feet wide; Les Chemins de 8 pieds, which were 12 feet wide; and Les Chemins de 4 pieds, which served only carriages on horseback.
In the early 19th century, the military roads were constructed (on occasion at gunpoint in the face of opposition from landowners) by the governor, General George Don, to link coastal fortifications with St. Helier harbour. These had an unexpected effect on agriculture once peace restored reliable trade links. Farmers in previously isolated valleys were able to swiftly transport crops grown in the island's microclimate to waiting ships and then on to the markets of London and Paris ahead of the competition. In conjunction with the later introduction of steamships and the development of the French and British railway systems, Jersey's agriculture was no longer as isolated as before.
Driving laws in Jersey are the United Kingdom Highway Code, supplemented by the Jersey Highway Code.
Visitors wishing to drive must possess a Certificate of Insurance or an International Green Card, a valid Driving Licence or International Driving Permit (UK International Driving Permits are not valid). Photocopies are not acceptable. A nationality plate must be displayed on the back of visiting vehicles.
It is an offence to hold a mobile phone whilst driving a moving vehicle. It is not an offence to use a hands-free system. Where fitted, all passengers inside a vehicle must wear a seat belt at all times, regardless of whether they are sitting in the front or the rear.
Drink-driving is illegal in Jersey. Police use breathalyser tests during spot checks and a person is guilty if there is over 35 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 ml breath.
The penalties for drinking and driving in Jersey are up to £2,000 fine or 6 months in prison for the first offence plus unlimited disqualification of driving licence. It is an offence to drive whilst under the influence of drugs. Since July 2014 it has also been illegal to smoke in any vehicle carrying passengers under the age of 18.
Over the years, a number of traffic calming schemes have been introduced around the island to get motorists to slow down. In 2016, a report in the JEP outlined a number of traffic calming schemes that were under consideration around the island.
Jersey has a shared electric car operator, EVie, that provides islandwide self-service electric car hire.
Jersey has infrastructure dedicated to cyclists. Cycle infrastructure has been improving in the previous decade under the Sustainable Transport Policy.
The best developed cycle route is the route from St Helier to Corbière. The route consists of segregated cycle paths and shared pedestrian-cycle paths, including the St Aubin's Bay promenade and the Railway Walk. The connection from West Park to Havre des Pas was completed an upgraded after a ministerial decision in 2011. A branch of this route connects to St Peter's Village via Les Quennevais.
There is a segregated cycle-pedestrian path along St Peter's Valley, which connects pedestrians and cyclists from the green lane network in St Mary to roads near the St Aubin's Bay Promenade cycle route. It was opened in 2016.
Jersey has a network of signposted cycle routes. There are fifteen routes in total, such as route 1, which forms a loop around the island. Most of the routes are on quieter lanes and dedicated paths, however some of these routes are on busy main road with no dedicated infrastructure.
The Eastern Cycle Route network is a proposed network of cycle-safe routes in the eastern parishes of St Clement and Grouville. The first section from Gorey to La Ville-ès-Renauds in Grouville was opened in 2011.
There is a dedicated network of Green Lanes across the island, which have a 15 mph speed limit and where priority is afforded to cyclists.
Jersey has a shared electric bike operator, EVie, that provides islandwide self-service electric bike hire.
EVie
Buses started running on the island in the 1920s, and by the 1930s, competition from motor buses had rendered the railways unprofitable, with final closure coming in 1935 after a fire disaster (except for the later German reintroduction of rail during the military occupation).
Buses are operated by CT Plus Jersey, a local subsidiary of HCT Group. Bus service routes radiate from the Liberation Station in St Helier.
In 2012, it was announced that CT Plus would take over the operation of the bus service, commencing on 2 January 2013, ending 10 years of Connex service in Jersey. This new service is called LibertyBus.
Public parking in Jersey is controlled by time restrictions and payment.
A single-yellow line along the side of the carriageway indicates a "No waiting" restriction. There are no double-yellow lines in Jersey. Parking on yellow lines is liable to a fine.
Some on-street and off-street parking is paid parking. Payments operate using either Paycards or PayByPhone and is indicated with the Paycard Symbol. Paycards are a form of voucher payment. Paycards are purchased from various stores around the island and can be used by scratching the time of arrival on the relevant number of units.
Certain car parks, such as the Waterfront, Sand Street and Ports of Jersey Car Parks use automatic number plate recognition or ticket technology with a pay upon exit system.
Some parking is free to use however is time-restricted and a Jersey parking disc must be displayed showing time of arrival.
There are four main residents’ and business parking zones within St Helier.
There is a single airport on the island, Jersey Airport, located in St Peter. It has one runway and one terminal building and has direct flights throughout the year to many United Kingdom and International destinations, including nine daily flights to London.
Before the present airport opened in 1937, air transport was through seaplanes, which landed at West Park in St Helier. The first aeroplane to land in Jersey was the Sanchez Besa in August 1912. The first passenger flight was recorded as taking place 147 years earlier through air balloon.
Historically there were public railway services in the island, provided by two railway companies:
The mostly coastal lines operated out of St Helier and ran across the southern part of the island, reaching Gorey Harbour in the east and la Corbière in the west. There were two stations in St Helier: St Helier (Weighbridge) (JR) and St Helier (Snow Hill) (JER).
After closure, most of the infrastructure was removed and today little evidence remains of these railways. A small number of former station buildings are still standing, including St Helier Weighbridge, which is now in use as the Liberty Wharf shopping centre, and St Aubin railway station, which is used today as the Parish Hall of Saint Brélade. Part of the former Jersey Railway line from St Aubin to Corbière has been converted into a rail trail for cyclists and walkers.
During the German military occupation 1940–1945, light railways were re-established by the Germans for the purpose of supplying coastal fortifications. A one-metre gauge line was laid down following the route of the former Jersey Railway from Saint Helier to La Corbière, with a branch line connecting the stone quarry at Ronez in Saint John. A 60 cm line ran along the west coast, and another was laid out heading east from Saint Helier to Gorey. The first line was opened in July 1942, the ceremony being disrupted by passively resisting Jersey spectators. The German railway infrastructure was dismantled after the Liberation in 1945.
Two railways operate at the Pallot Heritage Steam Museum; a standard gauge heritage steam railway, and a narrow gauge pleasure line operated by steam-outline diesel motive power.
An important growth for St Helier in the early 19th century was the construction of the harbour. Previously, ships coming into the town had only a small jetty at the site now called the English Harbour and the French Harbour. The Chamber of Commerce urged the States to build a new harbour, but the States refused, so the Chamber took it into their own hands and repaired and upgraded the harbour in 1790. A new breakwater was constructed to shelter the jetty and harbours. In 1814, the merchants constructed the roads now known as Commercial Buildings and Le Quai des Marchands to connect the harbours to the town and in 1832 construction was finished on the Esplanade and its sea wall. A rapid expansion in shipping led the States in 1837 to order the construction of two new piers: the Victoria and Albert Piers.
Saint Helier is the island's main port, others include Gorey, Saint Aubin, La Rocque, and Bonne Nuit. It is 33.6 miles (54.1 km) distant from Granville, Manche, 142.9 miles (230.0 km) from Southampton, 131.3 miles (211.3 km) from Poole, and 22.9 miles (36.9 km) from St Malo.
On 20 August 2013, Huelin-Renouf, which had operated a "lift-on lift-off" container service for 80 years between the Port of Southampton and the Port of Jersey, ceased trading. Senator Alan Maclean, a Jersey politician had previously tried to save the 90-odd jobs furnished by the company to no avail. On 20 September, it was announced that Channel Island Lines would continue this service, and would purchase the MV Huelin Dispatch from Associated British Ports who in turn had purchased them from the receiver in the bankruptcy. The new operator was to be funded by Rockayne Limited, a closely held association of Jersey businesspeople. Channel Island Lines closed in 2020.
Passenger-only access to France is provided by Manche-Iles Express ferry service, to either Barneville-Carteret, Granville or Dielette.
A service to St Malo was provided by Compagnie Corsaire, but is now operated by its sister service, Condor Ferries, which runs MV Commodore Goodwill, a large ro-ro vessel to Portsmouth, and has multiple ro-ro connections to Poole and St Malo.
Jersey on SABRE Road Wiki | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Transport in Jersey is primarily through the motor vehicle. The island, which is the largest of the Channel Islands has 124,737 registered vehicles (2016). The island is committed to combatting climate change, having declared a climate emergency, and policy is focused on reducing dependence on the car. The island has a cycle network and bus service. The primary modes of transport for leaving the island are by air or sea.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Road transport is the primary form of both private and public transport in Jersey.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Vehicles in Jersey drive on the left side of the road. The island has a default speed limit of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) with slower limits on certain stretches of road, such as 20/30 mph (32/48 km/h) in built up areas and 15 mph (24 km/h) on roads designated as green lanes.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The island is home to longest dual carriageway in the Channel Islands, consisting of Victoria Avenue (A2), and the Esplanade/Route de la Liberation (A1). Roads in Jersey are often named in French or Jèrriais, except in St Helier, where they are often named in English.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Public highways are state-owned and managed by public highways authorities. Main roads are maintained by the Government of Jersey and funded through general taxation. By-roads (chemins vinciaux) are managed by the relevant parish through a Roads Committee. Roads Inspectors are elected to report on roads in their vingtaine.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Roads in Jersey are classified using two systems. The first is the signposted system for classifying main roads, consisting of an \"A\", \"B\" and \"C\" system as used in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. These are often signed on directional signs, however some are inaccurate.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The second is a system used privately by the Government of Jersey to classify both main roads and by-roads. The system consists of Class 1, 2 and 3 roads (main roads) and Class 4 roads (by-roads). Class 1 roads include Victoria Avenue.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A Visite du Branchage is an inspection of roads to ensure property owners have complied with the laws against vegetation encroaching on the highway.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Until the 19th century, Jersey's highway system were narrow and muddy tracks connecting homes and fields to the churches, mills and beaches. Around the turn of the 18th century, the number of roads are described as \"[holding] no Proportion with the Bigness [of the island]\". The sides of the road, unlike in England had \"great Bulwarks of Earth ... from 6 to 8, and sometimes 10 Foot high\". At the time there were three types of road: Les Chemins du Roi, which, including the banks, were 16 feet wide; Les Chemins de 8 pieds, which were 12 feet wide; and Les Chemins de 4 pieds, which served only carriages on horseback.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the early 19th century, the military roads were constructed (on occasion at gunpoint in the face of opposition from landowners) by the governor, General George Don, to link coastal fortifications with St. Helier harbour. These had an unexpected effect on agriculture once peace restored reliable trade links. Farmers in previously isolated valleys were able to swiftly transport crops grown in the island's microclimate to waiting ships and then on to the markets of London and Paris ahead of the competition. In conjunction with the later introduction of steamships and the development of the French and British railway systems, Jersey's agriculture was no longer as isolated as before.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Driving laws in Jersey are the United Kingdom Highway Code, supplemented by the Jersey Highway Code.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Visitors wishing to drive must possess a Certificate of Insurance or an International Green Card, a valid Driving Licence or International Driving Permit (UK International Driving Permits are not valid). Photocopies are not acceptable. A nationality plate must be displayed on the back of visiting vehicles.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It is an offence to hold a mobile phone whilst driving a moving vehicle. It is not an offence to use a hands-free system. Where fitted, all passengers inside a vehicle must wear a seat belt at all times, regardless of whether they are sitting in the front or the rear.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Drink-driving is illegal in Jersey. Police use breathalyser tests during spot checks and a person is guilty if there is over 35 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 ml breath.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The penalties for drinking and driving in Jersey are up to £2,000 fine or 6 months in prison for the first offence plus unlimited disqualification of driving licence. It is an offence to drive whilst under the influence of drugs. Since July 2014 it has also been illegal to smoke in any vehicle carrying passengers under the age of 18.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Over the years, a number of traffic calming schemes have been introduced around the island to get motorists to slow down. In 2016, a report in the JEP outlined a number of traffic calming schemes that were under consideration around the island.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Jersey has a shared electric car operator, EVie, that provides islandwide self-service electric car hire.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jersey has infrastructure dedicated to cyclists. Cycle infrastructure has been improving in the previous decade under the Sustainable Transport Policy.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The best developed cycle route is the route from St Helier to Corbière. The route consists of segregated cycle paths and shared pedestrian-cycle paths, including the St Aubin's Bay promenade and the Railway Walk. The connection from West Park to Havre des Pas was completed an upgraded after a ministerial decision in 2011. A branch of this route connects to St Peter's Village via Les Quennevais.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "There is a segregated cycle-pedestrian path along St Peter's Valley, which connects pedestrians and cyclists from the green lane network in St Mary to roads near the St Aubin's Bay Promenade cycle route. It was opened in 2016.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Jersey has a network of signposted cycle routes. There are fifteen routes in total, such as route 1, which forms a loop around the island. Most of the routes are on quieter lanes and dedicated paths, however some of these routes are on busy main road with no dedicated infrastructure.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Eastern Cycle Route network is a proposed network of cycle-safe routes in the eastern parishes of St Clement and Grouville. The first section from Gorey to La Ville-ès-Renauds in Grouville was opened in 2011.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "There is a dedicated network of Green Lanes across the island, which have a 15 mph speed limit and where priority is afforded to cyclists.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Jersey has a shared electric bike operator, EVie, that provides islandwide self-service electric bike hire.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "EVie",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Buses started running on the island in the 1920s, and by the 1930s, competition from motor buses had rendered the railways unprofitable, with final closure coming in 1935 after a fire disaster (except for the later German reintroduction of rail during the military occupation).",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Buses are operated by CT Plus Jersey, a local subsidiary of HCT Group. Bus service routes radiate from the Liberation Station in St Helier.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 2012, it was announced that CT Plus would take over the operation of the bus service, commencing on 2 January 2013, ending 10 years of Connex service in Jersey. This new service is called LibertyBus.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Public parking in Jersey is controlled by time restrictions and payment.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A single-yellow line along the side of the carriageway indicates a \"No waiting\" restriction. There are no double-yellow lines in Jersey. Parking on yellow lines is liable to a fine.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Some on-street and off-street parking is paid parking. Payments operate using either Paycards or PayByPhone and is indicated with the Paycard Symbol. Paycards are a form of voucher payment. Paycards are purchased from various stores around the island and can be used by scratching the time of arrival on the relevant number of units.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Certain car parks, such as the Waterfront, Sand Street and Ports of Jersey Car Parks use automatic number plate recognition or ticket technology with a pay upon exit system.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Some parking is free to use however is time-restricted and a Jersey parking disc must be displayed showing time of arrival.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "There are four main residents’ and business parking zones within St Helier.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "There is a single airport on the island, Jersey Airport, located in St Peter. It has one runway and one terminal building and has direct flights throughout the year to many United Kingdom and International destinations, including nine daily flights to London.",
"title": "Air transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Before the present airport opened in 1937, air transport was through seaplanes, which landed at West Park in St Helier. The first aeroplane to land in Jersey was the Sanchez Besa in August 1912. The first passenger flight was recorded as taking place 147 years earlier through air balloon.",
"title": "Air transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Historically there were public railway services in the island, provided by two railway companies:",
"title": "Rail transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The mostly coastal lines operated out of St Helier and ran across the southern part of the island, reaching Gorey Harbour in the east and la Corbière in the west. There were two stations in St Helier: St Helier (Weighbridge) (JR) and St Helier (Snow Hill) (JER).",
"title": "Rail transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "After closure, most of the infrastructure was removed and today little evidence remains of these railways. A small number of former station buildings are still standing, including St Helier Weighbridge, which is now in use as the Liberty Wharf shopping centre, and St Aubin railway station, which is used today as the Parish Hall of Saint Brélade. Part of the former Jersey Railway line from St Aubin to Corbière has been converted into a rail trail for cyclists and walkers.",
"title": "Rail transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During the German military occupation 1940–1945, light railways were re-established by the Germans for the purpose of supplying coastal fortifications. A one-metre gauge line was laid down following the route of the former Jersey Railway from Saint Helier to La Corbière, with a branch line connecting the stone quarry at Ronez in Saint John. A 60 cm line ran along the west coast, and another was laid out heading east from Saint Helier to Gorey. The first line was opened in July 1942, the ceremony being disrupted by passively resisting Jersey spectators. The German railway infrastructure was dismantled after the Liberation in 1945.",
"title": "Rail transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Two railways operate at the Pallot Heritage Steam Museum; a standard gauge heritage steam railway, and a narrow gauge pleasure line operated by steam-outline diesel motive power.",
"title": "Rail transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "An important growth for St Helier in the early 19th century was the construction of the harbour. Previously, ships coming into the town had only a small jetty at the site now called the English Harbour and the French Harbour. The Chamber of Commerce urged the States to build a new harbour, but the States refused, so the Chamber took it into their own hands and repaired and upgraded the harbour in 1790. A new breakwater was constructed to shelter the jetty and harbours. In 1814, the merchants constructed the roads now known as Commercial Buildings and Le Quai des Marchands to connect the harbours to the town and in 1832 construction was finished on the Esplanade and its sea wall. A rapid expansion in shipping led the States in 1837 to order the construction of two new piers: the Victoria and Albert Piers.",
"title": "Sea transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Saint Helier is the island's main port, others include Gorey, Saint Aubin, La Rocque, and Bonne Nuit. It is 33.6 miles (54.1 km) distant from Granville, Manche, 142.9 miles (230.0 km) from Southampton, 131.3 miles (211.3 km) from Poole, and 22.9 miles (36.9 km) from St Malo.",
"title": "Sea transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On 20 August 2013, Huelin-Renouf, which had operated a \"lift-on lift-off\" container service for 80 years between the Port of Southampton and the Port of Jersey, ceased trading. Senator Alan Maclean, a Jersey politician had previously tried to save the 90-odd jobs furnished by the company to no avail. On 20 September, it was announced that Channel Island Lines would continue this service, and would purchase the MV Huelin Dispatch from Associated British Ports who in turn had purchased them from the receiver in the bankruptcy. The new operator was to be funded by Rockayne Limited, a closely held association of Jersey businesspeople. Channel Island Lines closed in 2020.",
"title": "Sea transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Passenger-only access to France is provided by Manche-Iles Express ferry service, to either Barneville-Carteret, Granville or Dielette.",
"title": "Sea transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "A service to St Malo was provided by Compagnie Corsaire, but is now operated by its sister service, Condor Ferries, which runs MV Commodore Goodwill, a large ro-ro vessel to Portsmouth, and has multiple ro-ro connections to Poole and St Malo.",
"title": "Sea transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Jersey on SABRE Road Wiki",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Transport in Jersey is primarily through the motor vehicle. The island, which is the largest of the Channel Islands has 124,737 registered vehicles (2016). The island is committed to combatting climate change, having declared a climate emergency, and policy is focused on reducing dependence on the car. The island has a cycle network and bus service. The primary modes of transport for leaving the island are by air or sea. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-10-25T15:31:22Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Jersey |
15,704 | Johnston Atoll | Johnston Atoll is an unincorporated territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). It is a National Wildlife Refuge and part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. It is closed to public entry, and limited access for management needs is only granted by letter of authorization from the United States Air Force and a special use permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
For nearly 70 years, the isolated atoll was under the control of the U.S. military. During that time, it was variously used as a naval refueling depot, an airbase, a testing site for nuclear and biological weapons, a secret missile base, and a site for the storage and disposal of chemical weapons and Agent Orange. Those activities left the area environmentally contaminated, and monitoring continues.
The island is home to thriving communities of nesting seabirds and has significant marine biodiversity. USFWS teams carry out environmental monitoring and maintenance to protect the native wildlife.
Johnston Atoll is a 1,300-hectare (3,200-acre) atoll in the North Pacific Ocean, located about 750 nautical miles (1,390 km; 860 mi) southwest of the island of Hawaiʻi, and is grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The atoll, which is located on a coral reef platform, has four islands. Johnston Island and Sand Island are both enlarged natural features, while Akau (North) and Hikina (East) are two artificial islands formed by coral dredging. By 1964, dredge and fill operations had increased the size of Johnston Island to 596 acres (241 ha) from its original 46 acres (19 ha), increased the size of Sand Island from 10 to 22 acres (4.0 to 8.9 ha), and added the two new islands, North and East, of 25 and 18 acres (10.1 and 7.3 ha) respectively.
The four islands compose a total land area of 2.67 square kilometers (1.03 square miles). Due to the atoll's tilt, much of the reef on the southeast portion has subsided. But even though it does not have an encircling reef crest, the reef crest on the northwest portion of the atoll does provide for a shallow lagoon, with depths ranging from 3 to 10 m (10 to 33 ft).
The climate is tropical but generally dry. Northeast trade winds are consistent and there is little seasonal temperature variation. With elevation ranging from sea level to 5 m (16 ft) at Summit Peak, the islands contain some low-growing vegetation and palm trees on mostly flat terrain, and no natural fresh water resources.
It is a dry atoll with less than 20 inches (510 mm) of annual rainfall.
About 300 species of fish have been recorded from the reefs and inshore waters of the atoll. It is also visited by green turtles and Hawaiian monk seals. The possibility of humpback whales using the waters as a breeding ground has been suggested, albeit in small numbers and with irregular occurrences so far. Many other cetaceans possibly migrate through the area, including Cuvier's beaked whales.
Seabird species recorded as breeding on the atoll include Bulwer's petrel, wedge-tailed shearwater, Christmas shearwater, white-tailed tropicbird, red-tailed tropicbird, brown booby, red-footed booby, masked booby, great frigatebird, spectacled tern, sooty tern, brown noddy, black noddy, and white tern. It is the world's largest colony of red-tailed tropicbirds, with 10,800 nests in 2020. It is visited by migratory shorebirds, including the Pacific golden plover, wandering tattler, bristle-thighed curlew, ruddy turnstone and sanderling. The island, with its surrounding marine waters, has been recognised as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International for its seabird colonies.
The first list of plants catalogued on Johnston Atoll was published in Vascular Plants of Johnston and Wake Islands (1931), based on collections from the Tanager Expedition (1923). Three species were described: Lepturus repens, Boerhavia diffusa, and Tribulus cistoides. In the 1930s, when the island was used for aviation activities for the war, Pluchea odorata was introduced from Honolulu.
The first Western record of the atoll was on September 2, 1796, when the Boston-based American brig Sally accidentally grounded on a shoal near the islands. The ship's captain, Joseph Pierpont, published his experience in several American newspapers the following year giving an accurate position of Johnston and Sand Island along with part of the reef, but did not name or lay claim to the area. The islands were not officially named until Captain Charles J. Johnston of the Royal Naval ship HMS Cornwallis sighted them on December 14, 1807. The ship's journal recorded: "on the 14th [December 1808] made a new discovery, viz. two very low islands, in lat. 16° 52′ N. long. 190° 26′ E., having a dangerous reef to the east of them, and the whole not exceeding four miles in extent".
In 1856, the United States enacted the Guano Islands Act, which allowed citizens of the United States to take possession of islands containing guano deposits. Under this act, William Parker and R. F. Ryan chartered the schooner Palestine specifically to find Johnston Atoll. They located guano on the atoll in March 1858 and proceeded to claim the island as U.S. territory. In June of the same year, S. C. Allen, sailing on the Kalama under a commission from King Kamehameha IV of Hawaiʻi, landed on Johnston Atoll, removed the American flag, and claimed the atoll for the Kingdom of Hawaii. Allen named the atoll "Kalama" and the nearby smaller island "Cornwallis."
Returning on July 27, 1858, the captain of the Palestine again hoisted the American flag and tried to acquire the island in the name of the United States. The same day, the "derelict and abandoned" atoll was declared part of the domain of Kamehameha IV. On its July visit, however, the Palestine left two crew members on the island to gather phosphate. Later that year, Kamehameha revoked the lease granted to Allen when he learned the atoll had been claimed previously by the United States. However, this did not prevent the Hawaiian Territory from making use of the atoll or asserting ownership.
By 1890, the atoll's guano deposits had been almost entirely depleted (mined out) by U.S. interests operating under the Guano Islands Act. In 1892, HMS Champion made a survey and map of the island, hoping that it might be suitable as a telegraph cable station. On January 16, 1893, the Hawaiian Legation at London reported a diplomatic conference over this temporary occupation of the island. However, the Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown on January 17, 1893. When Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1898, during the Spanish–American War, the name of Johnston Island was omitted from the list of Hawaiian Islands. On September 11, 1909, Johnston was leased by the Territory of Hawaii to a private citizen for fifteen years. A board shed was built on the southeast side of the larger island, and a small tramline run up onto the slope of the low hill, to facilitate the removal of guano. Apparently neither the quantity nor the quality of the guano was sufficient to pay for gathering it, so that the project was soon abandoned.
The Tanager Expedition was a joint expedition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Bishop Museum of Hawaii, which visited the Atoll in 1923. The expedition to the atoll consisted of two teams accompanied by destroyer convoys, with the first departing Honolulu on July 7, 1923, aboard the USS Whippoorwill, which conducted the first survey of Johnston Island in the 20th century. Aerial survey and mapping flights over Johnston were conducted with a Douglas DT-2 floatplane carried on her fantail, which was hoisted into the water for takeoff. From July 10–22, 1923, the atoll was recorded in a pioneering aerial photography project. The USS Tanager left Honolulu on July 16 and joined up with the Whippoorwill to complete the survey and then traveled to Wake Island to complete surveys there. Tents were pitched on the southwest beach of fine white sand, and a rather thorough biological survey was made of the island. Hundreds of sea birds, of a dozen kinds, were the principal inhabitants, together with lizards, insects, and hermit crabs. The reefs and shallow water abounded with fish and other marine life.
On June 29, 1926, by Executive Order 4467, President Calvin Coolidge established Johnston Island Reservation as a federal bird refuge and placed it under the control of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as a "refuge and breeding ground for native birds." Johnston Atoll was added to the United States National Wildlife Refuge system in 1926, and renamed the Johnston Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1940. The Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge was established to protect the tropical ecosystem and the wildlife that it harbors. However, the Department of Agriculture had no ships, and the United States Navy was interested in the atoll for strategic reasons, so with Executive Order 6935 on December 29, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt placed the islands under the "control and jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Navy for administrative purposes", but subject to use as a refuge and breeding ground for native birds, under the United States Department of the Interior.
On February 14, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8682 to create naval defense areas in the central Pacific territories. The proclamation established "Johnston Island Naval Defensive Sea Area" which encompassed the territorial waters between the extreme high-water marks and the three-mile marine boundaries surrounding the atoll. "Johnston Island Naval Airspace Reservation" was also established to restrict access to the airspace over the naval defense sea area. Only U.S. government ships and aircraft were permitted to enter the naval defense areas at Johnston unless authorized by the Secretary of the Navy.
In 1990, two full-time U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel, a Refuge Manager and a biologist, were stationed on Johnston Atoll to handle the increase in biological, contaminant, and resource conflict activities.
After the military mission on the island ended in 2004, the Atoll was administered by the Pacific Remote Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. The outer islets and water rights were managed cooperatively by the Fish and Wildlife Service, with some of the actual Johnston Island land mass remaining under control of the United States Air Force (USAF) for environmental remediation and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for plutonium cleanup purposes. However, on January 6, 2009, under authority of section 2 of the Antiquities Act, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was established by President George W. Bush to administer and protect Johnston Island along with six other Pacific islands. The national monument includes Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge within its boundaries and contains 696 acres (2.82 km) of land and over 800,000 acres (3,200 km) of water area. The Administration of President Barack Obama in 2014 extended the protected area to encompass the entire Exclusive Economic Zone, by banning all commercial fishing activities. Under a 2017 review of all national monuments extended since 1996, then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke recommended to permit fishing outside the 12-mile limit.
On December 29, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt with Executive Order 6935 transferred control of Johnston Atoll to the United States Navy under the 14th Naval District, Pearl Harbor, in order to establish an air station, and also to the Department of the Interior to administer the bird refuge. In 1948, the USAF assumed control of the Atoll.
During the Operation Hardtack nuclear test series from April 22 to August 19, 1958, administration of Johnston Atoll was assigned to the Commander of Joint Task Force 7. After the tests were completed, the island reverted to the command of the US Air Force.
From 1963 to 1970, the Navy's Joint Task force 8 and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) held joint operational control of the island during high-altitude nuclear testing operations.
In 1970, operational control was handed back to the Air Force until July 1973, when Defense Special Weapons Agency was given host-management responsibility by the Secretary of Defense. Over the years, sequential descendant organizations have been the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) from 1959 to 1971, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) from 1971 to 1996, and the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA) from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, Defense Special Weapons Agency, and selected elements of the Office of Secretary of Defense were combined to form the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). In 1999, host-management responsibility transferred from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency once again to the Air Force until the Air Force mission ended in 2004 and the base was closed.
In 1935, personnel from the US Navy's Patrol Wing Two carried out some minor construction to develop the atoll for seaplane operation. In 1936, the Navy began the first of many changes to enlarge the atoll's land area. They erected some buildings and a boat landing on Sand Island and blasted coral to clear a 3,600 feet (1,100 m) seaplane landing. Several seaplanes made flights from Hawaii to Johnston, such as that of a squadron of six aircraft in November, 1935.
In November 1939, further work was commenced on Sand Island by civilian contractors to allow the operation of one squadron of patrol planes with tender support. Part of the lagoon was dredged and the excavated material was used to make a parking area connected by a 2,000-foot (610 m) causeway to Sand Island. Three seaplane landings were cleared, one 11,000 feet (3,400 m) by 1,000 feet (300 m) and two cross-landings each 7,000 feet (2,100 m) by 800 feet (240 m) and dredged to a depth of 8 feet (2.4 m). Sand Island had barracks built for 400 men, a mess hall, underground hospital, radio station, water tanks and a 100 feet (30 m) steel control tower. In December 1943 an additional 10 acres (4.0 hectares) of parking was added to the seaplane base.
On May 26, 1942, a United States Navy Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina wrecked at Johnston Atoll. The Catalina pilot made a normal power landing and immediately applied throttle for take-off. At a speed of about 50 knots the plane swerved to the left and then continued into a violent waterloop. The hull of the plane was broken open and the Catalina sank immediately.
After the war on March 27, 1949, a PBY-6A Catalina had to make a forced landing during flight from Kwajalein to Johnston Island. The plane was damaged beyond repair and the crew of 11 was rescued nine hours later by a Navy ship which sank the plane using gunfire.
During 1958, a proposed support agreement for Navy Seaplane operations at Johnston Island was under discussion though it was never completed because a requirement for the operation failed to materialize.
By September 1941, construction of an airfield on Johnston Island commenced. A 4,000-foot (1,200 m) by 500-foot (150 m) runway was built together with two 400-man barracks, two mess halls, a cold-storage building, an underground hospital, a fresh-water plant, shop buildings, and fuel storage. The runway was complete by December 7, 1941, though in December 1943 the 99th Naval Construction Battalion arrived at the atoll and proceeded to lengthen the runway to 6,000 feet (1,800 m). The runway was subsequently lengthened and improved as the island was enlarged.
During World War II Johnston Atoll was used as a refueling base for submarines, and also as an aircraft refueling stop for American bombers transiting the Pacific Ocean, including the Boeing B-29 Enola Gay. By 1944, the atoll was one of the busiest air transport terminals in the Pacific. Air Transport Command aeromedical evacuation planes stopped at Johnston en route to Hawaii. Following V-J Day on August 14, 1945, Johnston Atoll saw the flow of men and aircraft that had been coming from the mainland into the Pacific turn around. By 1947, over 1,300 B-29 and B-24 bombers had passed through the Marianas, Kwajalein, Johnston Island, and Oahu en route to Mather Field and civilian life.
Following World War II, Johnston Atoll Airport was used commercially by Continental Air Micronesia, touching down between Honolulu and Majuro. When aircraft landed, soldiers surrounded the aircraft and passengers were not allowed to leave the aircraft. Aloha Airlines also made weekly scheduled flights to the island carrying civilian and military personnel. In the 1990s there were flights almost daily, and some days saw up to three arrivals. Just before movement of the chemical munitions to Johnston Atoll, the Surgeon General, Public Health Service, reviewed the shipment and the Johnston Atoll storage plans. His recommendations caused the Secretary of Defense in December 1970 to issue instructions suspending missile launches and all non-essential aircraft flights. As a result, Air Micronesia service was immediately discontinued, and missile firings were terminated with the exception of two 1975 satellite launches deemed critical to the island's mission.
There were many times when the runway was needed for emergency landings for both civil and military aircraft. When the runway was decommissioned, it could no longer be used as a potential emergency landing place when planning flight routes across the Pacific Ocean. As of 2003, the airfield at Johnston Atoll consisted of an unmaintained closed single 9,000 feet (2,700 m) asphalt/concrete runway 5/23, a parallel taxiway, and a large paved ramp along the southeast side of the runway.
In February 1941 Johnston Atoll was designated as a Naval Defensive Sea Area and Airspace Reservation. On the day the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, USS Indianapolis was out of her home port of Pearl Harbor, to make a simulated bombardment at Johnston Island. Japan's strike at Pearl Harbor occurred as the ship was unloading marines, civilians and stores on the atoll. On December 15, 1941, the atoll was shelled outside the reef by a Japanese submarine, which had been part of the attack on Pearl Harbor eight days earlier. Several buildings including the power station were hit, but no personnel were injured. Additional Japanese shelling occurred on December 22 and 23, 1941. On all occasions, Johnston Atoll's coastal artillery guns returned fire, driving off the sub.
In July 1942, the civilian contractors at the atoll were replaced by 500 men from the 5th and 10th Naval Construction Battalions, who expanded the fuel storage and water production at the base and built additional facilities. The 5th Battalion departed in January 1943. In December 1943 the 99th Naval Construction Battalion arrived at the atoll and proceeded to lengthen the runway to 6,000 feet (1,800 m) and add an additional 10 acres (4.0 ha) of parking to the seaplane base.
On January 25, 1957, the Department of Treasury was granted a 5-year permit for the United States Coast Guard (USCG) to operate and maintain a Long Range Aid to Navigation (LORAN) transmitting station on Johnston Atoll. Two years later in December 1959, the Secretary of Defense approved the Secretary of the Treasury's request to use Sand Island for U.S. Coast Guard LORAN A and C station sites. The USCG was granted permission to install a LORAN A and C station on Sand Island to be staffed by U.S. Coast Guard personnel through June 30, 1992. The permit for a LORAN station to operate on Johnston Island was terminated in 1962. On November 1, 1957, a new United States Coast Guard LORAN-A station was commissioned. By 1958, the Coast Guard LORAN Station at Johnston Island began transmitting on a 24-hour basis, thus establishing a new LORAN rate in the Central Pacific. The new rate between Johnston Island and French Frigate Shoals gave a higher order of accuracy for fixing positions in the steamship lanes from Oahu, Hawaii, to Midway Island. In the past, this was impossible in some areas along this important shipping route. The original U.S. Coast Guard LORAN-A Station on Johnston Island ceased operations on June 30, 1961, when the new station on nearby Sand Island began transmitting using a larger 180 foot antenna.
The LORAN-C station was disestablished on July 1, 1992, and all Coast Guard personnel, electronic equipment and property departed that month. Buildings on Sand Island were transferred to other activities. LORAN whip antennas on Johnston and Sand Islands were removed, and the 625-foot LORAN tower and antenna were demolished on December 3, 1992. The LORAN A and C station and buildings on Sand Island were then dismantled and removed.
Between 1958 and 1975, Johnston Atoll was used as an American national nuclear test site for atmospheric and extremely high-altitude nuclear explosions in outer space. In 1958, Johnston Atoll was the location of the two "Hardtack I" nuclear tests firings. One conducted August 1, 1958, was codenamed "Hardtack Teak" and one conducted August 12, 1958, was codenamed "Orange." Both tests detonated 3.8-megaton hydrogen bombs launched to high altitudes by rockets from Johnston Atoll.
Johnston Island was also used as the launch site of 124 sounding rockets going up as high as 1,158 kilometers (720 miles). These carried scientific instruments and telemetry equipment, either in support of the nuclear bomb tests, or in experimental antisatellite technology.
Eight PGM-17 Thor missiles deployed by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) were launched from Johnston Island in 1962 as part of "Operation Fishbowl," a part of "Operation Dominic" nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific. The first launch in "Operation Fishbowl" was a successful research and development launch with no warhead. In the end, "Operation Fishbowl" produced four successful high-altitude detonations: "Starfish Prime," "Checkmate," "Bluegill Triple Prime," and "Kingfish." In addition, it produced one atmospheric nuclear explosion, "Tightrope."
On July 9, 1962, "Starfish Prime" had a 1.4-megaton explosion, using a W49 warhead at an altitude of about 400 kilometers (250 miles). It created a very brief fireball visible over a wide area, plus bright artificial auroras visible in Hawaii for several minutes. "Starfish Prime" also produced an electromagnetic pulse that disrupted some electric power and communication systems in Hawaii. It pumped enough radiation into the Van Allen belts to destroy or damage seven satellites in orbit.
The final Fishbowl launch that used a Thor missile carried the "Kingfish" 400-kiloton warhead up to its 98-kilometer (61 mi) detonation altitude. Although it was officially one of the Operation Fishbowl tests, it is sometimes not listed among high-altitude nuclear tests because of its lower detonation altitude. "Tightrope" was the final test of Operation Fishbowl and detonated on November 3, 1962. It launched on a nuclear-armed Nike-Hercules missile and was detonated at a lower altitude than the other tests:
"At Johnston Island, there was an intense white flash. Even with high-density goggles, the burst was too bright to view, even for a few seconds. A distinct thermal pulse was felt on bare skin. A yellow-orange disc was formed, and transformed itself into a purple doughnut. A glowing purple cloud was faintly visible for a few minutes." The nuclear yield was reported in most official documents as "less than 20 kilotons." One report by the U.S. government reported the yield of the "Tightrope" test as 10 kilotons. Seven sounding rockets were launched from Johnston Island in support of the Tightrope test, and this was the final American nuclear atmospheric test.
The "Fishbowl" series included four failures, all of which were deliberately disrupted by range safety officers when the missiles' systems failed during launch and were aborted. The second launch of the Fishbowl series, "Bluegill", carried an active warhead. Bluegill was "lost" by a defective range safety tracking radar and had to be destroyed 10 minutes after liftoff even though it probably ascended successfully. The subsequent nuclear weapon launch failures from Johnston Atoll caused serious contamination to the island and surrounding areas with weapons-grade plutonium and americium that remains an issue to this day.
The failure of the "Bluegill" launch created in effect a dirty bomb but did not release the nuclear warhead's plutonium debris onto Johnston Atoll as the missile fell into the ocean south of the island and was not recovered. However, the "Starfish", "Bluegill Prime", and "Bluegill Double Prime" test launch failures in 1962 scattered radioactive debris over Johnston Island contaminating it, the lagoon, and Sand Island with plutonium for decades.
"Starfish", a high altitude Thor launched nuclear test scheduled for June 20, 1962, was the first to contaminate the atoll. The rocket with the 1.45-megaton Starfish device (W49 warhead and the MK-4 re-entry vehicle) on its nose was launched that evening, but the Thor missile engine cut out only 59 seconds after launch. The range safety officer sent a destruct signal 65 seconds after launch, and the missile was destroyed at approximately 10.6 kilometers (6.6 miles) altitude. The warhead high explosive detonated in 1-point safe fashion, destroying the warhead without producing nuclear yield. Large pieces of the plutonium contaminated missile, including pieces of the warhead, booster rocket, engine, re-entry vehicle and missile parts, fell back on Johnston Island. More wreckage along with plutonium contamination was found on nearby Sand Island.
"Bluegill Prime," the second attempt to launch the payload which failed last time was scheduled for 23:15 (local) on July 25, 1962. It too was a genuine disaster and caused the most serious plutonium contamination on the island. The Thor missile was carrying one pod, two re-entry vehicles and the W50 nuclear warhead. The missile engine malfunctioned immediately after ignition, and the range safety officer fired the destruct system while the missile was still on the launch pad. The Johnston Island launch complex was demolished in the subsequent explosions and fire which burned through the night. The launch emplacement and portions of the island were contaminated with radioactive plutonium spread by the explosion, fire and wind-blown smoke.
Afterward, the Johnston Island launch complex was heavily damaged and contaminated with plutonium. Missile launches and nuclear testing halted until the radioactive debris was dumped and soils were recovered and the launch emplacement rebuilt. Three months of repairs, decontamination, and rebuilding the LE1 as well as the backup pad LE2 were necessary before tests could resume. In an effort to continue with the testing program, U.S. troops were sent in to do a rapid cleanup. The troops scrubbed down the revetments and launch pad, carted away debris and removed the top layer of coral around the contaminated launch pad. The plutonium-contaminated rubbish was dumped in the lagoon, polluting the surrounding marine environment. More than 550 drums of contaminated material were dumped in the ocean off Johnston from 1964 to 1965. At the time of the Bluegill Prime disaster, the top fill around the launch pad was scraped by a bulldozer and grader. It was then dumped into the lagoon to make a ramp, so the rest of the debris could be loaded onto landing craft to be dumped out into the ocean. An estimated 10 percent of the plutonium from the test device was in the fill used to make the ramp. Then the ramp was covered and placed into a 25 acres (100,000 m) landfill on the island during 1962 dredging to extend the island. The lagoon was again dredged in 1963–1964 and used to expand Johnston Island from 220 acres (89 ha) to 625 acres (253 ha) recontaminating additional portions of the island.
On October 15, 1962, the "Bluegill Double Prime" test also misfired. During the test, the rocket was destroyed at a height of 109,000 feet after it malfunctioned 90 seconds into the flight. U.S. Defense Department officials confirm that when the rocket was destroyed, it contributed to the radioactive pollution on the island.
In 1963, the U.S. Senate ratified the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which contained a provision known as "Safeguard C". Safeguard C was the basis for maintaining Johnston Atoll as a "ready to test" above-ground nuclear testing site should atmospheric nuclear testing ever be deemed to be necessary again. In 1993, Congress appropriated no funds for the Johnston Atoll "Safeguard C" mission, bringing it to an end.
Program 437 turned the PGM-17 Thor into an operational anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon system, a capability that was kept top secret even after it was deployed. The Program 437 mission was approved for development by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on November 20, 1962, and based at the Atoll. Program 437 used modified Thor missiles that had been returned from deployment in Great Britain and was the second deployed U.S. operational nuclear anti-satellite operation. Eighteen more suborbital Thor launches took place from Johnston Island during the 1964–1975 period in support of Program 437. In 1965–1966 four Program 437 Thors were launched with 'Alternate Payloads' for satellite inspection. This was evidently an elaboration of the system to allow visual verification of the target before destroying it. These flights may have been related to the late 1960s Program 922, a non-nuclear version of Thor with infrared homing and a high-explosive warhead. Thors were kept positioned and active near the two Johnston Island launch pads after 1964. However, partly because of the Vietnam War, in October 1970 the Department of Defense had transferred Program 437 to standby status as an economic measure. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks led to Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that prohibited 'interference with national means of verification', which meant that ASAT's were not allowed, by treaty, to attack Soviet spy satellites. Thors were removed from Johnston Atoll and were stored in mothballed war-reserve condition at Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1970 until the anti-satellite mission of Johnston Island facilities was ceased on August 10, 1974, and the program was officially discontinued on April 1, 1975, when any possibility of restoring the ASAT program was finally terminated. Eighteen Thor launches in support of the Program 437 Alternate Payload (AP) mission took place from Johnston Atoll's Launch emplacements.
The Space Detection and Tracking System or SPADATS was operated by North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) along with the U.S. Air Force Spacetrack system, The Navy Space Surveillance System and Canadian Forces Air Defense Command Satellite Tracking Unit. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory also operated a dozen 3.5 ton Baker-Nunn Camera systems (none at Johnston) for cataloging of man-made satellites. The U.S. Air Force had ten Baker-Nunn camera stations around the world mostly from 1960 to 1977 with a phase-out beginning in 1964.
The Baker-Nunn space camera station was constructed on Sand Island and was functioning by 1965. USAF 18th Surveillance Squadron operated the Baker-Nunn camera at a station built along the causeway on Sand Island until 1975 when a contract to operate the four remaining Air Force stations was awarded to Bendix Field Engineering Corporation. In about 1977, the camera at Sand Island was moved to Daegu, South Korea. Baker-Nunn were rendered obsolete with the Initial Operational Capability of 3 GEODSS optical tracking sites at Daegu, Korea; Mount Haleakala, Maui and White Sands Missile Range. A fourth site was operational in 1985 at Diego Garcia and a proposed fifth site in Portugal was cancelled. The Daegu, Korea site was closed due to encroaching city lights. GEODSS tracked satellites at night, though the MIT Lincoln Laboratory test site, co-located with Site 1 at White Sands did track asteroids in daytime as proof of concept in the early 1980s.
Satellite and Missile Observation System Project (SAMOS-E) or "E-6" was a relatively short-lived series of United States visual reconnaissance satellites in the early 1960s. SAMOS was also known by the unclassified terms Program 101 and Program 201. The Air Force program was used as a cover for the initial development of the Central Intelligence Agency's Key Hole (including Corona and Gambit) reconnaissance satellites systems. Imaging was performed with film cameras and television surveillance from polar low Earth orbits with film canisters returning via capsule and parachute with mid-air retrieval. SAMOS was first launched in 1960, but not operational until 1963 with all of the missions being launched from Vandenberg AFB.
During the early months of the SAMOS program it was essential not only to hide the Corona and GAMBIT technical efforts under a screen of SAMOS activity, but also to make the orbital vehicle portions of the two systems resemble one another in outward appearance. Thus, some of the configuration details of SAMOS were decided less by engineering logic than by the need to camouflage GAMBIT and thus, in theory, a GAMBIT could be launched without alerting many people to its real nature. Problems relative to tracking networks, communications, and recovery were resolved with the decision in late February 1961 to use Johnston Island as the film capsule descent and recovery zone for the program. On July 10, 1961, work was initiated on four buildings of the Johnston Island Recovery Operations Center for the National Reconnaissance Office. Men from the Johnston Atoll facility would recover the parachuting film canister capsules with a radar equipped JC-130 aircraft by capturing them in the air with a specialized recovery apparatus. The recovery center was also responsible for collecting the radioactive scientific data pods dropped from missiles following launch and nuclear detonation.
The atoll was subject to large-scale bioweapons testing over four years starting in 1965. The American strategic tests of bioweapons were as expensive and elaborate as the tests of the first hydrogen bombs at Eniwetok Atoll. They involved enough ships to have made the world's fifth-largest independent navy. One experiment involved a number of barges loaded with hundreds of rhesus monkeys. It is estimated that one jet with bioweapon spray "would probably be more efficient at causing human deaths than a ten-megaton hydrogen bomb."
In the lead up to biological warfare testing in the Pacific under Project 112 and Project SHAD, a new virus was discovered during the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program by teams from the Smithsonian's Division of Birds aboard a United States Army tugboat involved in the program. Initially, the name of that effort was to be called the Pacific Ornithological Observation Project but this was changed for obvious reasons. First isolated in 1964 the tick-borne virus was discovered in Ornithodoros capensis ticks, found in a nest of common noddy (Anous stolidus) at Sand Island, Johnston Atoll. It was designated Johnston Atoll Virus and is related to influenza.
In February, March, and April 1965 Johnston Atoll was used to launch biological attacks against U.S. Army and Navy vessels 100 miles (160 km) south-west of Johnston island in vulnerability, defense and decontamination tests conducted by the Deseret Test Center during Project SHAD under Project 112. Test DTC 64-4 (Deseret Test Center) was originally called "RED BEVA" (Biological EVAluation) though the name was later changed to "Shady Grove", likely for operational security reasons. The biological agents released during this test included Francisella tularensis (formerly called Pasteurella tularensis) (Agent UL), the causative agent of tularemia; Coxiella burnetii (Agent OU), causative agent of Q fever; and Bacillus globigii (Agent BG). During Project SHAD, Bacillus globigii was used to simulate biological warfare agents (such as anthrax), because it was then considered a contaminant with little health consequence to humans; however, it is now considered a human pathogen. Ships equipped with the E-2 multi-head disseminator and A-4C aircraft equipped with Aero 14B spray tanks released live pathogenic agents in nine aerial and four surface trials in phase B of the test series from February 12 to March 15, 1965, and in four aerial trials in phase D of the test series from March 22 to April 3, 1965.
According to Project SHAD veteran Jack Alderson who commanded the Army tugs, area three at Johnston Atoll was located at the most downwind part of the island and consisted of an collapsible Nissen hut to be used for weapons preparation and some communications.
In 1970, Congress redefined the island's military mission as the storage and destruction of chemical weapons. The United States Army leased 41 acres (17 ha) on the Atoll to store chemical weapons held in Okinawa, Japan. Johnston Atoll became a chemical weapons storage site in 1971 holding about 6.6 percent of the U.S. military chemical weapon arsenal. The chemical weapons were brought from Okinawa under Operation Red Hat with the re-deployment of the 267th Chemical Company and consisted of rockets, mines, artillery projectiles, and bulk 1-ton containers filled with Sarin, Agent VX, vomiting agent, and blister agent such as mustard gas. Chemical weapons from West Germany and World War II era weapons from the Solomon Islands were also stored on the island after 1990. Chemical agents were stored in the high security Red Hat Storage Area (RHSA) which included hardened igloos in the weapon storage area, the Red Hat building (#850), two Red Hat hazardous waste warehouses (#851 and #852), an open storage area, and security entrances and guard towers.
Some of the other weapons stored at the site were shipped from U.S. stockpiles in West Germany in 1990. These shipments followed a 1986 agreement between the U.S. and West Germany to move the munitions. Merchant ships carrying the munitions left West Germany under Operation Golden Python and Operation Steel Box in October 1990 and arrived at Johnston Island November 6, 1990. Although the ships were unloaded within nine days, the unpacking and storing of munitions continued into 1991. The remainder of the chemical weapons was a small number of World War II era weapons shipped from the Solomon Islands.
Agent Orange was brought to Johnston Atoll from South Vietnam and Gulfport, Mississippi in 1972 under Operation Pacer IVY. It was stored on the northwest corner of the island known as the Herbicide Orange Storage site, dubbed the "Agent Orange Yard". The Agent Orange was eventually destroyed during Operation Pacer HO on the Dutch incineration ship MT Vulcanus in the Summer of 1977. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that 1,800,000 gallons of Herbicide Orange were stored at Johnston Atoll, and that an additional 480,000 gallons stored at Gulfport, Mississippi, was brought to Johnston Atoll for destruction. Leaking barrels during storage, and spills during re-drumming operations, contaminated both the storage area and the lagoon with herbicide residue and its toxic contaminant 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin.
The Army's Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) was the first full-scale chemical weapons disposal facility. Built to incinerate chemical munitions on the island, planning started in 1981, construction began in 1985, and it was completed five years later. Following completion of construction and facility characterization, JACADS began operational verification testing (OVT) in June 1990. From 1990 until 1993, the Army conducted four planned periods of Operational Verification Testing (OVT), required by Public Law 100–456. OVT was completed in March 1993, having demonstrated that the reverse assembly incineration technology was effective, and that JACADS operations met all environmental parameters. Transition to full-scale operations started in May 1993, but the facility did not begin full-scale operations until August 1993.
All of the chemical weapons once stored on Johnston Island were demilitarized, and the agents incinerated at JACADS, with the process completed in year 2000. Later, the destruction of legacy hazardous waste material associated with chemical weapon storage and cleanup was completed. JACADS was demolished by 2003, and the island was stripped of its remaining infrastructure and environmentally remediated.
In 2003, structures and facilities, including those used in JACADS, were removed, and the runway was marked closed. The last flight out for official personnel was June 15, 2004. After this date, the base was completely deserted, with the only structures left standing being the Joint Operations Center (JOC) building at the east end of the runway, chemical bunkers in the weapon storage area, and at least one Quonset hut.
Built in 1964, the JOC is a four-floor concrete and steel administration building for the island that has no windows and was built to withstand a category IV tropical cyclone as well as atmospheric nuclear tests. The building remains standing but was gutted entirely in 2004, during an asbestos abatement project. All doors of the JOC except one have been welded shut. The ground floor has a side building attached which served as a facility for decontamination that contained three long snaking corridors and 55 shower heads one could walk through during decontamination.
Rows of bunkers in the Red Hat Storage Area remain intact; however, an agreement was established between the U.S. Army and EPA Region IX on August 21, 2003, that the Munitions Demilitarization Building (MDB) at JACADS would be demolished and the bunkers in the RHSA used for disposal of construction rubble and debris. After placement of the debris inside the bunkers, they were secured and the entries blocked with a concrete block barrier (a.k.a. King Tut Block) to prevent access to the bunker interior.
Over the years, leaks of Agent Orange as well as chemical weapon leaks in the weapon storage area occurred where caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide were used to mitigate toxic agents during cleanup. Larger spills of nerve and mustard agent within the MCD at JACADS also took place. Small releases of chemical weapon components from JACADS were cited by the EPA. Multiple studies of the Johnston Atoll environment and ecology have been conducted and the atoll is likely the most studied island in the Pacific.
Studies at the atoll on the effect of PCB contamination in reef damselfish (Abudefduf sordidus) demonstrated that embryonic abnormalities could be used as a metric for comparing contaminated and uncontaminated areas. Some PCB contamination in the lagoon was traced to Coast Guard disposal practices of PCB-laden electrical transformers.
In 1962, plutonium pollution following three failed nuclear missile launches was heaviest near the destroyed launch emplacement, in the lagoon offshore of the launch pad, and near Sand Island. The contaminated launch site was stripped, the debris gathered and buried in the island's 1962 expansion. A comprehensive radiological survey was completed in 1980 to record transuranic contamination remaining from the 1962 THOR missile aborts. The Air Force also initiated research on methods to remove dioxin contamination from soil resulting from leakage of the stored herbicide Agent Orange. Since then, U.S. defense authorities have surveyed the island in a series of studies.
Contaminated structures were dismantled and isolated within the former Thor Launch Emplacement No. 1 (LE-1) as a start for the cleanup program. About 45,000 tons of soil contaminated with radioactive isotopes was collected and placed into a fenced area covering 24 acres (9.7 ha) on the north of the island. The area was known as the Radiological Control Area, and heavily contaminated with highly radioactive Plutonium. The Pluto Yard is on the site of the LE1 where the 1962 missile explosion occurred and also where a highly contaminated loading ramp was buried that was made for loading plutonium contaminated debris onto small boats that was dumped at sea. Remediation included a plutonium "mining" operation called the Johnston Atoll Plutonium Contaminated Soil Cleanup Project. The collected radioactive soil and other debris was buried in a landfill created within the former LE-1 area from June 2002 through November 11, 2002. Remediation at the Radiation Control Area included the construction of a 61-centimeter-thick cap of coral sealing the landfill. Permanent markers were placed at each corner of the landfill to identify the landfill area.
The atoll was placed up for auction via the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) in 2005 before it was withdrawn. The stripped Johnston Island was briefly offered for sale with several deed restrictions in 2005 as a "residence or vacation getaway," with potential usage for "eco-tourism" by the GSA's Office of Real Property Utilization and Disposal. The proposed sale included the unique postal zip code 96558, formerly assigned to the Armed Forces in the Pacific. The proposed sale did not include running water, electricity, or activation of the closed runway. The details of the offering were outlined on GSA's website and in a newsletter of the Center for Land Use Interpretation as unusual real estate listing # 6384, Johnston Island.
On August 22, 2006, Johnston Island was struck by Hurricane Ioke. The eastern eye-wall passed directly over the atoll, with winds exceeding 100 mph (160 km/h). Twelve people were on the island when the hurricane struck, part of a crew sent to the island to deliver a USAF contractor who sampled groundwater contamination levels. All 12 survived and one wrote a first hand account of taking shelter from the storm in the JOC building.
On December 9, 2007, the United States Coast Guard swept the runway at Johnston Island of debris and used the runway in the removal and rescue of an ill Taiwanese fisherman to Oahu, Hawaii. The fisherman was transferred from the Taiwanese fishing vessel Sheng Yi Tsai No. 166 to the Coast Guard buoy tender Kukui on December 6, 2007. The fisherman was transported to the island, and then picked up by a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules rescue plane from Kodiak, Alaska.
Since the base was closed, the atoll has been visited by many vessels crossing the Pacific, as the deserted atoll has a strong lure due to the activities once performed there. Visitors have blogged about stopping there during a trip, or have posted photos of their visits.
In 2010, a Fish and Wildlife survey team identified a swarm of Anoplolepis ants that had invaded the Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. The crazy ants threatened vital seabird colonies, and needed to be eradicated. The "Crazy Ant Strike Team" project was led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who achieved a 99% reduction in ant numbers by 2013. The team camped in a bunker that was previously used as a fallout shelter and office. Full eradication of the species from the atoll was achieved in 2021.
Johnston Atoll has never had any indigenous inhabitants, although during the late part of the 20th century, there were averages of about 300 American military personnel and 1,000 civilian contractors present at any given time. Today it is uninhabited except for a handful of workers with the Crazy Ant Strike Team project, who live on the island for six months at a time with little outside contact.
The primary means of transportation to this island was the airport, which had a paved military runway, or alternatively by ship via a pier and ship channel through the atoll's coral reef system. The islands were wired with 13 outgoing and 10 incoming commercial telephone lines, a 60-channel submarine cable, 22 DSN circuits by satellite, an Autodin with standard remote terminal, a digital telephone switch, the Military Affiliated Radio System (MARS station), a UHF/VHF air-ground radio, and a link to the Pacific Consolidated Telecommunications Network (PCTN) satellite. Amateur radio operators occasionally transmitted from the island, using the KH3 call-sign prefix. The United States Undersea Cable Corporation was awarded contracts to lay underwater cable in the Pacific. A cable known as "Wet Wash C" was laid in 1966 between Makua, Hawaii, and the Johnston Island Air Force Base. USNS Neptune surveyed the route and laid 769 nautical miles (1,424 km; 885 mi) of cable and 45 repeaters. These cables were manufactured by the Simplex Wire and Cable Company with the repeaters being supplied by Felten and Guilleaume. In 1993 a satellite communication ground station was added to augment the atoll's communications capability.
Johnston Atoll's economic activity was limited to providing services to American military and contractor personnel residing on the island. The island was regularly resupplied by ship or barge, and all foodstuffs and manufactured goods were imported. The base had six 2.5-megawatt electrical generators using diesel engines. The runway was also available to commercial airlines for emergency landings (a fairly common event), and for many years it was a regular stop on Continental Micronesia airline's "island hopper" service between Hawaii and the Marshall Islands.
There were no official license plates issued for use on Johnston Atoll. U.S. government vehicles were issued U.S. government license plates and private vehicles retained the plates from which they were registered. According to reputable license plate collectors, a number of Johnston Atoll license plates were created as souvenirs, and have even been sold online to collectors, but they were not officially issued. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Johnston Atoll is an unincorporated territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). It is a National Wildlife Refuge and part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. It is closed to public entry, and limited access for management needs is only granted by letter of authorization from the United States Air Force and a special use permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "For nearly 70 years, the isolated atoll was under the control of the U.S. military. During that time, it was variously used as a naval refueling depot, an airbase, a testing site for nuclear and biological weapons, a secret missile base, and a site for the storage and disposal of chemical weapons and Agent Orange. Those activities left the area environmentally contaminated, and monitoring continues.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The island is home to thriving communities of nesting seabirds and has significant marine biodiversity. USFWS teams carry out environmental monitoring and maintenance to protect the native wildlife.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Johnston Atoll is a 1,300-hectare (3,200-acre) atoll in the North Pacific Ocean, located about 750 nautical miles (1,390 km; 860 mi) southwest of the island of Hawaiʻi, and is grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The atoll, which is located on a coral reef platform, has four islands. Johnston Island and Sand Island are both enlarged natural features, while Akau (North) and Hikina (East) are two artificial islands formed by coral dredging. By 1964, dredge and fill operations had increased the size of Johnston Island to 596 acres (241 ha) from its original 46 acres (19 ha), increased the size of Sand Island from 10 to 22 acres (4.0 to 8.9 ha), and added the two new islands, North and East, of 25 and 18 acres (10.1 and 7.3 ha) respectively.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The four islands compose a total land area of 2.67 square kilometers (1.03 square miles). Due to the atoll's tilt, much of the reef on the southeast portion has subsided. But even though it does not have an encircling reef crest, the reef crest on the northwest portion of the atoll does provide for a shallow lagoon, with depths ranging from 3 to 10 m (10 to 33 ft).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The climate is tropical but generally dry. Northeast trade winds are consistent and there is little seasonal temperature variation. With elevation ranging from sea level to 5 m (16 ft) at Summit Peak, the islands contain some low-growing vegetation and palm trees on mostly flat terrain, and no natural fresh water resources.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "It is a dry atoll with less than 20 inches (510 mm) of annual rainfall.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "About 300 species of fish have been recorded from the reefs and inshore waters of the atoll. It is also visited by green turtles and Hawaiian monk seals. The possibility of humpback whales using the waters as a breeding ground has been suggested, albeit in small numbers and with irregular occurrences so far. Many other cetaceans possibly migrate through the area, including Cuvier's beaked whales.",
"title": "Wildlife"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Seabird species recorded as breeding on the atoll include Bulwer's petrel, wedge-tailed shearwater, Christmas shearwater, white-tailed tropicbird, red-tailed tropicbird, brown booby, red-footed booby, masked booby, great frigatebird, spectacled tern, sooty tern, brown noddy, black noddy, and white tern. It is the world's largest colony of red-tailed tropicbirds, with 10,800 nests in 2020. It is visited by migratory shorebirds, including the Pacific golden plover, wandering tattler, bristle-thighed curlew, ruddy turnstone and sanderling. The island, with its surrounding marine waters, has been recognised as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International for its seabird colonies.",
"title": "Wildlife"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The first list of plants catalogued on Johnston Atoll was published in Vascular Plants of Johnston and Wake Islands (1931), based on collections from the Tanager Expedition (1923). Three species were described: Lepturus repens, Boerhavia diffusa, and Tribulus cistoides. In the 1930s, when the island was used for aviation activities for the war, Pluchea odorata was introduced from Honolulu.",
"title": "Flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The first Western record of the atoll was on September 2, 1796, when the Boston-based American brig Sally accidentally grounded on a shoal near the islands. The ship's captain, Joseph Pierpont, published his experience in several American newspapers the following year giving an accurate position of Johnston and Sand Island along with part of the reef, but did not name or lay claim to the area. The islands were not officially named until Captain Charles J. Johnston of the Royal Naval ship HMS Cornwallis sighted them on December 14, 1807. The ship's journal recorded: \"on the 14th [December 1808] made a new discovery, viz. two very low islands, in lat. 16° 52′ N. long. 190° 26′ E., having a dangerous reef to the east of them, and the whole not exceeding four miles in extent\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1856, the United States enacted the Guano Islands Act, which allowed citizens of the United States to take possession of islands containing guano deposits. Under this act, William Parker and R. F. Ryan chartered the schooner Palestine specifically to find Johnston Atoll. They located guano on the atoll in March 1858 and proceeded to claim the island as U.S. territory. In June of the same year, S. C. Allen, sailing on the Kalama under a commission from King Kamehameha IV of Hawaiʻi, landed on Johnston Atoll, removed the American flag, and claimed the atoll for the Kingdom of Hawaii. Allen named the atoll \"Kalama\" and the nearby smaller island \"Cornwallis.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Returning on July 27, 1858, the captain of the Palestine again hoisted the American flag and tried to acquire the island in the name of the United States. The same day, the \"derelict and abandoned\" atoll was declared part of the domain of Kamehameha IV. On its July visit, however, the Palestine left two crew members on the island to gather phosphate. Later that year, Kamehameha revoked the lease granted to Allen when he learned the atoll had been claimed previously by the United States. However, this did not prevent the Hawaiian Territory from making use of the atoll or asserting ownership.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "By 1890, the atoll's guano deposits had been almost entirely depleted (mined out) by U.S. interests operating under the Guano Islands Act. In 1892, HMS Champion made a survey and map of the island, hoping that it might be suitable as a telegraph cable station. On January 16, 1893, the Hawaiian Legation at London reported a diplomatic conference over this temporary occupation of the island. However, the Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown on January 17, 1893. When Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1898, during the Spanish–American War, the name of Johnston Island was omitted from the list of Hawaiian Islands. On September 11, 1909, Johnston was leased by the Territory of Hawaii to a private citizen for fifteen years. A board shed was built on the southeast side of the larger island, and a small tramline run up onto the slope of the low hill, to facilitate the removal of guano. Apparently neither the quantity nor the quality of the guano was sufficient to pay for gathering it, so that the project was soon abandoned.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Tanager Expedition was a joint expedition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Bishop Museum of Hawaii, which visited the Atoll in 1923. The expedition to the atoll consisted of two teams accompanied by destroyer convoys, with the first departing Honolulu on July 7, 1923, aboard the USS Whippoorwill, which conducted the first survey of Johnston Island in the 20th century. Aerial survey and mapping flights over Johnston were conducted with a Douglas DT-2 floatplane carried on her fantail, which was hoisted into the water for takeoff. From July 10–22, 1923, the atoll was recorded in a pioneering aerial photography project. The USS Tanager left Honolulu on July 16 and joined up with the Whippoorwill to complete the survey and then traveled to Wake Island to complete surveys there. Tents were pitched on the southwest beach of fine white sand, and a rather thorough biological survey was made of the island. Hundreds of sea birds, of a dozen kinds, were the principal inhabitants, together with lizards, insects, and hermit crabs. The reefs and shallow water abounded with fish and other marine life.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On June 29, 1926, by Executive Order 4467, President Calvin Coolidge established Johnston Island Reservation as a federal bird refuge and placed it under the control of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as a \"refuge and breeding ground for native birds.\" Johnston Atoll was added to the United States National Wildlife Refuge system in 1926, and renamed the Johnston Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1940. The Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge was established to protect the tropical ecosystem and the wildlife that it harbors. However, the Department of Agriculture had no ships, and the United States Navy was interested in the atoll for strategic reasons, so with Executive Order 6935 on December 29, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt placed the islands under the \"control and jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Navy for administrative purposes\", but subject to use as a refuge and breeding ground for native birds, under the United States Department of the Interior.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On February 14, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8682 to create naval defense areas in the central Pacific territories. The proclamation established \"Johnston Island Naval Defensive Sea Area\" which encompassed the territorial waters between the extreme high-water marks and the three-mile marine boundaries surrounding the atoll. \"Johnston Island Naval Airspace Reservation\" was also established to restrict access to the airspace over the naval defense sea area. Only U.S. government ships and aircraft were permitted to enter the naval defense areas at Johnston unless authorized by the Secretary of the Navy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1990, two full-time U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel, a Refuge Manager and a biologist, were stationed on Johnston Atoll to handle the increase in biological, contaminant, and resource conflict activities.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After the military mission on the island ended in 2004, the Atoll was administered by the Pacific Remote Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. The outer islets and water rights were managed cooperatively by the Fish and Wildlife Service, with some of the actual Johnston Island land mass remaining under control of the United States Air Force (USAF) for environmental remediation and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for plutonium cleanup purposes. However, on January 6, 2009, under authority of section 2 of the Antiquities Act, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was established by President George W. Bush to administer and protect Johnston Island along with six other Pacific islands. The national monument includes Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge within its boundaries and contains 696 acres (2.82 km) of land and over 800,000 acres (3,200 km) of water area. The Administration of President Barack Obama in 2014 extended the protected area to encompass the entire Exclusive Economic Zone, by banning all commercial fishing activities. Under a 2017 review of all national monuments extended since 1996, then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke recommended to permit fishing outside the 12-mile limit.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On December 29, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt with Executive Order 6935 transferred control of Johnston Atoll to the United States Navy under the 14th Naval District, Pearl Harbor, in order to establish an air station, and also to the Department of the Interior to administer the bird refuge. In 1948, the USAF assumed control of the Atoll.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During the Operation Hardtack nuclear test series from April 22 to August 19, 1958, administration of Johnston Atoll was assigned to the Commander of Joint Task Force 7. After the tests were completed, the island reverted to the command of the US Air Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "From 1963 to 1970, the Navy's Joint Task force 8 and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) held joint operational control of the island during high-altitude nuclear testing operations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1970, operational control was handed back to the Air Force until July 1973, when Defense Special Weapons Agency was given host-management responsibility by the Secretary of Defense. Over the years, sequential descendant organizations have been the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) from 1959 to 1971, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) from 1971 to 1996, and the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA) from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, Defense Special Weapons Agency, and selected elements of the Office of Secretary of Defense were combined to form the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). In 1999, host-management responsibility transferred from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency once again to the Air Force until the Air Force mission ended in 2004 and the base was closed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1935, personnel from the US Navy's Patrol Wing Two carried out some minor construction to develop the atoll for seaplane operation. In 1936, the Navy began the first of many changes to enlarge the atoll's land area. They erected some buildings and a boat landing on Sand Island and blasted coral to clear a 3,600 feet (1,100 m) seaplane landing. Several seaplanes made flights from Hawaii to Johnston, such as that of a squadron of six aircraft in November, 1935.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In November 1939, further work was commenced on Sand Island by civilian contractors to allow the operation of one squadron of patrol planes with tender support. Part of the lagoon was dredged and the excavated material was used to make a parking area connected by a 2,000-foot (610 m) causeway to Sand Island. Three seaplane landings were cleared, one 11,000 feet (3,400 m) by 1,000 feet (300 m) and two cross-landings each 7,000 feet (2,100 m) by 800 feet (240 m) and dredged to a depth of 8 feet (2.4 m). Sand Island had barracks built for 400 men, a mess hall, underground hospital, radio station, water tanks and a 100 feet (30 m) steel control tower. In December 1943 an additional 10 acres (4.0 hectares) of parking was added to the seaplane base.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "On May 26, 1942, a United States Navy Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina wrecked at Johnston Atoll. The Catalina pilot made a normal power landing and immediately applied throttle for take-off. At a speed of about 50 knots the plane swerved to the left and then continued into a violent waterloop. The hull of the plane was broken open and the Catalina sank immediately.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "After the war on March 27, 1949, a PBY-6A Catalina had to make a forced landing during flight from Kwajalein to Johnston Island. The plane was damaged beyond repair and the crew of 11 was rescued nine hours later by a Navy ship which sank the plane using gunfire.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "During 1958, a proposed support agreement for Navy Seaplane operations at Johnston Island was under discussion though it was never completed because a requirement for the operation failed to materialize.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "By September 1941, construction of an airfield on Johnston Island commenced. A 4,000-foot (1,200 m) by 500-foot (150 m) runway was built together with two 400-man barracks, two mess halls, a cold-storage building, an underground hospital, a fresh-water plant, shop buildings, and fuel storage. The runway was complete by December 7, 1941, though in December 1943 the 99th Naval Construction Battalion arrived at the atoll and proceeded to lengthen the runway to 6,000 feet (1,800 m). The runway was subsequently lengthened and improved as the island was enlarged.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "During World War II Johnston Atoll was used as a refueling base for submarines, and also as an aircraft refueling stop for American bombers transiting the Pacific Ocean, including the Boeing B-29 Enola Gay. By 1944, the atoll was one of the busiest air transport terminals in the Pacific. Air Transport Command aeromedical evacuation planes stopped at Johnston en route to Hawaii. Following V-J Day on August 14, 1945, Johnston Atoll saw the flow of men and aircraft that had been coming from the mainland into the Pacific turn around. By 1947, over 1,300 B-29 and B-24 bombers had passed through the Marianas, Kwajalein, Johnston Island, and Oahu en route to Mather Field and civilian life.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Following World War II, Johnston Atoll Airport was used commercially by Continental Air Micronesia, touching down between Honolulu and Majuro. When aircraft landed, soldiers surrounded the aircraft and passengers were not allowed to leave the aircraft. Aloha Airlines also made weekly scheduled flights to the island carrying civilian and military personnel. In the 1990s there were flights almost daily, and some days saw up to three arrivals. Just before movement of the chemical munitions to Johnston Atoll, the Surgeon General, Public Health Service, reviewed the shipment and the Johnston Atoll storage plans. His recommendations caused the Secretary of Defense in December 1970 to issue instructions suspending missile launches and all non-essential aircraft flights. As a result, Air Micronesia service was immediately discontinued, and missile firings were terminated with the exception of two 1975 satellite launches deemed critical to the island's mission.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "There were many times when the runway was needed for emergency landings for both civil and military aircraft. When the runway was decommissioned, it could no longer be used as a potential emergency landing place when planning flight routes across the Pacific Ocean. As of 2003, the airfield at Johnston Atoll consisted of an unmaintained closed single 9,000 feet (2,700 m) asphalt/concrete runway 5/23, a parallel taxiway, and a large paved ramp along the southeast side of the runway.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In February 1941 Johnston Atoll was designated as a Naval Defensive Sea Area and Airspace Reservation. On the day the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, USS Indianapolis was out of her home port of Pearl Harbor, to make a simulated bombardment at Johnston Island. Japan's strike at Pearl Harbor occurred as the ship was unloading marines, civilians and stores on the atoll. On December 15, 1941, the atoll was shelled outside the reef by a Japanese submarine, which had been part of the attack on Pearl Harbor eight days earlier. Several buildings including the power station were hit, but no personnel were injured. Additional Japanese shelling occurred on December 22 and 23, 1941. On all occasions, Johnston Atoll's coastal artillery guns returned fire, driving off the sub.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In July 1942, the civilian contractors at the atoll were replaced by 500 men from the 5th and 10th Naval Construction Battalions, who expanded the fuel storage and water production at the base and built additional facilities. The 5th Battalion departed in January 1943. In December 1943 the 99th Naval Construction Battalion arrived at the atoll and proceeded to lengthen the runway to 6,000 feet (1,800 m) and add an additional 10 acres (4.0 ha) of parking to the seaplane base.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On January 25, 1957, the Department of Treasury was granted a 5-year permit for the United States Coast Guard (USCG) to operate and maintain a Long Range Aid to Navigation (LORAN) transmitting station on Johnston Atoll. Two years later in December 1959, the Secretary of Defense approved the Secretary of the Treasury's request to use Sand Island for U.S. Coast Guard LORAN A and C station sites. The USCG was granted permission to install a LORAN A and C station on Sand Island to be staffed by U.S. Coast Guard personnel through June 30, 1992. The permit for a LORAN station to operate on Johnston Island was terminated in 1962. On November 1, 1957, a new United States Coast Guard LORAN-A station was commissioned. By 1958, the Coast Guard LORAN Station at Johnston Island began transmitting on a 24-hour basis, thus establishing a new LORAN rate in the Central Pacific. The new rate between Johnston Island and French Frigate Shoals gave a higher order of accuracy for fixing positions in the steamship lanes from Oahu, Hawaii, to Midway Island. In the past, this was impossible in some areas along this important shipping route. The original U.S. Coast Guard LORAN-A Station on Johnston Island ceased operations on June 30, 1961, when the new station on nearby Sand Island began transmitting using a larger 180 foot antenna.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The LORAN-C station was disestablished on July 1, 1992, and all Coast Guard personnel, electronic equipment and property departed that month. Buildings on Sand Island were transferred to other activities. LORAN whip antennas on Johnston and Sand Islands were removed, and the 625-foot LORAN tower and antenna were demolished on December 3, 1992. The LORAN A and C station and buildings on Sand Island were then dismantled and removed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Between 1958 and 1975, Johnston Atoll was used as an American national nuclear test site for atmospheric and extremely high-altitude nuclear explosions in outer space. In 1958, Johnston Atoll was the location of the two \"Hardtack I\" nuclear tests firings. One conducted August 1, 1958, was codenamed \"Hardtack Teak\" and one conducted August 12, 1958, was codenamed \"Orange.\" Both tests detonated 3.8-megaton hydrogen bombs launched to high altitudes by rockets from Johnston Atoll.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Johnston Island was also used as the launch site of 124 sounding rockets going up as high as 1,158 kilometers (720 miles). These carried scientific instruments and telemetry equipment, either in support of the nuclear bomb tests, or in experimental antisatellite technology.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Eight PGM-17 Thor missiles deployed by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) were launched from Johnston Island in 1962 as part of \"Operation Fishbowl,\" a part of \"Operation Dominic\" nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific. The first launch in \"Operation Fishbowl\" was a successful research and development launch with no warhead. In the end, \"Operation Fishbowl\" produced four successful high-altitude detonations: \"Starfish Prime,\" \"Checkmate,\" \"Bluegill Triple Prime,\" and \"Kingfish.\" In addition, it produced one atmospheric nuclear explosion, \"Tightrope.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On July 9, 1962, \"Starfish Prime\" had a 1.4-megaton explosion, using a W49 warhead at an altitude of about 400 kilometers (250 miles). It created a very brief fireball visible over a wide area, plus bright artificial auroras visible in Hawaii for several minutes. \"Starfish Prime\" also produced an electromagnetic pulse that disrupted some electric power and communication systems in Hawaii. It pumped enough radiation into the Van Allen belts to destroy or damage seven satellites in orbit.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The final Fishbowl launch that used a Thor missile carried the \"Kingfish\" 400-kiloton warhead up to its 98-kilometer (61 mi) detonation altitude. Although it was officially one of the Operation Fishbowl tests, it is sometimes not listed among high-altitude nuclear tests because of its lower detonation altitude. \"Tightrope\" was the final test of Operation Fishbowl and detonated on November 3, 1962. It launched on a nuclear-armed Nike-Hercules missile and was detonated at a lower altitude than the other tests:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "\"At Johnston Island, there was an intense white flash. Even with high-density goggles, the burst was too bright to view, even for a few seconds. A distinct thermal pulse was felt on bare skin. A yellow-orange disc was formed, and transformed itself into a purple doughnut. A glowing purple cloud was faintly visible for a few minutes.\" The nuclear yield was reported in most official documents as \"less than 20 kilotons.\" One report by the U.S. government reported the yield of the \"Tightrope\" test as 10 kilotons. Seven sounding rockets were launched from Johnston Island in support of the Tightrope test, and this was the final American nuclear atmospheric test.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The \"Fishbowl\" series included four failures, all of which were deliberately disrupted by range safety officers when the missiles' systems failed during launch and were aborted. The second launch of the Fishbowl series, \"Bluegill\", carried an active warhead. Bluegill was \"lost\" by a defective range safety tracking radar and had to be destroyed 10 minutes after liftoff even though it probably ascended successfully. The subsequent nuclear weapon launch failures from Johnston Atoll caused serious contamination to the island and surrounding areas with weapons-grade plutonium and americium that remains an issue to this day.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The failure of the \"Bluegill\" launch created in effect a dirty bomb but did not release the nuclear warhead's plutonium debris onto Johnston Atoll as the missile fell into the ocean south of the island and was not recovered. However, the \"Starfish\", \"Bluegill Prime\", and \"Bluegill Double Prime\" test launch failures in 1962 scattered radioactive debris over Johnston Island contaminating it, the lagoon, and Sand Island with plutonium for decades.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "\"Starfish\", a high altitude Thor launched nuclear test scheduled for June 20, 1962, was the first to contaminate the atoll. The rocket with the 1.45-megaton Starfish device (W49 warhead and the MK-4 re-entry vehicle) on its nose was launched that evening, but the Thor missile engine cut out only 59 seconds after launch. The range safety officer sent a destruct signal 65 seconds after launch, and the missile was destroyed at approximately 10.6 kilometers (6.6 miles) altitude. The warhead high explosive detonated in 1-point safe fashion, destroying the warhead without producing nuclear yield. Large pieces of the plutonium contaminated missile, including pieces of the warhead, booster rocket, engine, re-entry vehicle and missile parts, fell back on Johnston Island. More wreckage along with plutonium contamination was found on nearby Sand Island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "\"Bluegill Prime,\" the second attempt to launch the payload which failed last time was scheduled for 23:15 (local) on July 25, 1962. It too was a genuine disaster and caused the most serious plutonium contamination on the island. The Thor missile was carrying one pod, two re-entry vehicles and the W50 nuclear warhead. The missile engine malfunctioned immediately after ignition, and the range safety officer fired the destruct system while the missile was still on the launch pad. The Johnston Island launch complex was demolished in the subsequent explosions and fire which burned through the night. The launch emplacement and portions of the island were contaminated with radioactive plutonium spread by the explosion, fire and wind-blown smoke.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Afterward, the Johnston Island launch complex was heavily damaged and contaminated with plutonium. Missile launches and nuclear testing halted until the radioactive debris was dumped and soils were recovered and the launch emplacement rebuilt. Three months of repairs, decontamination, and rebuilding the LE1 as well as the backup pad LE2 were necessary before tests could resume. In an effort to continue with the testing program, U.S. troops were sent in to do a rapid cleanup. The troops scrubbed down the revetments and launch pad, carted away debris and removed the top layer of coral around the contaminated launch pad. The plutonium-contaminated rubbish was dumped in the lagoon, polluting the surrounding marine environment. More than 550 drums of contaminated material were dumped in the ocean off Johnston from 1964 to 1965. At the time of the Bluegill Prime disaster, the top fill around the launch pad was scraped by a bulldozer and grader. It was then dumped into the lagoon to make a ramp, so the rest of the debris could be loaded onto landing craft to be dumped out into the ocean. An estimated 10 percent of the plutonium from the test device was in the fill used to make the ramp. Then the ramp was covered and placed into a 25 acres (100,000 m) landfill on the island during 1962 dredging to extend the island. The lagoon was again dredged in 1963–1964 and used to expand Johnston Island from 220 acres (89 ha) to 625 acres (253 ha) recontaminating additional portions of the island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On October 15, 1962, the \"Bluegill Double Prime\" test also misfired. During the test, the rocket was destroyed at a height of 109,000 feet after it malfunctioned 90 seconds into the flight. U.S. Defense Department officials confirm that when the rocket was destroyed, it contributed to the radioactive pollution on the island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1963, the U.S. Senate ratified the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which contained a provision known as \"Safeguard C\". Safeguard C was the basis for maintaining Johnston Atoll as a \"ready to test\" above-ground nuclear testing site should atmospheric nuclear testing ever be deemed to be necessary again. In 1993, Congress appropriated no funds for the Johnston Atoll \"Safeguard C\" mission, bringing it to an end.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Program 437 turned the PGM-17 Thor into an operational anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon system, a capability that was kept top secret even after it was deployed. The Program 437 mission was approved for development by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on November 20, 1962, and based at the Atoll. Program 437 used modified Thor missiles that had been returned from deployment in Great Britain and was the second deployed U.S. operational nuclear anti-satellite operation. Eighteen more suborbital Thor launches took place from Johnston Island during the 1964–1975 period in support of Program 437. In 1965–1966 four Program 437 Thors were launched with 'Alternate Payloads' for satellite inspection. This was evidently an elaboration of the system to allow visual verification of the target before destroying it. These flights may have been related to the late 1960s Program 922, a non-nuclear version of Thor with infrared homing and a high-explosive warhead. Thors were kept positioned and active near the two Johnston Island launch pads after 1964. However, partly because of the Vietnam War, in October 1970 the Department of Defense had transferred Program 437 to standby status as an economic measure. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks led to Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that prohibited 'interference with national means of verification', which meant that ASAT's were not allowed, by treaty, to attack Soviet spy satellites. Thors were removed from Johnston Atoll and were stored in mothballed war-reserve condition at Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1970 until the anti-satellite mission of Johnston Island facilities was ceased on August 10, 1974, and the program was officially discontinued on April 1, 1975, when any possibility of restoring the ASAT program was finally terminated. Eighteen Thor launches in support of the Program 437 Alternate Payload (AP) mission took place from Johnston Atoll's Launch emplacements.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Space Detection and Tracking System or SPADATS was operated by North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) along with the U.S. Air Force Spacetrack system, The Navy Space Surveillance System and Canadian Forces Air Defense Command Satellite Tracking Unit. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory also operated a dozen 3.5 ton Baker-Nunn Camera systems (none at Johnston) for cataloging of man-made satellites. The U.S. Air Force had ten Baker-Nunn camera stations around the world mostly from 1960 to 1977 with a phase-out beginning in 1964.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The Baker-Nunn space camera station was constructed on Sand Island and was functioning by 1965. USAF 18th Surveillance Squadron operated the Baker-Nunn camera at a station built along the causeway on Sand Island until 1975 when a contract to operate the four remaining Air Force stations was awarded to Bendix Field Engineering Corporation. In about 1977, the camera at Sand Island was moved to Daegu, South Korea. Baker-Nunn were rendered obsolete with the Initial Operational Capability of 3 GEODSS optical tracking sites at Daegu, Korea; Mount Haleakala, Maui and White Sands Missile Range. A fourth site was operational in 1985 at Diego Garcia and a proposed fifth site in Portugal was cancelled. The Daegu, Korea site was closed due to encroaching city lights. GEODSS tracked satellites at night, though the MIT Lincoln Laboratory test site, co-located with Site 1 at White Sands did track asteroids in daytime as proof of concept in the early 1980s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Satellite and Missile Observation System Project (SAMOS-E) or \"E-6\" was a relatively short-lived series of United States visual reconnaissance satellites in the early 1960s. SAMOS was also known by the unclassified terms Program 101 and Program 201. The Air Force program was used as a cover for the initial development of the Central Intelligence Agency's Key Hole (including Corona and Gambit) reconnaissance satellites systems. Imaging was performed with film cameras and television surveillance from polar low Earth orbits with film canisters returning via capsule and parachute with mid-air retrieval. SAMOS was first launched in 1960, but not operational until 1963 with all of the missions being launched from Vandenberg AFB.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "During the early months of the SAMOS program it was essential not only to hide the Corona and GAMBIT technical efforts under a screen of SAMOS activity, but also to make the orbital vehicle portions of the two systems resemble one another in outward appearance. Thus, some of the configuration details of SAMOS were decided less by engineering logic than by the need to camouflage GAMBIT and thus, in theory, a GAMBIT could be launched without alerting many people to its real nature. Problems relative to tracking networks, communications, and recovery were resolved with the decision in late February 1961 to use Johnston Island as the film capsule descent and recovery zone for the program. On July 10, 1961, work was initiated on four buildings of the Johnston Island Recovery Operations Center for the National Reconnaissance Office. Men from the Johnston Atoll facility would recover the parachuting film canister capsules with a radar equipped JC-130 aircraft by capturing them in the air with a specialized recovery apparatus. The recovery center was also responsible for collecting the radioactive scientific data pods dropped from missiles following launch and nuclear detonation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The atoll was subject to large-scale bioweapons testing over four years starting in 1965. The American strategic tests of bioweapons were as expensive and elaborate as the tests of the first hydrogen bombs at Eniwetok Atoll. They involved enough ships to have made the world's fifth-largest independent navy. One experiment involved a number of barges loaded with hundreds of rhesus monkeys. It is estimated that one jet with bioweapon spray \"would probably be more efficient at causing human deaths than a ten-megaton hydrogen bomb.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In the lead up to biological warfare testing in the Pacific under Project 112 and Project SHAD, a new virus was discovered during the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program by teams from the Smithsonian's Division of Birds aboard a United States Army tugboat involved in the program. Initially, the name of that effort was to be called the Pacific Ornithological Observation Project but this was changed for obvious reasons. First isolated in 1964 the tick-borne virus was discovered in Ornithodoros capensis ticks, found in a nest of common noddy (Anous stolidus) at Sand Island, Johnston Atoll. It was designated Johnston Atoll Virus and is related to influenza.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In February, March, and April 1965 Johnston Atoll was used to launch biological attacks against U.S. Army and Navy vessels 100 miles (160 km) south-west of Johnston island in vulnerability, defense and decontamination tests conducted by the Deseret Test Center during Project SHAD under Project 112. Test DTC 64-4 (Deseret Test Center) was originally called \"RED BEVA\" (Biological EVAluation) though the name was later changed to \"Shady Grove\", likely for operational security reasons. The biological agents released during this test included Francisella tularensis (formerly called Pasteurella tularensis) (Agent UL), the causative agent of tularemia; Coxiella burnetii (Agent OU), causative agent of Q fever; and Bacillus globigii (Agent BG). During Project SHAD, Bacillus globigii was used to simulate biological warfare agents (such as anthrax), because it was then considered a contaminant with little health consequence to humans; however, it is now considered a human pathogen. Ships equipped with the E-2 multi-head disseminator and A-4C aircraft equipped with Aero 14B spray tanks released live pathogenic agents in nine aerial and four surface trials in phase B of the test series from February 12 to March 15, 1965, and in four aerial trials in phase D of the test series from March 22 to April 3, 1965.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "According to Project SHAD veteran Jack Alderson who commanded the Army tugs, area three at Johnston Atoll was located at the most downwind part of the island and consisted of an collapsible Nissen hut to be used for weapons preparation and some communications.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 1970, Congress redefined the island's military mission as the storage and destruction of chemical weapons. The United States Army leased 41 acres (17 ha) on the Atoll to store chemical weapons held in Okinawa, Japan. Johnston Atoll became a chemical weapons storage site in 1971 holding about 6.6 percent of the U.S. military chemical weapon arsenal. The chemical weapons were brought from Okinawa under Operation Red Hat with the re-deployment of the 267th Chemical Company and consisted of rockets, mines, artillery projectiles, and bulk 1-ton containers filled with Sarin, Agent VX, vomiting agent, and blister agent such as mustard gas. Chemical weapons from West Germany and World War II era weapons from the Solomon Islands were also stored on the island after 1990. Chemical agents were stored in the high security Red Hat Storage Area (RHSA) which included hardened igloos in the weapon storage area, the Red Hat building (#850), two Red Hat hazardous waste warehouses (#851 and #852), an open storage area, and security entrances and guard towers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Some of the other weapons stored at the site were shipped from U.S. stockpiles in West Germany in 1990. These shipments followed a 1986 agreement between the U.S. and West Germany to move the munitions. Merchant ships carrying the munitions left West Germany under Operation Golden Python and Operation Steel Box in October 1990 and arrived at Johnston Island November 6, 1990. Although the ships were unloaded within nine days, the unpacking and storing of munitions continued into 1991. The remainder of the chemical weapons was a small number of World War II era weapons shipped from the Solomon Islands.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Agent Orange was brought to Johnston Atoll from South Vietnam and Gulfport, Mississippi in 1972 under Operation Pacer IVY. It was stored on the northwest corner of the island known as the Herbicide Orange Storage site, dubbed the \"Agent Orange Yard\". The Agent Orange was eventually destroyed during Operation Pacer HO on the Dutch incineration ship MT Vulcanus in the Summer of 1977. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that 1,800,000 gallons of Herbicide Orange were stored at Johnston Atoll, and that an additional 480,000 gallons stored at Gulfport, Mississippi, was brought to Johnston Atoll for destruction. Leaking barrels during storage, and spills during re-drumming operations, contaminated both the storage area and the lagoon with herbicide residue and its toxic contaminant 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The Army's Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) was the first full-scale chemical weapons disposal facility. Built to incinerate chemical munitions on the island, planning started in 1981, construction began in 1985, and it was completed five years later. Following completion of construction and facility characterization, JACADS began operational verification testing (OVT) in June 1990. From 1990 until 1993, the Army conducted four planned periods of Operational Verification Testing (OVT), required by Public Law 100–456. OVT was completed in March 1993, having demonstrated that the reverse assembly incineration technology was effective, and that JACADS operations met all environmental parameters. Transition to full-scale operations started in May 1993, but the facility did not begin full-scale operations until August 1993.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "All of the chemical weapons once stored on Johnston Island were demilitarized, and the agents incinerated at JACADS, with the process completed in year 2000. Later, the destruction of legacy hazardous waste material associated with chemical weapon storage and cleanup was completed. JACADS was demolished by 2003, and the island was stripped of its remaining infrastructure and environmentally remediated.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In 2003, structures and facilities, including those used in JACADS, were removed, and the runway was marked closed. The last flight out for official personnel was June 15, 2004. After this date, the base was completely deserted, with the only structures left standing being the Joint Operations Center (JOC) building at the east end of the runway, chemical bunkers in the weapon storage area, and at least one Quonset hut.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Built in 1964, the JOC is a four-floor concrete and steel administration building for the island that has no windows and was built to withstand a category IV tropical cyclone as well as atmospheric nuclear tests. The building remains standing but was gutted entirely in 2004, during an asbestos abatement project. All doors of the JOC except one have been welded shut. The ground floor has a side building attached which served as a facility for decontamination that contained three long snaking corridors and 55 shower heads one could walk through during decontamination.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Rows of bunkers in the Red Hat Storage Area remain intact; however, an agreement was established between the U.S. Army and EPA Region IX on August 21, 2003, that the Munitions Demilitarization Building (MDB) at JACADS would be demolished and the bunkers in the RHSA used for disposal of construction rubble and debris. After placement of the debris inside the bunkers, they were secured and the entries blocked with a concrete block barrier (a.k.a. King Tut Block) to prevent access to the bunker interior.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Over the years, leaks of Agent Orange as well as chemical weapon leaks in the weapon storage area occurred where caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide were used to mitigate toxic agents during cleanup. Larger spills of nerve and mustard agent within the MCD at JACADS also took place. Small releases of chemical weapon components from JACADS were cited by the EPA. Multiple studies of the Johnston Atoll environment and ecology have been conducted and the atoll is likely the most studied island in the Pacific.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Studies at the atoll on the effect of PCB contamination in reef damselfish (Abudefduf sordidus) demonstrated that embryonic abnormalities could be used as a metric for comparing contaminated and uncontaminated areas. Some PCB contamination in the lagoon was traced to Coast Guard disposal practices of PCB-laden electrical transformers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In 1962, plutonium pollution following three failed nuclear missile launches was heaviest near the destroyed launch emplacement, in the lagoon offshore of the launch pad, and near Sand Island. The contaminated launch site was stripped, the debris gathered and buried in the island's 1962 expansion. A comprehensive radiological survey was completed in 1980 to record transuranic contamination remaining from the 1962 THOR missile aborts. The Air Force also initiated research on methods to remove dioxin contamination from soil resulting from leakage of the stored herbicide Agent Orange. Since then, U.S. defense authorities have surveyed the island in a series of studies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Contaminated structures were dismantled and isolated within the former Thor Launch Emplacement No. 1 (LE-1) as a start for the cleanup program. About 45,000 tons of soil contaminated with radioactive isotopes was collected and placed into a fenced area covering 24 acres (9.7 ha) on the north of the island. The area was known as the Radiological Control Area, and heavily contaminated with highly radioactive Plutonium. The Pluto Yard is on the site of the LE1 where the 1962 missile explosion occurred and also where a highly contaminated loading ramp was buried that was made for loading plutonium contaminated debris onto small boats that was dumped at sea. Remediation included a plutonium \"mining\" operation called the Johnston Atoll Plutonium Contaminated Soil Cleanup Project. The collected radioactive soil and other debris was buried in a landfill created within the former LE-1 area from June 2002 through November 11, 2002. Remediation at the Radiation Control Area included the construction of a 61-centimeter-thick cap of coral sealing the landfill. Permanent markers were placed at each corner of the landfill to identify the landfill area.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The atoll was placed up for auction via the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) in 2005 before it was withdrawn. The stripped Johnston Island was briefly offered for sale with several deed restrictions in 2005 as a \"residence or vacation getaway,\" with potential usage for \"eco-tourism\" by the GSA's Office of Real Property Utilization and Disposal. The proposed sale included the unique postal zip code 96558, formerly assigned to the Armed Forces in the Pacific. The proposed sale did not include running water, electricity, or activation of the closed runway. The details of the offering were outlined on GSA's website and in a newsletter of the Center for Land Use Interpretation as unusual real estate listing # 6384, Johnston Island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "On August 22, 2006, Johnston Island was struck by Hurricane Ioke. The eastern eye-wall passed directly over the atoll, with winds exceeding 100 mph (160 km/h). Twelve people were on the island when the hurricane struck, part of a crew sent to the island to deliver a USAF contractor who sampled groundwater contamination levels. All 12 survived and one wrote a first hand account of taking shelter from the storm in the JOC building.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "On December 9, 2007, the United States Coast Guard swept the runway at Johnston Island of debris and used the runway in the removal and rescue of an ill Taiwanese fisherman to Oahu, Hawaii. The fisherman was transferred from the Taiwanese fishing vessel Sheng Yi Tsai No. 166 to the Coast Guard buoy tender Kukui on December 6, 2007. The fisherman was transported to the island, and then picked up by a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules rescue plane from Kodiak, Alaska.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Since the base was closed, the atoll has been visited by many vessels crossing the Pacific, as the deserted atoll has a strong lure due to the activities once performed there. Visitors have blogged about stopping there during a trip, or have posted photos of their visits.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 2010, a Fish and Wildlife survey team identified a swarm of Anoplolepis ants that had invaded the Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. The crazy ants threatened vital seabird colonies, and needed to be eradicated. The \"Crazy Ant Strike Team\" project was led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who achieved a 99% reduction in ant numbers by 2013. The team camped in a bunker that was previously used as a fallout shelter and office. Full eradication of the species from the atoll was achieved in 2021.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Johnston Atoll has never had any indigenous inhabitants, although during the late part of the 20th century, there were averages of about 300 American military personnel and 1,000 civilian contractors present at any given time. Today it is uninhabited except for a handful of workers with the Crazy Ant Strike Team project, who live on the island for six months at a time with little outside contact.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The primary means of transportation to this island was the airport, which had a paved military runway, or alternatively by ship via a pier and ship channel through the atoll's coral reef system. The islands were wired with 13 outgoing and 10 incoming commercial telephone lines, a 60-channel submarine cable, 22 DSN circuits by satellite, an Autodin with standard remote terminal, a digital telephone switch, the Military Affiliated Radio System (MARS station), a UHF/VHF air-ground radio, and a link to the Pacific Consolidated Telecommunications Network (PCTN) satellite. Amateur radio operators occasionally transmitted from the island, using the KH3 call-sign prefix. The United States Undersea Cable Corporation was awarded contracts to lay underwater cable in the Pacific. A cable known as \"Wet Wash C\" was laid in 1966 between Makua, Hawaii, and the Johnston Island Air Force Base. USNS Neptune surveyed the route and laid 769 nautical miles (1,424 km; 885 mi) of cable and 45 repeaters. These cables were manufactured by the Simplex Wire and Cable Company with the repeaters being supplied by Felten and Guilleaume. In 1993 a satellite communication ground station was added to augment the atoll's communications capability.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Johnston Atoll's economic activity was limited to providing services to American military and contractor personnel residing on the island. The island was regularly resupplied by ship or barge, and all foodstuffs and manufactured goods were imported. The base had six 2.5-megawatt electrical generators using diesel engines. The runway was also available to commercial airlines for emergency landings (a fairly common event), and for many years it was a regular stop on Continental Micronesia airline's \"island hopper\" service between Hawaii and the Marshall Islands.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "There were no official license plates issued for use on Johnston Atoll. U.S. government vehicles were issued U.S. government license plates and private vehicles retained the plates from which they were registered. According to reputable license plate collectors, a number of Johnston Atoll license plates were created as souvenirs, and have even been sold online to collectors, but they were not officially issued.",
"title": "Demographics"
}
]
| Johnston Atoll is an unincorporated territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). It is a National Wildlife Refuge and part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. It is closed to public entry, and limited access for management needs is only granted by letter of authorization from the United States Air Force and a special use permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. For nearly 70 years, the isolated atoll was under the control of the U.S. military. During that time, it was variously used as a naval refueling depot, an airbase, a testing site for nuclear and biological weapons, a secret missile base, and a site for the storage and disposal of chemical weapons and Agent Orange. Those activities left the area environmentally contaminated, and monitoring continues. The island is home to thriving communities of nesting seabirds and has significant marine biodiversity. USFWS teams carry out environmental monitoring and maintenance to protect the native wildlife. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-12T04:20:08Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll |
15,716 | Geography of Jordan | Jordan is situated geographically in West Asia, south of Syria, west of Iraq, northwest of Saudi Arabia, east of Palestine. The area is also referred to as the Middle or Near East. The territory of Jordan now covers about 91,880 square kilometres (35,480 sq mi).
Between 1950 and the Six-Day War in 1967, although not widely recognized, Jordan claimed and administered an additional 5,880 square kilometres (2,270 sq mi) encompassing the West Bank; in 1988 and with continuing Israeli occupation, King Hussein relinquished Jordan's claim to the West Bank in favor of the Palestinians.
Jordan is landlocked except at its southern extremity, where nearly 26 kilometres (16 mi) of shoreline along the Gulf of Aqaba provide access to the Red Sea.
Geographic coordinates: 31°00′N 36°00′E / 31.000°N 36.000°E / 31.000; 36.000
Except for small sections of the borders with Israel and Syria, Jordan's international boundaries do not follow well-defined natural features of the terrain. The country's boundaries were established by various international agreements and with the exception of the border with Israel, none was in dispute in early 1989.
Jordan's boundaries with Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia do not have the special significance that the border with Israel does; these borders have not always hampered tribal nomads in their movements, yet for a few groups borders did separate them from traditional grazing areas and delimited by a series of agreements between the United Kingdom and the government of what eventually became Saudi Arabia) was first formally defined in the Hadda Agreement of 1925.
In 1965 Jordan and Saudi Arabia concluded an agreement that realigned and delimited the boundary. Jordan gained 19 kilometers of land on the Gulf of Aqaba and 6,000 square kilometers of territory in the interior, and 7,000 square kilometers of Jordanian-administered, landlocked territory was ceded to Saudi Arabia. The new boundary enabled Jordan to expand its port facilities and established a zone in which the two parties agreed to share petroleum revenues equally if oil were discovered. The agreement also protected the pasturage and watering rights of nomadic tribes inside the exchanged territories.
The country consists mainly of a plateau between 700 metres (2,300 ft) and 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) meters high, divided into ridges by valleys and gorges, and a few mountainous areas. West of the plateau, land descents form the East Bank of the Jordan Rift Valley. The valley is part of the north-south Great Rift Valley, and its successive depressions are Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee; its bottom is about −258 metres (−846 ft)), Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea (its bottom is about −730 metres (−2,400 ft)), Arabah, and the Gulf of Aqaba at the Red Sea. Jordan's western border follows the bottom of the rift. Although an earthquake-prone region, no severe shocks had been recorded for several centuries.
By far the greatest part of the East Bank is desert, displaying the land forms and other features associated with great aridity. Most of this land is part of the Syrian Desert and northern Arabian Desert. There are broad expanses of sand and dunes, particularly in the south and southeast, together with salt flats. Occasional jumbles of sandstone hills or low mountains support only meager and stunted vegetation that thrives for a short period after the scanty winter rains. These areas support little life and are the least populated regions of Jordan.
The drainage network is coarse and incised. In many areas the relief provides no eventual outlet to the sea, so that sedimentary deposits accumulate in basins where moisture evaporates or is absorbed in the ground. Toward the depression in the western part of the East Bank, the desert rises gradually into the Jordanian Highlands—a steppe country of high, deeply cut limestone plateaus with an average elevation of about 900 meters. Occasional summits in this region reach 1,200 meters in the northern part and exceed 1,700 meters in the southern part; the highest peak is Jabal Ramm at 1,754 meters (though the highest peak in all of Jordan is Jabal Umm al Dami at 1854 meters. It is located in a remote part of southern Jordan). These highlands are an area of long-settled villages.
The western edge of this plateau country forms an escarpment along the eastern side of the Jordan River-Dead Sea depression and its continuation south of the Dead Sea. Most of the wadis that provide drainage from the plateau country into the depression carry water only during the short season of winter rains. Sharply incised with deep, canyon-like walls, whether flowing or dry the wadis can be formidable obstacles to travel.
The Jordan River is short, but from its mountain headwaters (approximately 160 kilometers north of the river's mouth at the Dead Sea) the riverbed drops from an elevation of about 3,000 meters above sea level to more than 400 meters below sea level. Before reaching Jordanian territory the river forms the Sea of Galilee, the surface of which is 212 meters below sea level. The Jordan River's principal tributary is the Yarmouk River. Near the junction of the two rivers, the Yarmouk forms the boundary between Israel on the northwest, Syria on the northeast, and Jordan on the south. The Zarqa River, the second main tributary of the Jordan River, flows and empties entirely within the East Bank.
A 380-kilometer-long rift valley runs from the Yarmouk River in the north to Al Aqaba in the south. The northern part, from the Yarmouk River to the Dead Sea, is commonly known as the Jordan Valley. It is divided into eastern and western parts by the Jordan River. Bordered by a steep escarpment on both the eastern and the western side, the valley reaches a maximum width of twenty-two kilometers at some points. The valley is properly known as Al Ghawr or Al Ghor (the depression, or valley).
The Rift Valley on the southern side of the Dead Sea is known as the Southern Ghawr and the Wadi al Jayb (popularly known as the Wadi al Arabah). The Southern Ghawr runs from Wadi al Hammah, on the south side of the Dead Sea, to Ghawr Faya, about twenty-five kilometers south of the Dead Sea. Wadi al Jayb is 180 kilometers long, from the southern shore of the Dead Sea to Al Aqaba in the south. The valley floor varies in level. In the south, it reaches its lowest level at the Dead Sea (more than 400 meters below sea level), rising in the north to just above sea level. Evaporation from the sea is extreme due to year-round high temperatures. The water contains about 250 grams of dissolved salts per liter at the surface and reaches the saturation point at 110 meters.
The Dead Sea occupies the deepest depression on the land surface of the earth. The depth of the depression is accentuated by the surrounding mountains and highlands that rise to elevations of 800 to 1,200 meters above sea level. The sea's greatest depth is about 430 meters, and it thus reaches a point more than 825 meters below sea level. A drop in the level of the sea has caused the former Lisan Peninsula to become a land bridge dividing the sea into separate northern and southern basins.
The major characteristic of the climate is the contrast between a relatively rainy season from November to April and very dry weather for the rest of the year. With hot, dry, uniform summers and cool, variable winters during which practically all of the precipitation occurs, the country has a Mediterranean-style climate.
In general, the farther inland from the Mediterranean Sea a given part of the country lies, the greater are the seasonal contrasts in temperature and the less rainfall. Atmospheric pressures during the summer months are relatively uniform, whereas the winter months bring a succession of marked low pressure areas and accompanying cold fronts. These cyclonic disturbances generally move eastward from over the Mediterranean Sea several times a month and result in sporadic precipitation.
Most of the East Bank receives less than 120 millimeters (4.7 in) of rain a year and may be classified as a dry desert or steppe region. Where the ground rises to form the highlands east of the Jordan Valley, precipitation increases to around 300 millimeters (11.8 in) in the south and 500 millimeters (19.7 in) or more in the north. The Jordan Valley, lying in the lee of high ground on the West Bank, forms a narrow climatic zone that annually receives up to 300 millimeters (11.8 in) of rain in the northern reaches; rain dwindles to less than 120 millimeters (4.7 in) at the head of the Dead Sea.
The country's long summer reaches a peak during August. January is usually the coolest month. The fairly wide ranges of temperature during a twenty-four-hour period are greatest during the summer months and have a tendency to increase with higher elevation and distance from the Mediterranean seacoast. Daytime temperatures during the summer months frequently exceed 36 °C (96.8 °F) and average about 32 °C (89.6 °F). In contrast, the winter months—November to April—bring moderately cool and sometimes cold weather, averaging about 13 °C (55.4 °F). Except in the rift depression, frost is fairly common during the winter, it may take the form of snow at the higher elevations of the north western highlands. Usually it snows a couple of times a year in western Amman.
For a month or so before and after the summer dry season, hot, dry air from the desert, drawn by low pressure, produces strong winds from the south or southeast that sometimes reach gale force. Known in the Middle East by various names, including the khamsin, this dry, sirocco-style wind is usually accompanied by great dust clouds. Its onset is heralded by a hazy sky, a falling barometer, and a drop in relative humidity to about 10 percent. Within a few hours there may be a 10 °F (5.6 °C) to 15 °F (8.3 °C) rise in temperature. These windstorms ordinarily last a day or so, cause much discomfort, and destroy crops by desiccating them.
The shamal, another wind of some significance, comes from the north or northwest, generally at intervals between June and September. Remarkably steady during daytime hours but becoming a breeze at night, the shamal may blow for as long as nine days out of ten and then repeat the process. It originates as a dry continental mass of polar air that is warmed as it passes over the Eurasian landmass. The dryness allows intense heating of the Earth's surface by the sun, resulting in high daytime temperatures that moderate after sunset.
Area: total: 89,342 km² land: 88,802 km² water: 540 km²
Land boundaries: total: 1,744 km border countries: Iraq 179 km, Israel 307 km, Saudi Arabia 731 km, Syria 379 km, West Bank 148 km
Coastline: 26 km note: Jordan also borders the Dead Sea, for 50 kilometres (31 mi)
Maritime claims: territorial sea: 3 nmi (5.556 km; 3.452 mi)
Elevation extremes: lowest point: Dead Sea −408 m highest point: Jabal Umm ad Dami 1,854 m
Natural resources: phosphates, potash, oil shale
Land use: arable land: 2.41% permanent crops: 0.97% other: 96.62% (2012)
Irrigated land: 788.6 km² (2004)
Total renewable water resources: 0.94 km (2011)
Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural): total: 0.94 km/yr (31%/4%/65%) per capita: 166 m/yr (2005)
Droughts; occasional minor earthquakes in areas close to the Jordan Rift Valley
Environment – current issues: limited natural fresh water resources and water stress; deforestation; overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification
Environment – international agreements: party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jordan is situated geographically in West Asia, south of Syria, west of Iraq, northwest of Saudi Arabia, east of Palestine. The area is also referred to as the Middle or Near East. The territory of Jordan now covers about 91,880 square kilometres (35,480 sq mi).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Between 1950 and the Six-Day War in 1967, although not widely recognized, Jordan claimed and administered an additional 5,880 square kilometres (2,270 sq mi) encompassing the West Bank; in 1988 and with continuing Israeli occupation, King Hussein relinquished Jordan's claim to the West Bank in favor of the Palestinians.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Jordan is landlocked except at its southern extremity, where nearly 26 kilometres (16 mi) of shoreline along the Gulf of Aqaba provide access to the Red Sea.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Geographic coordinates: 31°00′N 36°00′E / 31.000°N 36.000°E / 31.000; 36.000",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Except for small sections of the borders with Israel and Syria, Jordan's international boundaries do not follow well-defined natural features of the terrain. The country's boundaries were established by various international agreements and with the exception of the border with Israel, none was in dispute in early 1989.",
"title": "Boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Jordan's boundaries with Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia do not have the special significance that the border with Israel does; these borders have not always hampered tribal nomads in their movements, yet for a few groups borders did separate them from traditional grazing areas and delimited by a series of agreements between the United Kingdom and the government of what eventually became Saudi Arabia) was first formally defined in the Hadda Agreement of 1925.",
"title": "Boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1965 Jordan and Saudi Arabia concluded an agreement that realigned and delimited the boundary. Jordan gained 19 kilometers of land on the Gulf of Aqaba and 6,000 square kilometers of territory in the interior, and 7,000 square kilometers of Jordanian-administered, landlocked territory was ceded to Saudi Arabia. The new boundary enabled Jordan to expand its port facilities and established a zone in which the two parties agreed to share petroleum revenues equally if oil were discovered. The agreement also protected the pasturage and watering rights of nomadic tribes inside the exchanged territories.",
"title": "Boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The country consists mainly of a plateau between 700 metres (2,300 ft) and 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) meters high, divided into ridges by valleys and gorges, and a few mountainous areas. West of the plateau, land descents form the East Bank of the Jordan Rift Valley. The valley is part of the north-south Great Rift Valley, and its successive depressions are Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee; its bottom is about −258 metres (−846 ft)), Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea (its bottom is about −730 metres (−2,400 ft)), Arabah, and the Gulf of Aqaba at the Red Sea. Jordan's western border follows the bottom of the rift. Although an earthquake-prone region, no severe shocks had been recorded for several centuries.",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "By far the greatest part of the East Bank is desert, displaying the land forms and other features associated with great aridity. Most of this land is part of the Syrian Desert and northern Arabian Desert. There are broad expanses of sand and dunes, particularly in the south and southeast, together with salt flats. Occasional jumbles of sandstone hills or low mountains support only meager and stunted vegetation that thrives for a short period after the scanty winter rains. These areas support little life and are the least populated regions of Jordan.",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The drainage network is coarse and incised. In many areas the relief provides no eventual outlet to the sea, so that sedimentary deposits accumulate in basins where moisture evaporates or is absorbed in the ground. Toward the depression in the western part of the East Bank, the desert rises gradually into the Jordanian Highlands—a steppe country of high, deeply cut limestone plateaus with an average elevation of about 900 meters. Occasional summits in this region reach 1,200 meters in the northern part and exceed 1,700 meters in the southern part; the highest peak is Jabal Ramm at 1,754 meters (though the highest peak in all of Jordan is Jabal Umm al Dami at 1854 meters. It is located in a remote part of southern Jordan). These highlands are an area of long-settled villages.",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The western edge of this plateau country forms an escarpment along the eastern side of the Jordan River-Dead Sea depression and its continuation south of the Dead Sea. Most of the wadis that provide drainage from the plateau country into the depression carry water only during the short season of winter rains. Sharply incised with deep, canyon-like walls, whether flowing or dry the wadis can be formidable obstacles to travel.",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Jordan River is short, but from its mountain headwaters (approximately 160 kilometers north of the river's mouth at the Dead Sea) the riverbed drops from an elevation of about 3,000 meters above sea level to more than 400 meters below sea level. Before reaching Jordanian territory the river forms the Sea of Galilee, the surface of which is 212 meters below sea level. The Jordan River's principal tributary is the Yarmouk River. Near the junction of the two rivers, the Yarmouk forms the boundary between Israel on the northwest, Syria on the northeast, and Jordan on the south. The Zarqa River, the second main tributary of the Jordan River, flows and empties entirely within the East Bank.",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A 380-kilometer-long rift valley runs from the Yarmouk River in the north to Al Aqaba in the south. The northern part, from the Yarmouk River to the Dead Sea, is commonly known as the Jordan Valley. It is divided into eastern and western parts by the Jordan River. Bordered by a steep escarpment on both the eastern and the western side, the valley reaches a maximum width of twenty-two kilometers at some points. The valley is properly known as Al Ghawr or Al Ghor (the depression, or valley).",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Rift Valley on the southern side of the Dead Sea is known as the Southern Ghawr and the Wadi al Jayb (popularly known as the Wadi al Arabah). The Southern Ghawr runs from Wadi al Hammah, on the south side of the Dead Sea, to Ghawr Faya, about twenty-five kilometers south of the Dead Sea. Wadi al Jayb is 180 kilometers long, from the southern shore of the Dead Sea to Al Aqaba in the south. The valley floor varies in level. In the south, it reaches its lowest level at the Dead Sea (more than 400 meters below sea level), rising in the north to just above sea level. Evaporation from the sea is extreme due to year-round high temperatures. The water contains about 250 grams of dissolved salts per liter at the surface and reaches the saturation point at 110 meters.",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Dead Sea occupies the deepest depression on the land surface of the earth. The depth of the depression is accentuated by the surrounding mountains and highlands that rise to elevations of 800 to 1,200 meters above sea level. The sea's greatest depth is about 430 meters, and it thus reaches a point more than 825 meters below sea level. A drop in the level of the sea has caused the former Lisan Peninsula to become a land bridge dividing the sea into separate northern and southern basins.",
"title": "Topography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The major characteristic of the climate is the contrast between a relatively rainy season from November to April and very dry weather for the rest of the year. With hot, dry, uniform summers and cool, variable winters during which practically all of the precipitation occurs, the country has a Mediterranean-style climate.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In general, the farther inland from the Mediterranean Sea a given part of the country lies, the greater are the seasonal contrasts in temperature and the less rainfall. Atmospheric pressures during the summer months are relatively uniform, whereas the winter months bring a succession of marked low pressure areas and accompanying cold fronts. These cyclonic disturbances generally move eastward from over the Mediterranean Sea several times a month and result in sporadic precipitation.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Most of the East Bank receives less than 120 millimeters (4.7 in) of rain a year and may be classified as a dry desert or steppe region. Where the ground rises to form the highlands east of the Jordan Valley, precipitation increases to around 300 millimeters (11.8 in) in the south and 500 millimeters (19.7 in) or more in the north. The Jordan Valley, lying in the lee of high ground on the West Bank, forms a narrow climatic zone that annually receives up to 300 millimeters (11.8 in) of rain in the northern reaches; rain dwindles to less than 120 millimeters (4.7 in) at the head of the Dead Sea.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The country's long summer reaches a peak during August. January is usually the coolest month. The fairly wide ranges of temperature during a twenty-four-hour period are greatest during the summer months and have a tendency to increase with higher elevation and distance from the Mediterranean seacoast. Daytime temperatures during the summer months frequently exceed 36 °C (96.8 °F) and average about 32 °C (89.6 °F). In contrast, the winter months—November to April—bring moderately cool and sometimes cold weather, averaging about 13 °C (55.4 °F). Except in the rift depression, frost is fairly common during the winter, it may take the form of snow at the higher elevations of the north western highlands. Usually it snows a couple of times a year in western Amman.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "For a month or so before and after the summer dry season, hot, dry air from the desert, drawn by low pressure, produces strong winds from the south or southeast that sometimes reach gale force. Known in the Middle East by various names, including the khamsin, this dry, sirocco-style wind is usually accompanied by great dust clouds. Its onset is heralded by a hazy sky, a falling barometer, and a drop in relative humidity to about 10 percent. Within a few hours there may be a 10 °F (5.6 °C) to 15 °F (8.3 °C) rise in temperature. These windstorms ordinarily last a day or so, cause much discomfort, and destroy crops by desiccating them.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The shamal, another wind of some significance, comes from the north or northwest, generally at intervals between June and September. Remarkably steady during daytime hours but becoming a breeze at night, the shamal may blow for as long as nine days out of ten and then repeat the process. It originates as a dry continental mass of polar air that is warmed as it passes over the Eurasian landmass. The dryness allows intense heating of the Earth's surface by the sun, resulting in high daytime temperatures that moderate after sunset.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Area: total: 89,342 km² land: 88,802 km² water: 540 km²",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Land boundaries: total: 1,744 km border countries: Iraq 179 km, Israel 307 km, Saudi Arabia 731 km, Syria 379 km, West Bank 148 km",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Coastline: 26 km note: Jordan also borders the Dead Sea, for 50 kilometres (31 mi)",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Maritime claims: territorial sea: 3 nmi (5.556 km; 3.452 mi)",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Elevation extremes: lowest point: Dead Sea −408 m highest point: Jabal Umm ad Dami 1,854 m",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Natural resources: phosphates, potash, oil shale",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Land use: arable land: 2.41% permanent crops: 0.97% other: 96.62% (2012)",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Irrigated land: 788.6 km² (2004)",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Total renewable water resources: 0.94 km (2011)",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural): total: 0.94 km/yr (31%/4%/65%) per capita: 166 m/yr (2005)",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Droughts; occasional minor earthquakes in areas close to the Jordan Rift Valley",
"title": "Environmental concerns"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Environment – current issues: limited natural fresh water resources and water stress; deforestation; overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification",
"title": "Environmental concerns"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Environment – international agreements: party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands",
"title": "Environmental concerns"
}
]
| Jordan is situated geographically in West Asia, south of Syria, west of Iraq, northwest of Saudi Arabia, east of Palestine. The area is also referred to as the Middle or Near East. The territory of Jordan now covers about 91,880 square kilometres (35,480 sq mi). Between 1950 and the Six-Day War in 1967, although not widely recognized, Jordan claimed and administered an additional 5,880 square kilometres (2,270 sq mi) encompassing the West Bank; in 1988 and with continuing Israeli occupation, King Hussein relinquished Jordan's claim to the West Bank in favor of the Palestinians. Jordan is landlocked except at its southern extremity, where nearly 26 kilometres (16 mi) of shoreline along the Gulf of Aqaba provide access to the Red Sea. Geographic coordinates:
31°00′N 36°00′E | 2001-05-08T00:15:43Z | 2023-12-21T03:10:53Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Jordan |
15,717 | Demographics of Jordan | Jordan has a population of more than 11.1 million inhabitants as of 2023. Jordanians (Arabic: أردنيون) are the citizens of Jordan. Around 94% of Jordanians are Arabs, while the remaining 6% belong to other ethnic minorities, including Circassians, Chechens, Armenians and Kurds. Around 2.9 million inhabitants are non-citizens, a figure including refugees, legal and illegal immigrants. Jordan's annual population growth rate stands at 3.05% as of 2023, with an average of 2.8 births per woman. There were 1,977,534 households in Jordan in 2015, with an average of 4.8 persons per household.
The official language is Arabic, while English is the second most widely spoken language by Jordanians. It is also widely used in commerce and government. In 2016, about 84% of Jordan's population live in urban towns and cities. Many Jordanians and people of Jordanian descent live across the world, mainly in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, United States, Canada and Turkey.
In 2016, Jordan was named as the largest refugee hosting country per capita in the world, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon. Jordan hosts refugees mainly from the West Bank, Syria, and Iraq, as well as smaller communities from other nations. There are also hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Indonesia and South Asia, who work as domestic and construction workers.
The territory of Jordan can be defined by the history of its creation after the end of World War I, the League of Nations and redrawing of the borders of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral. The ensuing decisions, most notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which created the Mandatory Palestine. In September 1922, Transjordan was formally identified as a subdivision of the Mandate Palestine after the League of Nations approved the British Transjordan memorandum which stated that the Mandate east of the Jordan River would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement west of the Jordan River.
Arab Jordanians are either descended from families and clans who were living in the cities and towns in Transjordan prior to the 1948 war, most notably in the governorates of Jerash, Ajlun, Balqa, Irbid, Madaba, Al Karak, Aqaba, Amman and some other towns in the country, or from the Palestinian families who sought refuge in Jordan in different times in the 20th century, mostly during and after the wars of 1948 and 1967. Many Christians are natives especially in towns such as Fuhies, Madaba, Al Karak, Ajlun, or have Bedouin origins, and a significant number came in 1948 and 1967 mainly from Jerusalem, Jaffa, Lydda, Bethlehem, and other Palestinian and Israeli cities.
The Druze people are believed to constitute about 0.5% of the total population of Jordan, around 32,000 people. The Druze, who refer to themselves as al-Muwahhideen, or "believers in one God," are concentrated in the rural, mountainous areas west and north of Amman. Even though the faith originally developed out of Ismaili Islam, most Druze do not identify as Muslims, and they do not accept the five pillars of Islam.
The other group of Jordanians is descended from Bedouins (of which, less than 1% live a nomadic lifestyle). Bedouin settlements are concentrated in the wasteland south and east of the country.
An unknown but considerable number of Jordanians are of African descent.
There were an estimated 5,000 Armenians living within the country in 2009. An estimated 4,500 of these are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and predominantly speak the Western dialect of the Armenian language. This population makes up the majority of non-Arab Christians in the country.
There is an Assyrian refugee population in Jordan. Many Assyrians have arrived in Jordan as refugees since the invasion of Iraq, making up a large part of the Iraqi refugees.
By the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman Authorities directed the Circassian immigrants to settle in Jordan. The Circassians are Sunni Muslims and are estimated to number 20,000 to 80,000 people.
There are about 10,000 Chechens estimated to reside in Jordan.
Jordan is a home to 2,175,491 registered Palestinian refugees. Out of those 2,175,491 refugees, 634,182 have not been given Jordanian citizenship. Jordan also hosts around 1.4 million Syrian refugees who fled to the country due to the Syrian Civil War since 2011. About 31,163 Yemenis and 22,700 Libyan refugees live in Jordan as of January 2015. There are thousands of Lebanese refugees who came to Jordan when civil strife and war and the 2006 war broke out in their native country. Up to 1 million Iraqis came to Jordan following the Iraq War in 2003. In 2015, their number was 130,911. About 2,500 Iraqi Mandaean refugees have been resettled in Jordan.
Religion in Jordan
Jordan prides itself on its health services, some of the best in the region. Qualified medics, favourable investment climate and Jordan's stability have contributed to the success of this sector.
Jordan has a very advanced education system. The school education system comprises 2 years of pre-school education, 10 years of compulsory basic education, and two years of secondary academic or vocational education, after which the students sit for the General Certificate of Secondary Education Exam (Tawjihi). Scholars may attend either private or public schools.
Access to higher education is open to holders of the General Secondary Education Certificate, who can then choose between private Community Colleges, public Community Colleges or universities (public and private). The credit-hour system, which entitles students to select courses according to a study plan, is implemented at universities. The number of public universities has reached (10), besides (17) universities that are private, and (51) community colleges. Numbers of universities accompanied by significant increase in number of students enrolled to study in these universities, where the number of enrolled students in both public and private universities is estimated at nearly (236) thousand; (28) thousand out of the total are from Arab or foreign nationalities.
Source: UN World Population Prospects
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
11,200,320 (According to the Population Clock as of July 23, 2022).
Structure of the population
Births and deaths
Fertility Rate (The Demographic Health Survey) Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and CBR (Crude Birth Rate):
Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) by nationality
Government health reports indicate that about 40% of Jordanian adults are overweight and child obesity stands at more than 50%.
15–24 years (in 2015):
15 years and older (in 2015):
One World Values Survey reported 51.4% of Jordanians responded that they would prefer not to have neighbors of a different race. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jordan has a population of more than 11.1 million inhabitants as of 2023. Jordanians (Arabic: أردنيون) are the citizens of Jordan. Around 94% of Jordanians are Arabs, while the remaining 6% belong to other ethnic minorities, including Circassians, Chechens, Armenians and Kurds. Around 2.9 million inhabitants are non-citizens, a figure including refugees, legal and illegal immigrants. Jordan's annual population growth rate stands at 3.05% as of 2023, with an average of 2.8 births per woman. There were 1,977,534 households in Jordan in 2015, with an average of 4.8 persons per household.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The official language is Arabic, while English is the second most widely spoken language by Jordanians. It is also widely used in commerce and government. In 2016, about 84% of Jordan's population live in urban towns and cities. Many Jordanians and people of Jordanian descent live across the world, mainly in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, United States, Canada and Turkey.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 2016, Jordan was named as the largest refugee hosting country per capita in the world, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon. Jordan hosts refugees mainly from the West Bank, Syria, and Iraq, as well as smaller communities from other nations. There are also hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Indonesia and South Asia, who work as domestic and construction workers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The territory of Jordan can be defined by the history of its creation after the end of World War I, the League of Nations and redrawing of the borders of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral. The ensuing decisions, most notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which created the Mandatory Palestine. In September 1922, Transjordan was formally identified as a subdivision of the Mandate Palestine after the League of Nations approved the British Transjordan memorandum which stated that the Mandate east of the Jordan River would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement west of the Jordan River.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Arab Jordanians are either descended from families and clans who were living in the cities and towns in Transjordan prior to the 1948 war, most notably in the governorates of Jerash, Ajlun, Balqa, Irbid, Madaba, Al Karak, Aqaba, Amman and some other towns in the country, or from the Palestinian families who sought refuge in Jordan in different times in the 20th century, mostly during and after the wars of 1948 and 1967. Many Christians are natives especially in towns such as Fuhies, Madaba, Al Karak, Ajlun, or have Bedouin origins, and a significant number came in 1948 and 1967 mainly from Jerusalem, Jaffa, Lydda, Bethlehem, and other Palestinian and Israeli cities.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Druze people are believed to constitute about 0.5% of the total population of Jordan, around 32,000 people. The Druze, who refer to themselves as al-Muwahhideen, or \"believers in one God,\" are concentrated in the rural, mountainous areas west and north of Amman. Even though the faith originally developed out of Ismaili Islam, most Druze do not identify as Muslims, and they do not accept the five pillars of Islam.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The other group of Jordanians is descended from Bedouins (of which, less than 1% live a nomadic lifestyle). Bedouin settlements are concentrated in the wasteland south and east of the country.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "An unknown but considerable number of Jordanians are of African descent.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "There were an estimated 5,000 Armenians living within the country in 2009. An estimated 4,500 of these are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and predominantly speak the Western dialect of the Armenian language. This population makes up the majority of non-Arab Christians in the country.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "There is an Assyrian refugee population in Jordan. Many Assyrians have arrived in Jordan as refugees since the invasion of Iraq, making up a large part of the Iraqi refugees.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "By the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman Authorities directed the Circassian immigrants to settle in Jordan. The Circassians are Sunni Muslims and are estimated to number 20,000 to 80,000 people.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "There are about 10,000 Chechens estimated to reside in Jordan.",
"title": "Ethnic and religious groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jordan is a home to 2,175,491 registered Palestinian refugees. Out of those 2,175,491 refugees, 634,182 have not been given Jordanian citizenship. Jordan also hosts around 1.4 million Syrian refugees who fled to the country due to the Syrian Civil War since 2011. About 31,163 Yemenis and 22,700 Libyan refugees live in Jordan as of January 2015. There are thousands of Lebanese refugees who came to Jordan when civil strife and war and the 2006 war broke out in their native country. Up to 1 million Iraqis came to Jordan following the Iraq War in 2003. In 2015, their number was 130,911. About 2,500 Iraqi Mandaean refugees have been resettled in Jordan.",
"title": "Refugees"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Religion in Jordan",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Jordan prides itself on its health services, some of the best in the region. Qualified medics, favourable investment climate and Jordan's stability have contributed to the success of this sector.",
"title": "Health and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Jordan has a very advanced education system. The school education system comprises 2 years of pre-school education, 10 years of compulsory basic education, and two years of secondary academic or vocational education, after which the students sit for the General Certificate of Secondary Education Exam (Tawjihi). Scholars may attend either private or public schools.",
"title": "Health and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Access to higher education is open to holders of the General Secondary Education Certificate, who can then choose between private Community Colleges, public Community Colleges or universities (public and private). The credit-hour system, which entitles students to select courses according to a study plan, is implemented at universities. The number of public universities has reached (10), besides (17) universities that are private, and (51) community colleges. Numbers of universities accompanied by significant increase in number of students enrolled to study in these universities, where the number of enrolled students in both public and private universities is estimated at nearly (236) thousand; (28) thousand out of the total are from Arab or foreign nationalities.",
"title": "Health and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Source: UN World Population Prospects",
"title": "Health and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "11,200,320 (According to the Population Clock as of July 23, 2022).",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Structure of the population",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Births and deaths",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Fertility Rate (The Demographic Health Survey) Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and CBR (Crude Birth Rate):",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) by nationality",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Government health reports indicate that about 40% of Jordanian adults are overweight and child obesity stands at more than 50%.",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "15–24 years (in 2015):",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "15 years and older (in 2015):",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "One World Values Survey reported 51.4% of Jordanians responded that they would prefer not to have neighbors of a different race.",
"title": "Public attitudes"
}
]
| Jordan has a population of more than 11.1 million inhabitants as of 2023. Jordanians are the citizens of Jordan. Around 94% of Jordanians are Arabs, while the remaining 6% belong to other ethnic minorities, including Circassians, Chechens, Armenians and Kurds. Around 2.9 million inhabitants are non-citizens, a figure including refugees, legal and illegal immigrants. Jordan's annual population growth rate stands at 3.05% as of 2023, with an average of 2.8 births per woman. There were 1,977,534 households in Jordan in 2015, with an average of 4.8 persons per household. The official language is Arabic, while English is the second most widely spoken language by Jordanians. It is also widely used in commerce and government. In 2016, about 84% of Jordan's population live in urban towns and cities. Many Jordanians and people of Jordanian descent live across the world, mainly in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, United States, Canada and Turkey. In 2016, Jordan was named as the largest refugee hosting country per capita in the world, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon. Jordan hosts refugees mainly from the West Bank, Syria, and Iraq, as well as smaller communities from other nations. There are also hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Indonesia and South Asia, who work as domestic and construction workers. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-11-27T14:22:56Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Jordan |
15,718 | Politics of Jordan | The politics of Jordan takes place in a framework of a parliamentary monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Jordan is head of government, and of a multi-party system. Jordan is a constitutional monarchy based on the constitution promulgated on January 8, 1952. The king exercises his power through the government he appoints which is responsible before the Parliament. In contrast to most parliamentary monarchies, the monarchy of Jordan is not ceremonial, with the King having significant influence over the affairs of the country.
King Abdullah II of Jordan has been sovereign since the death of his father, King Hussein, in 1999. Bisher Al-Khasawneh has been Prime Minister since 7 October 2020.
The Constitution of Jordan vests executive authority in the king and in his cabinet. The king signs and executes or vetoes all laws. The king may also suspend or dissolve parliament, and shorten or lengthen the term of session. A veto by the king may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both houses of parliament at his discretion, most recently in November 2009. The king appoints and may dismiss all judges by decree, approves amendments to the constitution after passing by both parliaments, declares war and acts as the supreme leader of the armed forces. Cabinet decisions, court judgments, and the national currency are issued in his name. The Cabinet, led by a prime minister, was formerly appointed by the king, but following the 2011 Jordanian protests, King Abdullah agreed to a prime minister selected by and responsible to the Chamber of Deputies on matters of general policy, including the composition of cabinet. A two-thirds vote of "no confidence" by the Chamber can force the cabinet to resign.
Legislative power rests in the bicameral National Assembly. The National Assembly (Majlis al-Umma) has two chambers. The Chamber of Deputies (Majlis al-Nuwaab) has 130 members, elected for a four-year term in single-seat constituencies with 15 seats reserved for women by a special electoral college, nine for Christians and three for Chechens/Circassians. While the Chamber of Deputies is elected by the people, its main legislative abilities are limited to approving, rejecting, or amending legislation with little power to initiate laws. The Assembly of Senators (Majlis al-Aayan) has 65 members appointed by the King for a four-year term. The Assembly of Senators is responsible to the Chamber of Deputies and can be removed by a "vote of no confidence".
Political factions or blocs in the Jordanian parliament change with each parliamentary election and typically involve one of the following affiliations; a democratic Marxist/Socialist faction, a mainstream liberal faction, a moderate-pragmatic faction, a mainstream conservative faction, and an extreme conservative faction (such as the Islamic Action Front).
The Jordanian Chamber of Deputies is known for brawls between its members, including acts of violence and the use of weapons. In September 2013 Representative Talal al-Sharif tried to shoot one of his colleagues with an assault rifle while at the parliamentary premises.
The judiciary is completely independent from the other two branches of the government. The constitution provides for three categories of courts—civil (in this case meaning "regular"), religious, and special. Regular courts consist of both civil and criminal varieties at the first level—First Instance or Conciliation Courts, second level—Appelette or Appeals Courts, and the Cassation Court which is the highest judicial authority in the kingdom. There are two types of religious courts: Sharia courts which enforce the provisions of Islamic law and civil status, and tribunals of other religious communities officially recognized in Jordan.
King Hussein ruled Jordan from 1953 to 1999, surviving a number of challenges to his rule, drawing on the loyalty of his military, and serving as a symbol of unity and stability for both the Jordanians and Palestinian communities in Jordan. King Hussein ended martial law in 1989 and ended suspension on political parties that was initiated following the loss of the West Bank to Israel and in order to preserve the status quo in Jordan. In 1989 and 1993, Jordan held free and fair parliamentary elections. Controversial changes in the election law led Islamist parties to boycott the 1997, 2011 and 2013 elections.
King Abdullah II succeeded his father Hussein following the latter's death in February 1999. Abdullah moved quickly to reaffirm Jordan's peace treaty with Israel and its relations with the United States. Abdullah, during the first year in power, refocused the government's agenda on economic reform.
Jordan's continuing structural economic difficulties, burgeoning population, and more open political environment led to the emergence of a variety of political parties. Moving toward greater independence, Jordan's parliament has investigated corruption charges against several regime figures and has become the major forum in which differing political views, including those of political Islamists, are expressed.
On February 1, 2011, it was announced that King Abdullah had dismissed his government. This has been interpreted as a pre-emptive move in the context of the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution and unfolding events in nearby Egypt.
King Abdullah II and the Jordanian Government began the process of decentralization, with the Madaba governorate as the pilot project, on the regional level dividing the nation into three regions: North, Central, and South. The Greater Amman Municipality will be excluded from the plan but it will set up a similar decentralization process. Each region will have an elected council that will handle the political, social, legal, and economic affairs of its area. This decentralization process is part of Jordan's Democratization Program.
Jordan ranked 47th out of 180 nations in the Corruption Perceptions Index. The Constitution of Jordan states that no member of Parliament can have any financial or business dealings with the government and no member of the royal family can be in the government. However, corruption remains a problem in Jordan despite progress. Corruption cases are examined by the Anti-Corruption Commission and then referred to the judiciary for legal action. Corruption in Jordan takes the form of nepotism, favouritism, and bribery.
The 2018 Jordanian protests started as a general strike organized by more than 30 trade unions on 30 May 2018 after the government of Hani Mulki submitted a new tax law to Parliament. The bill followed IMF-backed measures to tackle Jordan's growing public debt.
The day following the strike on 31 May, the government raised fuel and electricity prices responding to an increase in international oil prices, which led to more public discontent. On 1 June King Abdullah intervened and ordered the freeze of the price hikes.
The protests continued for four days until Mulki submitted his resignation to the King on 4 June, and Omar Razzaz, his education minister, became Prime Minister. Protests only ceased after Razzaz announced his intention of withdrawing the new tax bill.
Administratively, Jordan is divided into twelve governorates (muhafazat, singular—muhafazah), each headed by a governor appointed by the king. They are the sole authorities for all government departments and development projects in their respective areas:
ABEDA, ACC, AFESD, AL, AMF, CAEU, CCC, CTBTO, EBRD, ESCWA, FAO, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICC, ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, IOM (observer), ISO (correspondent), ITU, NAM, OIC, OPCW, OSCE (partner), PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UNMIBH, UNMIK, UNMOP, UNMOT, UNOMIG, UNRWA, UNTAET, UNWTO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO, WTrO | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The politics of Jordan takes place in a framework of a parliamentary monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Jordan is head of government, and of a multi-party system. Jordan is a constitutional monarchy based on the constitution promulgated on January 8, 1952. The king exercises his power through the government he appoints which is responsible before the Parliament. In contrast to most parliamentary monarchies, the monarchy of Jordan is not ceremonial, with the King having significant influence over the affairs of the country.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "King Abdullah II of Jordan has been sovereign since the death of his father, King Hussein, in 1999. Bisher Al-Khasawneh has been Prime Minister since 7 October 2020.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Constitution of Jordan vests executive authority in the king and in his cabinet. The king signs and executes or vetoes all laws. The king may also suspend or dissolve parliament, and shorten or lengthen the term of session. A veto by the king may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both houses of parliament at his discretion, most recently in November 2009. The king appoints and may dismiss all judges by decree, approves amendments to the constitution after passing by both parliaments, declares war and acts as the supreme leader of the armed forces. Cabinet decisions, court judgments, and the national currency are issued in his name. The Cabinet, led by a prime minister, was formerly appointed by the king, but following the 2011 Jordanian protests, King Abdullah agreed to a prime minister selected by and responsible to the Chamber of Deputies on matters of general policy, including the composition of cabinet. A two-thirds vote of \"no confidence\" by the Chamber can force the cabinet to resign.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Legislative power rests in the bicameral National Assembly. The National Assembly (Majlis al-Umma) has two chambers. The Chamber of Deputies (Majlis al-Nuwaab) has 130 members, elected for a four-year term in single-seat constituencies with 15 seats reserved for women by a special electoral college, nine for Christians and three for Chechens/Circassians. While the Chamber of Deputies is elected by the people, its main legislative abilities are limited to approving, rejecting, or amending legislation with little power to initiate laws. The Assembly of Senators (Majlis al-Aayan) has 65 members appointed by the King for a four-year term. The Assembly of Senators is responsible to the Chamber of Deputies and can be removed by a \"vote of no confidence\".",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Political factions or blocs in the Jordanian parliament change with each parliamentary election and typically involve one of the following affiliations; a democratic Marxist/Socialist faction, a mainstream liberal faction, a moderate-pragmatic faction, a mainstream conservative faction, and an extreme conservative faction (such as the Islamic Action Front).",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Jordanian Chamber of Deputies is known for brawls between its members, including acts of violence and the use of weapons. In September 2013 Representative Talal al-Sharif tried to shoot one of his colleagues with an assault rifle while at the parliamentary premises.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The judiciary is completely independent from the other two branches of the government. The constitution provides for three categories of courts—civil (in this case meaning \"regular\"), religious, and special. Regular courts consist of both civil and criminal varieties at the first level—First Instance or Conciliation Courts, second level—Appelette or Appeals Courts, and the Cassation Court which is the highest judicial authority in the kingdom. There are two types of religious courts: Sharia courts which enforce the provisions of Islamic law and civil status, and tribunals of other religious communities officially recognized in Jordan.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "King Hussein ruled Jordan from 1953 to 1999, surviving a number of challenges to his rule, drawing on the loyalty of his military, and serving as a symbol of unity and stability for both the Jordanians and Palestinian communities in Jordan. King Hussein ended martial law in 1989 and ended suspension on political parties that was initiated following the loss of the West Bank to Israel and in order to preserve the status quo in Jordan. In 1989 and 1993, Jordan held free and fair parliamentary elections. Controversial changes in the election law led Islamist parties to boycott the 1997, 2011 and 2013 elections.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "King Abdullah II succeeded his father Hussein following the latter's death in February 1999. Abdullah moved quickly to reaffirm Jordan's peace treaty with Israel and its relations with the United States. Abdullah, during the first year in power, refocused the government's agenda on economic reform.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Jordan's continuing structural economic difficulties, burgeoning population, and more open political environment led to the emergence of a variety of political parties. Moving toward greater independence, Jordan's parliament has investigated corruption charges against several regime figures and has become the major forum in which differing political views, including those of political Islamists, are expressed.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On February 1, 2011, it was announced that King Abdullah had dismissed his government. This has been interpreted as a pre-emptive move in the context of the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution and unfolding events in nearby Egypt.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "King Abdullah II and the Jordanian Government began the process of decentralization, with the Madaba governorate as the pilot project, on the regional level dividing the nation into three regions: North, Central, and South. The Greater Amman Municipality will be excluded from the plan but it will set up a similar decentralization process. Each region will have an elected council that will handle the political, social, legal, and economic affairs of its area. This decentralization process is part of Jordan's Democratization Program.",
"title": "Decentralization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jordan ranked 47th out of 180 nations in the Corruption Perceptions Index. The Constitution of Jordan states that no member of Parliament can have any financial or business dealings with the government and no member of the royal family can be in the government. However, corruption remains a problem in Jordan despite progress. Corruption cases are examined by the Anti-Corruption Commission and then referred to the judiciary for legal action. Corruption in Jordan takes the form of nepotism, favouritism, and bribery.",
"title": "Corruption"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The 2018 Jordanian protests started as a general strike organized by more than 30 trade unions on 30 May 2018 after the government of Hani Mulki submitted a new tax law to Parliament. The bill followed IMF-backed measures to tackle Jordan's growing public debt.",
"title": "2018 Protests"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The day following the strike on 31 May, the government raised fuel and electricity prices responding to an increase in international oil prices, which led to more public discontent. On 1 June King Abdullah intervened and ordered the freeze of the price hikes.",
"title": "2018 Protests"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The protests continued for four days until Mulki submitted his resignation to the King on 4 June, and Omar Razzaz, his education minister, became Prime Minister. Protests only ceased after Razzaz announced his intention of withdrawing the new tax bill.",
"title": "2018 Protests"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Administratively, Jordan is divided into twelve governorates (muhafazat, singular—muhafazah), each headed by a governor appointed by the king. They are the sole authorities for all government departments and development projects in their respective areas:",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "ABEDA, ACC, AFESD, AL, AMF, CAEU, CCC, CTBTO, EBRD, ESCWA, FAO, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICC, ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, IOM (observer), ISO (correspondent), ITU, NAM, OIC, OPCW, OSCE (partner), PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UNMIBH, UNMIK, UNMOP, UNMOT, UNOMIG, UNRWA, UNTAET, UNWTO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO, WTrO",
"title": "International organization participation"
}
]
| The politics of Jordan takes place in a framework of a parliamentary monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Jordan is head of government, and of a multi-party system. Jordan is a constitutional monarchy based on the constitution promulgated on January 8, 1952. The king exercises his power through the government he appoints which is responsible before the Parliament. In contrast to most parliamentary monarchies, the monarchy of Jordan is not ceremonial, with the King having significant influence over the affairs of the country. King Abdullah II of Jordan has been sovereign since the death of his father, King Hussein, in 1999. Bisher Al-Khasawneh has been Prime Minister since 7 October 2020. | 2001-05-08T00:16:18Z | 2023-11-10T00:30:28Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Jordan |
15,719 | Economy of Jordan | The economy of Jordan is classified as an emerging market economy. Jordan's GDP per capita rose by 351% in the 1970s, declined 30% in the 1980s, and rose 36% in the 1990s. After King Abdullah II's accession to the throne in 1999, liberal economic policies were introduced. Jordan's economy had been growing at an annual rate of 8% between 1999 and 2008. However, growth has slowed to 2% after the Arab Spring in 2011. The substantial increase of the population, coupled with slowed economic growth and rising public debt led to a worsening of poverty and unemployment in the country. As of 2019, Jordan has a GDP of US$44.4 billion, ranking it 89th worldwide.
Jordan has Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the United States, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, the European Union, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Turkey and Syria. More FTA's are planned with Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, the GCC, Lebanon, and Pakistan. Jordan is a member of the Greater Arab Free Trade Agreement, the Euro-Mediterranean free trade area, the Agadir Agreement, and also enjoys advanced status with the EU.
Jordan's economic resource base centers on phosphates, potash, and their fertilizer derivatives; tourism; overseas remittances; and foreign aid. These are its principal sources of hard currency earnings. Lacking coal reserves, hydroelectric power, large tracts of forest or commercially viable oil deposits, Jordan relies on natural gas for 93% of its domestic energy needs. Jordan used to depend on Iraq for oil until the American-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Jordan also has a plethora of industrial zones producing goods in the textile, aerospace, defense, ICT, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic sectors. Jordan is an emerging knowledge economy.
The main obstacles to Jordan's economy are scarce water supplies, complete reliance on oil imports for energy, and regional instability. Just over 10% of its land is arable and the water supply is limited. Rainfall is low and highly variable, and much of Jordan's available ground water is not renewable.
In the last few years Jordan's economic growth has slowed, averaging around 2%. Jordan's total foreign debt in 2011 was $19 billion, representing 60% of its GDP. In 2016, the debt reached $35.1 billion representing 93.4% of its GDP. This substantial increase is attributed to effects of regional instability causing: decrease in tourist activity; decreased foreign investments; increased military expenditure; attacks on Egyptian pipeline supplying the Kingdom with gas; the collapse of trade with Iraq and Syria; expenses from hosting Syrian refugees and accumulated interests from loans. According to the World Bank, Syrian refugees have cost Jordan more than $2.5 billion a year, amounting to 6% of the GDP and 25% of the government's annual revenue. With the presence of Syrian refugees in Jordan, wage growth went considerably down as a result of competition for jobs between refugees and Jordan citizens. The downturn that began in 2011, continued until 2018. The country's top five contributing sectors to GDP, government services, finance, manufacturing, transport, and tourism and hospitality were badly impacted by the Syrian civil war. Foreign aid covers only a small part of these costs, 63% of the total costs are covered by Jordan. An austerity programme was adopted by the government which aims to reduce Jordan's debt-to-GDP ratio to 77% by 2021. The programme succeeded in preventing the debt from rising above 95% in 2018. The yearly growth rate of the economy was 2% from 2016 to 2019, compared to 6.4% from 2000 to 2009.
The Central Bank of Jordan commenced operations in 1964 and is the sole issuer of Jordanian currency, the Jordanian dinar, which is pegged to the US dollar. The following chart of the trend of gross domestic product of Jordan at market prices by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of Jordanian dinars.
For purchasing power parity comparisons, the Jordanian dinar is exchanged per US dollar at 0.710.
Jordan's population is 6,342,948 and mean wages were $4.19 per man-hour in 2009.
Jordan is classified by the World Bank as a "lower middle-income country." According to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, Jordan has the third freest economy in the Middle East and North Africa, behind only Bahrain and Qatar, and the 32nd freest in the world. Jordan ranked as having the 35th best infrastructure in the world, according to the World Economic Forum's Index of Economic Competitiveness. The Kingdom scored higher than many of its peers in the Persian Gulf and Europe like Kuwait, Israel. and Ireland. The 2010 AOF Index of Globalization ranked Jordan as the most globalized country in the Middle East and North Africa region. Jordan's banking sector is classified as "highly developed" by the IMF along with the GCC economies and Lebanon.
The official currency in Jordan is the Jordanian dinar and divides into 100 qirsh (also called piastres) or 1000 fils. Since 23 October 1995, the dinar has been officially pegged to the IMF's special drawing rights (SDRs). In practice, it is fixed at 1 US$ = 0.709 dinar, which translates to approximately 1 dinar = 1.41044 dollars. The Central Bank buys US dollars at 0.708 dinar, and sell US dollars at 0.7125 dinar, Exchangers buys US dollars at 0.708 and sell US dollars at 0.709.
The Jordanian market is considered one of the most developed Arab markets outside the Persian Gulf states. Jordan ranked 18th on the 2012 Global Retail Development Index which lists the 30 most attractive retail markets in the world. Jordan was ranked as the 19th most expensive country in the world to live in 2010 and the most expensive Arab country to live in.
Jordan has been a member of the World Trade Organization since 2000. In the 2009 Global Enabling Trade Report, Jordan ranked 4th in the Arab World behind the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States that went into effect in December 2001 would phase out duties on nearly all goods and services by 2010.
Jordan has high unemployment rates, 11.9% in the fourth quarter of 2010 but some estimate it to be as high as a quarter of the working-age population. Unemployment has continued to rise, hitting 25% in 2021, the highest level in more than 25 years, 6% points more than in 2019, and more than double the amount in 2011. Unemployment is a major issue, particularly for young people, women, and those with a university degree, with rates of unemployment exceeding 45%, 30%, and 30%, respectively.
The flows of remittance to Jordan had experienced rapid growth rates, particularly during the end of the 1970s and 1980s, where Jordan had started exporting high skilled labour to the Persian Gulf States. The money that migrants send home, remittances, represents today an important source of external funding for many developing countries, including Jordan. According to the World Bank data on remittances, with about US$3000 million in 2010, Jordan ranks at 10th place among all developing countries. Jordan has ranked constantly among the top 20 remittances-recipient countries over the last decade. In addition, the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) statistics in 2010 indicate that Jordan was the third biggest recipient of remittances among Arab countries after Egypt and Lebanon. The host countries that have absorbed most of the Jordanian expatriates are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab of Emirates (UAE), where the available recorded number of the Jordanian expatriates, working abroad, indicates that about 90% of these migrants are working in Persian Gulf countries. The proportion of skilled workers in Jordan is among the highest in the region. Many of the world's major software and hardware IT companies are present in Jordan. The presence of such firms underlines Jordan's attractiveness as a stable base with high-calibre human resources from which to serve the wider region. According to a report published in January 2012 by the founder of venture capital firm Finaventures, Rachid Sefraoui, Amman is one of the top 10 best cities in the world to launch a tech start-up.
An estimated 13.3% of citizens live under the poverty line. Since the mid-1970s, migrants' remittances are Jordan's most important source of foreign exchange, and a decisive factor in the country's economic development and the rising standard of living of the population.
Agriculture in Jordan constituted almost 40% of GNP in the early 1950s; on the eve of the June 1967 War, it was 17%. By the mid-1980s, agriculture's share of GNP in Jordan was only about 6%.
Jordan hosts SOFEX, the world's fastest growing and region's only special operations and homeland security exhibition and conference. Jordan is a regional and international provider of advanced military goods and services. The KADDB Industrial Park, specialized in defense manufacturing, was opened in September 2009 in Mafraq. By 2015, the park is expected to provide around 15,000 job opportunities whereas the investment volume is expected to reach JD500 million. A report by Strategic Foresight Group has calculated the opportunity cost of conflict for the Middle East from 1991 to 2010 at $12 trillion. Jordan's share in this is almost $84 billion.
Jordan has a 138% mobile phone penetration rate and a 63% internet penetration rate. 41.6% of all mobile phones in Jordan are smartphones, compared with 40% in the United States and 26% in the United Kingdom. 97% of Jordanian households own at least one television set while 90% have satellite reception. Furthermore, 61% of Jordanian households own at least one personal computer or laptop.
According to an investment survey, Jordan ranked as the 9th best outsourcing destination worldwide. Amman is one of the top 10 cities in the world to launch a tech start-up in 2012 and is becoming referred to as the "Silicon Valley of the Middle East".
Jordan has hosted the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa six times and plans to hold it again at the Dead Sea for the seventh time in 2013. Amman also hosts the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week semiannually and is the only city in the region to hold such a prestigious event that is usually held by the likes of New York, Paris, and Milan.
Jordan is one of the most liberal countries in the Middle East allowing a debate to consider introducing a secular government. In the 2010 Human Development Index, Jordan was placed in the "high human development" bracket and came 7th among Arab countries, after the Persian Gulf states and Lebanon. The 2010 Quality of Life Index prepared by International Living magazine ranked Jordan second in the MENA with 55.0 points after Israel.
Decades of political stability and security and strict law enforcement make Jordan one of the top 10 countries worldwide in security. In the 2010 Newsweek "World's Best Countries" list, Jordan ranked 53rd worldwide, and 3rd among Arab countries after Kuwait and the UAE. Jordan is also among the top ten countries whose citizens feel safest walking the streets at night.
As of 2011, 63% of working Jordanians are insured with the Social Security Corporation, as well as 120,000 foreigners, with plans to include the rest of Jordanian workers both inside and outside the kingdom as well as students, housewives, business owners, and the unemployed. Only 1.6% of Jordanians make less than $2 a day, one of the lowest in the developing world according to the Human Poverty Index.
In the 2010 Gallup Global Wellbeing Survey, 30% of Jordanians described their financial situation as "thriving", surpassed most of the Arab countries with the exception of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. In 2008, the Jordanian government launched the "Decent Housing for a Decent Living" project aimed at building 120,000 affordable housing units within the next 5 years, plus an additional 100,000 housing units if the need arises.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.
Despite increases in production, the agriculture sector's share of the economy has declined steadily to just 2.4 percent of gross domestic product by 2004. About 4 percent of Jordan's labor force worked in the agricultural sector in 2002. The most profitable segment of Jordan's agriculture is fruit and vegetable production (including tomatoes, cucumbers, citrus fruit, and bananas) in the Jordan Valley. The rest of crop production, especially cereal production, remains volatile because of the lack of consistent rainfall. Fishing and forestry are negligible in terms of the overall domestic economy. The fishing industry is evenly divided between live capture and aquaculture; the live weight catch totaled just over 1,000 metric tons in 2002. The forestry industry is even smaller in economic terms; approximately 240,000 total cubic meters of roundwood were removed in 2002, the vast majority for fuelwood.
Potash and phosphates are among the country's main economic exports. In 2003 approximately 2 million tons of potash salt production translated into US$192 million in export earnings, making it the second most lucrative exported good. Potash production totaled 1.9 million tons in 2004 and 1.8 million tons in 2005. In 2004 approximately 6.75 million tons of phosphate rock production generated US$135 million in export earnings, placing it fourth on Jordan's principal export list. With production totaling 6.4 million tons in 2005, Jordan was the world's third largest producer of raw phosphates. In addition to these two major minerals, smaller quantities of unrefined salt, copper ore, gypsum, manganese ore, and the mineral precursors to the production of ceramics (glass sand, clays, and feldspar) are also mined.
The industrial sector, which includes mining, manufacturing, construction, and power, accounted for approximately 26 percent of gross domestic product in 2004 (including manufacturing, 16.2 percent; construction, 4.6 percent; and mining, 3.1 percent). More than 21 percent of the country's labor force was reported to be employed in this sector in 2002. The main industrial products are potash, phosphates, pharmaceuticals, cement, clothes, and fertilizers. The most promising segment of this sector is construction. In the past several years, demand has increased rapidly for housing and offices of foreign enterprises based in Jordan to better access the Iraqi market. The manufacturing sector has grown as well (to nearly 20 percent of GDP by 2005), in large part as a result of the United States–Jordan Free Trade Agreement (ratified in 2001 by the U.S. Senate); the agreement has led to the establishment of approximately 13 Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZs) throughout the country. The QIZs, which provide duty-free access to the U.S. market, produce mostly light industrial products, especially ready-made garments. By 2004 the QIZs accounted for nearly US$1.1 billion in exports according to the Jordanian government.
Jordan's free trade agreement (FTA) with the US – the first in the Arab world – has already made the US one of Jordan's most significant markets. By 2010, it would have barrier-free export access in almost all sectors. A number of trade agreements with countries in the Middle Eastern and North African regions and beyond should also reap increasing benefits, not in the least the Agadir Agreement, which is seen as a precursor to an FTA with the EU. Jordan also recently signed an FTA with Canada. Furthermore, Jordan's plethora of industrial zones offering tax incentives, low utility costs and improved infrastructure links are helping incubate new developments. The relatively high skills level is also a key factor in promoting investment and stimulating the economy, particularly in value-added sectors. Despite the fact that Jordan has few natural resources it does benefit from abundant reserves of potash and phosphates, which are widely used in the production of fertilisers. Exports by these industries are expected to have a combined worth of $1bn in 2008. Other important industries include pharmaceuticals, which exported around $435m in 2006 and $260m in the first half of 2008 alone, as well as textiles, which were worth $1.19bn in 2007. Although the value of Jordan's industrial sector is high, the kingdom faces a number of challenges. Because the country is dependent on importing raw materials, it is vulnerable to price volatility. Shortages in water and power also make consistent development difficult. Despite these challenges, Jordan's economic openness and long-standing fertiliser and pharmaceutical industries should continue to provide a solid source of foreign currency.
Jordan has a plethora of industrial zones and special economic zones aimed at increasing exports and making Jordan an industrial giant. The Mafraq SEZ is focused on industry and logistics hoping to become the regional logistics hub with air, road, and rail links to neighboring countries and eventually Europe and the Persian Gulf. The Ma'an SEZ is primarily industrial focusing on satisfying domestic demand and reducing reliance on imports. With a national rail system under construction, Jordan expects trade to grow significantly and Jordan will mostly become the trade hub of the Levant and even the Middle East region as a whole due to its geography and natural resources.
Telecommunications is a billion-dollar industry with estimates showing that core markets of fixed-line, mobile and data service generate annual revenue of around JD836.5m ($1.18bn) per year, which is equivalent to 13.5% of GDP. Jordan's IT sector is the most developed and competitive in the region due to the 2001 telecom liberalization. Market share of the mobile sector, the most competitive telecoms market, is currently fairly evenly divided between the three operators, with Zain, owned by MTC Kuwait, maintaining the largest share (39%), followed by France Telecom's brand Orange (36%) and Umniah (25%), which is 96% owned by Bahrain's Batelco. End of year figures for 2007 show that the market trend is towards greater parity, with Zain's share falling in the space of a year from 47% in 2006 and the other two operators picking up subscribers. The increased competition has led to pricing that is more favourable to consumers. Mobile penetration is currently around 80%.
Ambitious subsequent national strategies were formulated already since Y 2000 as a private sector initiative directly led by his majesty the king of Jordan. Information technology association in Jordan (int@j ) was established to kick off a private sector process that would focus on preparing Jordan for the new economy through IT and shall reflect the national objectives towards automation and modernization in co-operation with the ministry of information technology in Jordan the (MOICT). The latest strategy will take the sector through to 2011, aims to bring Jordan to precise objectives. The ICT sector currently accounts for over a 14% (indirect) of the kingdom's GDP. This figure includes foreign investment and total domestic revenue from the sector. Employment growth in the sector was progressive and reached up to 60.000 (indirect ) by 2008. The government is working to address employment issues and education related to sector by developing ICT training and opportunities to increase the overall penetration of ICT in Jordanian society. The policy outlines a number of objectives for the country to reach within the next three years, including almost doubling the size of the sector to $3bn, and pushing internet user penetration up to 50%.
The early founder of Int@j and its first chairman of the board is Karim Kawar and early activists who drove the national strategic objectives and helped formulate an action plan through the developing pillars were Marwan Juma Jordan's minister of ICT, Doha Abdelkhaleq on labour and education. Humam Mufti on advocacy and Nashat Masri on Capital and finance amongst others. Such an infrastructure made Jordan a suitable location for IT startups that operate in the fields of web development, mobile application development, online services, and investment in IT businesses.
The IT industry in Jordan in the year 2000 and beyond got a very big boost after the Gulf War of 1991. This boost came from a large influx of immigrants from the Gulf countries to Jordan, mostly from Jordanian expatriates from Kuwait, totaling few hundred thousands. This large wave impacted Jordan in many ways, and one of them was on its IT industry.
Energy remains perhaps the biggest challenge for continued growth for Jordan's economy. Spurred by the surge in the price of oil to more than $145 a barrel at its peak, the Jordanian government has responded with an ambitious plan for the sector. The country's lack of domestic resources is being addressed via a $14bn investment programme in the sector. The programme aims to reduce reliance on imported products from the current level of 96%, with renewables meeting 10% of energy demand by 2020 and nuclear energy meeting 60% of energy needs by 2035. The government also announced in 2007 that it would scale back subsidies in several areas, including energy, where there have historically been regressive subsidies for fuel and electricity. In another new step, the government is opening up the sector to competition, and intends to offer all the planned new energy projects to international tender.
Unlike most of its neighbors, Jordan has no significant petroleum resources of its own and is heavily dependent on oil imports to fulfill its domestic energy needs. In 2002 proved oil reserves totaled only 445,000 barrels (70,700 m). Jordan produced only 40 barrels per day (6.4 m/d) in 2004 but consumed an estimated 103,000 barrels per day (16,400 m/d). According to U.S. government figures, oil imports had reached about 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m/d) in 2004. The Iraq invasion of 2003 disrupted Jordan's primary oil supply route from its eastern neighbor, which under Saddam Hussein had provided the kingdom with highly discounted crude oil via overland truck routes. Since late 2003, an alternative supply route by tanker through the Al Aqabah port has been established; Saudi Arabia is now Jordan's primary source of imported oil; Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are secondary sources. Although not so heavily discounted as Iraqi crude oil, supplies from Saudi Arabia and the UAE are subsidized to some extent.
In the face of continued high oil costs, interest has increased in the possibility of exploiting Jordan's vast oil shale resources, which are estimated to total approximately 40 billion tons, 4 billion tons of which are believed to be recoverable. Jordan's oil shale resources could produce 28 billion barrels (4.5 km) of oil, enabling production of about 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m/d). The oil shale in Jordan has the fourth largest in the world which currently, there are several companies who are negotiating with the Jordanian government about exploiting the oil shale like Royal Dutch Shell, Petrobras and Eesti Energia.
Natural gas is increasingly being used to fulfill the country's domestic energy needs, especially with regard to electricity generation. Jordan was estimated to have only modest natural gas reserves (about 6 billion cubic meters in 2002), but new estimates suggest a much higher total. In 2003 the country produced and consumed an estimated 390 million cubic meters of natural gas. The primary source is located in the eastern portion of the country at the Risha gas field. Until the early 2010s, the country imported the bulk of its natural gas via the Arab Gas Pipeline that stretches from the Al Arish terminal in Egypt underwater to Al Aqabah and then to northern Jordan, where it links to two major power stations. This Egypt–Jordan pipeline supplied Jordan with approximately 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Gas supplies from Egypt were halted in 2013 due to insurgent activities in the Sinai and domestic gas shortages in Egypt. In light of this, a liquified natural gas terminal was built in the Port of Aqaba to facilitate gas imports. In 2017, a low-capacity gas pipeline from Israel was completed which supplies the Arab Potash factories near the Dead Sea. As of 2018, a large capacity pipeline from Israel is under construction in northern Jordan which is expected to begin operating by 2020 and will supply the kingdom with 3 BCM of gas per year, thereby satisfying most of Jordan's natural gas consumption needs.
The state-owned National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) produces most of Jordan's electricity (94%). Since mid-2000, privatization efforts have been undertaken to increase independent power generation facilities; a Belgian firm was set to begin operations at a new power plant near Amman with an estimated capacity of 450 megawatts. Power plants at Az Zarqa (400 megawatts) and Al Aqabah (650 MW) are Jordan's other primary electricity providers. As a whole, the country consumed nearly 8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2003 while producing only 7.5 billion kWh of electricity. Electricity production in 2004 rose to 8.7 billion kWh, but production must continue to increase in order to meet demand, which the government estimates would continue to grow by about 5% per year. About 99 percent of the population is reported to have access to electricity.
The transportation sector on average contributes some 10% to Jordan's GDP, with transportation and communications accounting for $2.14bn in 2007. Well aware of the sector's importance to the country's service and industry-oriented economy, in 2008 the government formulated a new national transport strategy with the aim to improve, modernise and further privatise the sector. With no imminent solution to the ongoing security crisis in Iraq in sight, prospects for the Jordanian transport sector as a whole look bright. The country will arguably remain one of the major transit points for both goods and people destined for Iraq, while the number of tourists visiting Jordan is set to continue to increase. The main events to follow in the near future are the relocation of Aqaba's main port, a national railway system, and the construction of a new terminal at QAIA. Volatility in fuel prices is almost certainly going to have negative effects on operational costs and as such may hamper the sector's average annual growth of around 6%. However, uncertain fuel prices also offer a great deal of incentive to boost private investments in alternative modes of transport such as public buses and improved trains.
Although the state remains a major influence, Jordan's media sector has seen significant privatisation and liberalisation efforts in recent years. Based on official rack rates, research firm Ipsos estimated that the advertisement sector spent some $280m towards publicity in Jordan's media, 80% of which was spent on newspapers, followed by TV, radio and magazines. The biggest event of 2007 was the cancelled launch of ATV, the kingdom's first private broadcaster. As a result, the state-owned Jordan TV (JTV) remains the country's sole broadcaster. In recent years, Jordan has also seen a spectacular rise in the number of blogs, websites and news portals as sources of news information. The increasing diversification of Jordan's media is a good sign and should boost advertising revenues and private initiatives.
Recording growth of 30%, 2007 turned out to be yet another outstanding year for Jordan's advertising industry. Following nearly a decade of double-digit growth, however, most publicity specialists expect to see a relative slowdown in 2008. Unlike 2007, no major campaigns were planned for the first part of 2008. Additionally, the Jordanian advertising had some catching up to do with the rest of the region in terms of average expenditure per capita. As the sector matures, it is only normal for growth figures to gradually decrease. Since 2000 total ad spend increased from $77m to $280m in 2007, an increase of 260%. The Jordanian telecoms sector was the biggest ad spender in 2007, accounting for around 20% of the market, followed by the banking and finance sector (12%), services industry (11%), real estate (8%) and the automotive sector (5%). In the next year, particularly if there is a downturn, it would become increasingly important for the sector to develop good vocational training and to begin to take advantage of new media markets.
Services accounted for more than 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004. The sector employed nearly 75 percent of the labor force in 2002.
Jordan's banking system consists of 25 commercial banks, three Islamic banks, and nine foreign banks, with total assets of Jordanian dinar, JOD 57 billion (or EUR69.6 billion). Between 2010 and 2020, the sector's total assets climbed by 5% on average, led by a 7% increase in lending.
The banking sector is widely regarded as advanced in both regional and international terms. In 2007, total profits of the 15 listed banks rose 14.89% to JD640m ($909m). Jordan's strong growth of 6% in 2007 was reflected in a 20.57% expansion in net credit to JD17.9bn ($25.4bn) by the end of the year. The most improvement was in trade, construction and industry. Many banks suffered from the sharp correction in the Amman Stock Market in 2006, encouraging them to focus on core banking business in 2007, and this was reflected in a 16.65% rise in net interest and commission income to JD1.32bn ($1.87bn). The stock market also picked up in 2007 and total portfolio income losses decreased. Although Jordan's banking sector is small by global standards, it has attracted strong interest from regional investors in Lebanon and the GCC. New regulations introduced by the CBJ, in addition to political stability, have helped to create a favourable investment environment. Its conservative policies helped Jordan avoid the global financial crisis of 2009, Jordanian banks was one of the only countries that posted a profit in 2009.
Banking sector profitability was momentarily impacted (in 2020) by the COVID-19-induced economic downturn, but it already recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels in 2021. The Jordanian banking sector's non-performing loan (NPL) ratio remained at 5.5% during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a survey conducted in 2021, the pandemic's impact on credit supply in Jordan has been quite limited, with two-thirds of the banks surveyed indicating a constant or growing availability of loans. 50% of banks also reported an increase to loan supply for SMEs. For corporates, the increase was 25%.
90% of Banks believed that the pandemic will also affect the digitization of internal processes. 81% believed that banks' daily operations will be impacted and 90% believed that banks' online offerings will be improved.
Contributing an estimated JD477.5m ($678.05m), or 4.25% of Jordan's GDP, according to figures from the Central Bank, the construction sector performed strongly in 2007. The Great Amman Municipality (GAM) completed its master plan for the capital, which is expected to grow from 700 km today to 1700 km by 2025. Amman is changing from a predominantly horizontal to a largely vertical city due to various clusters of high-rises. Significant developments outside Amman include the rapid residential build-up of Zarqa, the transformation of Aqaba into a commercial and tourist centre, and the construction of a series of high-end hotels and tourist resorts along the Dead Sea. A new airport terminal, Amman ring road and a light rail between the capital and Zarqa are being constructed.
Despite recording a relative slowdown compared to the expansion of recent years, Jordan's construction and real estate market continued to grow in 2007. Trading totaled JD5.6bn ($8bn), up from JD5.2bn ($7.4bn) in 2006, according to Jordan's Land and Survey Department. Although the years of astounding growth—some 75% in 2004 and 48% in 2005—seem to have passed, the future looks bright for real estate, as demand continues to outstrip supply, while Jordan remains a very attractive investment destination for foreign businesses, second-home buyers and Jordanians working abroad. With Jordan's continuing sharp population growth, as well as its strategic location at the heart of the Middle East, the kingdom's main market drivers indicate a bright future for years to come. Although a number of class-A office space developments are currently under construction, it would take a few years to close the gap between demand and supply. The Amman retail market may become more saturated in the short term. Consequently, developers may turn to other cities to build supermarkets and malls.
Jordan's insurance market, with 29 companies operating in a country of just 5.7 million people, is saturated, despite regulatory encouragements for mergers and acquisitions. In terms of market share based on premiums, motor coverage accounts for 42.4%, medical insurance 18.6%, fire and property damage 17%, life 9.8%, marine and transport 7.9% and other insurance the remaining 4.3%. The insurance sector made up 2.52% of GDP in 2006, up from 2.43% in 2005. Current plans call for increasing the sector's GDP contribution to 7% in the short term and 10% in the long term. The sector holds great potential but remains underdeveloped. Region-wide price increases and a lack of consumer understanding of products are two major challenges. In addition, cultural considerations, including religion, make improving market penetration difficult. The cost of living has also risen, and the IMF forecasts that the inflation rate would reach 9% in 2008. Salaries have remained unchanged, however, leaving consumers with less disposable income. Other than mandatory motor coverage, insurance products are considered a luxury by average Jordanians, who must often prioritise spending. There would likely only be a few changes to the market in the coming year. Members of the sector would like to see greater coordination among the regulators and those working for the kingdom's legal system in order to improve insurance laws.
The state of the tourism sector is widely regarded as below potential, especially given the country's rich history, ancient ruins, Mediterranean climate, and diverse geography. Despite personal appeals by the king and an increasingly sophisticated marketing campaign, the industry is still adversely affected by the political instability of the region. More than 5 million visitors entered Jordan in 2004, generating US$1.3 billion in earnings. Earnings from tourism rose to US$1.4 billion in 2005. The fact that the bulk of Jordan's tourist trade emanates from elsewhere in the Middle East should contribute to the industry's growth potential in the years ahead, as Jordan is relatively stable, open, and safe in comparison to many of its neighbors. The tourism sector remains an important element of the Jordanian economy, directly employing some 30,000 Jordanians and contributing 10% to the kingdom's GDP. Despite a decline in Arab and Gulf visitors, 2007 marked a year of steady growth for the tourism sector. Revenues jumped 13% to nearly $2.11bn during the first 11 months, up from $1.86bn for the same period in 2006. The sector is overseen by the government's National Tourism Strategy (NTS), which was established in 2004 to take the industry through 2010. NTS aimed to double tourism revenues during the period and to increase tourism-related jobs to 91,719. The first goal has already been met but the second one might be more of a challenge: between 2004 and 2007 the total number of people employed in the sector rose from 23,544 to 35,484. This is impressive growth, but less than half the 90,000-or-more goal. NTS hopes to place Jordan as a boutique destination for high-end tourists. The strategy identifies seven priorities or niche markets: cultural heritage (archaeology); religion; ecotourism; health and wellness; adventure; meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE); and cruises. The Jordan Tourism Board's (JTB) marketing budget has increased in the past year from JD6m ($8.52m) to JD11.5m ($16.3m). These are positive times for tourism in Jordan, with steady growth and major projects in the pipeline. The sector has to make improvements in infrastructure and marketing, but overall the industry has been improving for the past several years.
Jordan's real GDP fell by 1.6% in 2020, with a dramatic reduction in tourism—a crucial economic sector—being one of the primary transmission routes of the crisis. Tourism provides for about 40% of Jordan's export receipts and 10–15% of GDP, with 3.8 million international tourists every year. The sector's GDP share fell to 3% in 2020, and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be slow.
Since 1995, economic growth has been low. Real GDP has grown at only about 1.5% annually, while the official unemployment has hovered at 14% (unofficial estimates are double this number). The budget deficit and public debt have remained high and continue to widen, yet during this period inflation has remained low due mainly to stable monetary policy and the continued peg to the United States Dollar. Exports of manufactured goods have risen at an annual rate of 9%. Monetary stability has been reinforced, even when tensions were renewed in the region during 1998, and during the illness and ultimate death of King Hussein in 1999.
Expectations of increased trade and tourism as a consequence of Jordan's peace treaty with Israel have been disappointing. Security-related restrictions to trade with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have led to a substantial decline in Jordan's exports there. Following his ascension, King Abdullah improved relations with Arabic states of the Persian Gulf and Syria, but this brought few real economic benefits. Most recently the Jordanians have focused on WTO membership and a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. as means to encourage export-led growth.
The stock market capitalisation of listed companies in Jordan was valued at $37.639 billion in 2005 by the World Bank.
According to the 2015 Middle East and North Africa Salary Survey conducted by Bayt.com, Respondents from GCC (49%) seem somewhat happier with the raise they received in 2014, as compared to respondents from Levant (42%):
The population of Aqaba is only 100,000 people and is set to double over the next 10 years. The town benefits from some natural advantages. Located at the southern tip of the country, between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the shores of the Red Sea, the city is close to the Suez Canal, with easy access to key trade centres in both the Middle East and Africa. Aqaba is also the kingdom's only deep-water port town, taking up most of Jordan's scant 27 km (17 mi) of coastline. The Aqaba Special Economic Zone (ASEZ) has been responsible for most of this development since it opened in 2001.
It covers 375 km and offers tax and tariff incentives, as well as full repatriation rights and more flexible operating regulations. There is a 5% flat tax on most economic activities, no tariffs on imported goods, no currency restrictions and no property taxes for corporate land. Additionally – and somewhat controversially, given Jordan's past issues with unemployment – companies based in ASEZ are allowed to employ up to 70% foreign workers in their operations. Jordan's investment profile has been growing nationally, but according to the Jordan Investment Board (JIB), the ASEZ has exceeded investment targets by 33%. By 2006 it had already brought in around $8bn in investment, some $2bn more than the original target of $6bn by 2020. ASEZ expects to attract a further $12bn spread across a number of sectors, including tourism, finance and industry. The Development Law of 2008 set in place a universal framework for special development areas based on the Aqaba model. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Jordan is classified as an emerging market economy. Jordan's GDP per capita rose by 351% in the 1970s, declined 30% in the 1980s, and rose 36% in the 1990s. After King Abdullah II's accession to the throne in 1999, liberal economic policies were introduced. Jordan's economy had been growing at an annual rate of 8% between 1999 and 2008. However, growth has slowed to 2% after the Arab Spring in 2011. The substantial increase of the population, coupled with slowed economic growth and rising public debt led to a worsening of poverty and unemployment in the country. As of 2019, Jordan has a GDP of US$44.4 billion, ranking it 89th worldwide.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jordan has Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the United States, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, the European Union, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Turkey and Syria. More FTA's are planned with Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, the GCC, Lebanon, and Pakistan. Jordan is a member of the Greater Arab Free Trade Agreement, the Euro-Mediterranean free trade area, the Agadir Agreement, and also enjoys advanced status with the EU.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Jordan's economic resource base centers on phosphates, potash, and their fertilizer derivatives; tourism; overseas remittances; and foreign aid. These are its principal sources of hard currency earnings. Lacking coal reserves, hydroelectric power, large tracts of forest or commercially viable oil deposits, Jordan relies on natural gas for 93% of its domestic energy needs. Jordan used to depend on Iraq for oil until the American-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Jordan also has a plethora of industrial zones producing goods in the textile, aerospace, defense, ICT, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic sectors. Jordan is an emerging knowledge economy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The main obstacles to Jordan's economy are scarce water supplies, complete reliance on oil imports for energy, and regional instability. Just over 10% of its land is arable and the water supply is limited. Rainfall is low and highly variable, and much of Jordan's available ground water is not renewable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In the last few years Jordan's economic growth has slowed, averaging around 2%. Jordan's total foreign debt in 2011 was $19 billion, representing 60% of its GDP. In 2016, the debt reached $35.1 billion representing 93.4% of its GDP. This substantial increase is attributed to effects of regional instability causing: decrease in tourist activity; decreased foreign investments; increased military expenditure; attacks on Egyptian pipeline supplying the Kingdom with gas; the collapse of trade with Iraq and Syria; expenses from hosting Syrian refugees and accumulated interests from loans. According to the World Bank, Syrian refugees have cost Jordan more than $2.5 billion a year, amounting to 6% of the GDP and 25% of the government's annual revenue. With the presence of Syrian refugees in Jordan, wage growth went considerably down as a result of competition for jobs between refugees and Jordan citizens. The downturn that began in 2011, continued until 2018. The country's top five contributing sectors to GDP, government services, finance, manufacturing, transport, and tourism and hospitality were badly impacted by the Syrian civil war. Foreign aid covers only a small part of these costs, 63% of the total costs are covered by Jordan. An austerity programme was adopted by the government which aims to reduce Jordan's debt-to-GDP ratio to 77% by 2021. The programme succeeded in preventing the debt from rising above 95% in 2018. The yearly growth rate of the economy was 2% from 2016 to 2019, compared to 6.4% from 2000 to 2009.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Central Bank of Jordan commenced operations in 1964 and is the sole issuer of Jordanian currency, the Jordanian dinar, which is pegged to the US dollar. The following chart of the trend of gross domestic product of Jordan at market prices by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of Jordanian dinars.",
"title": "Currency"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "For purchasing power parity comparisons, the Jordanian dinar is exchanged per US dollar at 0.710.",
"title": "Currency"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Jordan's population is 6,342,948 and mean wages were $4.19 per man-hour in 2009.",
"title": "Currency"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Jordan is classified by the World Bank as a \"lower middle-income country.\" According to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, Jordan has the third freest economy in the Middle East and North Africa, behind only Bahrain and Qatar, and the 32nd freest in the world. Jordan ranked as having the 35th best infrastructure in the world, according to the World Economic Forum's Index of Economic Competitiveness. The Kingdom scored higher than many of its peers in the Persian Gulf and Europe like Kuwait, Israel. and Ireland. The 2010 AOF Index of Globalization ranked Jordan as the most globalized country in the Middle East and North Africa region. Jordan's banking sector is classified as \"highly developed\" by the IMF along with the GCC economies and Lebanon.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The official currency in Jordan is the Jordanian dinar and divides into 100 qirsh (also called piastres) or 1000 fils. Since 23 October 1995, the dinar has been officially pegged to the IMF's special drawing rights (SDRs). In practice, it is fixed at 1 US$ = 0.709 dinar, which translates to approximately 1 dinar = 1.41044 dollars. The Central Bank buys US dollars at 0.708 dinar, and sell US dollars at 0.7125 dinar, Exchangers buys US dollars at 0.708 and sell US dollars at 0.709.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Jordanian market is considered one of the most developed Arab markets outside the Persian Gulf states. Jordan ranked 18th on the 2012 Global Retail Development Index which lists the 30 most attractive retail markets in the world. Jordan was ranked as the 19th most expensive country in the world to live in 2010 and the most expensive Arab country to live in.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jordan has been a member of the World Trade Organization since 2000. In the 2009 Global Enabling Trade Report, Jordan ranked 4th in the Arab World behind the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States that went into effect in December 2001 would phase out duties on nearly all goods and services by 2010.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jordan has high unemployment rates, 11.9% in the fourth quarter of 2010 but some estimate it to be as high as a quarter of the working-age population. Unemployment has continued to rise, hitting 25% in 2021, the highest level in more than 25 years, 6% points more than in 2019, and more than double the amount in 2011. Unemployment is a major issue, particularly for young people, women, and those with a university degree, with rates of unemployment exceeding 45%, 30%, and 30%, respectively.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The flows of remittance to Jordan had experienced rapid growth rates, particularly during the end of the 1970s and 1980s, where Jordan had started exporting high skilled labour to the Persian Gulf States. The money that migrants send home, remittances, represents today an important source of external funding for many developing countries, including Jordan. According to the World Bank data on remittances, with about US$3000 million in 2010, Jordan ranks at 10th place among all developing countries. Jordan has ranked constantly among the top 20 remittances-recipient countries over the last decade. In addition, the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) statistics in 2010 indicate that Jordan was the third biggest recipient of remittances among Arab countries after Egypt and Lebanon. The host countries that have absorbed most of the Jordanian expatriates are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab of Emirates (UAE), where the available recorded number of the Jordanian expatriates, working abroad, indicates that about 90% of these migrants are working in Persian Gulf countries. The proportion of skilled workers in Jordan is among the highest in the region. Many of the world's major software and hardware IT companies are present in Jordan. The presence of such firms underlines Jordan's attractiveness as a stable base with high-calibre human resources from which to serve the wider region. According to a report published in January 2012 by the founder of venture capital firm Finaventures, Rachid Sefraoui, Amman is one of the top 10 best cities in the world to launch a tech start-up.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "An estimated 13.3% of citizens live under the poverty line. Since the mid-1970s, migrants' remittances are Jordan's most important source of foreign exchange, and a decisive factor in the country's economic development and the rising standard of living of the population.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Agriculture in Jordan constituted almost 40% of GNP in the early 1950s; on the eve of the June 1967 War, it was 17%. By the mid-1980s, agriculture's share of GNP in Jordan was only about 6%.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Jordan hosts SOFEX, the world's fastest growing and region's only special operations and homeland security exhibition and conference. Jordan is a regional and international provider of advanced military goods and services. The KADDB Industrial Park, specialized in defense manufacturing, was opened in September 2009 in Mafraq. By 2015, the park is expected to provide around 15,000 job opportunities whereas the investment volume is expected to reach JD500 million. A report by Strategic Foresight Group has calculated the opportunity cost of conflict for the Middle East from 1991 to 2010 at $12 trillion. Jordan's share in this is almost $84 billion.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jordan has a 138% mobile phone penetration rate and a 63% internet penetration rate. 41.6% of all mobile phones in Jordan are smartphones, compared with 40% in the United States and 26% in the United Kingdom. 97% of Jordanian households own at least one television set while 90% have satellite reception. Furthermore, 61% of Jordanian households own at least one personal computer or laptop.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "According to an investment survey, Jordan ranked as the 9th best outsourcing destination worldwide. Amman is one of the top 10 cities in the world to launch a tech start-up in 2012 and is becoming referred to as the \"Silicon Valley of the Middle East\".",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Jordan has hosted the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa six times and plans to hold it again at the Dead Sea for the seventh time in 2013. Amman also hosts the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week semiannually and is the only city in the region to hold such a prestigious event that is usually held by the likes of New York, Paris, and Milan.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Jordan is one of the most liberal countries in the Middle East allowing a debate to consider introducing a secular government. In the 2010 Human Development Index, Jordan was placed in the \"high human development\" bracket and came 7th among Arab countries, after the Persian Gulf states and Lebanon. The 2010 Quality of Life Index prepared by International Living magazine ranked Jordan second in the MENA with 55.0 points after Israel.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Decades of political stability and security and strict law enforcement make Jordan one of the top 10 countries worldwide in security. In the 2010 Newsweek \"World's Best Countries\" list, Jordan ranked 53rd worldwide, and 3rd among Arab countries after Kuwait and the UAE. Jordan is also among the top ten countries whose citizens feel safest walking the streets at night.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "As of 2011, 63% of working Jordanians are insured with the Social Security Corporation, as well as 120,000 foreigners, with plans to include the rest of Jordanian workers both inside and outside the kingdom as well as students, housewives, business owners, and the unemployed. Only 1.6% of Jordanians make less than $2 a day, one of the lowest in the developing world according to the Human Poverty Index.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In the 2010 Gallup Global Wellbeing Survey, 30% of Jordanians described their financial situation as \"thriving\", surpassed most of the Arab countries with the exception of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. In 2008, the Jordanian government launched the \"Decent Housing for a Decent Living\" project aimed at building 120,000 affordable housing units within the next 5 years, plus an additional 100,000 housing units if the need arises.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.",
"title": "Economic overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Despite increases in production, the agriculture sector's share of the economy has declined steadily to just 2.4 percent of gross domestic product by 2004. About 4 percent of Jordan's labor force worked in the agricultural sector in 2002. The most profitable segment of Jordan's agriculture is fruit and vegetable production (including tomatoes, cucumbers, citrus fruit, and bananas) in the Jordan Valley. The rest of crop production, especially cereal production, remains volatile because of the lack of consistent rainfall. Fishing and forestry are negligible in terms of the overall domestic economy. The fishing industry is evenly divided between live capture and aquaculture; the live weight catch totaled just over 1,000 metric tons in 2002. The forestry industry is even smaller in economic terms; approximately 240,000 total cubic meters of roundwood were removed in 2002, the vast majority for fuelwood.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Potash and phosphates are among the country's main economic exports. In 2003 approximately 2 million tons of potash salt production translated into US$192 million in export earnings, making it the second most lucrative exported good. Potash production totaled 1.9 million tons in 2004 and 1.8 million tons in 2005. In 2004 approximately 6.75 million tons of phosphate rock production generated US$135 million in export earnings, placing it fourth on Jordan's principal export list. With production totaling 6.4 million tons in 2005, Jordan was the world's third largest producer of raw phosphates. In addition to these two major minerals, smaller quantities of unrefined salt, copper ore, gypsum, manganese ore, and the mineral precursors to the production of ceramics (glass sand, clays, and feldspar) are also mined.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The industrial sector, which includes mining, manufacturing, construction, and power, accounted for approximately 26 percent of gross domestic product in 2004 (including manufacturing, 16.2 percent; construction, 4.6 percent; and mining, 3.1 percent). More than 21 percent of the country's labor force was reported to be employed in this sector in 2002. The main industrial products are potash, phosphates, pharmaceuticals, cement, clothes, and fertilizers. The most promising segment of this sector is construction. In the past several years, demand has increased rapidly for housing and offices of foreign enterprises based in Jordan to better access the Iraqi market. The manufacturing sector has grown as well (to nearly 20 percent of GDP by 2005), in large part as a result of the United States–Jordan Free Trade Agreement (ratified in 2001 by the U.S. Senate); the agreement has led to the establishment of approximately 13 Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZs) throughout the country. The QIZs, which provide duty-free access to the U.S. market, produce mostly light industrial products, especially ready-made garments. By 2004 the QIZs accounted for nearly US$1.1 billion in exports according to the Jordanian government.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Jordan's free trade agreement (FTA) with the US – the first in the Arab world – has already made the US one of Jordan's most significant markets. By 2010, it would have barrier-free export access in almost all sectors. A number of trade agreements with countries in the Middle Eastern and North African regions and beyond should also reap increasing benefits, not in the least the Agadir Agreement, which is seen as a precursor to an FTA with the EU. Jordan also recently signed an FTA with Canada. Furthermore, Jordan's plethora of industrial zones offering tax incentives, low utility costs and improved infrastructure links are helping incubate new developments. The relatively high skills level is also a key factor in promoting investment and stimulating the economy, particularly in value-added sectors. Despite the fact that Jordan has few natural resources it does benefit from abundant reserves of potash and phosphates, which are widely used in the production of fertilisers. Exports by these industries are expected to have a combined worth of $1bn in 2008. Other important industries include pharmaceuticals, which exported around $435m in 2006 and $260m in the first half of 2008 alone, as well as textiles, which were worth $1.19bn in 2007. Although the value of Jordan's industrial sector is high, the kingdom faces a number of challenges. Because the country is dependent on importing raw materials, it is vulnerable to price volatility. Shortages in water and power also make consistent development difficult. Despite these challenges, Jordan's economic openness and long-standing fertiliser and pharmaceutical industries should continue to provide a solid source of foreign currency.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Jordan has a plethora of industrial zones and special economic zones aimed at increasing exports and making Jordan an industrial giant. The Mafraq SEZ is focused on industry and logistics hoping to become the regional logistics hub with air, road, and rail links to neighboring countries and eventually Europe and the Persian Gulf. The Ma'an SEZ is primarily industrial focusing on satisfying domestic demand and reducing reliance on imports. With a national rail system under construction, Jordan expects trade to grow significantly and Jordan will mostly become the trade hub of the Levant and even the Middle East region as a whole due to its geography and natural resources.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Telecommunications is a billion-dollar industry with estimates showing that core markets of fixed-line, mobile and data service generate annual revenue of around JD836.5m ($1.18bn) per year, which is equivalent to 13.5% of GDP. Jordan's IT sector is the most developed and competitive in the region due to the 2001 telecom liberalization. Market share of the mobile sector, the most competitive telecoms market, is currently fairly evenly divided between the three operators, with Zain, owned by MTC Kuwait, maintaining the largest share (39%), followed by France Telecom's brand Orange (36%) and Umniah (25%), which is 96% owned by Bahrain's Batelco. End of year figures for 2007 show that the market trend is towards greater parity, with Zain's share falling in the space of a year from 47% in 2006 and the other two operators picking up subscribers. The increased competition has led to pricing that is more favourable to consumers. Mobile penetration is currently around 80%.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Ambitious subsequent national strategies were formulated already since Y 2000 as a private sector initiative directly led by his majesty the king of Jordan. Information technology association in Jordan (int@j ) was established to kick off a private sector process that would focus on preparing Jordan for the new economy through IT and shall reflect the national objectives towards automation and modernization in co-operation with the ministry of information technology in Jordan the (MOICT). The latest strategy will take the sector through to 2011, aims to bring Jordan to precise objectives. The ICT sector currently accounts for over a 14% (indirect) of the kingdom's GDP. This figure includes foreign investment and total domestic revenue from the sector. Employment growth in the sector was progressive and reached up to 60.000 (indirect ) by 2008. The government is working to address employment issues and education related to sector by developing ICT training and opportunities to increase the overall penetration of ICT in Jordanian society. The policy outlines a number of objectives for the country to reach within the next three years, including almost doubling the size of the sector to $3bn, and pushing internet user penetration up to 50%.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The early founder of Int@j and its first chairman of the board is Karim Kawar and early activists who drove the national strategic objectives and helped formulate an action plan through the developing pillars were Marwan Juma Jordan's minister of ICT, Doha Abdelkhaleq on labour and education. Humam Mufti on advocacy and Nashat Masri on Capital and finance amongst others. Such an infrastructure made Jordan a suitable location for IT startups that operate in the fields of web development, mobile application development, online services, and investment in IT businesses.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The IT industry in Jordan in the year 2000 and beyond got a very big boost after the Gulf War of 1991. This boost came from a large influx of immigrants from the Gulf countries to Jordan, mostly from Jordanian expatriates from Kuwait, totaling few hundred thousands. This large wave impacted Jordan in many ways, and one of them was on its IT industry.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Energy remains perhaps the biggest challenge for continued growth for Jordan's economy. Spurred by the surge in the price of oil to more than $145 a barrel at its peak, the Jordanian government has responded with an ambitious plan for the sector. The country's lack of domestic resources is being addressed via a $14bn investment programme in the sector. The programme aims to reduce reliance on imported products from the current level of 96%, with renewables meeting 10% of energy demand by 2020 and nuclear energy meeting 60% of energy needs by 2035. The government also announced in 2007 that it would scale back subsidies in several areas, including energy, where there have historically been regressive subsidies for fuel and electricity. In another new step, the government is opening up the sector to competition, and intends to offer all the planned new energy projects to international tender.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Unlike most of its neighbors, Jordan has no significant petroleum resources of its own and is heavily dependent on oil imports to fulfill its domestic energy needs. In 2002 proved oil reserves totaled only 445,000 barrels (70,700 m). Jordan produced only 40 barrels per day (6.4 m/d) in 2004 but consumed an estimated 103,000 barrels per day (16,400 m/d). According to U.S. government figures, oil imports had reached about 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m/d) in 2004. The Iraq invasion of 2003 disrupted Jordan's primary oil supply route from its eastern neighbor, which under Saddam Hussein had provided the kingdom with highly discounted crude oil via overland truck routes. Since late 2003, an alternative supply route by tanker through the Al Aqabah port has been established; Saudi Arabia is now Jordan's primary source of imported oil; Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are secondary sources. Although not so heavily discounted as Iraqi crude oil, supplies from Saudi Arabia and the UAE are subsidized to some extent.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In the face of continued high oil costs, interest has increased in the possibility of exploiting Jordan's vast oil shale resources, which are estimated to total approximately 40 billion tons, 4 billion tons of which are believed to be recoverable. Jordan's oil shale resources could produce 28 billion barrels (4.5 km) of oil, enabling production of about 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m/d). The oil shale in Jordan has the fourth largest in the world which currently, there are several companies who are negotiating with the Jordanian government about exploiting the oil shale like Royal Dutch Shell, Petrobras and Eesti Energia.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Natural gas is increasingly being used to fulfill the country's domestic energy needs, especially with regard to electricity generation. Jordan was estimated to have only modest natural gas reserves (about 6 billion cubic meters in 2002), but new estimates suggest a much higher total. In 2003 the country produced and consumed an estimated 390 million cubic meters of natural gas. The primary source is located in the eastern portion of the country at the Risha gas field. Until the early 2010s, the country imported the bulk of its natural gas via the Arab Gas Pipeline that stretches from the Al Arish terminal in Egypt underwater to Al Aqabah and then to northern Jordan, where it links to two major power stations. This Egypt–Jordan pipeline supplied Jordan with approximately 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Gas supplies from Egypt were halted in 2013 due to insurgent activities in the Sinai and domestic gas shortages in Egypt. In light of this, a liquified natural gas terminal was built in the Port of Aqaba to facilitate gas imports. In 2017, a low-capacity gas pipeline from Israel was completed which supplies the Arab Potash factories near the Dead Sea. As of 2018, a large capacity pipeline from Israel is under construction in northern Jordan which is expected to begin operating by 2020 and will supply the kingdom with 3 BCM of gas per year, thereby satisfying most of Jordan's natural gas consumption needs.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The state-owned National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) produces most of Jordan's electricity (94%). Since mid-2000, privatization efforts have been undertaken to increase independent power generation facilities; a Belgian firm was set to begin operations at a new power plant near Amman with an estimated capacity of 450 megawatts. Power plants at Az Zarqa (400 megawatts) and Al Aqabah (650 MW) are Jordan's other primary electricity providers. As a whole, the country consumed nearly 8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2003 while producing only 7.5 billion kWh of electricity. Electricity production in 2004 rose to 8.7 billion kWh, but production must continue to increase in order to meet demand, which the government estimates would continue to grow by about 5% per year. About 99 percent of the population is reported to have access to electricity.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The transportation sector on average contributes some 10% to Jordan's GDP, with transportation and communications accounting for $2.14bn in 2007. Well aware of the sector's importance to the country's service and industry-oriented economy, in 2008 the government formulated a new national transport strategy with the aim to improve, modernise and further privatise the sector. With no imminent solution to the ongoing security crisis in Iraq in sight, prospects for the Jordanian transport sector as a whole look bright. The country will arguably remain one of the major transit points for both goods and people destined for Iraq, while the number of tourists visiting Jordan is set to continue to increase. The main events to follow in the near future are the relocation of Aqaba's main port, a national railway system, and the construction of a new terminal at QAIA. Volatility in fuel prices is almost certainly going to have negative effects on operational costs and as such may hamper the sector's average annual growth of around 6%. However, uncertain fuel prices also offer a great deal of incentive to boost private investments in alternative modes of transport such as public buses and improved trains.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Although the state remains a major influence, Jordan's media sector has seen significant privatisation and liberalisation efforts in recent years. Based on official rack rates, research firm Ipsos estimated that the advertisement sector spent some $280m towards publicity in Jordan's media, 80% of which was spent on newspapers, followed by TV, radio and magazines. The biggest event of 2007 was the cancelled launch of ATV, the kingdom's first private broadcaster. As a result, the state-owned Jordan TV (JTV) remains the country's sole broadcaster. In recent years, Jordan has also seen a spectacular rise in the number of blogs, websites and news portals as sources of news information. The increasing diversification of Jordan's media is a good sign and should boost advertising revenues and private initiatives.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Recording growth of 30%, 2007 turned out to be yet another outstanding year for Jordan's advertising industry. Following nearly a decade of double-digit growth, however, most publicity specialists expect to see a relative slowdown in 2008. Unlike 2007, no major campaigns were planned for the first part of 2008. Additionally, the Jordanian advertising had some catching up to do with the rest of the region in terms of average expenditure per capita. As the sector matures, it is only normal for growth figures to gradually decrease. Since 2000 total ad spend increased from $77m to $280m in 2007, an increase of 260%. The Jordanian telecoms sector was the biggest ad spender in 2007, accounting for around 20% of the market, followed by the banking and finance sector (12%), services industry (11%), real estate (8%) and the automotive sector (5%). In the next year, particularly if there is a downturn, it would become increasingly important for the sector to develop good vocational training and to begin to take advantage of new media markets.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Services accounted for more than 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004. The sector employed nearly 75 percent of the labor force in 2002.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Jordan's banking system consists of 25 commercial banks, three Islamic banks, and nine foreign banks, with total assets of Jordanian dinar, JOD 57 billion (or EUR69.6 billion). Between 2010 and 2020, the sector's total assets climbed by 5% on average, led by a 7% increase in lending.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The banking sector is widely regarded as advanced in both regional and international terms. In 2007, total profits of the 15 listed banks rose 14.89% to JD640m ($909m). Jordan's strong growth of 6% in 2007 was reflected in a 20.57% expansion in net credit to JD17.9bn ($25.4bn) by the end of the year. The most improvement was in trade, construction and industry. Many banks suffered from the sharp correction in the Amman Stock Market in 2006, encouraging them to focus on core banking business in 2007, and this was reflected in a 16.65% rise in net interest and commission income to JD1.32bn ($1.87bn). The stock market also picked up in 2007 and total portfolio income losses decreased. Although Jordan's banking sector is small by global standards, it has attracted strong interest from regional investors in Lebanon and the GCC. New regulations introduced by the CBJ, in addition to political stability, have helped to create a favourable investment environment. Its conservative policies helped Jordan avoid the global financial crisis of 2009, Jordanian banks was one of the only countries that posted a profit in 2009.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Banking sector profitability was momentarily impacted (in 2020) by the COVID-19-induced economic downturn, but it already recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels in 2021. The Jordanian banking sector's non-performing loan (NPL) ratio remained at 5.5% during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a survey conducted in 2021, the pandemic's impact on credit supply in Jordan has been quite limited, with two-thirds of the banks surveyed indicating a constant or growing availability of loans. 50% of banks also reported an increase to loan supply for SMEs. For corporates, the increase was 25%.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "90% of Banks believed that the pandemic will also affect the digitization of internal processes. 81% believed that banks' daily operations will be impacted and 90% believed that banks' online offerings will be improved.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Contributing an estimated JD477.5m ($678.05m), or 4.25% of Jordan's GDP, according to figures from the Central Bank, the construction sector performed strongly in 2007. The Great Amman Municipality (GAM) completed its master plan for the capital, which is expected to grow from 700 km today to 1700 km by 2025. Amman is changing from a predominantly horizontal to a largely vertical city due to various clusters of high-rises. Significant developments outside Amman include the rapid residential build-up of Zarqa, the transformation of Aqaba into a commercial and tourist centre, and the construction of a series of high-end hotels and tourist resorts along the Dead Sea. A new airport terminal, Amman ring road and a light rail between the capital and Zarqa are being constructed.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Despite recording a relative slowdown compared to the expansion of recent years, Jordan's construction and real estate market continued to grow in 2007. Trading totaled JD5.6bn ($8bn), up from JD5.2bn ($7.4bn) in 2006, according to Jordan's Land and Survey Department. Although the years of astounding growth—some 75% in 2004 and 48% in 2005—seem to have passed, the future looks bright for real estate, as demand continues to outstrip supply, while Jordan remains a very attractive investment destination for foreign businesses, second-home buyers and Jordanians working abroad. With Jordan's continuing sharp population growth, as well as its strategic location at the heart of the Middle East, the kingdom's main market drivers indicate a bright future for years to come. Although a number of class-A office space developments are currently under construction, it would take a few years to close the gap between demand and supply. The Amman retail market may become more saturated in the short term. Consequently, developers may turn to other cities to build supermarkets and malls.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Jordan's insurance market, with 29 companies operating in a country of just 5.7 million people, is saturated, despite regulatory encouragements for mergers and acquisitions. In terms of market share based on premiums, motor coverage accounts for 42.4%, medical insurance 18.6%, fire and property damage 17%, life 9.8%, marine and transport 7.9% and other insurance the remaining 4.3%. The insurance sector made up 2.52% of GDP in 2006, up from 2.43% in 2005. Current plans call for increasing the sector's GDP contribution to 7% in the short term and 10% in the long term. The sector holds great potential but remains underdeveloped. Region-wide price increases and a lack of consumer understanding of products are two major challenges. In addition, cultural considerations, including religion, make improving market penetration difficult. The cost of living has also risen, and the IMF forecasts that the inflation rate would reach 9% in 2008. Salaries have remained unchanged, however, leaving consumers with less disposable income. Other than mandatory motor coverage, insurance products are considered a luxury by average Jordanians, who must often prioritise spending. There would likely only be a few changes to the market in the coming year. Members of the sector would like to see greater coordination among the regulators and those working for the kingdom's legal system in order to improve insurance laws.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The state of the tourism sector is widely regarded as below potential, especially given the country's rich history, ancient ruins, Mediterranean climate, and diverse geography. Despite personal appeals by the king and an increasingly sophisticated marketing campaign, the industry is still adversely affected by the political instability of the region. More than 5 million visitors entered Jordan in 2004, generating US$1.3 billion in earnings. Earnings from tourism rose to US$1.4 billion in 2005. The fact that the bulk of Jordan's tourist trade emanates from elsewhere in the Middle East should contribute to the industry's growth potential in the years ahead, as Jordan is relatively stable, open, and safe in comparison to many of its neighbors. The tourism sector remains an important element of the Jordanian economy, directly employing some 30,000 Jordanians and contributing 10% to the kingdom's GDP. Despite a decline in Arab and Gulf visitors, 2007 marked a year of steady growth for the tourism sector. Revenues jumped 13% to nearly $2.11bn during the first 11 months, up from $1.86bn for the same period in 2006. The sector is overseen by the government's National Tourism Strategy (NTS), which was established in 2004 to take the industry through 2010. NTS aimed to double tourism revenues during the period and to increase tourism-related jobs to 91,719. The first goal has already been met but the second one might be more of a challenge: between 2004 and 2007 the total number of people employed in the sector rose from 23,544 to 35,484. This is impressive growth, but less than half the 90,000-or-more goal. NTS hopes to place Jordan as a boutique destination for high-end tourists. The strategy identifies seven priorities or niche markets: cultural heritage (archaeology); religion; ecotourism; health and wellness; adventure; meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE); and cruises. The Jordan Tourism Board's (JTB) marketing budget has increased in the past year from JD6m ($8.52m) to JD11.5m ($16.3m). These are positive times for tourism in Jordan, with steady growth and major projects in the pipeline. The sector has to make improvements in infrastructure and marketing, but overall the industry has been improving for the past several years.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Jordan's real GDP fell by 1.6% in 2020, with a dramatic reduction in tourism—a crucial economic sector—being one of the primary transmission routes of the crisis. Tourism provides for about 40% of Jordan's export receipts and 10–15% of GDP, with 3.8 million international tourists every year. The sector's GDP share fell to 3% in 2020, and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be slow.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Since 1995, economic growth has been low. Real GDP has grown at only about 1.5% annually, while the official unemployment has hovered at 14% (unofficial estimates are double this number). The budget deficit and public debt have remained high and continue to widen, yet during this period inflation has remained low due mainly to stable monetary policy and the continued peg to the United States Dollar. Exports of manufactured goods have risen at an annual rate of 9%. Monetary stability has been reinforced, even when tensions were renewed in the region during 1998, and during the illness and ultimate death of King Hussein in 1999.",
"title": "External trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Expectations of increased trade and tourism as a consequence of Jordan's peace treaty with Israel have been disappointing. Security-related restrictions to trade with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have led to a substantial decline in Jordan's exports there. Following his ascension, King Abdullah improved relations with Arabic states of the Persian Gulf and Syria, but this brought few real economic benefits. Most recently the Jordanians have focused on WTO membership and a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. as means to encourage export-led growth.",
"title": "External trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The stock market capitalisation of listed companies in Jordan was valued at $37.639 billion in 2005 by the World Bank.",
"title": "Investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "According to the 2015 Middle East and North Africa Salary Survey conducted by Bayt.com, Respondents from GCC (49%) seem somewhat happier with the raise they received in 2014, as compared to respondents from Levant (42%):",
"title": "Salaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The population of Aqaba is only 100,000 people and is set to double over the next 10 years. The town benefits from some natural advantages. Located at the southern tip of the country, between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the shores of the Red Sea, the city is close to the Suez Canal, with easy access to key trade centres in both the Middle East and Africa. Aqaba is also the kingdom's only deep-water port town, taking up most of Jordan's scant 27 km (17 mi) of coastline. The Aqaba Special Economic Zone (ASEZ) has been responsible for most of this development since it opened in 2001.",
"title": "Aqaba Special Economic Zone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "It covers 375 km and offers tax and tariff incentives, as well as full repatriation rights and more flexible operating regulations. There is a 5% flat tax on most economic activities, no tariffs on imported goods, no currency restrictions and no property taxes for corporate land. Additionally – and somewhat controversially, given Jordan's past issues with unemployment – companies based in ASEZ are allowed to employ up to 70% foreign workers in their operations. Jordan's investment profile has been growing nationally, but according to the Jordan Investment Board (JIB), the ASEZ has exceeded investment targets by 33%. By 2006 it had already brought in around $8bn in investment, some $2bn more than the original target of $6bn by 2020. ASEZ expects to attract a further $12bn spread across a number of sectors, including tourism, finance and industry. The Development Law of 2008 set in place a universal framework for special development areas based on the Aqaba model.",
"title": "Aqaba Special Economic Zone"
}
]
| The economy of Jordan is classified as an emerging market economy. Jordan's GDP per capita rose by 351% in the 1970s, declined 30% in the 1980s, and rose 36% in the 1990s. After King Abdullah II's accession to the throne in 1999, liberal economic policies were introduced. Jordan's economy had been growing at an annual rate of 8% between 1999 and 2008. However, growth has slowed to 2% after the Arab Spring in 2011. The substantial increase of the population, coupled with slowed economic growth and rising public debt led to a worsening of poverty and unemployment in the country. As of 2019, Jordan has a GDP of US$44.4 billion, ranking it 89th worldwide. Jordan has Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the United States, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, the European Union, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Turkey and Syria. More FTA's are planned with Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, the GCC, Lebanon, and Pakistan. Jordan is a member of the Greater Arab Free Trade Agreement, the Euro-Mediterranean free trade area, the Agadir Agreement, and also enjoys advanced status with the EU. Jordan's economic resource base centers on phosphates, potash, and their fertilizer derivatives; tourism; overseas remittances; and foreign aid. These are its principal sources of hard currency earnings. Lacking coal reserves, hydroelectric power, large tracts of forest or commercially viable oil deposits, Jordan relies on natural gas for 93% of its domestic energy needs. Jordan used to depend on Iraq for oil until the American-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Jordan also has a plethora of industrial zones producing goods in the textile, aerospace, defense, ICT, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic sectors. Jordan is an emerging knowledge economy. The main obstacles to Jordan's economy are scarce water supplies, complete reliance on oil imports for energy, and regional instability. Just over 10% of its land is arable and the water supply is limited. Rainfall is low and highly variable, and much of Jordan's available ground water is not renewable. In the last few years Jordan's economic growth has slowed, averaging around 2%. Jordan's total foreign debt in 2011 was $19 billion, representing 60% of its GDP. In 2016, the debt reached $35.1 billion representing 93.4% of its GDP. This substantial increase is attributed to effects of regional instability causing: decrease in tourist activity; decreased foreign investments; increased military expenditure; attacks on Egyptian pipeline supplying the Kingdom with gas; the collapse of trade with Iraq and Syria; expenses from hosting Syrian refugees and accumulated interests from loans. According to the World Bank, Syrian refugees have cost Jordan more than $2.5 billion a year, amounting to 6% of the GDP and 25% of the government's annual revenue. With the presence of Syrian refugees in Jordan, wage growth went considerably down as a result of competition for jobs between refugees and Jordan citizens. The downturn that began in 2011, continued until 2018. The country's top five contributing sectors to GDP, government services, finance, manufacturing, transport, and tourism and hospitality were badly impacted by the Syrian civil war. Foreign aid covers only a small part of these costs, 63% of the total costs are covered by Jordan. An austerity programme was adopted by the government which aims to reduce Jordan's debt-to-GDP ratio to 77% by 2021. The programme succeeded in preventing the debt from rising above 95% in 2018. The yearly growth rate of the economy was 2% from 2016 to 2019, compared to 6.4% from 2000 to 2009. | 2001-09-18T00:59:23Z | 2023-12-08T02:18:04Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Jordan |
15,720 | Telecommunications in Jordan | Jordan has a highly developed communications infrastructure. Jordan's telecom infrastructure is growing at a very rapid pace and continually being updated and expanded. Communications in Jordan occur across many media, including telephone, radio, television, and internet.
50% of households have at least one main line telephone. As of 2010, 103% of the population has a cell phone; 15% have more than one.
In mid 2004, XPress Telecom was launched as the country's digital radio trunking operator.
40% of Jordanian households have a PC. This is expected to double in the coming years when the government reduces the sales tax on PCs and internet service in an effort to make Jordan the high-tech capital of the Middle East. The Jordanian Government is also providing every university student with a laptop in partnership with the private sector. All Jordan's schools are connected with internet service and the Jordanian Government is heavily purchasing computers and smart technology to be equipped in Jordan's classrooms.
As of 2013, Internet penetration in Jordan was 63%. It was 50.5 percent by the end of 2011. Internet usage more than doubled from 2007 to 2009 with the rapid growth expected to continue. Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) figures indicate that Internet penetration stood at 29 per cent by the end of 2009 and 38 per cent by the end of 2010.
The Jordanian government has announced that the sales tax on computers and internet connection would be removed in order to further stimulate the ICT industry in Jordan. King Abdullah II told the BBC in 2004 that he hoped to make his country the tech hub of the Middle East. Jordan has more internet start up companies than any other country in the Middle East, and thus was dubbed the Middle East's "Silicon Valley". Amman was ranked as the 10th-best city in the world to launch a tech startup, according to a 2012 list compiled by Finaventures, a California-based venture-capital firm. Tech entrepreneurs have praised the ability to access high speed internet connections in Jordan, comparing this to Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Al Jami'a Street, in Jordan's northern city of Irbid, was ranked as the street with the highest number of internet cafes in the world by the Guinness World Records.
The IT industry in Jordan in the year 2000 and beyond got a very big boost after the Gulf War of 1991. This boost came from a large influx of immigrants from the Gulf countries to Jordan, mostly from Jordanian expatriates from Kuwait, totaling few hundred thousands. This large wave impacted Jordan in many ways, and one of them was on its IT industry.
When King Abdullah II ascended to the throne in 1999, he stated his intentions to turn Jordan into the high-tech capital of the Middle East and to create a Silicon Valley-like venture in Jordan. All Jordanian schools are equipped with computers and internet connection and instituted an ICT curriculum into Jordan's education system. ICT faculties were established in Jordanian universities and these campuses have been churning out 15,000 ICT graduates every year. Information access centers were established across the Kingdom to allow rural areas access to the Internet.
The number of phone lines has decreased dramatically in the past three years to below 500K telephone lines, due to the introduction of WI-Max technology and 3G networks. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jordan has a highly developed communications infrastructure. Jordan's telecom infrastructure is growing at a very rapid pace and continually being updated and expanded. Communications in Jordan occur across many media, including telephone, radio, television, and internet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "50% of households have at least one main line telephone. As of 2010, 103% of the population has a cell phone; 15% have more than one.",
"title": "Telephone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In mid 2004, XPress Telecom was launched as the country's digital radio trunking operator.",
"title": "Telephone"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "40% of Jordanian households have a PC. This is expected to double in the coming years when the government reduces the sales tax on PCs and internet service in an effort to make Jordan the high-tech capital of the Middle East. The Jordanian Government is also providing every university student with a laptop in partnership with the private sector. All Jordan's schools are connected with internet service and the Jordanian Government is heavily purchasing computers and smart technology to be equipped in Jordan's classrooms.",
"title": "PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "As of 2013, Internet penetration in Jordan was 63%. It was 50.5 percent by the end of 2011. Internet usage more than doubled from 2007 to 2009 with the rapid growth expected to continue. Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) figures indicate that Internet penetration stood at 29 per cent by the end of 2009 and 38 per cent by the end of 2010.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Jordanian government has announced that the sales tax on computers and internet connection would be removed in order to further stimulate the ICT industry in Jordan. King Abdullah II told the BBC in 2004 that he hoped to make his country the tech hub of the Middle East. Jordan has more internet start up companies than any other country in the Middle East, and thus was dubbed the Middle East's \"Silicon Valley\". Amman was ranked as the 10th-best city in the world to launch a tech startup, according to a 2012 list compiled by Finaventures, a California-based venture-capital firm. Tech entrepreneurs have praised the ability to access high speed internet connections in Jordan, comparing this to Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Al Jami'a Street, in Jordan's northern city of Irbid, was ranked as the street with the highest number of internet cafes in the world by the Guinness World Records.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The IT industry in Jordan in the year 2000 and beyond got a very big boost after the Gulf War of 1991. This boost came from a large influx of immigrants from the Gulf countries to Jordan, mostly from Jordanian expatriates from Kuwait, totaling few hundred thousands. This large wave impacted Jordan in many ways, and one of them was on its IT industry.",
"title": "Past"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "When King Abdullah II ascended to the throne in 1999, he stated his intentions to turn Jordan into the high-tech capital of the Middle East and to create a Silicon Valley-like venture in Jordan. All Jordanian schools are equipped with computers and internet connection and instituted an ICT curriculum into Jordan's education system. ICT faculties were established in Jordanian universities and these campuses have been churning out 15,000 ICT graduates every year. Information access centers were established across the Kingdom to allow rural areas access to the Internet.",
"title": "Future"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The number of phone lines has decreased dramatically in the past three years to below 500K telephone lines, due to the introduction of WI-Max technology and 3G networks.",
"title": "Future"
}
]
| Jordan has a highly developed communications infrastructure. Jordan's telecom infrastructure is growing at a very rapid pace and continually being updated and expanded. Communications in Jordan occur across many media, including telephone, radio, television, and internet. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-10-27T22:36:09Z | [
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15,721 | Transport in Jordan | With the exception of a railway system, Jordan has a developed public and private transportation system. There are three international airports in Jordan. The Hedjaz Jordan Railway runs one passenger train a day each way.
In 2009, it was estimated that Jordan had 7,891 kilometres (4,903 mi) of paved highways. Some of the major highways in Jordan are:
gas 473 km; oil 49 km
The port of Aqaba on the Gulf of Aqaba is the only sea port in Jordan.
total: 7 ships (with a volume of 1,000 gross tonnage (GT) or over) totaling 42,746 GT/59,100 tonnes deadweight (DWT) ships by type (1999): bulk carrier 2, cargo ship 2, container ship 1, livestock carrier 1, roll-on/roll-off ship 1 The governments of Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq own and operate the Arab Bridge Maritime company, which is the largest passenger transport company on the Red Sea.
18 as of 2012
As of 2012, there was a total of 16 airports, the main airports being:
total (2012): 16 over 10,000 ft (3,000 m): 8 8,000 to 9,999 ft (2,438 to 3,048 m): 5 under 3,000 ft (910 m): 1
total (2012): 2 under 3,000 ft (910 m): 2
56
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "With the exception of a railway system, Jordan has a developed public and private transportation system. There are three international airports in Jordan. The Hedjaz Jordan Railway runs one passenger train a day each way.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 2009, it was estimated that Jordan had 7,891 kilometres (4,903 mi) of paved highways. Some of the major highways in Jordan are:",
"title": "Roadways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "gas 473 km; oil 49 km",
"title": "Pipelines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The port of Aqaba on the Gulf of Aqaba is the only sea port in Jordan.",
"title": "Ports and harbors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "total: 7 ships (with a volume of 1,000 gross tonnage (GT) or over) totaling 42,746 GT/59,100 tonnes deadweight (DWT) ships by type (1999): bulk carrier 2, cargo ship 2, container ship 1, livestock carrier 1, roll-on/roll-off ship 1 The governments of Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq own and operate the Arab Bridge Maritime company, which is the largest passenger transport company on the Red Sea.",
"title": "Merchant marine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "18 as of 2012",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "As of 2012, there was a total of 16 airports, the main airports being:",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "total (2012): 16 over 10,000 ft (3,000 m): 8 8,000 to 9,999 ft (2,438 to 3,048 m): 5 under 3,000 ft (910 m): 1",
"title": "Airports"
},
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"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "total (2012): 2 under 3,000 ft (910 m): 2",
"title": "Airports"
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"title": "Airports"
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"title": "References"
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| With the exception of a railway system, Jordan has a developed public and private transportation system. There are three international airports in Jordan. The Hedjaz Jordan Railway runs one passenger train a day each way. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-11-12T04:05:38Z | [
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15,723 | Foreign relations of Jordan | The foreign relations of Jordan have been consistently a pro-Western foreign policy.
Jordan has had close relations with the United States and the United Kingdom for many years. During the first Gulf War (1990), these relations were damaged by Jordan's neutrality and its maintenance of relations with Iraq. Later, Jordan restored its relations with Western countries through its participation in the enforcement of UN sanctions against Iraq and in the Southwest Asia peace process. After King Hussein's death in 1999, relations between Jordan and the Persian Gulf countries greatly improved.
In 2000, Jordan signed a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which went into effect in 2010.
In 2013, the U.S. approved the CIA–led Timber Sycamore covert operation, based in Jordan, to train and arm Syrian rebels.
Jordan enjoys "advanced status" with the European Union and is part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, which aims to increase links between the EU and its neighbours.
Owing to its location, bordering Israel, Syria, and Iraq, Jordan has experienced wars along its borders for decades, and maintains careful diplomatic relations with Israel and its main ally, the U.S.
Along with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, as of 2009 Jordan was one of only three Arab nations to have signed peace treaties with Israel, Jordan's direct neighbour.
Jordan views an independent Palestinian state with the 1967 borders, as part of the two-state solution and of supreme national interest. The ruling Hashemite dynasty has had custodianship over holy sites in Jerusalem since 1924, a position reinforced in the Israel–Jordan peace treaty. Turmoil in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque between Israelis and Palestinians created tensions between Jordan and Israel concerning the former's role in protecting the Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem.
Jordan signed a non-aggression pact with Israel (the Washington Declaration) in Washington, D.C., on 25 July 1994. Jordan and Israel signed a historic peace treaty on October 26, 1994, witnessed by President Clinton, accompanied by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The U.S. has participated with Jordan and Israel in trilateral development discussions during which key issues have been water-sharing and security; cooperation on Jordan Rift Valley development; infrastructure projects; and trade, finance, and banking issues.
Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which was annexed by Jordan since 1950, in 1967. Since 1967, Pakistan has been demanding its vacation at the international level. Jordan, together with Pakistan, is playing an effective role in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
The political landscape of Jordan has changed as a consequence of the conflict between Israel and Hamas from October 2023. Prime minister Bisher al Khasawneh expressed his country's disapproval of Israel's offensive in Gaza by recalling its ambassador from Israel, and declared that Israel's ambassador, who had departed Amman following Hamas' attack, would not be permitted to return. Khasawneh argued that Israel's blockade of the heavily-populated Gaza Strip could not be justified as self-defense, and criticised the indiscriminate Israeli assault, which had included safe zones and ambulances in its targets.
Jordanian residents (including the approximately 2 million Palestinian refugees and others with Palestinian roots) have staged protests against Israel's actions in Gaza, which adds pressure to the government to take action on the issue. There is also evidence that there is more sympathy with Hamas among Jordanians in recent years. However, Jordan's Western allies view the kingdom as a potentially vital mediator, should Israel and Hamas agree to negotiate. King Abdullah has been taking part in diplomatic meetings in Europe, aiming to secure safe passage of humanitarian aid; however, the government is also grappling with domestic problems such as inflation, unemployment, and trafficking of arms and drugs through Jordan to the West Bank. The king and Queen Rania have criticised Israel's action in Gaza, and called for a ceasefire. Jordan's ambassador to Israel was recalled, and the Israeli ambassador was told to stay away. Queen Rania, whose family is Palestinian with roots in the West Bank town of Nablus, called on Western leaders to denounce Israel's attacks on Palestinian civilians in an interview aired on CNN in the U.S. There are fears of a huge influx of refugees into Jordan as a result of the Israel-Hamas War.
Jordan is an active member of the UN and several of its specialised and related agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, and World Health Organization.
Jordan is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and of the Arab League.
It is also a member of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Jordan and Morocco tried to join the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2011, but the Gulf countries offered a five-year development aid programme instead.
List of countries which Jordan maintains diplomatic relations with: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The foreign relations of Jordan have been consistently a pro-Western foreign policy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jordan has had close relations with the United States and the United Kingdom for many years. During the first Gulf War (1990), these relations were damaged by Jordan's neutrality and its maintenance of relations with Iraq. Later, Jordan restored its relations with Western countries through its participation in the enforcement of UN sanctions against Iraq and in the Southwest Asia peace process. After King Hussein's death in 1999, relations between Jordan and the Persian Gulf countries greatly improved.",
"title": "United Kingdom and United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 2000, Jordan signed a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which went into effect in 2010.",
"title": "United Kingdom and United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 2013, the U.S. approved the CIA–led Timber Sycamore covert operation, based in Jordan, to train and arm Syrian rebels.",
"title": "United Kingdom and United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Jordan enjoys \"advanced status\" with the European Union and is part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, which aims to increase links between the EU and its neighbours.",
"title": "European Union"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Owing to its location, bordering Israel, Syria, and Iraq, Jordan has experienced wars along its borders for decades, and maintains careful diplomatic relations with Israel and its main ally, the U.S.",
"title": "Israel and regional neighbours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Along with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, as of 2009 Jordan was one of only three Arab nations to have signed peace treaties with Israel, Jordan's direct neighbour.",
"title": "Israel and regional neighbours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Jordan views an independent Palestinian state with the 1967 borders, as part of the two-state solution and of supreme national interest. The ruling Hashemite dynasty has had custodianship over holy sites in Jerusalem since 1924, a position reinforced in the Israel–Jordan peace treaty. Turmoil in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque between Israelis and Palestinians created tensions between Jordan and Israel concerning the former's role in protecting the Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem.",
"title": "Israel and regional neighbours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Jordan signed a non-aggression pact with Israel (the Washington Declaration) in Washington, D.C., on 25 July 1994. Jordan and Israel signed a historic peace treaty on October 26, 1994, witnessed by President Clinton, accompanied by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The U.S. has participated with Jordan and Israel in trilateral development discussions during which key issues have been water-sharing and security; cooperation on Jordan Rift Valley development; infrastructure projects; and trade, finance, and banking issues.",
"title": "Israel and regional neighbours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which was annexed by Jordan since 1950, in 1967. Since 1967, Pakistan has been demanding its vacation at the international level. Jordan, together with Pakistan, is playing an effective role in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.",
"title": "Israel and regional neighbours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The political landscape of Jordan has changed as a consequence of the conflict between Israel and Hamas from October 2023. Prime minister Bisher al Khasawneh expressed his country's disapproval of Israel's offensive in Gaza by recalling its ambassador from Israel, and declared that Israel's ambassador, who had departed Amman following Hamas' attack, would not be permitted to return. Khasawneh argued that Israel's blockade of the heavily-populated Gaza Strip could not be justified as self-defense, and criticised the indiscriminate Israeli assault, which had included safe zones and ambulances in its targets.",
"title": "Israel and regional neighbours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jordanian residents (including the approximately 2 million Palestinian refugees and others with Palestinian roots) have staged protests against Israel's actions in Gaza, which adds pressure to the government to take action on the issue. There is also evidence that there is more sympathy with Hamas among Jordanians in recent years. However, Jordan's Western allies view the kingdom as a potentially vital mediator, should Israel and Hamas agree to negotiate. King Abdullah has been taking part in diplomatic meetings in Europe, aiming to secure safe passage of humanitarian aid; however, the government is also grappling with domestic problems such as inflation, unemployment, and trafficking of arms and drugs through Jordan to the West Bank. The king and Queen Rania have criticised Israel's action in Gaza, and called for a ceasefire. Jordan's ambassador to Israel was recalled, and the Israeli ambassador was told to stay away. Queen Rania, whose family is Palestinian with roots in the West Bank town of Nablus, called on Western leaders to denounce Israel's attacks on Palestinian civilians in an interview aired on CNN in the U.S. There are fears of a huge influx of refugees into Jordan as a result of the Israel-Hamas War.",
"title": "Israel and regional neighbours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Jordan is an active member of the UN and several of its specialised and related agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, and World Health Organization.",
"title": "UN and other affiliations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Jordan is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and of the Arab League.",
"title": "UN and other affiliations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "It is also a member of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the Non-Aligned Movement.",
"title": "UN and other affiliations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Jordan and Morocco tried to join the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2011, but the Gulf countries offered a five-year development aid programme instead.",
"title": "UN and other affiliations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "List of countries which Jordan maintains diplomatic relations with:",
"title": "Diplomatic relations"
}
]
| The foreign relations of Jordan have been consistently a pro-Western foreign policy. | 2001-05-08T00:17:35Z | 2023-12-31T08:24:48Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Jordan |
15,724 | Juan de Nova Island | Juan de Nova Island (French: Île Juan de Nova, pronounced [il ʒɥɑ̃ də nɔva]), Malagasy: Nosy Kely) is a French-controlled tropical island in the narrowest part of the Mozambique Channel, about one-third of the way between Madagascar and Mozambique. It is a low, flat island, 4.8 square kilometres (1.9 sq mi) in size.
Anchorage is possible off the northeast of the island which also has a 1,300-metre (4,300 ft) airstrip. Administratively, the island is one of the Scattered islands in the Indian Ocean, a district of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. The island is garrisoned by French troops from Réunion and has a weather station.
Juan de Nova, about six kilometres (3.7 mi) long and 1.6 kilometres (1 mi) at its widest, is a nature reserve surrounded by reefs which enclose an area—not a true lagoon like in an atoll—of roughly 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi). Forests, mainly of Casuarinaceae, cover about half the island. Sea turtles nest on the beaches around the island.
Juan de Nova is located in the Mozambique Canal, closer to the Madagascar side: 140 kilometres (87 mi) from Tambohorano, 207 kilometres (129 mi) west-southwest from Tanjona Vilanandro [fr] and 288 kilometres (179 mi) from the African coast.
The island was created when an underwater promontory of a coral reef emerged when the reef was dismantled by ocean currents, producing a sandy island. The prevailing south-southwest winds form dunes on the island, which, at 10 meters (33 ft) tall, form the island's highest points.
Its southwest coast is bordered by a coral reef that prevents ships from landing, and the northeast coast consists of a lagoon that becomes sandy and impassable at low tide. There is a single pass that allows access to the island.
The difficult conditions for accessing the island has caused several shipwrecks, some of which remain on the Island, including that of the Tottenham (nicknamed the Charbonnier), which ran aground in 1911 on the island's southwest coast.
The island is about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) long from east to west, and 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi) wide, with an area of approximately 4.8 km² (1.9 sq mi). The entire quasi-atoll is 30 kilometres (19 mi) in circumference, with an exclusive economic zone of 61,050 km² (23,572 sq mi).
João da Nova, a Galician admiral in the service of Portugal, came across the uninhabited island in 1501 while he was crossing the Mozambique Channel during an expedition to India. He called it Galega or Agalega (the Galician) in reference to his nationality. The island then came to be named for him, with the Spanish spelling: On subsequent maps it was labeled Johan de Nova on a map by Salvatore de Pilestrina (1519), Joa de Nova (Mercator, 1569), San-Christophoro (Ortelius, 1570), Saint-Christophe (Lislet Geoffroy), before finally being dubbed Juan de Nova by the British explorer William Fitzwilliam Owen. Historically, the island was sometimes confused with the nearby island Bassas da India, which is completely covered at high tide.
Although the island was located along the spice route, it was not of interest to the colonial powers because of its small size and little utility as a stopover. However, it is possible that it served as a refuge for pirates, such as Olivier Levasseur.
The island had never been inhabited when it became a possession of France, alongside Europa Island and Bassas da India, in 1897.
At the time, the only visitors to the island were Malagasy fishermen during sea turtles' nesting season. However, around 1900, the island was granted to a Frenchman for a 20-year lease. He initiated the exploitation of the island's guano deposits, which production reaching 53,000 tons in 1923. A coconut grove on the island also produced 12 tons of copra per year.
In 1921, France transferred the administration of Juan de Nova from Paris to Tananarive in its colony of Madagascar and Dependencies. Then, before the independence of Madagascar, France transferred the administration of the island to Saint-Pierre on Réunion. Madagascar became independent in 1960, and it has claimed sovereignty over the island since 1972.
An airstrip was built on the island in 1934. Guano exploitation continued for several decades, with a pause in activity during World War II. The island was abandoned during the war, and it was visited by German submariners. Installations, including a hangar, rail lines, houses and a jetty are in ruins.
In 1952, a second concession was granted for 15 years to the Société française des îles Malgaches (SOFIM), led by Hector Patureau. This concession was renewed for 25 years in 1960, after Madagascar's independence. Structures were built throughout the island to support the phosphate mining operation, including warehouses, housing, a prison, and a cemetery.
The workers on the island came mainly from Mauritius and the Seychelles. Working conditions were extremely harsh, with rule-breaking punished by flogging or imprisonment, and each worker had to extract one metric ton of phosphate per day to earn 3.5 rupees. In 1968, Mauritian workers revolted, and the operation's management appealed to the prefect of Réunion for help. The revolt brought government and media attention to abusive practices on the island, including droit du seigneur being practiced by one of the foremen, and some members of the staff were fired by SOFIM's president.
In the 1960s, the price of phosphate collapsed, and the mining operation on the island ceased to be profitable. SOFIM was dissolved in 1968, and the last workers left the island in 1975. The French government retook control of the concession, paying 45 million CFA to Hector Patureau in compensation.
In 1963, an auxiliary weather installation, called "la Goulette," was installed to carry out regular temperature and pressure readings. But on a visit to the island in 1971, a representative of the Weather Service found numerous irregularities in the readings, as well as poor security on the island, which was still under the responsibility of Patureau. Following the recommendations of the World Weather Watch, a basic, year-round weather station was built in 1973 in the southwest part of the island, at the end of the airstrip.
A project to create a Club Med tourist resort was proposed by Gilbert Trigano, which for a time brought a team of workers to the island under the supervision of Hector Patureau, but it was quickly abandoned.
In 1974, the French government decided to install military detachments across the Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean that lay within the Mozambique Channel (Juan de Nova, Europa Island, and the Glorioso Islands). Its aim was primarily to respond to Madagascar's claims to those territories, which France considers protected within an exclusive economic zone.
Juan de Nova Island was assigned a small garrison of 14 soldiers from the 2nd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, as well as a gendarme. They settled in housing that formerly hosted SOFIM workers. The troops receive supplies by air every 45 days.
Today, most of the installations from the mining days are in ruins, and only a few buildings are maintained for military use. Upkeep is also performed on the cemetery. The island has been converted into a nature preserve, which aims to protect biodiversity and particularly coral reefs. It is closed to access, with temporary authorization granted to scientists on short-term missions.
The island lies on the sea route between South Africa and the northern tip of Madagascar. It is affected by strong currents and has become the site of numerous wrecks. Most visible are the remains of the SS Tottenham which ran onto the southern fringing reef in 1911.
The presence of a significant bird population on Juan de Nova Island led to a major guano deposit on the surface of the island. This became the first natural resource to be exploited on the island in the 20th century. This mining operation led to the establishment of the first structures on the island, and the workers also planted coconut trees, whose products were also exported. The exploitation of guano stopped around 1970, after the price of phosphates dropped.
In 2005, a government decree authorized preliminary exploration for liquid or gas hydrocarbons offshore. This authorization covers an area of approximately 62,000 square kilometers surrounding the island. In 2008, a subsequent decree granted an exploration permit for the "Juan de Nova Est" field to the companies Nighthawk Energy Plc, Jupiter Petroleum Juan de Nova Ltd, and Osceola Hydrocarbons Ltd, as well as to Marex Inc. and Roc Oil Company Ltd for the "Juan de Nova Maritime Profond" field. The licensees had to commit to investing around $100 million over five years for mining and research. The eastern boundary of these exploration areas is in contention with Madagascar and its exclusive economic zone.
In 2015, the drilling authorization was renewed Sapetro and Marex Petroleum for a period of three years.
However, these projects have been abandoned since 2019, when the island was classified as a nature reserve.
Three or four times a year, scientists come to Juan de Nova Island to study its ecosystem. Despite the ongoing scientific efforts, an inventory of the island's biodiversity (particularly genetics) is only in its earliest stages. There is much to be studied.
Researchers from the University of Reunion Island's ECOMAR lab have worked to identify or observe seabirds around the island. In particular, they have worked to study the behavior of 2 million pairs of terns that have sought refuge on the island, forming the largest colony in the Indian Ocean.
Pascale Chabanet, of the Institut de recherche pour le développement, says based on their research on the island:
"The reefs of these deserted and isolated islands like Juan de Nova Island are preserved from all pollution and anthropogenic influence. But they are affected by climate change."
Such environments are useful for scientists to measure to what degree environmental changes are attributable to humans.
The scientists are also observing and working to mitigate the impact of the presence of invasive species on the island, including mosquitoes such as Aedes aegypti, Aedes fryeri, Culex sitiens, Culex tritaeniorhynchus, and Mansonia uniformis. Aedes albopictus, an invasive Asian species that can carry pathogenic arbovirus, has also been seen on the island.
The island has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it supports a very large colony of sooty terns, with up to 100,000 breeding pairs. It also has a much smaller colony of greater crested terns – with at least 50 breeding pairs recorded in 1994. Of at least seven species of land birds present, most are probably introduced.
The island exhibits a tropical savanna climate (Köppen Aw). A year on the island can be divided into two seasons: the cool season and the rainy season. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Juan de Nova Island (French: Île Juan de Nova, pronounced [il ʒɥɑ̃ də nɔva]), Malagasy: Nosy Kely) is a French-controlled tropical island in the narrowest part of the Mozambique Channel, about one-third of the way between Madagascar and Mozambique. It is a low, flat island, 4.8 square kilometres (1.9 sq mi) in size.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Anchorage is possible off the northeast of the island which also has a 1,300-metre (4,300 ft) airstrip. Administratively, the island is one of the Scattered islands in the Indian Ocean, a district of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. The island is garrisoned by French troops from Réunion and has a weather station.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Juan de Nova, about six kilometres (3.7 mi) long and 1.6 kilometres (1 mi) at its widest, is a nature reserve surrounded by reefs which enclose an area—not a true lagoon like in an atoll—of roughly 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi). Forests, mainly of Casuarinaceae, cover about half the island. Sea turtles nest on the beaches around the island.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Juan de Nova is located in the Mozambique Canal, closer to the Madagascar side: 140 kilometres (87 mi) from Tambohorano, 207 kilometres (129 mi) west-southwest from Tanjona Vilanandro [fr] and 288 kilometres (179 mi) from the African coast.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The island was created when an underwater promontory of a coral reef emerged when the reef was dismantled by ocean currents, producing a sandy island. The prevailing south-southwest winds form dunes on the island, which, at 10 meters (33 ft) tall, form the island's highest points.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Its southwest coast is bordered by a coral reef that prevents ships from landing, and the northeast coast consists of a lagoon that becomes sandy and impassable at low tide. There is a single pass that allows access to the island.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The difficult conditions for accessing the island has caused several shipwrecks, some of which remain on the Island, including that of the Tottenham (nicknamed the Charbonnier), which ran aground in 1911 on the island's southwest coast.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The island is about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) long from east to west, and 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi) wide, with an area of approximately 4.8 km² (1.9 sq mi). The entire quasi-atoll is 30 kilometres (19 mi) in circumference, with an exclusive economic zone of 61,050 km² (23,572 sq mi).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "João da Nova, a Galician admiral in the service of Portugal, came across the uninhabited island in 1501 while he was crossing the Mozambique Channel during an expedition to India. He called it Galega or Agalega (the Galician) in reference to his nationality. The island then came to be named for him, with the Spanish spelling: On subsequent maps it was labeled Johan de Nova on a map by Salvatore de Pilestrina (1519), Joa de Nova (Mercator, 1569), San-Christophoro (Ortelius, 1570), Saint-Christophe (Lislet Geoffroy), before finally being dubbed Juan de Nova by the British explorer William Fitzwilliam Owen. Historically, the island was sometimes confused with the nearby island Bassas da India, which is completely covered at high tide.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Although the island was located along the spice route, it was not of interest to the colonial powers because of its small size and little utility as a stopover. However, it is possible that it served as a refuge for pirates, such as Olivier Levasseur.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The island had never been inhabited when it became a possession of France, alongside Europa Island and Bassas da India, in 1897.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "At the time, the only visitors to the island were Malagasy fishermen during sea turtles' nesting season. However, around 1900, the island was granted to a Frenchman for a 20-year lease. He initiated the exploitation of the island's guano deposits, which production reaching 53,000 tons in 1923. A coconut grove on the island also produced 12 tons of copra per year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1921, France transferred the administration of Juan de Nova from Paris to Tananarive in its colony of Madagascar and Dependencies. Then, before the independence of Madagascar, France transferred the administration of the island to Saint-Pierre on Réunion. Madagascar became independent in 1960, and it has claimed sovereignty over the island since 1972.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "An airstrip was built on the island in 1934. Guano exploitation continued for several decades, with a pause in activity during World War II. The island was abandoned during the war, and it was visited by German submariners. Installations, including a hangar, rail lines, houses and a jetty are in ruins.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1952, a second concession was granted for 15 years to the Société française des îles Malgaches (SOFIM), led by Hector Patureau. This concession was renewed for 25 years in 1960, after Madagascar's independence. Structures were built throughout the island to support the phosphate mining operation, including warehouses, housing, a prison, and a cemetery.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The workers on the island came mainly from Mauritius and the Seychelles. Working conditions were extremely harsh, with rule-breaking punished by flogging or imprisonment, and each worker had to extract one metric ton of phosphate per day to earn 3.5 rupees. In 1968, Mauritian workers revolted, and the operation's management appealed to the prefect of Réunion for help. The revolt brought government and media attention to abusive practices on the island, including droit du seigneur being practiced by one of the foremen, and some members of the staff were fired by SOFIM's president.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In the 1960s, the price of phosphate collapsed, and the mining operation on the island ceased to be profitable. SOFIM was dissolved in 1968, and the last workers left the island in 1975. The French government retook control of the concession, paying 45 million CFA to Hector Patureau in compensation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1963, an auxiliary weather installation, called \"la Goulette,\" was installed to carry out regular temperature and pressure readings. But on a visit to the island in 1971, a representative of the Weather Service found numerous irregularities in the readings, as well as poor security on the island, which was still under the responsibility of Patureau. Following the recommendations of the World Weather Watch, a basic, year-round weather station was built in 1973 in the southwest part of the island, at the end of the airstrip.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "A project to create a Club Med tourist resort was proposed by Gilbert Trigano, which for a time brought a team of workers to the island under the supervision of Hector Patureau, but it was quickly abandoned.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1974, the French government decided to install military detachments across the Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean that lay within the Mozambique Channel (Juan de Nova, Europa Island, and the Glorioso Islands). Its aim was primarily to respond to Madagascar's claims to those territories, which France considers protected within an exclusive economic zone.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Juan de Nova Island was assigned a small garrison of 14 soldiers from the 2nd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, as well as a gendarme. They settled in housing that formerly hosted SOFIM workers. The troops receive supplies by air every 45 days.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Today, most of the installations from the mining days are in ruins, and only a few buildings are maintained for military use. Upkeep is also performed on the cemetery. The island has been converted into a nature preserve, which aims to protect biodiversity and particularly coral reefs. It is closed to access, with temporary authorization granted to scientists on short-term missions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The island lies on the sea route between South Africa and the northern tip of Madagascar. It is affected by strong currents and has become the site of numerous wrecks. Most visible are the remains of the SS Tottenham which ran onto the southern fringing reef in 1911.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The presence of a significant bird population on Juan de Nova Island led to a major guano deposit on the surface of the island. This became the first natural resource to be exploited on the island in the 20th century. This mining operation led to the establishment of the first structures on the island, and the workers also planted coconut trees, whose products were also exported. The exploitation of guano stopped around 1970, after the price of phosphates dropped.",
"title": "Economic resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 2005, a government decree authorized preliminary exploration for liquid or gas hydrocarbons offshore. This authorization covers an area of approximately 62,000 square kilometers surrounding the island. In 2008, a subsequent decree granted an exploration permit for the \"Juan de Nova Est\" field to the companies Nighthawk Energy Plc, Jupiter Petroleum Juan de Nova Ltd, and Osceola Hydrocarbons Ltd, as well as to Marex Inc. and Roc Oil Company Ltd for the \"Juan de Nova Maritime Profond\" field. The licensees had to commit to investing around $100 million over five years for mining and research. The eastern boundary of these exploration areas is in contention with Madagascar and its exclusive economic zone.",
"title": "Economic resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 2015, the drilling authorization was renewed Sapetro and Marex Petroleum for a period of three years.",
"title": "Economic resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "However, these projects have been abandoned since 2019, when the island was classified as a nature reserve.",
"title": "Economic resources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Three or four times a year, scientists come to Juan de Nova Island to study its ecosystem. Despite the ongoing scientific efforts, an inventory of the island's biodiversity (particularly genetics) is only in its earliest stages. There is much to be studied.",
"title": "Fauna and flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Researchers from the University of Reunion Island's ECOMAR lab have worked to identify or observe seabirds around the island. In particular, they have worked to study the behavior of 2 million pairs of terns that have sought refuge on the island, forming the largest colony in the Indian Ocean.",
"title": "Fauna and flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Pascale Chabanet, of the Institut de recherche pour le développement, says based on their research on the island:",
"title": "Fauna and flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "\"The reefs of these deserted and isolated islands like Juan de Nova Island are preserved from all pollution and anthropogenic influence. But they are affected by climate change.\"",
"title": "Fauna and flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Such environments are useful for scientists to measure to what degree environmental changes are attributable to humans.",
"title": "Fauna and flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The scientists are also observing and working to mitigate the impact of the presence of invasive species on the island, including mosquitoes such as Aedes aegypti, Aedes fryeri, Culex sitiens, Culex tritaeniorhynchus, and Mansonia uniformis. Aedes albopictus, an invasive Asian species that can carry pathogenic arbovirus, has also been seen on the island.",
"title": "Fauna and flora"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The island has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it supports a very large colony of sooty terns, with up to 100,000 breeding pairs. It also has a much smaller colony of greater crested terns – with at least 50 breeding pairs recorded in 1994. Of at least seven species of land birds present, most are probably introduced.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The island exhibits a tropical savanna climate (Köppen Aw). A year on the island can be divided into two seasons: the cool season and the rainy season.",
"title": "Geology"
}
]
| Juan de Nova Island, Malagasy: Nosy Kely) is a French-controlled tropical island in the narrowest part of the Mozambique Channel, about one-third of the way between Madagascar and Mozambique. It is a low, flat island, 4.8 square kilometres (1.9 sq mi) in size. Anchorage is possible off the northeast of the island which also has a 1,300-metre (4,300 ft) airstrip. Administratively, the island is one of the Scattered islands in the Indian Ocean, a district of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. The island is garrisoned by French troops from Réunion and has a weather station. | 2001-05-08T00:17:58Z | 2023-09-27T22:23:53Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Nova_Island |
15,736 | Johannes Kepler | Johannes Kepler (/ˈkɛplər/; German: [joˈhanəs ˈkɛplɐ, -nɛs -] ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science.
Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, being named the father of modern optics, in particular for his Astronomiae pars optica. He also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, the Keplerian telescope, which became the foundation of the modern refracting telescope, while also improving on the telescope design by Galileo Galilei, who mentioned Kepler's discoveries in his work.
Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy). Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason. Kepler described his new astronomy as "celestial physics", as "an excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics", and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the Heavens", transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.
Kepler has been called the "father of science fiction" for his novel Somnium.
Kepler was born on 27 December 1571, in the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt (now part of the Stuttgart Region in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, 30 km west of Stuttgart's center). His grandfather, Sebald Kepler, had been Lord Mayor of the city. By the time Johannes was born, he had two brothers and one sister and the Kepler family fortune was in decline. His father, Heinrich Kepler, earned a precarious living as a mercenary, and he left the family when Johannes was five years old. He was believed to have died in the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. His mother, Katharina Guldenmann, an innkeeper's daughter, was a healer and herbalist. Born prematurely, Johannes claimed to have been weak and sickly as a child. Nevertheless, he often impressed travelers at his grandfather's inn with his phenomenal mathematical faculty.
He was introduced to astronomy at an early age and developed a strong passion for it that would span his entire life. At age six, he observed the Great Comet of 1577, writing that he "was taken by [his] mother to a high place to look at it." In 1580, at age nine, he observed another astronomical event, a lunar eclipse, recording that he remembered being "called outdoors" to see it and that the Moon "appeared quite red". However, childhood smallpox left him with weak vision and crippled hands, limiting his ability in the observational aspects of astronomy.
In 1589, after moving through grammar school, Latin school, and seminary at Maulbronn, Kepler attended Tübinger Stift at the University of Tübingen. There, he studied philosophy under Vitus Müller and theology under Jacob Heerbrand (a student of Philipp Melanchthon at Wittenberg), who also taught Michael Maestlin while he was a student, until he became Chancellor at Tübingen in 1590. He proved himself to be a superb mathematician and earned a reputation as a skilful astrologer, casting horoscopes for fellow students. Under the instruction of Michael Maestlin, Tübingen's professor of mathematics from 1583 to 1631, he learned both the Ptolemaic system and the Copernican system of planetary motion. He became a Copernican at that time. In a student disputation, he defended heliocentrism from both a theoretical and theological perspective, maintaining that the Sun was the principal source of motive power in the universe. Despite his desire to become a minister, near the end of his studies, Kepler was recommended for a position as teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school in Graz. He accepted the position in April 1594, at the age of 22.
Before concluding his studies at Tübingen, Kepler accepted an offer to teach mathematics as a replacement to Georg Stadius at the Protestant school in Graz (now in Styria, Austria). During this period (1594–1600), he issued many official calendars and prognostications that enhanced his reputation as an astrologer. Although Kepler had mixed feelings about astrology and disparaged many customary practices of astrologers, he believed deeply in a connection between the cosmos and the individual. He eventually published some of the ideas he had entertained while a student in the Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), published a little over a year after his arrival at Graz.
In December 1595, Kepler was introduced to Barbara Müller, a 23-year-old widow (twice over) with a young daughter, Regina Lorenz, and he began courting her. Müller, an heiress to the estates of her late husbands, was also the daughter of a successful mill owner. Her father Jobst initially opposed a marriage. Even though Kepler had inherited his grandfather's nobility, Kepler's poverty made him an unacceptable match. Jobst relented after Kepler completed work on Mysterium, but the engagement nearly fell apart while Kepler was away tending to the details of publication. However, Protestant officials—who had helped set up the match—pressured the Müllers to honor their agreement. Barbara and Johannes were married on 27 April 1597.
In the first years of their marriage, the Keplers had two children (Heinrich and Susanna), both of whom died in infancy. In 1602, they had a daughter (Susanna); in 1604, a son (Friedrich); and in 1607, another son (Ludwig).
Following the publication of Mysterium and with the blessing of the Graz school inspectors, Kepler began an ambitious program to extend and elaborate his work. He planned four additional books: one on the stationary aspects of the universe (the Sun and the fixed stars); one on the planets and their motions; one on the physical nature of planets and the formation of geographical features (focused especially on Earth); and one on the effects of the heavens on the Earth, to include atmospheric optics, meteorology, and astrology.
He also sought the opinions of many of the astronomers to whom he had sent Mysterium, among them Reimarus Ursus (Nicolaus Reimers Bär)—the imperial mathematician to Rudolf II and a bitter rival of Tycho Brahe. Ursus did not reply directly, but republished Kepler's flattering letter to pursue his priority dispute over (what is now called) the Tychonic system with Tycho. Despite this black mark, Tycho also began corresponding with Kepler, starting with a harsh but legitimate critique of Kepler's system; among a host of objections, Tycho took issue with the use of inaccurate numerical data taken from Copernicus. Through their letters, Tycho and Kepler discussed a broad range of astronomical problems, dwelling on lunar phenomena and Copernican theory (particularly its theological viability). But without the significantly more accurate data of Tycho's observatory, Kepler had no way to address many of these issues.
Instead, he turned his attention to chronology and "harmony," the numerological relationships among music, mathematics and the physical world, and their astrological consequences. By assuming the Earth to possess a soul (a property he would later invoke to explain how the Sun causes the motion of planets), he established a speculative system connecting astrological aspects and astronomical distances to weather and other earthly phenomena. By 1599, however, he again felt his work limited by the inaccuracy of available data—just as growing religious tension was also threatening his continued employment in Graz. In December of that year, Tycho invited Kepler to visit him in Prague; on 1 January 1600 (before he even received the invitation), Kepler set off in the hopes that Tycho's patronage could solve his philosophical problems as well as his social and financial ones.
On 4 February 1600, Kepler met Tycho Brahe and his assistants Franz Tengnagel and Longomontanus at Benátky nad Jizerou (35 km from Prague), the site where Tycho's new observatory was being constructed. Over the next two months, he stayed as a guest, analyzing some of Tycho's observations of Mars; Tycho guarded his data closely, but was impressed by Kepler's theoretical ideas and soon allowed him more access. Kepler planned to test his theory from Mysterium Cosmographicum based on the Mars data, but he estimated that the work would take up to two years (since he was not allowed to simply copy the data for his own use). With the help of Johannes Jessenius, Kepler attempted to negotiate a more formal employment arrangement with Tycho, but negotiations broke down in an angry argument and Kepler left for Prague on 6 April. Kepler and Tycho soon reconciled and eventually reached an agreement on salary and living arrangements, and in June, Kepler returned home to Graz to collect his family.
Political and religious difficulties in Graz dashed his hopes of returning immediately to Brahe; in hopes of continuing his astronomical studies, Kepler sought an appointment as a mathematician to Archduke Ferdinand. To that end, Kepler composed an essay—dedicated to Ferdinand—in which he proposed a force-based theory of lunar motion: "In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam ciet" ("There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move"). Though the essay did not earn him a place in Ferdinand's court, it did detail a new method for measuring lunar eclipses, which he applied during the 10 July eclipse in Graz. These observations formed the basis of his explorations of the laws of optics that would culminate in Astronomiae Pars Optica.
On 2 August 1600, after refusing to convert to Catholicism, Kepler and his family were banished from Graz. Several months later, Kepler returned, now with the rest of his household, to Prague. Through most of 1601, he was supported directly by Tycho, who assigned him to analyzing planetary observations and writing a tract against Tycho's (by then deceased) rival, Ursus. In September, Tycho secured him a commission as a collaborator on the new project he had proposed to the emperor: the Rudolphine Tables that should replace the Prutenic Tables of Erasmus Reinhold. Two days after Tycho's unexpected death on 24 October 1601, Kepler was appointed his successor as the imperial mathematician with the responsibility to complete his unfinished work. The next 11 years as imperial mathematician would be the most productive of his life.
Kepler's primary obligation as imperial mathematician was to provide astrological advice to the emperor. Though Kepler took a dim view of the attempts of contemporary astrologers to precisely predict the future or divine specific events, he had been casting well-received detailed horoscopes for friends, family, and patrons since his time as a student in Tübingen. In addition to horoscopes for allies and foreign leaders, the emperor sought Kepler's advice in times of political trouble. Rudolf was actively interested in the work of many of his court scholars (including numerous alchemists) and kept up with Kepler's work in physical astronomy as well.
Officially, the only acceptable religious doctrines in Prague were Catholic and Utraquist, but Kepler's position in the imperial court allowed him to practice his Lutheran faith unhindered. The emperor nominally provided an ample income for his family, but the difficulties of the over-extended imperial treasury meant that actually getting hold of enough money to meet financial obligations was a continual struggle. Partly because of financial troubles, his life at home with Barbara was unpleasant, marred with bickering and bouts of sickness. Court life, however, brought Kepler into contact with other prominent scholars (Johannes Matthäus Wackher von Wackhenfels, Jost Bürgi, David Fabricius, Martin Bachazek, and Johannes Brengger, among others) and astronomical work proceeded rapidly.
In October 1604, a bright new evening star (SN 1604) appeared, but Kepler did not believe the rumors until he saw it himself. Kepler began systematically observing the supernova. Astrologically, the end of 1603 marked the beginning of a fiery trigon, the start of the about 800-year cycle of great conjunctions; astrologers associated the two previous such periods with the rise of Charlemagne (c. 800 years earlier) and the birth of Christ (c. 1600 years earlier), and thus expected events of great portent, especially regarding the emperor.
It was in this context, as the imperial mathematician and astrologer to the emperor, that Kepler described the new star two years later in his De Stella Nova. In it, Kepler addressed the star's astronomical properties while taking a skeptical approach to the many astrological interpretations then circulating. He noted its fading luminosity, speculated about its origin, and used the lack of observed parallax to argue that it was in the sphere of fixed stars, further undermining the doctrine of the immutability of the heavens (the idea accepted since Aristotle that the celestial spheres were perfect and unchanging). The birth of a new star implied the variability of the heavens. Kepler also attached an appendix where he discussed the recent chronology work of the Polish historian Laurentius Suslyga; he calculated that, if Suslyga was correct that accepted timelines were four years behind, then the Star of Bethlehem—analogous to the present new star—would have coincided with the first great conjunction of the earlier 800-year cycle.
Over the following years, Kepler attempted (unsuccessfully) to begin a collaboration with Italian astronomer Giovanni Antonio Magini, and dealt with chronology, especially the dating of events in the life of Jesus. Around 1611, Kepler circulated a manuscript of what would eventually be published (posthumously) as Somnium [The Dream]. Part of the purpose of Somnium was to describe what practicing astronomy would be like from the perspective of another planet, to show the feasibility of a non-geocentric system. The manuscript, which disappeared after changing hands several times, described a fantastic trip to the Moon; it was part allegory, part autobiography, and part treatise on interplanetary travel (and is sometimes described as the first work of science fiction). Years later, a distorted version of the story may have instigated the witchcraft trial against his mother, as the mother of the narrator consults a demon to learn the means of space travel. Following her eventual acquittal, Kepler composed 223 footnotes to the story—several times longer than the actual text—which explained the allegorical aspects as well as the considerable scientific content (particularly regarding lunar geography) hidden within the text.
In 1611, the growing political-religious tension in Prague came to a head. Emperor Rudolf—whose health was failing—was forced to abdicate as King of Bohemia by his brother Matthias. Both sides sought Kepler's astrological advice, an opportunity he used to deliver conciliatory political advice (with little reference to the stars, except in general statements to discourage drastic action). However, it was clear that Kepler's future prospects in the court of Matthias were dim.
Also in that year, Barbara Kepler contracted Hungarian spotted fever, then began having seizures. As Barbara was recovering, Kepler's three children all fell sick with smallpox; Friedrich, 6, died. Following his son's death, Kepler sent letters to potential patrons in Württemberg and Padua. At the University of Tübingen in Württemberg, concerns over Kepler's perceived Calvinist heresies in violation of the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord prevented his return. The University of Padua—on the recommendation of the departing Galileo—sought Kepler to fill the mathematics professorship, but Kepler, preferring to keep his family in German territory, instead travelled to Austria to arrange a position as teacher and district mathematician in Linz. However, Barbara relapsed into illness and died shortly after Kepler's return.
Kepler postponed the move to Linz and remained in Prague until Rudolf's death in early 1612, though between political upheaval, religious tension, and family tragedy (along with the legal dispute over his wife's estate), Kepler could do no research. Instead, he pieced together a chronology manuscript, Eclogae Chronicae, from correspondence and earlier work. Upon succession as Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias re-affirmed Kepler's position (and salary) as imperial mathematician but allowed him to move to Linz.
In Linz, Kepler's primary responsibilities (beyond completing the Rudolphine Tables) were teaching at the district school and providing astrological and astronomical services. In his first years there, he enjoyed financial security and religious freedom relative to his life in Prague—though he was excluded from Eucharist by his Lutheran church over his theological scruples. It was also during his time in Linz that Kepler had to deal with the accusation and ultimate verdict of witchcraft against his mother Katharina in the Protestant town of Leonberg. That blow, happening only a few years after Kepler's excommunication, is not seen as a coincidence but as a symptom of the full-fledged assault waged by the Lutherans against Kepler.
His first publication in Linz was De vero Anno (1613), an expanded treatise on the year of Christ's birth. He also participated in deliberations on whether to introduce Pope Gregory's reformed calendar to Protestant German lands. On 30 October 1613, Kepler married the 24-year-old Susanna Reuttinger. Following the death of his first wife Barbara, Kepler had considered 11 different matches over two years (a decision process formalized later as the marriage problem). He eventually returned to Reuttinger (the fifth match) who, he wrote, "won me over with love, humble loyalty, economy of household, diligence, and the love she gave the stepchildren." The first three children of this marriage (Margareta Regina, Katharina, and Sebald) died in childhood. Three more survived into adulthood: Cordula (born 1621); Fridmar (born 1623); and Hildebert (born 1625). According to Kepler's biographers, this was a much happier marriage than his first.
On 8 October 1630, Kepler set out for Regensburg, hoping to collect interest on work he had done previously. A few days after reaching Regensburg, Kepler became sick, and progressively became worse. On 15 November 1630, just over a month after his arrival, he died. He was buried in a Protestant churchyard that was completely destroyed during the Thirty Years' War.
Kepler's belief that God created the cosmos in an orderly fashion caused him to attempt to determine and comprehend the laws that govern the natural world, most profoundly in astronomy. The phrase "I am merely thinking God's thoughts after Him" has been attributed to him, although this is probably a capsulized version of a writing from his hand:
Those laws [of nature] are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts.
Kepler advocated for tolerance among Christian denominations, for example arguing that Catholics and Lutherans should be able to take communion together. He wrote, "Christ the Lord neither was nor is Lutheran, nor Calvinist, nor Papist."
Kepler's first major astronomical work, Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Cosmographic Mystery, 1596), was the first published defense of the Copernican system. Kepler claimed to have had an epiphany on 19 July 1595, while teaching in Graz, demonstrating the periodic conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the zodiac: he realized that regular polygons bound one inscribed and one circumscribed circle at definite ratios, which, he reasoned, might be the geometrical basis of the universe. After failing to find a unique arrangement of polygons that fit known astronomical observations (even with extra planets added to the system), Kepler began experimenting with 3-dimensional polyhedra. He found that each of the five Platonic solids could be inscribed and circumscribed by spherical orbs; nesting these solids, each encased in a sphere, within one another would produce six layers, corresponding to the six known planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. By ordering the solids selectively—octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, cube—Kepler found that the spheres could be placed at intervals corresponding to the relative sizes of each planet's path, assuming the planets circle the Sun. Kepler also found a formula relating the size of each planet's orb to the length of its orbital period: from inner to outer planets, the ratio of increase in orbital period is twice the difference in orb radius. However, Kepler later rejected this formula, because it was not precise enough.
Kepler thought the Mysterium had revealed God's geometrical plan for the universe. Much of Kepler's enthusiasm for the Copernican system stemmed from his theological convictions about the connection between the physical and the spiritual; the universe itself was an image of God, with the Sun corresponding to the Father, the stellar sphere to the Son, and the intervening space between them to the Holy Spirit. His first manuscript of Mysterium contained an extensive chapter reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seemed to support geocentrism. With the support of his mentor Michael Maestlin, Kepler received permission from the Tübingen university senate to publish his manuscript, pending removal of the Bible exegesis and the addition of a simpler, more understandable, description of the Copernican system as well as Kepler's new ideas. Mysterium was published late in 1596, and Kepler received his copies and began sending them to prominent astronomers and patrons early in 1597; it was not widely read, but it established Kepler's reputation as a highly skilled astronomer. The effusive dedication, to powerful patrons as well as to the men who controlled his position in Graz, also provided a crucial doorway into the patronage system.
In 1621, Kepler published an expanded second edition of Mysterium, half as long again as the first, detailing in footnotes the corrections and improvements he had achieved in the 25 years since its first publication. In terms of impact, the Mysterium can be seen as an important first step in modernizing the theory proposed by Copernicus in his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Whilst Copernicus sought to advance a heliocentric system in this book, he resorted to Ptolemaic devices (viz., epicycles and eccentric circles) in order to explain the change in planets' orbital speed, and also continued to use as a point of reference the center of the Earth's orbit rather than that of the Sun "as an aid to calculation and in order not to confuse the reader by diverging too much from Ptolemy." Modern astronomy owes much to Mysterium Cosmographicum, despite flaws in its main thesis, "since it represents the first step in cleansing the Copernican system of the remnants of the Ptolemaic theory still clinging to it."
The extended line of research that culminated in Astronomia Nova (A New Astronomy)—including the first two laws of planetary motion—began with the analysis, under Tycho's direction, of the orbit of Mars. In this work Kepler introduced the revolutionary concept of planetary orbit, a path of a planet in space resulting from the action of physical causes, distinct from previously held notion of planetary orb (a spherical shell to which planet is attached). As a result of this breakthrough astronomical phenomena came to be seen as being governed by physical laws. Kepler calculated and recalculated various approximations of Mars's orbit using an equant (the mathematical tool that Copernicus had eliminated with his system), eventually creating a model that generally agreed with Tycho's observations to within two arcminutes (the average measurement error). But he was not satisfied with the complex and still slightly inaccurate result; at certain points the model differed from the data by up to eight arcminutes. The wide array of traditional mathematical astronomy methods having failed him, Kepler set about trying to fit an ovoid orbit to the data.
In Kepler's religious view of the cosmos, the Sun (a symbol of God the Father) was the source of motive force in the Solar System. As a physical basis, Kepler drew by analogy on William Gilbert's theory of the magnetic soul of the Earth from De Magnete (1600) and on his own work on optics. Kepler supposed that the motive power (or motive species) radiated by the Sun weakens with distance, causing faster or slower motion as planets move closer or farther from it. Perhaps this assumption entailed a mathematical relationship that would restore astronomical order. Based on measurements of the aphelion and perihelion of the Earth and Mars, he created a formula in which a planet's rate of motion is inversely proportional to its distance from the Sun. Verifying this relationship throughout the orbital cycle required very extensive calculation; to simplify this task, by late 1602 Kepler reformulated the proportion in terms of geometry: planets sweep out equal areas in equal times—his second law of planetary motion.
He then set about calculating the entire orbit of Mars, using the geometrical rate law and assuming an egg-shaped ovoid orbit. After approximately 40 failed attempts, in late 1604 he at last hit upon the idea of an ellipse, which he had previously assumed to be too simple a solution for earlier astronomers to have overlooked. Finding that an elliptical orbit fit the Mars data (the Vicarious Hypothesis), Kepler immediately concluded that all planets move in ellipses, with the Sun at one focus—his first law of planetary motion. Because he employed no calculating assistants, he did not extend the mathematical analysis beyond Mars. By the end of the year, he completed the manuscript for Astronomia nova, though it would not be published until 1609 due to legal disputes over the use of Tycho's observations, the property of his heirs.
Since completing the Astronomia Nova, Kepler had intended to compose an astronomy textbook that would cover all the fundamentals of heliocentric astronomy. Kepler spent the next several years working on what would become Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy). Despite its title, which merely hints at heliocentrism, the Epitome is less about Copernicus's work and more about Kepler's own astronomical system. The Epitome contained all three laws of planetary motion and attempted to explain heavenly motions through physical causes. Although it explicitly extended the first two laws of planetary motion (applied to Mars in Astronomia nova) to all the planets as well as the Moon and the Medicean satellites of Jupiter, it did not explain how elliptical orbits could be derived from observational data.
Originally intended as an introduction for the uninitiated, Kepler sought to model his Epitome after that of his master Michael Maestlin, who published a well-regarded book explaining the basics of geocentric astronomy to non-experts. Kepler completed the first of three volumes, consisting of Books I–III, by 1615 in the same question-answer format of Maestlin's and have it printed in 1617. However, the banning of Copernican books by the Catholic Church, as well as the start of the Thirty Years' War, meant that publication of the next two volumes would be delayed. In the interim, and to avoid being subject to the ban, Kepler switched the audience of the Epitome from beginners to that of expert astronomers and mathematicians, as the arguments became more and more sophisticated and required advanced mathematics to be understood. The second volume, consisting of Book IV, was published in 1620, followed by the third volume, consisting of Books V–VII, in 1621.
In the years following the completion of Astronomia Nova, most of Kepler's research was focused on preparations for the Rudolphine Tables and a comprehensive set of ephemerides (specific predictions of planet and star positions) based on the table, though neither would be completed for many years.
Kepler, at last, completed the Rudolphine Tables in 1623, which at the time was considered his major work. However, due to the publishing requirements of the emperor and negotiations with Tycho Brahe's heir, it would not be printed until 1627.
Like Ptolemy, Kepler considered astrology as the counterpart to astronomy, and as being of equal interest and value. However, in the following years, the two subjects drifted apart until astrology was no longer practiced among professional astronomers.
Sir Oliver Lodge observed that Kepler was somewhat disdainful of astrology in his own day, as he was "continually attacking and throwing sarcasm at astrology, but it was the only thing for which people would pay him, and on it after a fashion he lived." Nonetheless, Kepler spent a huge amount of time trying to restore astrology on a firmer philosophical footing, composing numerous astrological calendars, more than 800 nativities, and a number of treaties dealing with the subject of astrology proper.
In his bid to become imperial astronomer, Kepler wrote De Fundamentis (1601), whose full title can be translated as “On Giving Astrology Sounder Foundations”, as a short foreword to one of his yearly almanacs.
In this work, Kepler describes the effects of the Sun, Moon, and the planets in terms of their light and their influences upon humors, finalizing with Kepler's view that the Earth possesses a soul with some sense of geometry. Stimulated by the geometric convergence of rays formed around it, the world-soul is sentient but not conscious. As a shepherd is pleased by the piping of a flute without understanding the theory of musical harmony, so likewise Earth responds to the angles and aspects made by the heavens but not in a conscious manner. Eclipses are important as omens because the animal faculty of the Earth is violently disturbed by the sudden intermission of light, experiencing something like emotion and persisting in it for some time.
Kepler surmises that the Earth has "cycles of humors" as living animals do, and gives for an example that "the highest tides of the sea are said by sailors to return after nineteen years around the same days of the year". (This may refer to the 18.6-year lunar node precession cycle.) Kepler advocates searching for such cycles by gathering observations over a period of many years, "and so far this observation has not been made".
Kepler and Helisaeus Roeslin engaged in a series of published attacks and counter-attacks on the importance of astrology after the supernova of 1604; around the same time, physician Philip Feselius published a work dismissing astrology altogether (and Roeslin's work in particular).
In response to what Kepler saw as the excesses of astrology, on the one hand, and overzealous rejection of it, on the other, Kepler prepared Tertius Interveniens (1610). Nominally this work—presented to the common patron of Roeslin and Feselius—was a neutral mediation between the feuding scholars (the titled meaning "Third-party interventions"), but it also set out Kepler's general views on the value of astrology, including some hypothesized mechanisms of interaction between planets and individual souls. While Kepler considered most traditional rules and methods of astrology to be the "evil-smelling dung" in which "an industrious hen" scrapes, there was an "occasional grain-seed, indeed, even a pearl or a gold nugget" to be found by the conscientious scientific astrologer.
Kepler was convinced "that the geometrical things have provided the Creator with the model for decorating the whole world". In Harmonice Mundi (1619), he attempted to explain the proportions of the natural world—particularly the astronomical and astrological aspects—in terms of music. The central set of "harmonies" was the musica universalis or "music of the spheres", which had been studied by Pythagoras, Ptolemy and others before Kepler; in fact, soon after publishing Harmonice Mundi, Kepler was embroiled in a priority dispute with Robert Fludd, who had recently published his own harmonic theory.
Kepler began by exploring regular polygons and regular solids, including the figures that would come to be known as Kepler's solids. From there, he extended his harmonic analysis to music, meteorology, and astrology; harmony resulted from the tones made by the souls of heavenly bodies—and in the case of astrology, the interaction between those tones and human souls. In the final portion of the work (Book V), Kepler dealt with planetary motions, especially relationships between orbital velocity and orbital distance from the Sun. Similar relationships had been used by other astronomers, but Kepler—with Tycho's data and his own astronomical theories—treated them much more precisely and attached new physical significance to them.
Among many other harmonies, Kepler articulated what came to be known as the third law of planetary motion. He tried many combinations until he discovered that (approximately) "The square of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances." Although he gives the date of this epiphany (8 March 1618), he does not give any details about how he arrived at this conclusion. However, the wider significance for planetary dynamics of this purely kinematical law was not realized until the 1660s. When conjoined with Christiaan Huygens' newly discovered law of centrifugal force, it enabled Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, and perhaps Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke to demonstrate independently that the presumed gravitational attraction between the Sun and its planets decreased with the square of the distance between them. This refuted the traditional assumption of scholastic physics that the power of gravitational attraction remained constant with distance whenever it applied between two bodies, such as was assumed by Kepler and also by Galileo in his mistaken universal law that gravitational fall is uniformly accelerated, and also by Galileo's student Borrelli in his 1666 celestial mechanics.
As Kepler slowly continued analyzing Tycho's Mars observations—now available to him in their entirety—and began the slow process of tabulating the Rudolphine Tables, Kepler also picked up the investigation of the laws of optics from his lunar essay of 1600. Both lunar and solar eclipses presented unexplained phenomena, such as unexpected shadow sizes, the red color of a total lunar eclipse, and the reportedly unusual light surrounding a total solar eclipse. Related issues of atmospheric refraction applied to all astronomical observations. Through most of 1603, Kepler paused his other work to focus on optical theory; the resulting manuscript, presented to the emperor on 1 January 1604, was published as Astronomiae Pars Optica (The Optical Part of Astronomy). In it, Kepler described the inverse-square law governing the intensity of light, reflection by flat and curved mirrors, and principles of pinhole cameras, as well as the astronomical implications of optics such as parallax and the apparent sizes of heavenly bodies. He also extended his study of optics to the human eye, and is generally considered by neuroscientists to be the first to recognize that images are projected inverted and reversed by the eye's lens onto the retina. The solution to this dilemma was not of particular importance to Kepler as he did not see it as pertaining to optics, although he did suggest that the image was later corrected "in the hollows of the brain" due to the "activity of the Soul."
Today, Astronomiae Pars Optica is generally recognized as the foundation of modern optics (though the law of refraction is conspicuously absent). With respect to the beginnings of projective geometry, Kepler introduced the idea of continuous change of a mathematical entity in this work. He argued that if a focus of a conic section were allowed to move along the line joining the foci, the geometric form would morph or degenerate, one into another. In this way, an ellipse becomes a parabola when a focus moves toward infinity, and when two foci of an ellipse merge into one another, a circle is formed. As the foci of a hyperbola merge into one another, the hyperbola becomes a pair of straight lines. He also assumed that if a straight line is extended to infinity it will meet itself at a single point at infinity, thus having the properties of a large circle.
In the first months of 1610, Galileo Galilei—using his powerful new telescope—discovered four satellites orbiting Jupiter. Upon publishing his account as Sidereus Nuncius [Starry Messenger], Galileo sought the opinion of Kepler, in part to bolster the credibility of his observations. Kepler responded enthusiastically with a short published reply, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo [Conversation with the Starry Messenger]. He endorsed Galileo's observations and offered a range of speculations about the meaning and implications of Galileo's discoveries and telescopic methods, for astronomy and optics as well as cosmology and astrology. Later that year, Kepler published his own telescopic observations of the moons in Narratio de Jovis Satellitibus, providing further support of Galileo. To Kepler's disappointment, however, Galileo never published his reactions (if any) to Astronomia Nova.
Kepler also started a theoretical and experimental investigation of telescopic lenses using a telescope borrowed from Duke Ernest of Cologne. The resulting manuscript was completed in September 1610 and published as Dioptrice in 1611. In it, Kepler set out the theoretical basis of double-convex converging lenses and double-concave diverging lenses—and how they are combined to produce a Galilean telescope—as well as the concepts of real vs. virtual images, upright vs. inverted images, and the effects of focal length on magnification and reduction. He also described an improved telescope—now known as the astronomical or Keplerian telescope—in which two convex lenses can produce higher magnification than Galileo's combination of convex and concave lenses.
As a New Year's gift that year (1611), he also composed for his friend and some-time patron, Baron Wackher von Wackhenfels, a short pamphlet entitled Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula (A New Year's Gift of Hexagonal Snow). In this treatise, he published the first description of the hexagonal symmetry of snowflakes and, extending the discussion into a hypothetical atomistic physical basis for the symmetry, posed what later became known as the Kepler conjecture, a statement about the most efficient arrangement for packing spheres.
Kepler wrote the influential mathematical treatise Nova stereometria doliorum vinariorum in 1613, on measuring the volume of containers such as wine barrels, which was published in 1615. Kepler also contributed to the development of infinitesimal methods and numerical analysis, including iterative approximations, infinitesimals, and the early use of logarithms and transcendental equations. Kepler's work on calculating volumes of shapes, and on finding the optimal shape of a wine barrel, were significant steps toward the development of calculus. Simpson's rule, an approximation method used in integral calculus, is known in German as Keplersche Fassregel (Kepler's barrel rule).
Kepler's laws of planetary motion were not immediately accepted. Several major figures such as Galileo and René Descartes completely ignored Kepler's Astronomia nova. Many astronomers, including Kepler's teacher, Michael Maestlin, objected to Kepler's introduction of physics into his astronomy. Some adopted compromise positions. Ismaël Bullialdus accepted elliptical orbits but replaced Kepler's area law with uniform motion in respect to the empty focus of the ellipse, while Seth Ward used an elliptical orbit with motions defined by an equant.
Several astronomers tested Kepler's theory, and its various modifications, against astronomical observations. Two transits of Venus and Mercury across the face of the sun provided sensitive tests of the theory, under circumstances when these planets could not normally be observed. In the case of the transit of Mercury in 1631, Kepler had been extremely uncertain of the parameters for Mercury, and advised observers to look for the transit the day before and after the predicted date. Pierre Gassendi observed the transit on the date predicted, a confirmation of Kepler's prediction. This was the first observation of a transit of Mercury. However, his attempt to observe the transit of Venus just one month later was unsuccessful due to inaccuracies in the Rudolphine Tables. Gassendi did not realize that it was not visible from most of Europe, including Paris. Jeremiah Horrocks, who observed the 1639 Venus transit, had used his own observations to adjust the parameters of the Keplerian model, predicted the transit, and then built apparatus to observe the transit. He remained a firm advocate of the Keplerian model.
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy was read by astronomers throughout Europe, and following Kepler's death, it was the main vehicle for spreading Kepler's ideas. In the period 1630–1650, this book was the most widely used astronomy textbook, winning many converts to ellipse-based astronomy. However, few adopted his ideas on the physical basis for celestial motions. In the late 17th century, a number of physical astronomy theories drawing from Kepler's work—notably those of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Robert Hooke—began to incorporate attractive forces (though not the quasi-spiritual motive species postulated by Kepler) and the Cartesian concept of inertia. This culminated in Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687), in which Newton derived Kepler's laws of planetary motion from a force-based theory of universal gravitation, a mathematical challenge later known as "solving the Kepler problem".
Beyond his role in the historical development of astronomy and natural philosophy, Kepler has loomed large in the philosophy and historiography of science. Kepler and his laws of motion were central to early histories of astronomy such as Jean-Étienne Montucla's 1758 Histoire des mathématiques and Jean-Baptiste Delambre's 1821 Histoire de l'astronomie moderne. These and other histories written from an Enlightenment perspective treated Kepler's metaphysical and religious arguments with skepticism and disapproval, but later Romantic-era natural philosophers viewed these elements as central to his success. William Whewell, in his influential History of the Inductive Sciences of 1837, found Kepler to be the archetype of the inductive scientific genius; in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences of 1840, Whewell held Kepler up as the embodiment of the most advanced forms of scientific method. Similarly, Ernst Friedrich Apelt—the first to extensively study Kepler's manuscripts, after their purchase by Catherine the Great—identified Kepler as a key to the "Revolution of the sciences". Apelt, who saw Kepler's mathematics, aesthetic sensibility, physical ideas, and theology as part of a unified system of thought, produced the first extended analysis of Kepler's life and work.
Alexandre Koyré's work on Kepler was, after Apelt, the first major milestone in historical interpretations of Kepler's cosmology and its influence. In the 1930s and 1940s, Koyré, and a number of others in the first generation of professional historians of science, described the "Scientific Revolution" as the central event in the history of science, and Kepler as a (perhaps the) central figure in the revolution. Koyré placed Kepler's theorization, rather than his empirical work, at the center of the intellectual transformation from ancient to modern world-views. Since the 1960s, the volume of historical Kepler scholarship has expanded greatly, including studies of his astrology and meteorology, his geometrical methods, the role of his religious views in his work, his literary and rhetorical methods, his interaction with the broader cultural and philosophical currents of his time, and even his role as an historian of science.
Philosophers of science—such as Charles Sanders Peirce, Norwood Russell Hanson, Stephen Toulmin, and Karl Popper—have repeatedly turned to Kepler: examples of incommensurability, analogical reasoning, falsification, and many other philosophical concepts have been found in Kepler's work. Physicist Wolfgang Pauli even used Kepler's priority dispute with Robert Fludd to explore the implications of analytical psychology on scientific investigation.
Modern translations of a number of Kepler's books appeared in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the systematic publication of his collected works began in 1937 (and is nearing completion in the early 21st century).
An edition in eight volumes, Kepleri Opera omnia, was prepared by Christian Frisch (1807–1881), during 1858 to 1871, on the occasion of Kepler's 300th birthday. Frisch's edition only included Kepler's Latin, with a Latin commentary.
A new edition was planned beginning in 1914 by Walther von Dyck (1856–1934). Dyck compiled copies of Kepler's unedited manuscripts, using international diplomatic contacts to convince the Soviet authorities to lend him the manuscripts kept in Leningrad for photographic reproduction. These manuscripts contained several works by Kepler that had not been available to Frisch. Dyck's photographs remain the basis for the modern editions of Kepler's unpublished manuscripts.
Max Caspar (1880–1956) published his German translation of Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum in 1923. Both Dyck and Caspar were influenced in their interest in Kepler by mathematician Alexander von Brill (1842–1935). Caspar became Dyck's collaborator, succeeding him as project leader in 1934, establishing the Kepler-Kommission in the following year. Assisted by Martha List (1908–1992) and Franz Hammer (1898–1969), Caspar continued editorial work during World War II. Max Caspar also published a biography of Kepler in 1948. The commission was later chaired by Volker Bialas (during 1976–2003) and Ulrich Grigull (during 1984–1999) and Roland Bulirsch (1998–2014).
Kepler has acquired a popular image as an icon of scientific modernity and a man before his time; science popularizer Carl Sagan described him as "the first astrophysicist and the last scientific astrologer". The debate over Kepler's place in the Scientific Revolution has produced a wide variety of philosophical and popular treatments. One of the most influential is Arthur Koestler's 1959 The Sleepwalkers, in which Kepler is unambiguously the hero (morally and theologically as well as intellectually) of the revolution.
A well-received historical novel by John Banville, Kepler (1981), explored many of the themes developed in Koestler's non-fiction narrative and in the philosophy of science. A 2004 nonfiction book, Heavenly Intrigue, suggested that Kepler murdered Tycho Brahe to gain access to his data.
In Austria, a silver collector's 10-euro Johannes Kepler silver coin was minted in 2002. The reverse side of the coin has a portrait of Kepler, who spent some time teaching in Graz and the surrounding areas. Kepler was acquainted with Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg personally, and he probably influenced the construction of Eggenberg Castle (the motif of the obverse of the coin). In front of him on the coin is the model of nested spheres and polyhedra from Mysterium Cosmographicum.
The German composer Paul Hindemith wrote an opera about Kepler entitled Die Harmonie der Welt (1957), and during the prolonged process of its creation, he also wrote a symphony of the same name based on the musical ideas he developed for it. Hindemith's opera inspired John Rodgers and Willie Ruff of Yale University to create a synthesizer composition based on Kepler's scheme for representing planetary motion with music. Philip Glass wrote an opera called Kepler (2009) based on Kepler's life, with a libretto in German and Latin by Martina Winkel.
Directly named for Kepler's contribution to science are Kepler's laws of planetary motion; Kepler's Supernova SN 1604, which he observed and described; the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra (a set of geometrical constructions), two of which were described by him; and the Kepler conjecture on sphere packing. Places and entities named in his honor include multiple city streets and squares, several educational institutions, an asteroid, and both a lunar and a Martian crater.
A critical edition of Kepler's collected works (Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke, KGW) in 22 volumes is being edited by the Kepler-Kommission (founded 1935) on behalf of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
The Kepler-Kommission also publishes Bibliographia Kepleriana (2nd ed. List, 1968), a complete bibliography of editions of Kepler's works, with a supplementary volume to the second edition (ed. Hamel 1998). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Johannes Kepler (/ˈkɛplər/; German: [joˈhanəs ˈkɛplɐ, -nɛs -] ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, being named the father of modern optics, in particular for his Astronomiae pars optica. He also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, the Keplerian telescope, which became the foundation of the modern refracting telescope, while also improving on the telescope design by Galileo Galilei, who mentioned Kepler's discoveries in his work.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy). Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason. Kepler described his new astronomy as \"celestial physics\", as \"an excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics\", and as \"a supplement to Aristotle's On the Heavens\", transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kepler has been called the \"father of science fiction\" for his novel Somnium.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kepler was born on 27 December 1571, in the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt (now part of the Stuttgart Region in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, 30 km west of Stuttgart's center). His grandfather, Sebald Kepler, had been Lord Mayor of the city. By the time Johannes was born, he had two brothers and one sister and the Kepler family fortune was in decline. His father, Heinrich Kepler, earned a precarious living as a mercenary, and he left the family when Johannes was five years old. He was believed to have died in the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. His mother, Katharina Guldenmann, an innkeeper's daughter, was a healer and herbalist. Born prematurely, Johannes claimed to have been weak and sickly as a child. Nevertheless, he often impressed travelers at his grandfather's inn with his phenomenal mathematical faculty.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "He was introduced to astronomy at an early age and developed a strong passion for it that would span his entire life. At age six, he observed the Great Comet of 1577, writing that he \"was taken by [his] mother to a high place to look at it.\" In 1580, at age nine, he observed another astronomical event, a lunar eclipse, recording that he remembered being \"called outdoors\" to see it and that the Moon \"appeared quite red\". However, childhood smallpox left him with weak vision and crippled hands, limiting his ability in the observational aspects of astronomy.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1589, after moving through grammar school, Latin school, and seminary at Maulbronn, Kepler attended Tübinger Stift at the University of Tübingen. There, he studied philosophy under Vitus Müller and theology under Jacob Heerbrand (a student of Philipp Melanchthon at Wittenberg), who also taught Michael Maestlin while he was a student, until he became Chancellor at Tübingen in 1590. He proved himself to be a superb mathematician and earned a reputation as a skilful astrologer, casting horoscopes for fellow students. Under the instruction of Michael Maestlin, Tübingen's professor of mathematics from 1583 to 1631, he learned both the Ptolemaic system and the Copernican system of planetary motion. He became a Copernican at that time. In a student disputation, he defended heliocentrism from both a theoretical and theological perspective, maintaining that the Sun was the principal source of motive power in the universe. Despite his desire to become a minister, near the end of his studies, Kepler was recommended for a position as teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school in Graz. He accepted the position in April 1594, at the age of 22.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Before concluding his studies at Tübingen, Kepler accepted an offer to teach mathematics as a replacement to Georg Stadius at the Protestant school in Graz (now in Styria, Austria). During this period (1594–1600), he issued many official calendars and prognostications that enhanced his reputation as an astrologer. Although Kepler had mixed feelings about astrology and disparaged many customary practices of astrologers, he believed deeply in a connection between the cosmos and the individual. He eventually published some of the ideas he had entertained while a student in the Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), published a little over a year after his arrival at Graz.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In December 1595, Kepler was introduced to Barbara Müller, a 23-year-old widow (twice over) with a young daughter, Regina Lorenz, and he began courting her. Müller, an heiress to the estates of her late husbands, was also the daughter of a successful mill owner. Her father Jobst initially opposed a marriage. Even though Kepler had inherited his grandfather's nobility, Kepler's poverty made him an unacceptable match. Jobst relented after Kepler completed work on Mysterium, but the engagement nearly fell apart while Kepler was away tending to the details of publication. However, Protestant officials—who had helped set up the match—pressured the Müllers to honor their agreement. Barbara and Johannes were married on 27 April 1597.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the first years of their marriage, the Keplers had two children (Heinrich and Susanna), both of whom died in infancy. In 1602, they had a daughter (Susanna); in 1604, a son (Friedrich); and in 1607, another son (Ludwig).",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Following the publication of Mysterium and with the blessing of the Graz school inspectors, Kepler began an ambitious program to extend and elaborate his work. He planned four additional books: one on the stationary aspects of the universe (the Sun and the fixed stars); one on the planets and their motions; one on the physical nature of planets and the formation of geographical features (focused especially on Earth); and one on the effects of the heavens on the Earth, to include atmospheric optics, meteorology, and astrology.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "He also sought the opinions of many of the astronomers to whom he had sent Mysterium, among them Reimarus Ursus (Nicolaus Reimers Bär)—the imperial mathematician to Rudolf II and a bitter rival of Tycho Brahe. Ursus did not reply directly, but republished Kepler's flattering letter to pursue his priority dispute over (what is now called) the Tychonic system with Tycho. Despite this black mark, Tycho also began corresponding with Kepler, starting with a harsh but legitimate critique of Kepler's system; among a host of objections, Tycho took issue with the use of inaccurate numerical data taken from Copernicus. Through their letters, Tycho and Kepler discussed a broad range of astronomical problems, dwelling on lunar phenomena and Copernican theory (particularly its theological viability). But without the significantly more accurate data of Tycho's observatory, Kepler had no way to address many of these issues.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Instead, he turned his attention to chronology and \"harmony,\" the numerological relationships among music, mathematics and the physical world, and their astrological consequences. By assuming the Earth to possess a soul (a property he would later invoke to explain how the Sun causes the motion of planets), he established a speculative system connecting astrological aspects and astronomical distances to weather and other earthly phenomena. By 1599, however, he again felt his work limited by the inaccuracy of available data—just as growing religious tension was also threatening his continued employment in Graz. In December of that year, Tycho invited Kepler to visit him in Prague; on 1 January 1600 (before he even received the invitation), Kepler set off in the hopes that Tycho's patronage could solve his philosophical problems as well as his social and financial ones.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On 4 February 1600, Kepler met Tycho Brahe and his assistants Franz Tengnagel and Longomontanus at Benátky nad Jizerou (35 km from Prague), the site where Tycho's new observatory was being constructed. Over the next two months, he stayed as a guest, analyzing some of Tycho's observations of Mars; Tycho guarded his data closely, but was impressed by Kepler's theoretical ideas and soon allowed him more access. Kepler planned to test his theory from Mysterium Cosmographicum based on the Mars data, but he estimated that the work would take up to two years (since he was not allowed to simply copy the data for his own use). With the help of Johannes Jessenius, Kepler attempted to negotiate a more formal employment arrangement with Tycho, but negotiations broke down in an angry argument and Kepler left for Prague on 6 April. Kepler and Tycho soon reconciled and eventually reached an agreement on salary and living arrangements, and in June, Kepler returned home to Graz to collect his family.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Political and religious difficulties in Graz dashed his hopes of returning immediately to Brahe; in hopes of continuing his astronomical studies, Kepler sought an appointment as a mathematician to Archduke Ferdinand. To that end, Kepler composed an essay—dedicated to Ferdinand—in which he proposed a force-based theory of lunar motion: \"In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam ciet\" (\"There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move\"). Though the essay did not earn him a place in Ferdinand's court, it did detail a new method for measuring lunar eclipses, which he applied during the 10 July eclipse in Graz. These observations formed the basis of his explorations of the laws of optics that would culminate in Astronomiae Pars Optica.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On 2 August 1600, after refusing to convert to Catholicism, Kepler and his family were banished from Graz. Several months later, Kepler returned, now with the rest of his household, to Prague. Through most of 1601, he was supported directly by Tycho, who assigned him to analyzing planetary observations and writing a tract against Tycho's (by then deceased) rival, Ursus. In September, Tycho secured him a commission as a collaborator on the new project he had proposed to the emperor: the Rudolphine Tables that should replace the Prutenic Tables of Erasmus Reinhold. Two days after Tycho's unexpected death on 24 October 1601, Kepler was appointed his successor as the imperial mathematician with the responsibility to complete his unfinished work. The next 11 years as imperial mathematician would be the most productive of his life.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kepler's primary obligation as imperial mathematician was to provide astrological advice to the emperor. Though Kepler took a dim view of the attempts of contemporary astrologers to precisely predict the future or divine specific events, he had been casting well-received detailed horoscopes for friends, family, and patrons since his time as a student in Tübingen. In addition to horoscopes for allies and foreign leaders, the emperor sought Kepler's advice in times of political trouble. Rudolf was actively interested in the work of many of his court scholars (including numerous alchemists) and kept up with Kepler's work in physical astronomy as well.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Officially, the only acceptable religious doctrines in Prague were Catholic and Utraquist, but Kepler's position in the imperial court allowed him to practice his Lutheran faith unhindered. The emperor nominally provided an ample income for his family, but the difficulties of the over-extended imperial treasury meant that actually getting hold of enough money to meet financial obligations was a continual struggle. Partly because of financial troubles, his life at home with Barbara was unpleasant, marred with bickering and bouts of sickness. Court life, however, brought Kepler into contact with other prominent scholars (Johannes Matthäus Wackher von Wackhenfels, Jost Bürgi, David Fabricius, Martin Bachazek, and Johannes Brengger, among others) and astronomical work proceeded rapidly.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In October 1604, a bright new evening star (SN 1604) appeared, but Kepler did not believe the rumors until he saw it himself. Kepler began systematically observing the supernova. Astrologically, the end of 1603 marked the beginning of a fiery trigon, the start of the about 800-year cycle of great conjunctions; astrologers associated the two previous such periods with the rise of Charlemagne (c. 800 years earlier) and the birth of Christ (c. 1600 years earlier), and thus expected events of great portent, especially regarding the emperor.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "It was in this context, as the imperial mathematician and astrologer to the emperor, that Kepler described the new star two years later in his De Stella Nova. In it, Kepler addressed the star's astronomical properties while taking a skeptical approach to the many astrological interpretations then circulating. He noted its fading luminosity, speculated about its origin, and used the lack of observed parallax to argue that it was in the sphere of fixed stars, further undermining the doctrine of the immutability of the heavens (the idea accepted since Aristotle that the celestial spheres were perfect and unchanging). The birth of a new star implied the variability of the heavens. Kepler also attached an appendix where he discussed the recent chronology work of the Polish historian Laurentius Suslyga; he calculated that, if Suslyga was correct that accepted timelines were four years behind, then the Star of Bethlehem—analogous to the present new star—would have coincided with the first great conjunction of the earlier 800-year cycle.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Over the following years, Kepler attempted (unsuccessfully) to begin a collaboration with Italian astronomer Giovanni Antonio Magini, and dealt with chronology, especially the dating of events in the life of Jesus. Around 1611, Kepler circulated a manuscript of what would eventually be published (posthumously) as Somnium [The Dream]. Part of the purpose of Somnium was to describe what practicing astronomy would be like from the perspective of another planet, to show the feasibility of a non-geocentric system. The manuscript, which disappeared after changing hands several times, described a fantastic trip to the Moon; it was part allegory, part autobiography, and part treatise on interplanetary travel (and is sometimes described as the first work of science fiction). Years later, a distorted version of the story may have instigated the witchcraft trial against his mother, as the mother of the narrator consults a demon to learn the means of space travel. Following her eventual acquittal, Kepler composed 223 footnotes to the story—several times longer than the actual text—which explained the allegorical aspects as well as the considerable scientific content (particularly regarding lunar geography) hidden within the text.",
"title": "Scientific career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1611, the growing political-religious tension in Prague came to a head. Emperor Rudolf—whose health was failing—was forced to abdicate as King of Bohemia by his brother Matthias. Both sides sought Kepler's astrological advice, an opportunity he used to deliver conciliatory political advice (with little reference to the stars, except in general statements to discourage drastic action). However, it was clear that Kepler's future prospects in the court of Matthias were dim.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Also in that year, Barbara Kepler contracted Hungarian spotted fever, then began having seizures. As Barbara was recovering, Kepler's three children all fell sick with smallpox; Friedrich, 6, died. Following his son's death, Kepler sent letters to potential patrons in Württemberg and Padua. At the University of Tübingen in Württemberg, concerns over Kepler's perceived Calvinist heresies in violation of the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord prevented his return. The University of Padua—on the recommendation of the departing Galileo—sought Kepler to fill the mathematics professorship, but Kepler, preferring to keep his family in German territory, instead travelled to Austria to arrange a position as teacher and district mathematician in Linz. However, Barbara relapsed into illness and died shortly after Kepler's return.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Kepler postponed the move to Linz and remained in Prague until Rudolf's death in early 1612, though between political upheaval, religious tension, and family tragedy (along with the legal dispute over his wife's estate), Kepler could do no research. Instead, he pieced together a chronology manuscript, Eclogae Chronicae, from correspondence and earlier work. Upon succession as Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias re-affirmed Kepler's position (and salary) as imperial mathematician but allowed him to move to Linz.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In Linz, Kepler's primary responsibilities (beyond completing the Rudolphine Tables) were teaching at the district school and providing astrological and astronomical services. In his first years there, he enjoyed financial security and religious freedom relative to his life in Prague—though he was excluded from Eucharist by his Lutheran church over his theological scruples. It was also during his time in Linz that Kepler had to deal with the accusation and ultimate verdict of witchcraft against his mother Katharina in the Protestant town of Leonberg. That blow, happening only a few years after Kepler's excommunication, is not seen as a coincidence but as a symptom of the full-fledged assault waged by the Lutherans against Kepler.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "His first publication in Linz was De vero Anno (1613), an expanded treatise on the year of Christ's birth. He also participated in deliberations on whether to introduce Pope Gregory's reformed calendar to Protestant German lands. On 30 October 1613, Kepler married the 24-year-old Susanna Reuttinger. Following the death of his first wife Barbara, Kepler had considered 11 different matches over two years (a decision process formalized later as the marriage problem). He eventually returned to Reuttinger (the fifth match) who, he wrote, \"won me over with love, humble loyalty, economy of household, diligence, and the love she gave the stepchildren.\" The first three children of this marriage (Margareta Regina, Katharina, and Sebald) died in childhood. Three more survived into adulthood: Cordula (born 1621); Fridmar (born 1623); and Hildebert (born 1625). According to Kepler's biographers, this was a much happier marriage than his first.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "On 8 October 1630, Kepler set out for Regensburg, hoping to collect interest on work he had done previously. A few days after reaching Regensburg, Kepler became sick, and progressively became worse. On 15 November 1630, just over a month after his arrival, he died. He was buried in a Protestant churchyard that was completely destroyed during the Thirty Years' War.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kepler's belief that God created the cosmos in an orderly fashion caused him to attempt to determine and comprehend the laws that govern the natural world, most profoundly in astronomy. The phrase \"I am merely thinking God's thoughts after Him\" has been attributed to him, although this is probably a capsulized version of a writing from his hand:",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Those laws [of nature] are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Kepler advocated for tolerance among Christian denominations, for example arguing that Catholics and Lutherans should be able to take communion together. He wrote, \"Christ the Lord neither was nor is Lutheran, nor Calvinist, nor Papist.\"",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Kepler's first major astronomical work, Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Cosmographic Mystery, 1596), was the first published defense of the Copernican system. Kepler claimed to have had an epiphany on 19 July 1595, while teaching in Graz, demonstrating the periodic conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the zodiac: he realized that regular polygons bound one inscribed and one circumscribed circle at definite ratios, which, he reasoned, might be the geometrical basis of the universe. After failing to find a unique arrangement of polygons that fit known astronomical observations (even with extra planets added to the system), Kepler began experimenting with 3-dimensional polyhedra. He found that each of the five Platonic solids could be inscribed and circumscribed by spherical orbs; nesting these solids, each encased in a sphere, within one another would produce six layers, corresponding to the six known planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. By ordering the solids selectively—octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, cube—Kepler found that the spheres could be placed at intervals corresponding to the relative sizes of each planet's path, assuming the planets circle the Sun. Kepler also found a formula relating the size of each planet's orb to the length of its orbital period: from inner to outer planets, the ratio of increase in orbital period is twice the difference in orb radius. However, Kepler later rejected this formula, because it was not precise enough.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Kepler thought the Mysterium had revealed God's geometrical plan for the universe. Much of Kepler's enthusiasm for the Copernican system stemmed from his theological convictions about the connection between the physical and the spiritual; the universe itself was an image of God, with the Sun corresponding to the Father, the stellar sphere to the Son, and the intervening space between them to the Holy Spirit. His first manuscript of Mysterium contained an extensive chapter reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seemed to support geocentrism. With the support of his mentor Michael Maestlin, Kepler received permission from the Tübingen university senate to publish his manuscript, pending removal of the Bible exegesis and the addition of a simpler, more understandable, description of the Copernican system as well as Kepler's new ideas. Mysterium was published late in 1596, and Kepler received his copies and began sending them to prominent astronomers and patrons early in 1597; it was not widely read, but it established Kepler's reputation as a highly skilled astronomer. The effusive dedication, to powerful patrons as well as to the men who controlled his position in Graz, also provided a crucial doorway into the patronage system.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1621, Kepler published an expanded second edition of Mysterium, half as long again as the first, detailing in footnotes the corrections and improvements he had achieved in the 25 years since its first publication. In terms of impact, the Mysterium can be seen as an important first step in modernizing the theory proposed by Copernicus in his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Whilst Copernicus sought to advance a heliocentric system in this book, he resorted to Ptolemaic devices (viz., epicycles and eccentric circles) in order to explain the change in planets' orbital speed, and also continued to use as a point of reference the center of the Earth's orbit rather than that of the Sun \"as an aid to calculation and in order not to confuse the reader by diverging too much from Ptolemy.\" Modern astronomy owes much to Mysterium Cosmographicum, despite flaws in its main thesis, \"since it represents the first step in cleansing the Copernican system of the remnants of the Ptolemaic theory still clinging to it.\"",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The extended line of research that culminated in Astronomia Nova (A New Astronomy)—including the first two laws of planetary motion—began with the analysis, under Tycho's direction, of the orbit of Mars. In this work Kepler introduced the revolutionary concept of planetary orbit, a path of a planet in space resulting from the action of physical causes, distinct from previously held notion of planetary orb (a spherical shell to which planet is attached). As a result of this breakthrough astronomical phenomena came to be seen as being governed by physical laws. Kepler calculated and recalculated various approximations of Mars's orbit using an equant (the mathematical tool that Copernicus had eliminated with his system), eventually creating a model that generally agreed with Tycho's observations to within two arcminutes (the average measurement error). But he was not satisfied with the complex and still slightly inaccurate result; at certain points the model differed from the data by up to eight arcminutes. The wide array of traditional mathematical astronomy methods having failed him, Kepler set about trying to fit an ovoid orbit to the data.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In Kepler's religious view of the cosmos, the Sun (a symbol of God the Father) was the source of motive force in the Solar System. As a physical basis, Kepler drew by analogy on William Gilbert's theory of the magnetic soul of the Earth from De Magnete (1600) and on his own work on optics. Kepler supposed that the motive power (or motive species) radiated by the Sun weakens with distance, causing faster or slower motion as planets move closer or farther from it. Perhaps this assumption entailed a mathematical relationship that would restore astronomical order. Based on measurements of the aphelion and perihelion of the Earth and Mars, he created a formula in which a planet's rate of motion is inversely proportional to its distance from the Sun. Verifying this relationship throughout the orbital cycle required very extensive calculation; to simplify this task, by late 1602 Kepler reformulated the proportion in terms of geometry: planets sweep out equal areas in equal times—his second law of planetary motion.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "He then set about calculating the entire orbit of Mars, using the geometrical rate law and assuming an egg-shaped ovoid orbit. After approximately 40 failed attempts, in late 1604 he at last hit upon the idea of an ellipse, which he had previously assumed to be too simple a solution for earlier astronomers to have overlooked. Finding that an elliptical orbit fit the Mars data (the Vicarious Hypothesis), Kepler immediately concluded that all planets move in ellipses, with the Sun at one focus—his first law of planetary motion. Because he employed no calculating assistants, he did not extend the mathematical analysis beyond Mars. By the end of the year, he completed the manuscript for Astronomia nova, though it would not be published until 1609 due to legal disputes over the use of Tycho's observations, the property of his heirs.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Since completing the Astronomia Nova, Kepler had intended to compose an astronomy textbook that would cover all the fundamentals of heliocentric astronomy. Kepler spent the next several years working on what would become Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy). Despite its title, which merely hints at heliocentrism, the Epitome is less about Copernicus's work and more about Kepler's own astronomical system. The Epitome contained all three laws of planetary motion and attempted to explain heavenly motions through physical causes. Although it explicitly extended the first two laws of planetary motion (applied to Mars in Astronomia nova) to all the planets as well as the Moon and the Medicean satellites of Jupiter, it did not explain how elliptical orbits could be derived from observational data.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Originally intended as an introduction for the uninitiated, Kepler sought to model his Epitome after that of his master Michael Maestlin, who published a well-regarded book explaining the basics of geocentric astronomy to non-experts. Kepler completed the first of three volumes, consisting of Books I–III, by 1615 in the same question-answer format of Maestlin's and have it printed in 1617. However, the banning of Copernican books by the Catholic Church, as well as the start of the Thirty Years' War, meant that publication of the next two volumes would be delayed. In the interim, and to avoid being subject to the ban, Kepler switched the audience of the Epitome from beginners to that of expert astronomers and mathematicians, as the arguments became more and more sophisticated and required advanced mathematics to be understood. The second volume, consisting of Book IV, was published in 1620, followed by the third volume, consisting of Books V–VII, in 1621.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In the years following the completion of Astronomia Nova, most of Kepler's research was focused on preparations for the Rudolphine Tables and a comprehensive set of ephemerides (specific predictions of planet and star positions) based on the table, though neither would be completed for many years.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Kepler, at last, completed the Rudolphine Tables in 1623, which at the time was considered his major work. However, due to the publishing requirements of the emperor and negotiations with Tycho Brahe's heir, it would not be printed until 1627.",
"title": "Astronomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Like Ptolemy, Kepler considered astrology as the counterpart to astronomy, and as being of equal interest and value. However, in the following years, the two subjects drifted apart until astrology was no longer practiced among professional astronomers.",
"title": "Astrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Sir Oliver Lodge observed that Kepler was somewhat disdainful of astrology in his own day, as he was \"continually attacking and throwing sarcasm at astrology, but it was the only thing for which people would pay him, and on it after a fashion he lived.\" Nonetheless, Kepler spent a huge amount of time trying to restore astrology on a firmer philosophical footing, composing numerous astrological calendars, more than 800 nativities, and a number of treaties dealing with the subject of astrology proper.",
"title": "Astrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In his bid to become imperial astronomer, Kepler wrote De Fundamentis (1601), whose full title can be translated as “On Giving Astrology Sounder Foundations”, as a short foreword to one of his yearly almanacs.",
"title": "Astrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In this work, Kepler describes the effects of the Sun, Moon, and the planets in terms of their light and their influences upon humors, finalizing with Kepler's view that the Earth possesses a soul with some sense of geometry. Stimulated by the geometric convergence of rays formed around it, the world-soul is sentient but not conscious. As a shepherd is pleased by the piping of a flute without understanding the theory of musical harmony, so likewise Earth responds to the angles and aspects made by the heavens but not in a conscious manner. Eclipses are important as omens because the animal faculty of the Earth is violently disturbed by the sudden intermission of light, experiencing something like emotion and persisting in it for some time.",
"title": "Astrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Kepler surmises that the Earth has \"cycles of humors\" as living animals do, and gives for an example that \"the highest tides of the sea are said by sailors to return after nineteen years around the same days of the year\". (This may refer to the 18.6-year lunar node precession cycle.) Kepler advocates searching for such cycles by gathering observations over a period of many years, \"and so far this observation has not been made\".",
"title": "Astrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Kepler and Helisaeus Roeslin engaged in a series of published attacks and counter-attacks on the importance of astrology after the supernova of 1604; around the same time, physician Philip Feselius published a work dismissing astrology altogether (and Roeslin's work in particular).",
"title": "Astrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In response to what Kepler saw as the excesses of astrology, on the one hand, and overzealous rejection of it, on the other, Kepler prepared Tertius Interveniens (1610). Nominally this work—presented to the common patron of Roeslin and Feselius—was a neutral mediation between the feuding scholars (the titled meaning \"Third-party interventions\"), but it also set out Kepler's general views on the value of astrology, including some hypothesized mechanisms of interaction between planets and individual souls. While Kepler considered most traditional rules and methods of astrology to be the \"evil-smelling dung\" in which \"an industrious hen\" scrapes, there was an \"occasional grain-seed, indeed, even a pearl or a gold nugget\" to be found by the conscientious scientific astrologer.",
"title": "Astrology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Kepler was convinced \"that the geometrical things have provided the Creator with the model for decorating the whole world\". In Harmonice Mundi (1619), he attempted to explain the proportions of the natural world—particularly the astronomical and astrological aspects—in terms of music. The central set of \"harmonies\" was the musica universalis or \"music of the spheres\", which had been studied by Pythagoras, Ptolemy and others before Kepler; in fact, soon after publishing Harmonice Mundi, Kepler was embroiled in a priority dispute with Robert Fludd, who had recently published his own harmonic theory.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Kepler began by exploring regular polygons and regular solids, including the figures that would come to be known as Kepler's solids. From there, he extended his harmonic analysis to music, meteorology, and astrology; harmony resulted from the tones made by the souls of heavenly bodies—and in the case of astrology, the interaction between those tones and human souls. In the final portion of the work (Book V), Kepler dealt with planetary motions, especially relationships between orbital velocity and orbital distance from the Sun. Similar relationships had been used by other astronomers, but Kepler—with Tycho's data and his own astronomical theories—treated them much more precisely and attached new physical significance to them.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Among many other harmonies, Kepler articulated what came to be known as the third law of planetary motion. He tried many combinations until he discovered that (approximately) \"The square of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances.\" Although he gives the date of this epiphany (8 March 1618), he does not give any details about how he arrived at this conclusion. However, the wider significance for planetary dynamics of this purely kinematical law was not realized until the 1660s. When conjoined with Christiaan Huygens' newly discovered law of centrifugal force, it enabled Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, and perhaps Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke to demonstrate independently that the presumed gravitational attraction between the Sun and its planets decreased with the square of the distance between them. This refuted the traditional assumption of scholastic physics that the power of gravitational attraction remained constant with distance whenever it applied between two bodies, such as was assumed by Kepler and also by Galileo in his mistaken universal law that gravitational fall is uniformly accelerated, and also by Galileo's student Borrelli in his 1666 celestial mechanics.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "As Kepler slowly continued analyzing Tycho's Mars observations—now available to him in their entirety—and began the slow process of tabulating the Rudolphine Tables, Kepler also picked up the investigation of the laws of optics from his lunar essay of 1600. Both lunar and solar eclipses presented unexplained phenomena, such as unexpected shadow sizes, the red color of a total lunar eclipse, and the reportedly unusual light surrounding a total solar eclipse. Related issues of atmospheric refraction applied to all astronomical observations. Through most of 1603, Kepler paused his other work to focus on optical theory; the resulting manuscript, presented to the emperor on 1 January 1604, was published as Astronomiae Pars Optica (The Optical Part of Astronomy). In it, Kepler described the inverse-square law governing the intensity of light, reflection by flat and curved mirrors, and principles of pinhole cameras, as well as the astronomical implications of optics such as parallax and the apparent sizes of heavenly bodies. He also extended his study of optics to the human eye, and is generally considered by neuroscientists to be the first to recognize that images are projected inverted and reversed by the eye's lens onto the retina. The solution to this dilemma was not of particular importance to Kepler as he did not see it as pertaining to optics, although he did suggest that the image was later corrected \"in the hollows of the brain\" due to the \"activity of the Soul.\"",
"title": "Optics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Today, Astronomiae Pars Optica is generally recognized as the foundation of modern optics (though the law of refraction is conspicuously absent). With respect to the beginnings of projective geometry, Kepler introduced the idea of continuous change of a mathematical entity in this work. He argued that if a focus of a conic section were allowed to move along the line joining the foci, the geometric form would morph or degenerate, one into another. In this way, an ellipse becomes a parabola when a focus moves toward infinity, and when two foci of an ellipse merge into one another, a circle is formed. As the foci of a hyperbola merge into one another, the hyperbola becomes a pair of straight lines. He also assumed that if a straight line is extended to infinity it will meet itself at a single point at infinity, thus having the properties of a large circle.",
"title": "Optics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In the first months of 1610, Galileo Galilei—using his powerful new telescope—discovered four satellites orbiting Jupiter. Upon publishing his account as Sidereus Nuncius [Starry Messenger], Galileo sought the opinion of Kepler, in part to bolster the credibility of his observations. Kepler responded enthusiastically with a short published reply, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo [Conversation with the Starry Messenger]. He endorsed Galileo's observations and offered a range of speculations about the meaning and implications of Galileo's discoveries and telescopic methods, for astronomy and optics as well as cosmology and astrology. Later that year, Kepler published his own telescopic observations of the moons in Narratio de Jovis Satellitibus, providing further support of Galileo. To Kepler's disappointment, however, Galileo never published his reactions (if any) to Astronomia Nova.",
"title": "Optics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Kepler also started a theoretical and experimental investigation of telescopic lenses using a telescope borrowed from Duke Ernest of Cologne. The resulting manuscript was completed in September 1610 and published as Dioptrice in 1611. In it, Kepler set out the theoretical basis of double-convex converging lenses and double-concave diverging lenses—and how they are combined to produce a Galilean telescope—as well as the concepts of real vs. virtual images, upright vs. inverted images, and the effects of focal length on magnification and reduction. He also described an improved telescope—now known as the astronomical or Keplerian telescope—in which two convex lenses can produce higher magnification than Galileo's combination of convex and concave lenses.",
"title": "Optics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "As a New Year's gift that year (1611), he also composed for his friend and some-time patron, Baron Wackher von Wackhenfels, a short pamphlet entitled Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula (A New Year's Gift of Hexagonal Snow). In this treatise, he published the first description of the hexagonal symmetry of snowflakes and, extending the discussion into a hypothetical atomistic physical basis for the symmetry, posed what later became known as the Kepler conjecture, a statement about the most efficient arrangement for packing spheres.",
"title": "Mathematics and physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Kepler wrote the influential mathematical treatise Nova stereometria doliorum vinariorum in 1613, on measuring the volume of containers such as wine barrels, which was published in 1615. Kepler also contributed to the development of infinitesimal methods and numerical analysis, including iterative approximations, infinitesimals, and the early use of logarithms and transcendental equations. Kepler's work on calculating volumes of shapes, and on finding the optimal shape of a wine barrel, were significant steps toward the development of calculus. Simpson's rule, an approximation method used in integral calculus, is known in German as Keplersche Fassregel (Kepler's barrel rule).",
"title": "Mathematics and physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Kepler's laws of planetary motion were not immediately accepted. Several major figures such as Galileo and René Descartes completely ignored Kepler's Astronomia nova. Many astronomers, including Kepler's teacher, Michael Maestlin, objected to Kepler's introduction of physics into his astronomy. Some adopted compromise positions. Ismaël Bullialdus accepted elliptical orbits but replaced Kepler's area law with uniform motion in respect to the empty focus of the ellipse, while Seth Ward used an elliptical orbit with motions defined by an equant.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Several astronomers tested Kepler's theory, and its various modifications, against astronomical observations. Two transits of Venus and Mercury across the face of the sun provided sensitive tests of the theory, under circumstances when these planets could not normally be observed. In the case of the transit of Mercury in 1631, Kepler had been extremely uncertain of the parameters for Mercury, and advised observers to look for the transit the day before and after the predicted date. Pierre Gassendi observed the transit on the date predicted, a confirmation of Kepler's prediction. This was the first observation of a transit of Mercury. However, his attempt to observe the transit of Venus just one month later was unsuccessful due to inaccuracies in the Rudolphine Tables. Gassendi did not realize that it was not visible from most of Europe, including Paris. Jeremiah Horrocks, who observed the 1639 Venus transit, had used his own observations to adjust the parameters of the Keplerian model, predicted the transit, and then built apparatus to observe the transit. He remained a firm advocate of the Keplerian model.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Epitome of Copernican Astronomy was read by astronomers throughout Europe, and following Kepler's death, it was the main vehicle for spreading Kepler's ideas. In the period 1630–1650, this book was the most widely used astronomy textbook, winning many converts to ellipse-based astronomy. However, few adopted his ideas on the physical basis for celestial motions. In the late 17th century, a number of physical astronomy theories drawing from Kepler's work—notably those of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Robert Hooke—began to incorporate attractive forces (though not the quasi-spiritual motive species postulated by Kepler) and the Cartesian concept of inertia. This culminated in Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687), in which Newton derived Kepler's laws of planetary motion from a force-based theory of universal gravitation, a mathematical challenge later known as \"solving the Kepler problem\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Beyond his role in the historical development of astronomy and natural philosophy, Kepler has loomed large in the philosophy and historiography of science. Kepler and his laws of motion were central to early histories of astronomy such as Jean-Étienne Montucla's 1758 Histoire des mathématiques and Jean-Baptiste Delambre's 1821 Histoire de l'astronomie moderne. These and other histories written from an Enlightenment perspective treated Kepler's metaphysical and religious arguments with skepticism and disapproval, but later Romantic-era natural philosophers viewed these elements as central to his success. William Whewell, in his influential History of the Inductive Sciences of 1837, found Kepler to be the archetype of the inductive scientific genius; in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences of 1840, Whewell held Kepler up as the embodiment of the most advanced forms of scientific method. Similarly, Ernst Friedrich Apelt—the first to extensively study Kepler's manuscripts, after their purchase by Catherine the Great—identified Kepler as a key to the \"Revolution of the sciences\". Apelt, who saw Kepler's mathematics, aesthetic sensibility, physical ideas, and theology as part of a unified system of thought, produced the first extended analysis of Kepler's life and work.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Alexandre Koyré's work on Kepler was, after Apelt, the first major milestone in historical interpretations of Kepler's cosmology and its influence. In the 1930s and 1940s, Koyré, and a number of others in the first generation of professional historians of science, described the \"Scientific Revolution\" as the central event in the history of science, and Kepler as a (perhaps the) central figure in the revolution. Koyré placed Kepler's theorization, rather than his empirical work, at the center of the intellectual transformation from ancient to modern world-views. Since the 1960s, the volume of historical Kepler scholarship has expanded greatly, including studies of his astrology and meteorology, his geometrical methods, the role of his religious views in his work, his literary and rhetorical methods, his interaction with the broader cultural and philosophical currents of his time, and even his role as an historian of science.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Philosophers of science—such as Charles Sanders Peirce, Norwood Russell Hanson, Stephen Toulmin, and Karl Popper—have repeatedly turned to Kepler: examples of incommensurability, analogical reasoning, falsification, and many other philosophical concepts have been found in Kepler's work. Physicist Wolfgang Pauli even used Kepler's priority dispute with Robert Fludd to explore the implications of analytical psychology on scientific investigation.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Modern translations of a number of Kepler's books appeared in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the systematic publication of his collected works began in 1937 (and is nearing completion in the early 21st century).",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "An edition in eight volumes, Kepleri Opera omnia, was prepared by Christian Frisch (1807–1881), during 1858 to 1871, on the occasion of Kepler's 300th birthday. Frisch's edition only included Kepler's Latin, with a Latin commentary.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "A new edition was planned beginning in 1914 by Walther von Dyck (1856–1934). Dyck compiled copies of Kepler's unedited manuscripts, using international diplomatic contacts to convince the Soviet authorities to lend him the manuscripts kept in Leningrad for photographic reproduction. These manuscripts contained several works by Kepler that had not been available to Frisch. Dyck's photographs remain the basis for the modern editions of Kepler's unpublished manuscripts.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Max Caspar (1880–1956) published his German translation of Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum in 1923. Both Dyck and Caspar were influenced in their interest in Kepler by mathematician Alexander von Brill (1842–1935). Caspar became Dyck's collaborator, succeeding him as project leader in 1934, establishing the Kepler-Kommission in the following year. Assisted by Martha List (1908–1992) and Franz Hammer (1898–1969), Caspar continued editorial work during World War II. Max Caspar also published a biography of Kepler in 1948. The commission was later chaired by Volker Bialas (during 1976–2003) and Ulrich Grigull (during 1984–1999) and Roland Bulirsch (1998–2014).",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Kepler has acquired a popular image as an icon of scientific modernity and a man before his time; science popularizer Carl Sagan described him as \"the first astrophysicist and the last scientific astrologer\". The debate over Kepler's place in the Scientific Revolution has produced a wide variety of philosophical and popular treatments. One of the most influential is Arthur Koestler's 1959 The Sleepwalkers, in which Kepler is unambiguously the hero (morally and theologically as well as intellectually) of the revolution.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "A well-received historical novel by John Banville, Kepler (1981), explored many of the themes developed in Koestler's non-fiction narrative and in the philosophy of science. A 2004 nonfiction book, Heavenly Intrigue, suggested that Kepler murdered Tycho Brahe to gain access to his data.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In Austria, a silver collector's 10-euro Johannes Kepler silver coin was minted in 2002. The reverse side of the coin has a portrait of Kepler, who spent some time teaching in Graz and the surrounding areas. Kepler was acquainted with Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg personally, and he probably influenced the construction of Eggenberg Castle (the motif of the obverse of the coin). In front of him on the coin is the model of nested spheres and polyhedra from Mysterium Cosmographicum.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The German composer Paul Hindemith wrote an opera about Kepler entitled Die Harmonie der Welt (1957), and during the prolonged process of its creation, he also wrote a symphony of the same name based on the musical ideas he developed for it. Hindemith's opera inspired John Rodgers and Willie Ruff of Yale University to create a synthesizer composition based on Kepler's scheme for representing planetary motion with music. Philip Glass wrote an opera called Kepler (2009) based on Kepler's life, with a libretto in German and Latin by Martina Winkel.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Directly named for Kepler's contribution to science are Kepler's laws of planetary motion; Kepler's Supernova SN 1604, which he observed and described; the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra (a set of geometrical constructions), two of which were described by him; and the Kepler conjecture on sphere packing. Places and entities named in his honor include multiple city streets and squares, several educational institutions, an asteroid, and both a lunar and a Martian crater.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "A critical edition of Kepler's collected works (Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke, KGW) in 22 volumes is being edited by the Kepler-Kommission (founded 1935) on behalf of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Kepler-Kommission also publishes Bibliographia Kepleriana (2nd ed. List, 1968), a complete bibliography of editions of Kepler's works, with a supplementary volume to the second edition (ed. Hamel 1998).",
"title": "Works"
}
]
| Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science. Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein.
Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, being named the father of modern optics, in particular for his Astronomiae pars optica. He also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, the Keplerian telescope, which became the foundation of the modern refracting telescope, while also improving on the telescope design by Galileo Galilei, who mentioned Kepler's discoveries in his work. Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy and physics. Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason. Kepler described his new astronomy as "celestial physics", as "an excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics", and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the Heavens", transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics. Kepler has been called the "father of science fiction" for his novel Somnium. | 2001-09-09T19:04:33Z | 2023-12-19T21:34:35Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler |
15,737 | John Bardeen | John Bardeen (/bɑːrˈdiːn/; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N. Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.
The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, making possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers, and ushering in the Information Age. Bardeen's developments in superconductivity—for which he was awarded his second Nobel Prize—are used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and superconducting quantum circuits.
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Bardeen received a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. After serving in World War II, he was a researcher at Bell Labs and a professor at the University of Illinois. In 1990, Bardeen appeared on Life magazine's list of "100 Most Influential Americans of the Century."
Bardeen is the first of only three people to have won multiple Nobel Prizes in the same category (the others being Frederick Sanger and Karl Barry Sharpless in chemistry), and one of five persons with two Nobel Prizes.
Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin, on May 23, 1908. He was the son of Charles Bardeen, the first dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School.
Bardeen attended University of Wisconsin High School in Madison. He graduated from the school in 1923 at age 15. He could have graduated several years earlier, but this was postponed because he took courses at another high school and because of his mother's death. Bardeen entered the University of Wisconsin in 1923. While in college, he joined the Zeta Psi fraternity. He raised a part of the needed membership fees by playing billiards. Bardeen was initiated as a member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. Not wanting to be an academic like his father, Bardeen chose engineering. He also felt that engineering had good job prospects.
Bardeen received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1928 from the University of Wisconsin. Despite taking a year off to work in Chicago, he graduated in 1928. Taking all the graduate courses in physics and mathematics that had interested him, Bardeen graduated in five years instead of the usual four. This allowed him time to complete his master's thesis, supervised by Leo J. Peters. He received his Master of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1929 from Wisconsin.
Bardeen furthered his studies by staying on at Wisconsin, but he eventually went to work for Gulf Research Laboratories, the research arm of the Gulf Oil Corporation that was based in Pittsburgh. From 1930 to 1933, Bardeen worked there on the development of methods for the interpretation of magnetic and gravitational surveys. He worked as a geophysicist. After the work failed to keep his interest, he applied and was accepted to the graduate program in mathematics at Princeton University.
As a graduate student, Bardeen studied mathematics and physics. Under physicist Eugene Wigner, he wrote his thesis on a problem in solid-state physics. Before completing his thesis, he was offered a position as junior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University in 1935. He spent the next three years there, from 1935 to 1938, working with to-be Nobel laureates in physics John Hasbrouck van Vleck and Percy Williams Bridgman on problems in cohesion and electrical conduction in metals,and also did some work on level density of nuclei. He received his Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Princeton in 1936.
From 1941 to 1944, Bardeen headed the group working on magnetic mines and torpedoes and mine and torpedo countermeasures at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. During this period, his wife Jane gave birth to a son (Bill, born in 1941) and a daughter (Betsy, born in 1944).
In October 1945, Bardeen began work at Bell Labs as a member of a solid-state physics group led by William Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan. Other personnel working in the group were Walter Brattain, physicist Gerald Pearson, chemist Robert Gibney, electronics expert Hilbert Moore and several technicians. He moved his family to Summit, New Jersey.
The assignment of the group was to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Their first attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity. These experiments mysteriously failed every time in all sorts of configurations and materials. The group was at a standstill until Bardeen suggested a theory that invoked surface states that prevented the field from penetrating the semiconductor. The group changed its focus to study these surface states, meeting almost daily to discuss the work. The rapport of the group was excellent and ideas were freely exchanged. By the winter of 1946, they had enough results that Bardeen submitted a paper on the surface states to Physical Review. Brattain started experiments to study the surface states through observations made while shining a bright light on the semiconductor's surface. This led to several more papers (one of them co-authored with Shockley), which estimated the density of the surface states to be more than enough to account for their failed experiments. The pace of the work picked up significantly when they started to surround point contacts between the semiconductor and the conducting wires with electrolytes. Moore built a circuit that allowed them to vary the frequency of the input signal easily and suggested that they use glycol borate (gu), a viscous chemical that did not evaporate. Finally, they began to get some evidence of power amplification when Pearson, acting on a suggestion by Shockley, put a voltage on a droplet of gu placed across a p–n junction.
On December 23, 1947, Bardeen and Brattain were working without Shockley when they succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor that achieved amplification. By the next month, Bell Labs' patent attorneys started to work on the patent applications.
Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered that Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld, who filed his MESFET-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925.
Shockley publicly took the lion's share of the credit for the invention of the transistor; this led to a deterioration of Bardeen's relationship with him. Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Shockley eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, essentially blocking the two from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen began pursuing a theory for superconductivity and left Bell Labs in 1951. Brattain refused to work with Shockley further and was assigned to another group. Neither Bardeen nor Brattain had much to do with the development of the transistor beyond the first year after its invention.
The "transistor" (a portmanteau of "transconductance" and "resistor") was 1/50 the size of the vacuum tubes it replaced in televisions and radios, used far less power, was far more reliable, and it allowed electrical devices to become more compact.
By 1951, Bardeen was looking for a new job. Fred Seitz, a friend of Bardeen, convinced the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign to make Bardeen an offer of $10,000 a year. Bardeen accepted the offer and left Bell Labs, joining the engineering and physics faculties at Illinois in 1951, where he was professor of electrical engineering and of physics.
At Illinois, he established two major research programs, one in the electrical engineering department and one in the physics department. The research program in the electrical engineering department dealt with both experimental and theoretical aspects of semiconductors, and the research program in the physics department dealt with theoretical aspects of macroscopic quantum systems, particularly superconductivity and quantum liquids.
He was an active professor at Illinois from 1951 to 1975 and then became professor emeritus. In his later life, Bardeen remained active in academic research, during which time he focused on understanding the flow of electrons in charge density waves (CDWs) through metallic linear chain compounds. His proposals that CDW electron transport is a collective quantum phenomenon (see Macroscopic quantum phenomena) were initially greeted with skepticism. However, experiments reported in 2012 show oscillations in CDW current versus magnetic flux through tantalum trisulfide rings, similar to the behavior of superconducting quantum interference devices (see SQUID and Aharonov–Bohm effect), lending credence to the idea that collective CDW electron transport is fundamentally quantum in nature. (See quantum mechanics.) Bardeen continued his research throughout the 1980s, and published articles in Physical Review Letters and Physics Today less than a year before he died.
A collection of Bardeen's personal papers are held by the University of Illinois Archives.
In 1956, John Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with William Shockley of Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments and Walter Brattain of Bell Telephone Laboratories "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".
At the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Brattain and Shockley received their awards that night from King Gustaf VI Adolf. Bardeen brought only one of his three children to the Nobel Prize ceremony. King Gustav chided Bardeen because of this, and Bardeen assured the King that the next time he would bring all his children to the ceremony. He kept his promise.
In 1957, Bardeen, in collaboration with Leon Cooper and his doctoral student John Robert Schrieffer, proposed the standard theory of superconductivity known as the BCS theory (named for their initials).
Bardeen became interested in superconducting tunnelling in the summer of 1960 after consulting for the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York where he learned about experiments done by Ivar Giaever at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute which suggested that electrons from a normal material could tunnel into a superconducting one.
In June 8, 1962, Brian Josephson, then 23, submitted to Physics Letters his prediction of a super-current flow across a barrier, effect which later became known as the Josephson effect. Bardeen challenged Josephson's theory on a note in his own paper received ten days later by Physical Review Letters:
In a recent note, Josephson uses a somewhat similar formulation to discuss the possibility of superfluid flow across the tunneling region, in which no quasi-particles are created. However, as pointed out by the author (reference 3), pairing does not extend into the barrier, so that there can be no such superfluid flow.
The matter was further discussed on the 8th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics held September 16 to 22, 1962 at Queen Mary University of London. While Josephson was presenting his theory, Bardeen rose to describe his objections. After an intense debate both men were unable to reach a common understanding, and at points Josephson repeatedly asked Bardeen, "Did you calculate it? No? I did."
In 1963, experimental evidence and further theoretical clarifications were discovered supporting the Josephson effect, notably in a paper by Philip W. Anderson and John Rowell from Bell Labs. After this, Bardeen came to accept Josephson's theory and publicly withdrew his previous opposition to it at a conference held in August 1963. Bardeen also invited Josephson as a postdoc in Illinois for the academic year of 1965–1966, and later nominate Josephson and Giaever for the Nobel Prize in Physics, which they received in 1973.
In 1972, Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Leon N Cooper of Brown University and John Robert Schrieffer of the University of Pennsylvania "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory". This was Bardeen's second Nobel Prize in Physics. He became the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field.
Bardeen brought his three children to the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm. Bardeen gave much of his Nobel Prize money to fund the Fritz London Memorial Lectures at Duke University.
In the late 1960s, Bardeen felt that Cooper and Schrieffer deserved the Nobel prize for BCS. He was concerned that they might not be awarded because of the Nobel Committee's reticence to award the same person twice, which would be his case as a co-author of the theory. Bardeen nominated scientists who worked on superconducting tunneling effects such as the Josephson effect for the prize in 1967: Leo Esaki, Ivar Giaever and Brian Josephson. He recognized that because the tunneling developments depended on superconductivity, it would increase the chances that BCS itself would be awarded first. He also reasoned that the Nobel Committee had a predilection for multinational teams, which was the case for his tunneling nominees, each being from a different country. Bardeen renewed the nominations in 1971, 1972, when BCS received the prize, and finally 1973, when tunneling was awarded.
He is the only double laureate in physics, and one of three double laureates of the same prize; the others are Frederick Sanger who won the 1958 and 1980 Prizes in Chemistry and Karl Barry Sharpless who won the 2001 and 2022 Prizes in chemistry.
In addition to being awarded the Nobel prize twice, Bardeen has numerous other awards including:
Bardeen was also an important adviser to Xerox Corporation. Though quiet by nature, he took the uncharacteristic step of urging Xerox executives to keep their California research center, Xerox PARC, afloat when the parent company was suspicious that its research center would amount to little.
Bardeen married Jane Maxwell on July 18, 1938. While at Princeton, he met Jane during a visit to his old friends in Pittsburgh.
Bardeen was a scientist with a very unassuming personality. While he served as a professor for almost 40 years at the University of Illinois, he was best remembered by neighbors for hosting cookouts where he would prepare food for his friends, many of whom were unaware of his accomplishments at the university. He would always ask his guests if they liked the hamburger bun toasted (since he liked his that way). He enjoyed playing golf and going on picnics with his family. Lillian Hoddeson said that because he "differed radically from the popular stereotype of 'genius' and was uninterested in appearing other than ordinary, the public and the media often overlooked him."
When Bardeen was asked about his beliefs during a 1988 interview, he responded: "I am not a religious person, and so do not think about it very much". However, he has also said: "I feel that science cannot provide an answer to the ultimate questions about the meaning and purpose of life." Bardeen did believe in a code of moral values and behavior. John Bardeen's children were taken to church by his wife, who taught Sunday school and was a church elder. Despite this, he and his wife made it clear that they did not have faith in an afterlife and other religious ideas. He was the father of James M. Bardeen, William A. Bardeen, and daughter Elizabeth.
Bardeen died of heart disease at age 82 at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1991. Although he lived in Champaign-Urbana, he had come to Boston for medical consultation. Bardeen and his wife Jane (1907–1997) are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison, Wisconsin. They were survived by three children, James, William and Elizabeth Bardeen Greytak, and six grandchildren.
Near the end of this decade, when they begin enumerating the names of the people who had the greatest impact on the 20th century, the name of John Bardeen, who died last week, has to be near, or perhaps even arguably at, the top of the list ... Mr. Bardeen shared two Nobel Prizes and has been awarded numerous other honors. But what greater honor can there be when each of us can look all around us and everywhere see the reminders of a man whose genius has made our lives longer, healthier and better.
—Chicago Tribune editorial, February 3, 1991
In honor of Bardeen, the engineering quadrangle at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is named the Bardeen Quad.
Also in honor of Bardeen, Sony Corporation endowed a $3 million John Bardeen professorial chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, beginning in 1990. Sony Corporation owed much of its success to commercializing Bardeen's transistors in portable TVs and radios, and had worked with Illinois researchers. As of 2022, the John Bardeen Professor is Yurii Vlasov.
At the time of Bardeen's death, then-University of Illinois chancellor Morton Weir said, "It is a rare person whose work changes the life of every American; John's did."
Bardeen was honored on a March 6, 2008, United States postage stamp as part of the "American Scientists" series designed by artist Victor Stabin. The $0.41 stamp was unveiled in a ceremony at the University of Illinois. His citation reads: "Theoretical physicist John Bardeen (1908–1991) shared the Nobel Prize in Physics twice—in 1956, as co-inventor of the transistor and in 1972, for the explanation of superconductivity. The transistor paved the way for all modern electronics, from computers to microchips. Diverse applications of superconductivity include infrared sensors and medical imaging systems." The other scientists on the "American Scientists" sheet include biochemist Gerty Cori, chemist Linus Pauling and astronomer Edwin Hubble. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "John Bardeen (/bɑːrˈdiːn/; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N. Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, making possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers, and ushering in the Information Age. Bardeen's developments in superconductivity—for which he was awarded his second Nobel Prize—are used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and superconducting quantum circuits.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Born and raised in Wisconsin, Bardeen received a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. After serving in World War II, he was a researcher at Bell Labs and a professor at the University of Illinois. In 1990, Bardeen appeared on Life magazine's list of \"100 Most Influential Americans of the Century.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Bardeen is the first of only three people to have won multiple Nobel Prizes in the same category (the others being Frederick Sanger and Karl Barry Sharpless in chemistry), and one of five persons with two Nobel Prizes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin, on May 23, 1908. He was the son of Charles Bardeen, the first dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School.",
"title": "Education and early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Bardeen attended University of Wisconsin High School in Madison. He graduated from the school in 1923 at age 15. He could have graduated several years earlier, but this was postponed because he took courses at another high school and because of his mother's death. Bardeen entered the University of Wisconsin in 1923. While in college, he joined the Zeta Psi fraternity. He raised a part of the needed membership fees by playing billiards. Bardeen was initiated as a member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. Not wanting to be an academic like his father, Bardeen chose engineering. He also felt that engineering had good job prospects.",
"title": "Education and early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Bardeen received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1928 from the University of Wisconsin. Despite taking a year off to work in Chicago, he graduated in 1928. Taking all the graduate courses in physics and mathematics that had interested him, Bardeen graduated in five years instead of the usual four. This allowed him time to complete his master's thesis, supervised by Leo J. Peters. He received his Master of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1929 from Wisconsin.",
"title": "Education and early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Bardeen furthered his studies by staying on at Wisconsin, but he eventually went to work for Gulf Research Laboratories, the research arm of the Gulf Oil Corporation that was based in Pittsburgh. From 1930 to 1933, Bardeen worked there on the development of methods for the interpretation of magnetic and gravitational surveys. He worked as a geophysicist. After the work failed to keep his interest, he applied and was accepted to the graduate program in mathematics at Princeton University.",
"title": "Education and early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "As a graduate student, Bardeen studied mathematics and physics. Under physicist Eugene Wigner, he wrote his thesis on a problem in solid-state physics. Before completing his thesis, he was offered a position as junior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University in 1935. He spent the next three years there, from 1935 to 1938, working with to-be Nobel laureates in physics John Hasbrouck van Vleck and Percy Williams Bridgman on problems in cohesion and electrical conduction in metals,and also did some work on level density of nuclei. He received his Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Princeton in 1936.",
"title": "Education and early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "From 1941 to 1944, Bardeen headed the group working on magnetic mines and torpedoes and mine and torpedo countermeasures at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. During this period, his wife Jane gave birth to a son (Bill, born in 1941) and a daughter (Betsy, born in 1944).",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In October 1945, Bardeen began work at Bell Labs as a member of a solid-state physics group led by William Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan. Other personnel working in the group were Walter Brattain, physicist Gerald Pearson, chemist Robert Gibney, electronics expert Hilbert Moore and several technicians. He moved his family to Summit, New Jersey.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The assignment of the group was to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Their first attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity. These experiments mysteriously failed every time in all sorts of configurations and materials. The group was at a standstill until Bardeen suggested a theory that invoked surface states that prevented the field from penetrating the semiconductor. The group changed its focus to study these surface states, meeting almost daily to discuss the work. The rapport of the group was excellent and ideas were freely exchanged. By the winter of 1946, they had enough results that Bardeen submitted a paper on the surface states to Physical Review. Brattain started experiments to study the surface states through observations made while shining a bright light on the semiconductor's surface. This led to several more papers (one of them co-authored with Shockley), which estimated the density of the surface states to be more than enough to account for their failed experiments. The pace of the work picked up significantly when they started to surround point contacts between the semiconductor and the conducting wires with electrolytes. Moore built a circuit that allowed them to vary the frequency of the input signal easily and suggested that they use glycol borate (gu), a viscous chemical that did not evaporate. Finally, they began to get some evidence of power amplification when Pearson, acting on a suggestion by Shockley, put a voltage on a droplet of gu placed across a p–n junction.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On December 23, 1947, Bardeen and Brattain were working without Shockley when they succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor that achieved amplification. By the next month, Bell Labs' patent attorneys started to work on the patent applications.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered that Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld, who filed his MESFET-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Shockley publicly took the lion's share of the credit for the invention of the transistor; this led to a deterioration of Bardeen's relationship with him. Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Shockley eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, essentially blocking the two from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen began pursuing a theory for superconductivity and left Bell Labs in 1951. Brattain refused to work with Shockley further and was assigned to another group. Neither Bardeen nor Brattain had much to do with the development of the transistor beyond the first year after its invention.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The \"transistor\" (a portmanteau of \"transconductance\" and \"resistor\") was 1/50 the size of the vacuum tubes it replaced in televisions and radios, used far less power, was far more reliable, and it allowed electrical devices to become more compact.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "By 1951, Bardeen was looking for a new job. Fred Seitz, a friend of Bardeen, convinced the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign to make Bardeen an offer of $10,000 a year. Bardeen accepted the offer and left Bell Labs, joining the engineering and physics faculties at Illinois in 1951, where he was professor of electrical engineering and of physics.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "At Illinois, he established two major research programs, one in the electrical engineering department and one in the physics department. The research program in the electrical engineering department dealt with both experimental and theoretical aspects of semiconductors, and the research program in the physics department dealt with theoretical aspects of macroscopic quantum systems, particularly superconductivity and quantum liquids.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "He was an active professor at Illinois from 1951 to 1975 and then became professor emeritus. In his later life, Bardeen remained active in academic research, during which time he focused on understanding the flow of electrons in charge density waves (CDWs) through metallic linear chain compounds. His proposals that CDW electron transport is a collective quantum phenomenon (see Macroscopic quantum phenomena) were initially greeted with skepticism. However, experiments reported in 2012 show oscillations in CDW current versus magnetic flux through tantalum trisulfide rings, similar to the behavior of superconducting quantum interference devices (see SQUID and Aharonov–Bohm effect), lending credence to the idea that collective CDW electron transport is fundamentally quantum in nature. (See quantum mechanics.) Bardeen continued his research throughout the 1980s, and published articles in Physical Review Letters and Physics Today less than a year before he died.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A collection of Bardeen's personal papers are held by the University of Illinois Archives.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1956, John Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with William Shockley of Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments and Walter Brattain of Bell Telephone Laboratories \"for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect\".",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "At the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Brattain and Shockley received their awards that night from King Gustaf VI Adolf. Bardeen brought only one of his three children to the Nobel Prize ceremony. King Gustav chided Bardeen because of this, and Bardeen assured the King that the next time he would bring all his children to the ceremony. He kept his promise.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1957, Bardeen, in collaboration with Leon Cooper and his doctoral student John Robert Schrieffer, proposed the standard theory of superconductivity known as the BCS theory (named for their initials).",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Bardeen became interested in superconducting tunnelling in the summer of 1960 after consulting for the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York where he learned about experiments done by Ivar Giaever at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute which suggested that electrons from a normal material could tunnel into a superconducting one.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In June 8, 1962, Brian Josephson, then 23, submitted to Physics Letters his prediction of a super-current flow across a barrier, effect which later became known as the Josephson effect. Bardeen challenged Josephson's theory on a note in his own paper received ten days later by Physical Review Letters:",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In a recent note, Josephson uses a somewhat similar formulation to discuss the possibility of superfluid flow across the tunneling region, in which no quasi-particles are created. However, as pointed out by the author (reference 3), pairing does not extend into the barrier, so that there can be no such superfluid flow.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The matter was further discussed on the 8th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics held September 16 to 22, 1962 at Queen Mary University of London. While Josephson was presenting his theory, Bardeen rose to describe his objections. After an intense debate both men were unable to reach a common understanding, and at points Josephson repeatedly asked Bardeen, \"Did you calculate it? No? I did.\"",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 1963, experimental evidence and further theoretical clarifications were discovered supporting the Josephson effect, notably in a paper by Philip W. Anderson and John Rowell from Bell Labs. After this, Bardeen came to accept Josephson's theory and publicly withdrew his previous opposition to it at a conference held in August 1963. Bardeen also invited Josephson as a postdoc in Illinois for the academic year of 1965–1966, and later nominate Josephson and Giaever for the Nobel Prize in Physics, which they received in 1973.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1972, Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Leon N Cooper of Brown University and John Robert Schrieffer of the University of Pennsylvania \"for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory\". This was Bardeen's second Nobel Prize in Physics. He became the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Bardeen brought his three children to the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm. Bardeen gave much of his Nobel Prize money to fund the Fritz London Memorial Lectures at Duke University.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In the late 1960s, Bardeen felt that Cooper and Schrieffer deserved the Nobel prize for BCS. He was concerned that they might not be awarded because of the Nobel Committee's reticence to award the same person twice, which would be his case as a co-author of the theory. Bardeen nominated scientists who worked on superconducting tunneling effects such as the Josephson effect for the prize in 1967: Leo Esaki, Ivar Giaever and Brian Josephson. He recognized that because the tunneling developments depended on superconductivity, it would increase the chances that BCS itself would be awarded first. He also reasoned that the Nobel Committee had a predilection for multinational teams, which was the case for his tunneling nominees, each being from a different country. Bardeen renewed the nominations in 1971, 1972, when BCS received the prize, and finally 1973, when tunneling was awarded.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "He is the only double laureate in physics, and one of three double laureates of the same prize; the others are Frederick Sanger who won the 1958 and 1980 Prizes in Chemistry and Karl Barry Sharpless who won the 2001 and 2022 Prizes in chemistry.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In addition to being awarded the Nobel prize twice, Bardeen has numerous other awards including:",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Bardeen was also an important adviser to Xerox Corporation. Though quiet by nature, he took the uncharacteristic step of urging Xerox executives to keep their California research center, Xerox PARC, afloat when the parent company was suspicious that its research center would amount to little.",
"title": "Career and research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Bardeen married Jane Maxwell on July 18, 1938. While at Princeton, he met Jane during a visit to his old friends in Pittsburgh.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Bardeen was a scientist with a very unassuming personality. While he served as a professor for almost 40 years at the University of Illinois, he was best remembered by neighbors for hosting cookouts where he would prepare food for his friends, many of whom were unaware of his accomplishments at the university. He would always ask his guests if they liked the hamburger bun toasted (since he liked his that way). He enjoyed playing golf and going on picnics with his family. Lillian Hoddeson said that because he \"differed radically from the popular stereotype of 'genius' and was uninterested in appearing other than ordinary, the public and the media often overlooked him.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "When Bardeen was asked about his beliefs during a 1988 interview, he responded: \"I am not a religious person, and so do not think about it very much\". However, he has also said: \"I feel that science cannot provide an answer to the ultimate questions about the meaning and purpose of life.\" Bardeen did believe in a code of moral values and behavior. John Bardeen's children were taken to church by his wife, who taught Sunday school and was a church elder. Despite this, he and his wife made it clear that they did not have faith in an afterlife and other religious ideas. He was the father of James M. Bardeen, William A. Bardeen, and daughter Elizabeth.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Bardeen died of heart disease at age 82 at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1991. Although he lived in Champaign-Urbana, he had come to Boston for medical consultation. Bardeen and his wife Jane (1907–1997) are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison, Wisconsin. They were survived by three children, James, William and Elizabeth Bardeen Greytak, and six grandchildren.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Near the end of this decade, when they begin enumerating the names of the people who had the greatest impact on the 20th century, the name of John Bardeen, who died last week, has to be near, or perhaps even arguably at, the top of the list ... Mr. Bardeen shared two Nobel Prizes and has been awarded numerous other honors. But what greater honor can there be when each of us can look all around us and everywhere see the reminders of a man whose genius has made our lives longer, healthier and better.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "—Chicago Tribune editorial, February 3, 1991",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In honor of Bardeen, the engineering quadrangle at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is named the Bardeen Quad.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Also in honor of Bardeen, Sony Corporation endowed a $3 million John Bardeen professorial chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, beginning in 1990. Sony Corporation owed much of its success to commercializing Bardeen's transistors in portable TVs and radios, and had worked with Illinois researchers. As of 2022, the John Bardeen Professor is Yurii Vlasov.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "At the time of Bardeen's death, then-University of Illinois chancellor Morton Weir said, \"It is a rare person whose work changes the life of every American; John's did.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Bardeen was honored on a March 6, 2008, United States postage stamp as part of the \"American Scientists\" series designed by artist Victor Stabin. The $0.41 stamp was unveiled in a ceremony at the University of Illinois. His citation reads: \"Theoretical physicist John Bardeen (1908–1991) shared the Nobel Prize in Physics twice—in 1956, as co-inventor of the transistor and in 1972, for the explanation of superconductivity. The transistor paved the way for all modern electronics, from computers to microchips. Diverse applications of superconductivity include infrared sensors and medical imaging systems.\" The other scientists on the \"American Scientists\" sheet include biochemist Gerty Cori, chemist Linus Pauling and astronomer Edwin Hubble.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| John Bardeen was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N. Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory. The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, making possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers, and ushering in the Information Age. Bardeen's developments in superconductivity—for which he was awarded his second Nobel Prize—are used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and superconducting quantum circuits. Born and raised in Wisconsin, Bardeen received a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. After serving in World War II, he was a researcher at Bell Labs and a professor at the University of Illinois. In 1990, Bardeen appeared on Life magazine's list of "100 Most Influential Americans of the Century." Bardeen is the first of only three people to have won multiple Nobel Prizes in the same category, and one of five persons with two Nobel Prizes. | 2001-06-14T15:44:42Z | 2023-11-21T14:52:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen |
15,739 | Jewellery | Jewellery (or jewelry in American English) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western perspective, the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal such as gold often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as glass, shells and other plant materials may be used.
Jewellery is one of the oldest types of archaeological artefact – with 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells thought to be the oldest known jewellery. The basic forms of jewellery vary between cultures but are often extremely long-lived; in European cultures the most common forms of jewellery listed above have persisted since ancient times, while other forms such as adornments for the nose or ankle, important in other cultures, are much less common.
Jewellery may be made from a wide range of materials. Gemstones and similar materials such as amber and coral, precious metals, beads, and shells have been widely used, and enamel has often been important. In most cultures jewellery can be understood as a status symbol, for its material properties, its patterns, or for meaningful symbols. Jewellery has been made to adorn nearly every body part, from hairpins to toe rings, and even genital jewellery. In modern European culture the amount worn by adult males is relatively low compared with other cultures and other periods in European culture.
The word jewellery itself is derived from the word jewel, which was anglicised from the Old French "jouel", and beyond that, to the Latin word "jocale", meaning plaything. In British English, Indian English, New Zealand English, Hiberno-English, Australian English, and South African English it is spelled jewellery, while the spelling is jewelry in American English. Both are used in Canadian English, though jewellery prevails by a two to one margin. In French and a few other European languages the equivalent term, joaillerie, may also cover decorated metalwork in precious metal such as objets d'art and church items, not just objects worn on the person.
Humans have used jewellery for a number of different reasons:
Most cultures at some point have had a practice of keeping large amounts of wealth stored in the form of jewellery. Numerous cultures store wedding dowries in the form of jewellery or make jewellery as a means to store or display coins. Alternatively, jewellery has been used as a currency or trade good. an example being the use of slave beads.
Many items of jewellery, such as brooches and buckles, originated as purely functional items, but evolved into decorative items as their functional requirement diminished.
Jewellery can symbolise group membership (as in the case, of the Christian crucifix or the Jewish Star of David) or status (as in the case of chains of office, or the Western practice of married people wearing wedding rings).
Wearing of amulets and devotional medals to provide protection or to ward off evil is common in some cultures. These may take the form of symbols (such as the ankh), stones, plants, animals, body parts (such as the Khamsa), or glyphs (such as stylised versions of the Throne Verse in Islamic art).
In creating jewellery, gemstones, coins, or other precious items are often used, and they are typically set into precious metals. Platinum alloys range from 900 (90% pure) to 950 (95% pure). The silver used in jewellery is usually sterling silver, or 92.5% fine silver. In costume jewellery, stainless steel findings are sometimes used.
Other commonly used materials include glass, such as fused-glass or enamel; wood, often carved or turned; shells and other natural animal substances such as bone and ivory; natural clay; polymer clay; Hemp and other twines have been used as well to create jewellery that has more of a natural feel. However, any inclusion of lead or lead solder will give a British Assay office (the body which gives U.K. jewellery its stamp of approval, the Hallmark) the right to destroy the piece, however it is very rare for the assay office to do so.
Beads are frequently used in jewellery. These may be made of glass, gemstones, metal, wood, shells, clay and polymer clay. Beaded jewellery commonly encompasses necklaces, bracelets, earrings, belts and rings. Beads may be large or small; the smallest type of beads used are known as seed beads, these are the beads used for the "woven" style of beaded jewellery. Seed beads are also used in an embroidery technique where they are sewn onto fabric backings to create broad collar neck pieces and beaded bracelets. Bead embroidery, a popular type of handwork during the Victorian era, is enjoying a renaissance in modern jewellery making. Beading, or beadwork, is also very popular in many African and indigenous North American cultures.
Silversmiths, goldsmiths, and lapidaries use methods including forging, casting, soldering or welding, cutting, carving and "cold-joining" (using adhesives, staples and rivets to assemble parts).
Diamonds were first mined in India. Pliny may have mentioned them, although there is some debate as to the exact nature of the stone he referred to as Adamas. In 2005, Australia, Botswana, Russia and Canada ranked among the primary sources of gemstone diamond production. There are negative consequences of the diamond trade in certain areas. Diamonds mined during the recent civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and other nations have been labelled as blood diamonds when they are mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency.
The British crown jewels contain the Cullinan Diamond, part of the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found (1905), at 3,106.75 carats (621.35 g).
Now popular in engagement rings, this usage dates back to the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy in 1477.
A popular style is the diamond solitaire, which features a single large diamond mounted prominently. Within solitaire, there are three categories in which a ring can be classified: prong, bezel and tension setting.
Many precious and semiprecious stones are used for jewellery. Among them are:
Some gemstones (like pearls, coral, and amber) are classified as organic, meaning that they are produced by living organisms. Others are inorganic, meaning that they are generally composed of and arise from minerals.
Some gems, for example, amethyst, have become less valued as methods of extracting and importing them have progressed. Some man-made gems can serve in place of natural gems, such as cubic zirconia, which can be used in place of diamond.
For platinum, gold, and silver jewellery, there are many techniques to create finishes. The most common are high-polish, satin/matte, brushed, and hammered. High-polished jewellery is the most common and gives the metal a highly reflective, shiny look. Satin, or matte finish reduces the shine and reflection of the jewellery, and this is commonly used to accentuate gemstones such as diamonds. Brushed finishes give the jewellery a textured look and are created by brushing a material (similar to sandpaper) against the metal, leaving "brush strokes". Hammered finishes are typically created by using a rounded steel hammer and hammering the jewellery to give it a wavy texture.
Some jewellery is plated to give it a shiny, reflective look or to achieve a desired colour. Sterling silver jewellery may be plated with a thin layer of 0.999 fine silver (a process known as flashing) or may be plated with rhodium or gold. Base metal costume jewellery may also be plated with silver, gold, or rhodium for a more attractive finish.
Jewellery has been used to denote status. In ancient Rome, only certain ranks could wear rings and later, sumptuary laws dictated who could wear what type of jewellery. This was also based on rank of the citizens of that time.
Cultural dictates have also played a significant role. For example, the wearing of earrings by Western men was considered effeminate in the 19th century and early 20th century. More recently, the display of body jewellery, such as piercings, has become a mark of acceptance or seen as a badge of courage within some groups but is completely rejected in others. Likewise, hip hop culture has popularised the slang term bling-bling, which refers to ostentatious display of jewellery by men or women.
Conversely, the jewellery industry in the early 20th century launched a campaign to popularise wedding rings for men, which caught on, as well as engagement rings for men, which did not, going so far as to create a false history and claim that the practice had medieval roots. By the mid-1940s, 85% of weddings in the U.S. featured a double-ring ceremony, up from 15% in the 1920s.
Some religions have specific rules or traditions surrounding jewellery (or even prohibiting it) and many religions have edicts against excessive display. Islam, for instance, considers the wearing of gold by men as Haraam. The majority of Islamic jewellery was in the form of bridal dowries, and traditionally was not handed down from generation to generation; instead, on a woman's death it was sold at the souk and recycled or sold to passers-by. Islamic jewellery from before the 19th century is thus exceedingly rare.
Some Christian denominations forbid the use of jewellery by both men and women, including Amish-Mennonites and Holiness churches. The New Testament of the Bible gives injunctions against the wearing of gold, in the writings of the apostles Paul and Peter, and Revelations, describes "the great whore", or false religious system, as being "decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand." (Rev. 17:4)
The history of jewellery is long and goes back many years, with many different uses among different cultures. It has endured for thousands of years and has provided various insights into how ancient cultures worked.
The earliest known Jewellery was actually created not by humans (Homo sapiens) but by Neanderthal living in Europe. Specifically, perforated beads made from small sea shells have been found dating to 115,000 years ago in the Cueva de los Aviones, a cave along the southeast coast of Spain. Later in Kenya, at Enkapune Ya Muto, beads made from perforated ostrich egg shells have been dated to more than 40,000 years ago. In Russia, a stone bracelet and marble ring are attributed to a similar age.
Later, the European early modern humans had crude necklaces and bracelets of bone, teeth, berries, and stone hung on pieces of string or animal sinew, or pieces of carved bone used to secure clothing together. In some cases, jewellery had shell or mother-of-pearl pieces. A decorated engraved pendant (the Star Carr Pendant) dating to around 11,000 BC, and thought to be the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain, was found at the site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire in 2015. In southern Russia, carved bracelets made of mammoth tusk have been found. The Venus of Hohle Fels features a perforation at the top, showing that it was intended to be worn as a pendant.
Around seven-thousand years ago, the first sign of copper jewellery was seen. In October 2012 the Museum of Ancient History in Lower Austria revealed that they had found a grave of a female jewellery worker – forcing archaeologists to take a fresh look at prehistoric gender roles after it appeared to be that of a female fine metal worker – a profession that was previously thought to have been carried out exclusively by men.
The first signs of established jewellery making in Ancient Egypt was around 3,000–5,000 years ago. The Egyptians preferred the luxury, rarity, and workability of gold over other metals. In Predynastic Egypt jewellery soon began to symbolise political and religious power in the community. Although it was worn by wealthy Egyptians in life, it was also worn by them in death, with jewellery commonly placed among grave goods.
In conjunction with gold jewellery, Egyptians used coloured glass, along with semi-precious gems. The colour of the jewellery had significance. Green, for example, symbolised fertility. Lapis lazuli and silver had to be imported from beyond the country's borders.
Egyptian designs were most common in Phoenician jewellery. Also, ancient Turkish designs found in Persian jewellery suggest that trade between the Middle East and Europe was not uncommon. Women wore elaborate gold and silver pieces that were used in ceremonies.
Jewellery of the Berber cultures is a style of traditional jewellery worn by women and girls in the rural areas of the Maghreb region in North Africa inhabited by indigenous Berber people (in Berber language: Amazigh, Imazighen, pl). Following long social and cultural traditions, the silversmiths of different ethnic Berber groups of Morocco, Algeria and neighbouring countries created intricate jewellery to adorn their women and that formed part of their ethnic identity. Traditional Berber jewellery was usually made of silver and includes elaborate brooches made of triangular plates and pins (fibula), originally used as clasps for garments, but also necklaces, bracelets, earrings and similar items.
Another major type is the so-called khmissa (local pronunciation of the Arabic word "khamsa" for the number "five"), which is called afus in the Berber language (Tamazight). This form represents the five fingers of the hand and is traditionally believed both by Muslims as well as Jewish people to protect against the Evil Eye.
The oldest gold jewelry in the world is dating from 4,600 BC to 4,200 BC and was discovered in Europe, at the site of Varna Necropolis, near the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria.
Several prehistoric Bulgarian finds are considered no less old – the golden treasures of Hotnitsa, Durankulak, artifacts from the Kurgan settlement of Yunatsite near Pazardzhik, the golden treasure Sakar, as well as beads and gold jewellery found in the Kurgan settlement of Provadia – Solnitsata (“salt pit”). However, Varna gold is most often called the oldest since this treasure is the largest and most diverse.
By approximately 5,000 years ago, jewellery-making had become a significant craft in the cities of Mesopotamia. The most significant archaeological evidence comes from the Royal Cemetery of Ur, where hundreds of burials dating 2900–2300 BC were unearthed; tombs such as that of Puabi contained a multitude of artefacts in gold, silver, and semi-precious stones, such as lapis lazuli crowns embellished with gold figurines, close-fitting collar necklaces, and jewel-headed pins. In Assyria, men and women both wore extensive amounts of jewellery, including amulets, ankle bracelets, heavy multi-strand necklaces, and cylinder seals.
Jewellery in Mesopotamia tended to be manufactured from thin metal leaf and was set with large numbers of brightly coloured stones (chiefly agate, lapis, carnelian, and jasper). Favoured shapes included leaves, spirals, cones, and bunches of grapes. Jewellers created works both for human use and for adorning statues and idols. They employed a wide variety of sophisticated metalworking techniques, such as cloisonné, engraving, fine granulation, and filigree.
Extensive and meticulously maintained records pertaining to the trade and manufacture of jewellery have also been unearthed throughout Mesopotamian archaeological sites. One record in the Mari royal archives, for example, gives the composition of various items of jewellery:
The Greeks started using gold and gems in jewellery in 1600 BC, although beads shaped as shells and animals were produced widely in earlier times. Around 1500 BC, the main techniques of working gold in Greece included casting, twisting bars, and making wire. Many of these sophisticated techniques were popular in the Mycenaean period, but unfortunately this skill was lost at the end of the Bronze Age. The forms and shapes of jewellery in ancient Greece such as the armring (13th century BC), brooch (10th century BC) and pins (7th century BC), have varied widely since the Bronze Age as well. Other forms of jewellery include wreaths, earrings, necklace and bracelets. A good example of the high quality that gold working techniques could achieve in Greece is the 'Gold Olive Wreath' (4th century BC), which is modeled on the type of wreath given as a prize for winners in athletic competitions like the Olympic Games. Jewellery dating from 600 to 475 BC is not well represented in the archaeological record, but after the Persian wars the quantity of jewellery again became more plentiful. One particularly popular type of design at this time was a bracelet decorated with snake and animal-heads Because these bracelets used considerably more metal, many examples were made from bronze. By 300 BC, the Greeks had mastered making coloured jewellery and using amethysts, pearl, and emeralds. Also, the first signs of cameos appeared, with the Greeks creating them from Indian Sardonyx, a striped brown pink and cream agate stone. Greek jewellery was often simpler than in other cultures, with simple designs and workmanship. However, as time progressed, the designs grew in complexity and different materials were soon used.
Jewellery in Greece was hardly worn and was mostly used for public appearances or on special occasions. It was frequently given as a gift and was predominantly worn by women to show their wealth, social status, and beauty. The jewellery was often supposed to give the wearer protection from the "Evil Eye" or endowed the owner with supernatural powers, while others had a religious symbolism. Older pieces of jewellery that have been found were dedicated to the Gods.
They worked two styles of pieces: cast pieces and pieces hammered out of sheet metal. Fewer pieces of cast jewellery have been recovered. It was made by casting the metal onto two stone or clay moulds. The two halves were then joined, and wax, followed by molten metal, was placed in the centre. This technique had been practised since the late Bronze Age. The more common form of jewellery was the hammered sheet type. Sheets of metal would be hammered to thickness and then soldered together. The inside of the two sheets would be filled with wax or another liquid to preserve the metal work. Different techniques, such as using a stamp or engraving, were then used to create motifs on the jewellery. Jewels may then be added to hollows or glass poured into special cavities on the surface.
The Greeks took much of their designs from outer origins, such as Asia, when Alexander the Great conquered part of it. In earlier designs, other European influences can also be detected. When Roman rule came to Greece, no change in jewellery designs was detected. However, by 27 BC, Greek designs were heavily influenced by the Roman culture. That is not to say that indigenous design did not thrive. Numerous polychrome butterfly pendants on silver foxtail chains, dating from the 1st century, have been found near Olbia, with only one example ever found anywhere else.
Gorgons, pomegranates, acorns, lotus flowers and palms were a clear indicator of Greek influence in Etruscan jewellery. The modelling of heads, which was a typical practice from the Greek severe period, was a technique that spread throughout the Etruscan territory. An even clearer evidence of new influences is the shape introduced in the Orientalizing era: The Bullae. A pear shaped vessel used to hold perfume. Its surface was usually decorated with repoussé and engraved symbolic figures.
Much of the jewellery found was not worn by Etruscans, but were made to accompany them in the after world. Most, if not all, techniques of Etruscan goldsmiths were not invented by them as they are dated to the third millennium BC.
Although jewellery work was abundantly diverse in earlier times, especially among the barbarian tribes such as the Celts, when the Romans conquered most of Europe, jewellery was changed as smaller factions developed the Roman designs. The most common artefact of early Rome was the brooch, which was used to secure clothing together. The Romans used a diverse range of materials for their jewellery from their extensive resources across the continent. Although they used gold, they sometimes used bronze or bone, and in earlier times, glass beads & pearl. As early as 2,000 years ago, they imported Sri Lankan sapphires and Indian diamonds and used emeralds and amber in their jewellery. In Roman-ruled England, fossilised wood called jet from Northern England was often carved into pieces of jewellery. The early Italians worked in crude gold and created clasps, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. They also produced larger pendants that could be filled with perfume.
Like the Greeks, often the purpose of Roman jewellery was to ward off the "Evil Eye" given by other people. Although women wore a vast array of jewellery, men often only wore a finger ring. Although they were expected to wear at least one ring, some Roman men wore a ring on every finger, while others wore none. Roman men and women wore rings with an engraved gem on it that was used with wax to seal documents, a practice that continued into medieval times when kings and noblemen used the same method. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the jewellery designs were absorbed by neighbouring countries and tribes.
Post-Roman Europe continued to develop jewellery making skills. The Celts and Merovingians in particular are noted for their jewellery, which in terms of quality matched or exceeded that of the Byzantine Empire. Clothing fasteners, amulets, and, to a lesser extent, signet rings, are the most common artefacts known to us. A particularly striking Celtic example is the Tara Brooch. The Torc was common throughout Europe as a symbol of status and power. By the 8th century, jewelled weaponry was common for men, while other jewellery (with the exception of signet rings) seemed to become the domain of women. Grave goods found in a 6th–7th century burial near Chalon-sur-Saône are illustrative. A young girl was buried with: 2 silver fibulae, a necklace (with coins), bracelet, gold earrings, a pair of hair-pins, comb, and buckle. The Celts specialised in continuous patterns and designs, while Merovingian designs are best known for stylised animal figures. They were not the only groups known for high quality work. Note the Visigoth work shown here, and the numerous decorative objects found at the Anglo-Saxon Ship burial at Sutton Hoo Suffolk, England are a particularly well-known example. On the continent, cloisonné and garnet were perhaps the quintessential method and gemstone of the period.
The Eastern successor of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, continued many of the methods of the Romans, though religious themes came to predominate. Unlike the Romans, the Franks, and the Celts, however, Byzantium used light-weight gold leaf rather than solid gold, and more emphasis was placed on stones and gems. As in the West, Byzantine jewellery was worn by wealthier females, with male jewellery apparently restricted to signet rings. Woman's jewellery had some peculiarities like kolts that decorated headband. Like other contemporary cultures, jewellery was commonly buried with its owner.
The Renaissance and exploration both had significant impacts on the development of jewellery in Europe. By the 17th century, increasing exploration and trade led to increased availability of a wide variety of gemstones as well as exposure to the art of other cultures. Whereas prior to this the working of gold and precious metal had been at the forefront of jewellery, this period saw increasing dominance of gemstones and their settings. An example of this is the Cheapside Hoard, the stock of a jeweller hidden in London during the Commonwealth period and not found again until 1912. It contained Colombian emerald, topaz, amazonite from Brazil, spinel, iolite, and chrysoberyl from Sri Lanka, ruby from India, Afghan lapis lazuli, Persian turquoise, Red Sea peridot, as well as Bohemian and Hungarian opal, garnet, and amethyst. Large stones were frequently set in box-bezels on enamelled rings. Notable among merchants of the period was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who brought the precursor stone of the Hope Diamond to France in the 1660s.
When Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as Emperor of the French in 1804, he revived the style and grandeur of jewellery and fashion in France. Under Napoleon's rule, jewellers introduced parures, suites of matching jewellery, such as a diamond tiara, diamond earrings, diamond rings, a diamond brooch, and a diamond necklace. Both of Napoleon's wives had beautiful sets such as these and wore them regularly. Another fashion trend resurrected by Napoleon was the cameo. Soon after his cameo decorated crown was seen, cameos were highly sought. The period also saw the early stages of costume jewellery, with fish scale covered glass beads in place of pearls or conch shell cameos instead of stone cameos. New terms were coined to differentiate the arts: jewellers who worked in cheaper materials were called bijoutiers, while jewellers who worked with expensive materials were called joailliers, a practice which continues to this day.
Starting in the late 18th century, Romanticism had a profound impact on the development of western jewellery. Perhaps the most significant influences were the public's fascination with the treasures being discovered through the birth of modern archaeology and a fascination with Medieval and Renaissance art. Changing social conditions and the onset of the Industrial Revolution also led to growth of a middle class that wanted and could afford jewellery. As a result, the use of industrial processes, cheaper alloys, and stone substitutes led to the development of paste or costume jewellery. Distinguished goldsmiths continued to flourish, however, as wealthier patrons sought to ensure that what they wore still stood apart from the jewellery of the masses, not only through use of precious metals and stones but also though superior artistic and technical work. One such artist was the French goldsmith François-Désiré Froment-Meurice. A category unique to this period and quite appropriate to the philosophy of romanticism was mourning jewellery. It originated in England, where Queen Victoria was often seen wearing jet jewellery after the death of Prince Albert, and it allowed the wearer to continue wearing jewellery while expressing a state of mourning at the death of a loved one.
In the United States, this period saw the founding in 1837 of Tiffany & Co. by Charles Lewis Tiffany. Tiffany's put the United States on the world map in terms of jewellery and gained fame creating dazzling commissions for people such as the wife of Abraham Lincoln. Later, it would gain popular notoriety as the setting of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. In France, Pierre Cartier founded Cartier SA in 1847, while 1884 saw the founding of Bulgari in Italy. The modern production studio had been born and was a step away from the former dominance of individual craftsmen and patronage.
This period also saw the first major collaboration between East and West. Collaboration in Pforzheim between German and Japanese artists led to Shakudō plaques set into Filigree frames being created by the Stoeffler firm in 1885). Perhaps the grand finalé – and an appropriate transition to the following period – were the masterful creations of the Russian artist Peter Carl Fabergé, working for the Imperial Russian court, whose Fabergé eggs and jewellery pieces are still considered as the epitome of the goldsmith's art.
Many whimsical fashions were introduced in the extravagant eighteenth century. Cameos that were used in connection with jewellery were the attractive trinkets along with many of the small objects such as brooches, ear-rings and scarf-pins. Some of the necklets were made of several pieces joined with the gold chains were in and bracelets were also made sometimes to match the necklet and the brooch. At the end of the Century the jewellery with cut steel intermixed with large crystals was introduced by an Englishman, Matthew Boulton of Birmingham.
In the 1890s, jewellers began to explore the potential of the growing Art Nouveau style and the closely related German Jugendstil, British (and to some extent American) Arts and Crafts Movement, Catalan Modernisme, Austro-Hungarian Sezession, Italian "Liberty", etc.
Art Nouveau jewellery encompassed many distinct features including a focus on the female form and an emphasis on colour, most commonly rendered through the use of enamelling techniques including basse-taille, champleve, cloisonné, and plique-à-jour. Motifs included orchids, irises, pansies, vines, swans, peacocks, snakes, dragonflies, mythological creatures, and the female silhouette.
René Lalique, working for the Paris shop of Samuel Bing, was recognised by contemporaries as a leading figure in this trend. The Darmstadt Artists' Colony and Wiener Werkstätte provided perhaps the most significant input to the trend, while in Denmark Georg Jensen, though best known for his Silverware, also contributed significant pieces. In England, Liberty & Co., (notably through the Cymric designs of Archibald Knox) and the British arts & crafts movement of Charles Robert Ashbee contributed slightly more linear but still characteristic designs. The new style moved the focus of the jeweller's art from the setting of stones to the artistic design of the piece itself. Lalique's dragonfly design is one of the best examples of this. Enamels played a large role in technique, while sinuous organic lines are the most recognisable design feature.
The end of World War I once again changed public attitudes, and a more sober style developed.
Growing political tensions, the after-effects of the war, and a reaction against the perceived decadence of the turn of the 20th century led to simpler forms, combined with more effective manufacturing for mass production of high-quality jewellery. Covering the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the style has become popularly known as Art Deco. Walter Gropius and the German Bauhaus movement, with their philosophy of "no barriers between artists and craftsmen" led to some interesting and stylistically simplified forms. Modern materials were also introduced: plastics and aluminium were first used in jewellery, and of note are the chromed pendants of Russian-born Bauhaus master Naum Slutzky. Technical mastery became as valued as the material itself. In the West, this period saw the reinvention of granulation by the German Elizabeth Treskow, although development of the re-invention has continued into the 1990s. It is based on the basic shapes.
In Asia, the Indian subcontinent has the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making anywhere, Asia was the first place where these jewellery were made in large numbers for the royals with a history of over 5,000 years. One of the first to start jewellery making were the peoples of the Indus Valley civilization, in what is now predominately modern-day Pakistan and part of northern and western India. Early jewellery making in China started around the same period, but it became widespread with the spread of Buddhism around 2,000 years ago.
The Chinese used silver in their jewellery more than gold. Blue kingfisher feathers were tied onto early Chinese jewellery and later, blue gems and glass were incorporated into designs. However, jade was preferred over any other stone. The Chinese revered jade because of the human-like qualities they assigned to it, such as its hardness, durability, and beauty. The first jade pieces were very simple, but as time progressed, more complex designs evolved. Jade rings from between the 4th and 7th centuries BC show evidence of having been worked with a compound milling machine, hundreds of years before the first mention of such equipment in the west.
In China, the most uncommon piece of jewellery is the earring, which was worn neither by men nor women. In modern times, earrings are still considered culturally taboo for men in China—in fact, in 2019, the Chinese video streaming service iQiyi began blurring the ears of male actors wearing earrings. Amulets were common, often with a Chinese symbol or dragon. Dragons, Chinese symbols, and phoenixes were frequently depicted on jewellery designs.
The Chinese often placed their jewellery in their graves. Most Chinese graves found by archaeologists contain decorative jewellery.
The Indian subcontinent has a long jewellery history, which has gone through various changes via cultural influence and politics for more than 5,000–8,000 years. Because India had an abundant supply of precious metals and gems, it prospered financially through export and exchange with other countries. While European traditions were heavily influenced by waxing and waning empires, India enjoyed a continuous development of art forms for some 5,000 years. One of the first to start jewellery making were the peoples of the Indus Valley civilization. By 1500 BC, the peoples of the Indus Valley were creating gold earrings and necklaces, bead necklaces, and metallic bangles. Before 2100 BC, prior to the period when metals were widely used, the largest jewellery trade in the Indus Valley region was the bead trade. Beads in the Indus Valley were made using simple techniques. First, a bead maker would need a rough stone, which would be bought from an eastern stone trader. The stone would then be placed into a hot oven where it would be heated until it turned deep red, a colour highly prized by people of the Indus Valley. The red stone would then be chipped to the right size and a hole bored through it with primitive drills. The beads were then polished. Some beads were also painted with designs. This art form was often passed down through the family. Children of bead makers often learned how to work beads from a young age. Each stone had its own characteristics related to Hinduism.
Jewellery in the Indus Valley Civilization was worn predominantly by females, who wore numerous clay or shell bracelets on their wrists. They were often shaped like doughnuts and painted black. Over time, clay bangles were discarded for more durable ones. In present-day India, bangles are made out of metal or glass. Other pieces that women frequently wore were thin bands of gold that would be worn on the forehead, earrings, primitive brooches, chokers, and gold rings. Although women wore jewellery the most, some men in the Indus Valley wore beads. Small beads were often crafted to be placed in men and women's hair. The beads were about one millimetre long.
A female skeleton (presently on display at the National Museum, New Delhi, India) wears a carlinean bangle (bracelet) on her left hand. Kada is a special kind of bracelet and is widely popular in Indian culture. They symbolize animals such as peacock, elephant, etc.
According to Hindu belief, gold and silver are considered as sacred metals. Gold is symbolic of the warm sun, while silver suggests the cool moon. Both are the quintessential metals of Indian jewellery. Pure gold does not oxidise or corrode with time, which is why Hindu tradition associates gold with immortality. Gold imagery occurs frequently in ancient Indian literature. In the Vedic Hindu belief of cosmological creation, the source of physical and spiritual human life originated in and evolved from a golden womb (hiranyagarbha) or egg (hiranyanda), a metaphor of the sun, whose light rises from the primordial waters.
Jewellery had great status with India's royalty; it was so powerful that they established laws, limiting wearing of jewellery to royalty. Only royalty and a few others to whom they granted permission could wear gold ornaments on their feet. This would normally be considered breaking the appreciation of the sacred metals. Even though the majority of the Indian population wore jewellery, Maharajas and people related to royalty had a deeper connection with jewellery. The Maharaja's role was so important that the Hindu philosophers identified him as central to the smooth working of the world. He was considered as a divine being, a deity in human form, whose duty was to uphold and protect dharma, the moral order of the universe. The largest ever single order to Cartier was made in 1925 by the Indian royalty, the Maharaja of Patiala, for the Patiala Necklace and other jewelry worth ₹1,000 million (equivalent to ₹210 billion, US$2.7 billion or €2.6 billion in 2023).
Navaratna (nine gems) is a powerful jewel frequently worn by a Maharaja (Emperor). It is an amulet, which comprises diamond, pearl, ruby, sapphire, emerald, topaz, cat's eye, coral, and hyacinth (red zircon). Each of these stones is associated with a celestial deity, represented the totality of the Hindu universe when all nine gems are together. The diamond is the most powerful gem among the nine stones. There were various cuts for the gemstone. Indian Kings bought gemstones privately from the sellers. Maharaja and other royal family members value gem as Hindu God. They exchanged gems with people to whom they were very close, especially the royal family members and other intimate allies.
India was the first country to mine diamonds, with some mines dating back to 296 BC. India traded the diamonds, realising their valuable qualities. Historically, diamonds have been given to retain or regain a lover's or ruler's lost favour, as symbols of tribute, or as an expression of fidelity in exchange for concessions and protection. Mughal emperors and Kings used the diamonds as a means of assuring their immortality by having their names and worldly titles inscribed upon them. Moreover, it has played and continues to play a pivotal role in Indian social, political, economic, and religious event, as it often has done elsewhere. In Indian history, diamonds have been used to acquire military equipment, finance wars, foment revolutions, and tempt defections. They have contributed to the abdication or the decapitation of potentates. They have been used to murder a representative of the dominating power by lacing his food with crushed diamond. Indian diamonds have been used as security to finance large loans needed to buttress politically or economically tottering regimes. Victorious military heroes have been honoured by rewards of diamonds and also have been used as ransom payment for release from imprisonment or abduction.
Today, many jewellery designs and traditions are used, and jewellery is commonplace in Indian ceremonies and weddings. For many Indians, especially those who follow the Hindu or Jain faiths, bridal jewellery is known as streedhan and functions as personal wealth for the bride only, as a sort of financial security. For this reason, this jewellery, especially in the sacred metals of gold and silver, has large cultural significance for Indian brides. Jewellery is worn on the arms and hands, ears, neck, hair, head, feet, toes and waist to bless the bride with prosperity.
Jewellery making started in the Americas with the arrival of Paleo-Indians more than 15,000 years ago. This jewellery would have been made from stone, shell, bone and other perishable materials. The American continent is home to 2 cradles of civilization: in the Andes and Mesoamerica. Cultures in these regions developed more complex methods of jewellery creation. The Andes is the origin of hot working metallurgy in the Americas and consequently the region has the longest history of work in materials such as silver, platinum and gold. Metallurgy began in Mesoamerica during the Termainal Classic era, likely arriving from direct maritime trade with the Andean cultures. As a result, western Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Tarascans and Mixtecs, had more complex use of the technology.
With the Moche culture, goldwork flourished. The pieces are no longer simple metalwork, but are now masterful examples of jewellery making. Pieces are sophisticated in their design, and feature inlays of turquoise, mother of pearl, spondylus shell, and amethyst. The nose and ear ornaments, chest plates, small containers and whistles are considered masterpieces of ancient Peruvian culture. A notable example of Andean metallurgy is the Northern Andean cultures' work with platinum, which has a much higher melting point than other precious metals. There are only a few known examples of cold worked platinum in the Old World and no known intentionally hot worked examples (platinum was not identified as a separate element and small inclusions appeared in some goldwork). In the New World however, certain Andean cultures recognized platinum as a separate metal and were able to incorporate it into jewellery, such as through sintering it with gold.
Among the Late Post-Classic Aztecs, only nobility wore gold jewellery, as it showed their rank, power, and wealth. A large portion of "Aztec gold" jewellery was created by Mixtec artisans. The Mixtecs were particularly known for their goldwork and gold jewellery was part of the tribute paid by Mixtec polities to the Aztecs. In general, the more jewellery an Aztec noble wore, the higher his status or prestige. The Emperor and his High Priests, for example, would be nearly completely covered in jewellery when making public appearances. Although gold was the most common and a popular material used in Aztec jewellery, jade, turquoise, and certain feathers were considered more valuable. In addition to adornment and status, the Aztecs also used jewellery in sacrifices to appease the gods.
Another ancient American civilization with expertise in jewellery making were the Maya. During the Pre-Classic and Classic era of Maya civilization, the Maya were making jewellery from local materials such as jade, pearls, and sea shell while also incorporating imported materials such as obsidian and turquoise. In the Terminal Classic and Post-Classic, importation of gold, silver, bronze, and copper lead to the use of these materials in jewellery. Merchants and nobility were the only few that wore expensive jewellery in the Maya region, much the same as with the Aztecs. Jade in particular had an important role across Mesoamerica.
In Northern America, Native Americans used shells, wood, turquoise, and soapstone The turquoise was used in necklaces and to be placed in earrings. The turquoise incorporated into Mesoamerican jewellery was primarily obtained through trade with Oasisamerica. Native Americans with access to oyster shells, often located in only one location in America, traded the shells with other tribes, showing the great importance of the body adornment trade in Northern America.
Jewellery played a major role in the fate of the Americas when the Spanish colonizers were spurred to search for gold on the American mainland after coming into contact with Caribbean natives that had gold jewellery obtained through trade with the mainland. Continued contact with Native Americans wearing gold jewellery eventually lead to Spanish expeditions of the mythological El Dorado.
Native American jewellery is the personal adornment, often in the forms of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, pins, brooches, labrets, and more, made by the Indigenous peoples of the United States. Native American jewellery reflects the cultural diversity and history of its makers. Native American tribes continue to develop distinct aesthetics rooted in their personal artistic visions and cultural traditions. Artists create jewellery for adornment, ceremonies, and trade. Lois Sherr Dubin writes, "[i]n the absence of written languages, adornment became an important element of Indian [Native American] communication, conveying many levels of information." Later, jewellery and personal adornment "...signaled resistance to assimilation. It remains a major statement of tribal and individual identity."
Within the Haida Nation of the Pacific Northwest, copper was used as a form of jewellery for creating bracelets.
Metalsmiths, beaders, carvers, and lapidaries combine a variety of metals, hardwoods, precious and semi-precious gemstones, beadwork, quillwork, teeth, bones, hide, vegetal fibres, and other materials to create jewellery. Contemporary Native American jewellery ranges from hand-quarried and processed stones and shells to computer-fabricated steel and titanium jewellery.
Jewellery making in the Pacific started later than in other areas because of recent human settlement. Early Pacific jewellery was made of bone, wood, and other natural materials, and thus has not survived. Most Pacific jewellery is worn above the waist, with headdresses, necklaces, hair pins, and arm and waist belts being the most common pieces.
Jewellery in the Pacific, with the exception of Australia, is worn to be a symbol of either fertility or power. Elaborate headdresses are worn by many Pacific cultures and some, such as the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea, wear certain headdresses once they have killed an enemy. Tribesman may wear boar bones through their noses.
Island jewellery is still very much primal because of the lack of communication with outside cultures. Some areas of Borneo and Papua New Guinea are yet to be explored by Western nations. However, the island nations that were flooded with Western missionaries have had drastic changes made to their jewellery designs. Missionaries saw any type of tribal jewellery as a sign of the wearer's devotion to paganism. Thus many tribal designs were lost forever in the mass conversion to Christianity.
Australia is now the number one supplier of opals in the world. Opals had already been mined in Europe and South America for many years prior, but in the late 19th century, the Australian opal market became predominant. Australian opals are only mined in a few select places around the country, making it one of the most profitable stones in the Pacific.
The New Zealand Māori traditionally had a strong culture of personal adornment, most famously the hei-tiki. Hei-tikis are traditionally carved by hand from bone, nephrite, or bowenite.
Nowadays a wide range of such traditionally inspired items such as bone carved pendants based on traditional fishhooks hei matau and other greenstone jewellery are popular with young New Zealanders of all backgrounds – for whom they relate to a generalized sense of New Zealand identity. These trends have contributed towards a worldwide interest in traditional Māori culture and arts.
Other than jewellery created through Māori influence, modern jewellery in New Zealand is multicultural and varied.
Most modern commercial jewellery continues traditional forms and styles, but designers such as Georg Jensen have widened the concept of wearable art. The advent of new materials, such as plastics, Precious Metal Clay (PMC), and colouring techniques, has led to increased variety in styles. Other advances, such as the development of improved pearl harvesting by people such as Mikimoto Kōkichi and the development of improved quality artificial gemstones such as moissanite (a diamond simulant), has placed jewellery within the economic grasp of a much larger segment of the population.
The "jewellery as art" movement was spearheaded by artisans such as Robert Lee Morris and continued by designers such as Gill Forsbrook in the UK. Influence from other cultural forms is also evident. One example of this is bling-bling style jewellery, popularised by hip-hop and rap artists in the early 21st century, e.g. grills, a type of jewellery worn over the teeth.
The late 20th century saw the blending of European design with oriental techniques such as Mokume-gane. The following are innovations in the decades straddling the year 2000: "Mokume-gane, hydraulic die forming, anti-clastic raising, fold-forming, reactive metal anodising, shell forms, PMC, photoetching, and [use of] CAD/CAM."
Also, 3D printing as a production technique gains more and more importance. With a great variety of services offering this production method, jewellery design becomes accessible to a growing number of creatives. An important advantage of using 3d printing are the relatively low costs for prototypes, small batch series or unique and personalized designs. Shapes that are hard or impossible to create by hand can often be realized by 3D printing. Popular materials to print include polyamide, steel and wax (latter for further processing). Every printable material has its very own constraints that have to be considered while designing the piece of jewellery using 3D modelling software.
Artisan jewellery continues to grow as both a hobby and a profession. With more than 17 United States periodicals about beading alone, resources, accessibility, and a low initial cost of entry continues to expand production of hand-made adornments. Some fine examples of artisan jewellery can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The increase in numbers of students choosing to study jewellery design and production in Australia has grown in the past 20 years, and Australia now has a thriving contemporary jewellery community. Many of these jewellers have embraced modern materials and techniques, as well as incorporating traditional workmanship.
More expansive use of metal to adorn the wearer, where the piece is larger and more elaborate than what would normally be considered jewellery, has come to be referred to by designers and fashion writers as metal couture.
Freemasons attach jewels to their detachable collars when in Lodge to signify a Brothers Office held with the Lodge. For example, the square represents the Master of the Lodge and the dove represents the Deacon.
Jewellery used in body modification can be simple and plain or dramatic and extreme. The use of simple silver studs, rings, and earrings predominates. Common jewellery pieces such as earrings are a form of body modification, as they are accommodated by creating a small hole in the ear.
Padaung women in Myanmar place large golden rings around their necks. From as early as five years old, girls are introduced to their first neck ring. Over the years, more rings are added. In addition to the twenty-plus pounds of rings on her neck, a woman will also wear just as many rings on her calves. At their extent, some necks modified like this can reach 10–15 in (25–38 cm) long. The practice has health impacts and has in recent years declined from cultural norm to tourist curiosity. Tribes related to the Padaung, as well as other cultures throughout the world, use jewellery to stretch their earlobes or enlarge ear piercings. In the Americas, labrets have been worn since before first contact by Innu and First Nations peoples of the northwest coast. Lip plates have been worn by the African Mursi and Sara people, as well as some South American peoples.
In the late twentieth century, the influence of modern primitivism led to many of these practices being incorporated into western subcultures. Many of these practices rely on a combination of body modification and decorative objects, thus keeping the distinction between these two types of decoration blurred.
In many cultures, jewellery is used as a temporary body modifier; in some cases, with hooks or other objects being placed into the recipient's skin. Although this procedure is often carried out by tribal or semi-tribal groups, often acting under a trance during religious ceremonies, this practice has seeped into western culture. Many extreme-jewellery shops now cater to people wanting large hooks or spikes set into their skin. Most often, these hooks are used in conjunction with pulleys to hoist the recipient into the air. This practice is said to give an erotic feeling to the person and some couples have even performed their marriage ceremony whilst being suspended by hooks.
According to a 2007 KPMG study, the largest jewellery market is the United States with a market share of 31%, Japan, India, China, and the Middle East each with 8–9%, and Italy with 5%. The authors of the study predicted a dramatic change in market shares by 2015, where the market share of the United States will have dropped to around 25%, and China and India will increase theirs to over 13%. The Trend of buying jewellery online is also increasing day by day, as a result the best quality jewellery can be provided at a cheaper price to any part of India via many online shops. The Middle East will remain more or less constant at 9%, whereas Europe's and Japan's market share will be halved and become less than 4% for Japan, and less than 3% for the biggest individual European countries, Italy and the UK. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jewellery (or jewelry in American English) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western perspective, the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal such as gold often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as glass, shells and other plant materials may be used.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jewellery is one of the oldest types of archaeological artefact – with 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells thought to be the oldest known jewellery. The basic forms of jewellery vary between cultures but are often extremely long-lived; in European cultures the most common forms of jewellery listed above have persisted since ancient times, while other forms such as adornments for the nose or ankle, important in other cultures, are much less common.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Jewellery may be made from a wide range of materials. Gemstones and similar materials such as amber and coral, precious metals, beads, and shells have been widely used, and enamel has often been important. In most cultures jewellery can be understood as a status symbol, for its material properties, its patterns, or for meaningful symbols. Jewellery has been made to adorn nearly every body part, from hairpins to toe rings, and even genital jewellery. In modern European culture the amount worn by adult males is relatively low compared with other cultures and other periods in European culture.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The word jewellery itself is derived from the word jewel, which was anglicised from the Old French \"jouel\", and beyond that, to the Latin word \"jocale\", meaning plaything. In British English, Indian English, New Zealand English, Hiberno-English, Australian English, and South African English it is spelled jewellery, while the spelling is jewelry in American English. Both are used in Canadian English, though jewellery prevails by a two to one margin. In French and a few other European languages the equivalent term, joaillerie, may also cover decorated metalwork in precious metal such as objets d'art and church items, not just objects worn on the person.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Humans have used jewellery for a number of different reasons:",
"title": "Form and function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Most cultures at some point have had a practice of keeping large amounts of wealth stored in the form of jewellery. Numerous cultures store wedding dowries in the form of jewellery or make jewellery as a means to store or display coins. Alternatively, jewellery has been used as a currency or trade good. an example being the use of slave beads.",
"title": "Form and function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Many items of jewellery, such as brooches and buckles, originated as purely functional items, but evolved into decorative items as their functional requirement diminished.",
"title": "Form and function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Jewellery can symbolise group membership (as in the case, of the Christian crucifix or the Jewish Star of David) or status (as in the case of chains of office, or the Western practice of married people wearing wedding rings).",
"title": "Form and function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Wearing of amulets and devotional medals to provide protection or to ward off evil is common in some cultures. These may take the form of symbols (such as the ankh), stones, plants, animals, body parts (such as the Khamsa), or glyphs (such as stylised versions of the Throne Verse in Islamic art).",
"title": "Form and function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In creating jewellery, gemstones, coins, or other precious items are often used, and they are typically set into precious metals. Platinum alloys range from 900 (90% pure) to 950 (95% pure). The silver used in jewellery is usually sterling silver, or 92.5% fine silver. In costume jewellery, stainless steel findings are sometimes used.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Other commonly used materials include glass, such as fused-glass or enamel; wood, often carved or turned; shells and other natural animal substances such as bone and ivory; natural clay; polymer clay; Hemp and other twines have been used as well to create jewellery that has more of a natural feel. However, any inclusion of lead or lead solder will give a British Assay office (the body which gives U.K. jewellery its stamp of approval, the Hallmark) the right to destroy the piece, however it is very rare for the assay office to do so.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Beads are frequently used in jewellery. These may be made of glass, gemstones, metal, wood, shells, clay and polymer clay. Beaded jewellery commonly encompasses necklaces, bracelets, earrings, belts and rings. Beads may be large or small; the smallest type of beads used are known as seed beads, these are the beads used for the \"woven\" style of beaded jewellery. Seed beads are also used in an embroidery technique where they are sewn onto fabric backings to create broad collar neck pieces and beaded bracelets. Bead embroidery, a popular type of handwork during the Victorian era, is enjoying a renaissance in modern jewellery making. Beading, or beadwork, is also very popular in many African and indigenous North American cultures.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Silversmiths, goldsmiths, and lapidaries use methods including forging, casting, soldering or welding, cutting, carving and \"cold-joining\" (using adhesives, staples and rivets to assemble parts).",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Diamonds were first mined in India. Pliny may have mentioned them, although there is some debate as to the exact nature of the stone he referred to as Adamas. In 2005, Australia, Botswana, Russia and Canada ranked among the primary sources of gemstone diamond production. There are negative consequences of the diamond trade in certain areas. Diamonds mined during the recent civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and other nations have been labelled as blood diamonds when they are mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The British crown jewels contain the Cullinan Diamond, part of the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found (1905), at 3,106.75 carats (621.35 g).",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Now popular in engagement rings, this usage dates back to the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy in 1477.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A popular style is the diamond solitaire, which features a single large diamond mounted prominently. Within solitaire, there are three categories in which a ring can be classified: prong, bezel and tension setting.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Many precious and semiprecious stones are used for jewellery. Among them are:",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Some gemstones (like pearls, coral, and amber) are classified as organic, meaning that they are produced by living organisms. Others are inorganic, meaning that they are generally composed of and arise from minerals.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Some gems, for example, amethyst, have become less valued as methods of extracting and importing them have progressed. Some man-made gems can serve in place of natural gems, such as cubic zirconia, which can be used in place of diamond.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "For platinum, gold, and silver jewellery, there are many techniques to create finishes. The most common are high-polish, satin/matte, brushed, and hammered. High-polished jewellery is the most common and gives the metal a highly reflective, shiny look. Satin, or matte finish reduces the shine and reflection of the jewellery, and this is commonly used to accentuate gemstones such as diamonds. Brushed finishes give the jewellery a textured look and are created by brushing a material (similar to sandpaper) against the metal, leaving \"brush strokes\". Hammered finishes are typically created by using a rounded steel hammer and hammering the jewellery to give it a wavy texture.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Some jewellery is plated to give it a shiny, reflective look or to achieve a desired colour. Sterling silver jewellery may be plated with a thin layer of 0.999 fine silver (a process known as flashing) or may be plated with rhodium or gold. Base metal costume jewellery may also be plated with silver, gold, or rhodium for a more attractive finish.",
"title": "Materials and methods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Jewellery has been used to denote status. In ancient Rome, only certain ranks could wear rings and later, sumptuary laws dictated who could wear what type of jewellery. This was also based on rank of the citizens of that time.",
"title": "Impact on society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Cultural dictates have also played a significant role. For example, the wearing of earrings by Western men was considered effeminate in the 19th century and early 20th century. More recently, the display of body jewellery, such as piercings, has become a mark of acceptance or seen as a badge of courage within some groups but is completely rejected in others. Likewise, hip hop culture has popularised the slang term bling-bling, which refers to ostentatious display of jewellery by men or women.",
"title": "Impact on society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Conversely, the jewellery industry in the early 20th century launched a campaign to popularise wedding rings for men, which caught on, as well as engagement rings for men, which did not, going so far as to create a false history and claim that the practice had medieval roots. By the mid-1940s, 85% of weddings in the U.S. featured a double-ring ceremony, up from 15% in the 1920s.",
"title": "Impact on society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Some religions have specific rules or traditions surrounding jewellery (or even prohibiting it) and many religions have edicts against excessive display. Islam, for instance, considers the wearing of gold by men as Haraam. The majority of Islamic jewellery was in the form of bridal dowries, and traditionally was not handed down from generation to generation; instead, on a woman's death it was sold at the souk and recycled or sold to passers-by. Islamic jewellery from before the 19th century is thus exceedingly rare.",
"title": "Impact on society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Some Christian denominations forbid the use of jewellery by both men and women, including Amish-Mennonites and Holiness churches. The New Testament of the Bible gives injunctions against the wearing of gold, in the writings of the apostles Paul and Peter, and Revelations, describes \"the great whore\", or false religious system, as being \"decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand.\" (Rev. 17:4)",
"title": "Impact on society"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The history of jewellery is long and goes back many years, with many different uses among different cultures. It has endured for thousands of years and has provided various insights into how ancient cultures worked.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The earliest known Jewellery was actually created not by humans (Homo sapiens) but by Neanderthal living in Europe. Specifically, perforated beads made from small sea shells have been found dating to 115,000 years ago in the Cueva de los Aviones, a cave along the southeast coast of Spain. Later in Kenya, at Enkapune Ya Muto, beads made from perforated ostrich egg shells have been dated to more than 40,000 years ago. In Russia, a stone bracelet and marble ring are attributed to a similar age.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Later, the European early modern humans had crude necklaces and bracelets of bone, teeth, berries, and stone hung on pieces of string or animal sinew, or pieces of carved bone used to secure clothing together. In some cases, jewellery had shell or mother-of-pearl pieces. A decorated engraved pendant (the Star Carr Pendant) dating to around 11,000 BC, and thought to be the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain, was found at the site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire in 2015. In southern Russia, carved bracelets made of mammoth tusk have been found. The Venus of Hohle Fels features a perforation at the top, showing that it was intended to be worn as a pendant.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Around seven-thousand years ago, the first sign of copper jewellery was seen. In October 2012 the Museum of Ancient History in Lower Austria revealed that they had found a grave of a female jewellery worker – forcing archaeologists to take a fresh look at prehistoric gender roles after it appeared to be that of a female fine metal worker – a profession that was previously thought to have been carried out exclusively by men.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The first signs of established jewellery making in Ancient Egypt was around 3,000–5,000 years ago. The Egyptians preferred the luxury, rarity, and workability of gold over other metals. In Predynastic Egypt jewellery soon began to symbolise political and religious power in the community. Although it was worn by wealthy Egyptians in life, it was also worn by them in death, with jewellery commonly placed among grave goods.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In conjunction with gold jewellery, Egyptians used coloured glass, along with semi-precious gems. The colour of the jewellery had significance. Green, for example, symbolised fertility. Lapis lazuli and silver had to be imported from beyond the country's borders.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Egyptian designs were most common in Phoenician jewellery. Also, ancient Turkish designs found in Persian jewellery suggest that trade between the Middle East and Europe was not uncommon. Women wore elaborate gold and silver pieces that were used in ceremonies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Jewellery of the Berber cultures is a style of traditional jewellery worn by women and girls in the rural areas of the Maghreb region in North Africa inhabited by indigenous Berber people (in Berber language: Amazigh, Imazighen, pl). Following long social and cultural traditions, the silversmiths of different ethnic Berber groups of Morocco, Algeria and neighbouring countries created intricate jewellery to adorn their women and that formed part of their ethnic identity. Traditional Berber jewellery was usually made of silver and includes elaborate brooches made of triangular plates and pins (fibula), originally used as clasps for garments, but also necklaces, bracelets, earrings and similar items.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Another major type is the so-called khmissa (local pronunciation of the Arabic word \"khamsa\" for the number \"five\"), which is called afus in the Berber language (Tamazight). This form represents the five fingers of the hand and is traditionally believed both by Muslims as well as Jewish people to protect against the Evil Eye.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The oldest gold jewelry in the world is dating from 4,600 BC to 4,200 BC and was discovered in Europe, at the site of Varna Necropolis, near the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Several prehistoric Bulgarian finds are considered no less old – the golden treasures of Hotnitsa, Durankulak, artifacts from the Kurgan settlement of Yunatsite near Pazardzhik, the golden treasure Sakar, as well as beads and gold jewellery found in the Kurgan settlement of Provadia – Solnitsata (“salt pit”). However, Varna gold is most often called the oldest since this treasure is the largest and most diverse.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "By approximately 5,000 years ago, jewellery-making had become a significant craft in the cities of Mesopotamia. The most significant archaeological evidence comes from the Royal Cemetery of Ur, where hundreds of burials dating 2900–2300 BC were unearthed; tombs such as that of Puabi contained a multitude of artefacts in gold, silver, and semi-precious stones, such as lapis lazuli crowns embellished with gold figurines, close-fitting collar necklaces, and jewel-headed pins. In Assyria, men and women both wore extensive amounts of jewellery, including amulets, ankle bracelets, heavy multi-strand necklaces, and cylinder seals.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Jewellery in Mesopotamia tended to be manufactured from thin metal leaf and was set with large numbers of brightly coloured stones (chiefly agate, lapis, carnelian, and jasper). Favoured shapes included leaves, spirals, cones, and bunches of grapes. Jewellers created works both for human use and for adorning statues and idols. They employed a wide variety of sophisticated metalworking techniques, such as cloisonné, engraving, fine granulation, and filigree.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Extensive and meticulously maintained records pertaining to the trade and manufacture of jewellery have also been unearthed throughout Mesopotamian archaeological sites. One record in the Mari royal archives, for example, gives the composition of various items of jewellery:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Greeks started using gold and gems in jewellery in 1600 BC, although beads shaped as shells and animals were produced widely in earlier times. Around 1500 BC, the main techniques of working gold in Greece included casting, twisting bars, and making wire. Many of these sophisticated techniques were popular in the Mycenaean period, but unfortunately this skill was lost at the end of the Bronze Age. The forms and shapes of jewellery in ancient Greece such as the armring (13th century BC), brooch (10th century BC) and pins (7th century BC), have varied widely since the Bronze Age as well. Other forms of jewellery include wreaths, earrings, necklace and bracelets. A good example of the high quality that gold working techniques could achieve in Greece is the 'Gold Olive Wreath' (4th century BC), which is modeled on the type of wreath given as a prize for winners in athletic competitions like the Olympic Games. Jewellery dating from 600 to 475 BC is not well represented in the archaeological record, but after the Persian wars the quantity of jewellery again became more plentiful. One particularly popular type of design at this time was a bracelet decorated with snake and animal-heads Because these bracelets used considerably more metal, many examples were made from bronze. By 300 BC, the Greeks had mastered making coloured jewellery and using amethysts, pearl, and emeralds. Also, the first signs of cameos appeared, with the Greeks creating them from Indian Sardonyx, a striped brown pink and cream agate stone. Greek jewellery was often simpler than in other cultures, with simple designs and workmanship. However, as time progressed, the designs grew in complexity and different materials were soon used.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Jewellery in Greece was hardly worn and was mostly used for public appearances or on special occasions. It was frequently given as a gift and was predominantly worn by women to show their wealth, social status, and beauty. The jewellery was often supposed to give the wearer protection from the \"Evil Eye\" or endowed the owner with supernatural powers, while others had a religious symbolism. Older pieces of jewellery that have been found were dedicated to the Gods.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "They worked two styles of pieces: cast pieces and pieces hammered out of sheet metal. Fewer pieces of cast jewellery have been recovered. It was made by casting the metal onto two stone or clay moulds. The two halves were then joined, and wax, followed by molten metal, was placed in the centre. This technique had been practised since the late Bronze Age. The more common form of jewellery was the hammered sheet type. Sheets of metal would be hammered to thickness and then soldered together. The inside of the two sheets would be filled with wax or another liquid to preserve the metal work. Different techniques, such as using a stamp or engraving, were then used to create motifs on the jewellery. Jewels may then be added to hollows or glass poured into special cavities on the surface.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Greeks took much of their designs from outer origins, such as Asia, when Alexander the Great conquered part of it. In earlier designs, other European influences can also be detected. When Roman rule came to Greece, no change in jewellery designs was detected. However, by 27 BC, Greek designs were heavily influenced by the Roman culture. That is not to say that indigenous design did not thrive. Numerous polychrome butterfly pendants on silver foxtail chains, dating from the 1st century, have been found near Olbia, with only one example ever found anywhere else.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Gorgons, pomegranates, acorns, lotus flowers and palms were a clear indicator of Greek influence in Etruscan jewellery. The modelling of heads, which was a typical practice from the Greek severe period, was a technique that spread throughout the Etruscan territory. An even clearer evidence of new influences is the shape introduced in the Orientalizing era: The Bullae. A pear shaped vessel used to hold perfume. Its surface was usually decorated with repoussé and engraved symbolic figures.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Much of the jewellery found was not worn by Etruscans, but were made to accompany them in the after world. Most, if not all, techniques of Etruscan goldsmiths were not invented by them as they are dated to the third millennium BC.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Although jewellery work was abundantly diverse in earlier times, especially among the barbarian tribes such as the Celts, when the Romans conquered most of Europe, jewellery was changed as smaller factions developed the Roman designs. The most common artefact of early Rome was the brooch, which was used to secure clothing together. The Romans used a diverse range of materials for their jewellery from their extensive resources across the continent. Although they used gold, they sometimes used bronze or bone, and in earlier times, glass beads & pearl. As early as 2,000 years ago, they imported Sri Lankan sapphires and Indian diamonds and used emeralds and amber in their jewellery. In Roman-ruled England, fossilised wood called jet from Northern England was often carved into pieces of jewellery. The early Italians worked in crude gold and created clasps, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. They also produced larger pendants that could be filled with perfume.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Like the Greeks, often the purpose of Roman jewellery was to ward off the \"Evil Eye\" given by other people. Although women wore a vast array of jewellery, men often only wore a finger ring. Although they were expected to wear at least one ring, some Roman men wore a ring on every finger, while others wore none. Roman men and women wore rings with an engraved gem on it that was used with wax to seal documents, a practice that continued into medieval times when kings and noblemen used the same method. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the jewellery designs were absorbed by neighbouring countries and tribes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Post-Roman Europe continued to develop jewellery making skills. The Celts and Merovingians in particular are noted for their jewellery, which in terms of quality matched or exceeded that of the Byzantine Empire. Clothing fasteners, amulets, and, to a lesser extent, signet rings, are the most common artefacts known to us. A particularly striking Celtic example is the Tara Brooch. The Torc was common throughout Europe as a symbol of status and power. By the 8th century, jewelled weaponry was common for men, while other jewellery (with the exception of signet rings) seemed to become the domain of women. Grave goods found in a 6th–7th century burial near Chalon-sur-Saône are illustrative. A young girl was buried with: 2 silver fibulae, a necklace (with coins), bracelet, gold earrings, a pair of hair-pins, comb, and buckle. The Celts specialised in continuous patterns and designs, while Merovingian designs are best known for stylised animal figures. They were not the only groups known for high quality work. Note the Visigoth work shown here, and the numerous decorative objects found at the Anglo-Saxon Ship burial at Sutton Hoo Suffolk, England are a particularly well-known example. On the continent, cloisonné and garnet were perhaps the quintessential method and gemstone of the period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Eastern successor of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, continued many of the methods of the Romans, though religious themes came to predominate. Unlike the Romans, the Franks, and the Celts, however, Byzantium used light-weight gold leaf rather than solid gold, and more emphasis was placed on stones and gems. As in the West, Byzantine jewellery was worn by wealthier females, with male jewellery apparently restricted to signet rings. Woman's jewellery had some peculiarities like kolts that decorated headband. Like other contemporary cultures, jewellery was commonly buried with its owner.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The Renaissance and exploration both had significant impacts on the development of jewellery in Europe. By the 17th century, increasing exploration and trade led to increased availability of a wide variety of gemstones as well as exposure to the art of other cultures. Whereas prior to this the working of gold and precious metal had been at the forefront of jewellery, this period saw increasing dominance of gemstones and their settings. An example of this is the Cheapside Hoard, the stock of a jeweller hidden in London during the Commonwealth period and not found again until 1912. It contained Colombian emerald, topaz, amazonite from Brazil, spinel, iolite, and chrysoberyl from Sri Lanka, ruby from India, Afghan lapis lazuli, Persian turquoise, Red Sea peridot, as well as Bohemian and Hungarian opal, garnet, and amethyst. Large stones were frequently set in box-bezels on enamelled rings. Notable among merchants of the period was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who brought the precursor stone of the Hope Diamond to France in the 1660s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "When Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as Emperor of the French in 1804, he revived the style and grandeur of jewellery and fashion in France. Under Napoleon's rule, jewellers introduced parures, suites of matching jewellery, such as a diamond tiara, diamond earrings, diamond rings, a diamond brooch, and a diamond necklace. Both of Napoleon's wives had beautiful sets such as these and wore them regularly. Another fashion trend resurrected by Napoleon was the cameo. Soon after his cameo decorated crown was seen, cameos were highly sought. The period also saw the early stages of costume jewellery, with fish scale covered glass beads in place of pearls or conch shell cameos instead of stone cameos. New terms were coined to differentiate the arts: jewellers who worked in cheaper materials were called bijoutiers, while jewellers who worked with expensive materials were called joailliers, a practice which continues to this day.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Starting in the late 18th century, Romanticism had a profound impact on the development of western jewellery. Perhaps the most significant influences were the public's fascination with the treasures being discovered through the birth of modern archaeology and a fascination with Medieval and Renaissance art. Changing social conditions and the onset of the Industrial Revolution also led to growth of a middle class that wanted and could afford jewellery. As a result, the use of industrial processes, cheaper alloys, and stone substitutes led to the development of paste or costume jewellery. Distinguished goldsmiths continued to flourish, however, as wealthier patrons sought to ensure that what they wore still stood apart from the jewellery of the masses, not only through use of precious metals and stones but also though superior artistic and technical work. One such artist was the French goldsmith François-Désiré Froment-Meurice. A category unique to this period and quite appropriate to the philosophy of romanticism was mourning jewellery. It originated in England, where Queen Victoria was often seen wearing jet jewellery after the death of Prince Albert, and it allowed the wearer to continue wearing jewellery while expressing a state of mourning at the death of a loved one.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In the United States, this period saw the founding in 1837 of Tiffany & Co. by Charles Lewis Tiffany. Tiffany's put the United States on the world map in terms of jewellery and gained fame creating dazzling commissions for people such as the wife of Abraham Lincoln. Later, it would gain popular notoriety as the setting of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. In France, Pierre Cartier founded Cartier SA in 1847, while 1884 saw the founding of Bulgari in Italy. The modern production studio had been born and was a step away from the former dominance of individual craftsmen and patronage.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "This period also saw the first major collaboration between East and West. Collaboration in Pforzheim between German and Japanese artists led to Shakudō plaques set into Filigree frames being created by the Stoeffler firm in 1885). Perhaps the grand finalé – and an appropriate transition to the following period – were the masterful creations of the Russian artist Peter Carl Fabergé, working for the Imperial Russian court, whose Fabergé eggs and jewellery pieces are still considered as the epitome of the goldsmith's art.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Many whimsical fashions were introduced in the extravagant eighteenth century. Cameos that were used in connection with jewellery were the attractive trinkets along with many of the small objects such as brooches, ear-rings and scarf-pins. Some of the necklets were made of several pieces joined with the gold chains were in and bracelets were also made sometimes to match the necklet and the brooch. At the end of the Century the jewellery with cut steel intermixed with large crystals was introduced by an Englishman, Matthew Boulton of Birmingham.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In the 1890s, jewellers began to explore the potential of the growing Art Nouveau style and the closely related German Jugendstil, British (and to some extent American) Arts and Crafts Movement, Catalan Modernisme, Austro-Hungarian Sezession, Italian \"Liberty\", etc.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Art Nouveau jewellery encompassed many distinct features including a focus on the female form and an emphasis on colour, most commonly rendered through the use of enamelling techniques including basse-taille, champleve, cloisonné, and plique-à-jour. Motifs included orchids, irises, pansies, vines, swans, peacocks, snakes, dragonflies, mythological creatures, and the female silhouette.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "René Lalique, working for the Paris shop of Samuel Bing, was recognised by contemporaries as a leading figure in this trend. The Darmstadt Artists' Colony and Wiener Werkstätte provided perhaps the most significant input to the trend, while in Denmark Georg Jensen, though best known for his Silverware, also contributed significant pieces. In England, Liberty & Co., (notably through the Cymric designs of Archibald Knox) and the British arts & crafts movement of Charles Robert Ashbee contributed slightly more linear but still characteristic designs. The new style moved the focus of the jeweller's art from the setting of stones to the artistic design of the piece itself. Lalique's dragonfly design is one of the best examples of this. Enamels played a large role in technique, while sinuous organic lines are the most recognisable design feature.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The end of World War I once again changed public attitudes, and a more sober style developed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Growing political tensions, the after-effects of the war, and a reaction against the perceived decadence of the turn of the 20th century led to simpler forms, combined with more effective manufacturing for mass production of high-quality jewellery. Covering the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the style has become popularly known as Art Deco. Walter Gropius and the German Bauhaus movement, with their philosophy of \"no barriers between artists and craftsmen\" led to some interesting and stylistically simplified forms. Modern materials were also introduced: plastics and aluminium were first used in jewellery, and of note are the chromed pendants of Russian-born Bauhaus master Naum Slutzky. Technical mastery became as valued as the material itself. In the West, this period saw the reinvention of granulation by the German Elizabeth Treskow, although development of the re-invention has continued into the 1990s. It is based on the basic shapes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In Asia, the Indian subcontinent has the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making anywhere, Asia was the first place where these jewellery were made in large numbers for the royals with a history of over 5,000 years. One of the first to start jewellery making were the peoples of the Indus Valley civilization, in what is now predominately modern-day Pakistan and part of northern and western India. Early jewellery making in China started around the same period, but it became widespread with the spread of Buddhism around 2,000 years ago.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Chinese used silver in their jewellery more than gold. Blue kingfisher feathers were tied onto early Chinese jewellery and later, blue gems and glass were incorporated into designs. However, jade was preferred over any other stone. The Chinese revered jade because of the human-like qualities they assigned to it, such as its hardness, durability, and beauty. The first jade pieces were very simple, but as time progressed, more complex designs evolved. Jade rings from between the 4th and 7th centuries BC show evidence of having been worked with a compound milling machine, hundreds of years before the first mention of such equipment in the west.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In China, the most uncommon piece of jewellery is the earring, which was worn neither by men nor women. In modern times, earrings are still considered culturally taboo for men in China—in fact, in 2019, the Chinese video streaming service iQiyi began blurring the ears of male actors wearing earrings. Amulets were common, often with a Chinese symbol or dragon. Dragons, Chinese symbols, and phoenixes were frequently depicted on jewellery designs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The Chinese often placed their jewellery in their graves. Most Chinese graves found by archaeologists contain decorative jewellery.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Indian subcontinent has a long jewellery history, which has gone through various changes via cultural influence and politics for more than 5,000–8,000 years. Because India had an abundant supply of precious metals and gems, it prospered financially through export and exchange with other countries. While European traditions were heavily influenced by waxing and waning empires, India enjoyed a continuous development of art forms for some 5,000 years. One of the first to start jewellery making were the peoples of the Indus Valley civilization. By 1500 BC, the peoples of the Indus Valley were creating gold earrings and necklaces, bead necklaces, and metallic bangles. Before 2100 BC, prior to the period when metals were widely used, the largest jewellery trade in the Indus Valley region was the bead trade. Beads in the Indus Valley were made using simple techniques. First, a bead maker would need a rough stone, which would be bought from an eastern stone trader. The stone would then be placed into a hot oven where it would be heated until it turned deep red, a colour highly prized by people of the Indus Valley. The red stone would then be chipped to the right size and a hole bored through it with primitive drills. The beads were then polished. Some beads were also painted with designs. This art form was often passed down through the family. Children of bead makers often learned how to work beads from a young age. Each stone had its own characteristics related to Hinduism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Jewellery in the Indus Valley Civilization was worn predominantly by females, who wore numerous clay or shell bracelets on their wrists. They were often shaped like doughnuts and painted black. Over time, clay bangles were discarded for more durable ones. In present-day India, bangles are made out of metal or glass. Other pieces that women frequently wore were thin bands of gold that would be worn on the forehead, earrings, primitive brooches, chokers, and gold rings. Although women wore jewellery the most, some men in the Indus Valley wore beads. Small beads were often crafted to be placed in men and women's hair. The beads were about one millimetre long.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "A female skeleton (presently on display at the National Museum, New Delhi, India) wears a carlinean bangle (bracelet) on her left hand. Kada is a special kind of bracelet and is widely popular in Indian culture. They symbolize animals such as peacock, elephant, etc.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "According to Hindu belief, gold and silver are considered as sacred metals. Gold is symbolic of the warm sun, while silver suggests the cool moon. Both are the quintessential metals of Indian jewellery. Pure gold does not oxidise or corrode with time, which is why Hindu tradition associates gold with immortality. Gold imagery occurs frequently in ancient Indian literature. In the Vedic Hindu belief of cosmological creation, the source of physical and spiritual human life originated in and evolved from a golden womb (hiranyagarbha) or egg (hiranyanda), a metaphor of the sun, whose light rises from the primordial waters.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Jewellery had great status with India's royalty; it was so powerful that they established laws, limiting wearing of jewellery to royalty. Only royalty and a few others to whom they granted permission could wear gold ornaments on their feet. This would normally be considered breaking the appreciation of the sacred metals. Even though the majority of the Indian population wore jewellery, Maharajas and people related to royalty had a deeper connection with jewellery. The Maharaja's role was so important that the Hindu philosophers identified him as central to the smooth working of the world. He was considered as a divine being, a deity in human form, whose duty was to uphold and protect dharma, the moral order of the universe. The largest ever single order to Cartier was made in 1925 by the Indian royalty, the Maharaja of Patiala, for the Patiala Necklace and other jewelry worth ₹1,000 million (equivalent to ₹210 billion, US$2.7 billion or €2.6 billion in 2023).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Navaratna (nine gems) is a powerful jewel frequently worn by a Maharaja (Emperor). It is an amulet, which comprises diamond, pearl, ruby, sapphire, emerald, topaz, cat's eye, coral, and hyacinth (red zircon). Each of these stones is associated with a celestial deity, represented the totality of the Hindu universe when all nine gems are together. The diamond is the most powerful gem among the nine stones. There were various cuts for the gemstone. Indian Kings bought gemstones privately from the sellers. Maharaja and other royal family members value gem as Hindu God. They exchanged gems with people to whom they were very close, especially the royal family members and other intimate allies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "India was the first country to mine diamonds, with some mines dating back to 296 BC. India traded the diamonds, realising their valuable qualities. Historically, diamonds have been given to retain or regain a lover's or ruler's lost favour, as symbols of tribute, or as an expression of fidelity in exchange for concessions and protection. Mughal emperors and Kings used the diamonds as a means of assuring their immortality by having their names and worldly titles inscribed upon them. Moreover, it has played and continues to play a pivotal role in Indian social, political, economic, and religious event, as it often has done elsewhere. In Indian history, diamonds have been used to acquire military equipment, finance wars, foment revolutions, and tempt defections. They have contributed to the abdication or the decapitation of potentates. They have been used to murder a representative of the dominating power by lacing his food with crushed diamond. Indian diamonds have been used as security to finance large loans needed to buttress politically or economically tottering regimes. Victorious military heroes have been honoured by rewards of diamonds and also have been used as ransom payment for release from imprisonment or abduction.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Today, many jewellery designs and traditions are used, and jewellery is commonplace in Indian ceremonies and weddings. For many Indians, especially those who follow the Hindu or Jain faiths, bridal jewellery is known as streedhan and functions as personal wealth for the bride only, as a sort of financial security. For this reason, this jewellery, especially in the sacred metals of gold and silver, has large cultural significance for Indian brides. Jewellery is worn on the arms and hands, ears, neck, hair, head, feet, toes and waist to bless the bride with prosperity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Jewellery making started in the Americas with the arrival of Paleo-Indians more than 15,000 years ago. This jewellery would have been made from stone, shell, bone and other perishable materials. The American continent is home to 2 cradles of civilization: in the Andes and Mesoamerica. Cultures in these regions developed more complex methods of jewellery creation. The Andes is the origin of hot working metallurgy in the Americas and consequently the region has the longest history of work in materials such as silver, platinum and gold. Metallurgy began in Mesoamerica during the Termainal Classic era, likely arriving from direct maritime trade with the Andean cultures. As a result, western Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Tarascans and Mixtecs, had more complex use of the technology.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "With the Moche culture, goldwork flourished. The pieces are no longer simple metalwork, but are now masterful examples of jewellery making. Pieces are sophisticated in their design, and feature inlays of turquoise, mother of pearl, spondylus shell, and amethyst. The nose and ear ornaments, chest plates, small containers and whistles are considered masterpieces of ancient Peruvian culture. A notable example of Andean metallurgy is the Northern Andean cultures' work with platinum, which has a much higher melting point than other precious metals. There are only a few known examples of cold worked platinum in the Old World and no known intentionally hot worked examples (platinum was not identified as a separate element and small inclusions appeared in some goldwork). In the New World however, certain Andean cultures recognized platinum as a separate metal and were able to incorporate it into jewellery, such as through sintering it with gold.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Among the Late Post-Classic Aztecs, only nobility wore gold jewellery, as it showed their rank, power, and wealth. A large portion of \"Aztec gold\" jewellery was created by Mixtec artisans. The Mixtecs were particularly known for their goldwork and gold jewellery was part of the tribute paid by Mixtec polities to the Aztecs. In general, the more jewellery an Aztec noble wore, the higher his status or prestige. The Emperor and his High Priests, for example, would be nearly completely covered in jewellery when making public appearances. Although gold was the most common and a popular material used in Aztec jewellery, jade, turquoise, and certain feathers were considered more valuable. In addition to adornment and status, the Aztecs also used jewellery in sacrifices to appease the gods.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Another ancient American civilization with expertise in jewellery making were the Maya. During the Pre-Classic and Classic era of Maya civilization, the Maya were making jewellery from local materials such as jade, pearls, and sea shell while also incorporating imported materials such as obsidian and turquoise. In the Terminal Classic and Post-Classic, importation of gold, silver, bronze, and copper lead to the use of these materials in jewellery. Merchants and nobility were the only few that wore expensive jewellery in the Maya region, much the same as with the Aztecs. Jade in particular had an important role across Mesoamerica.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In Northern America, Native Americans used shells, wood, turquoise, and soapstone The turquoise was used in necklaces and to be placed in earrings. The turquoise incorporated into Mesoamerican jewellery was primarily obtained through trade with Oasisamerica. Native Americans with access to oyster shells, often located in only one location in America, traded the shells with other tribes, showing the great importance of the body adornment trade in Northern America.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Jewellery played a major role in the fate of the Americas when the Spanish colonizers were spurred to search for gold on the American mainland after coming into contact with Caribbean natives that had gold jewellery obtained through trade with the mainland. Continued contact with Native Americans wearing gold jewellery eventually lead to Spanish expeditions of the mythological El Dorado.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Native American jewellery is the personal adornment, often in the forms of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, pins, brooches, labrets, and more, made by the Indigenous peoples of the United States. Native American jewellery reflects the cultural diversity and history of its makers. Native American tribes continue to develop distinct aesthetics rooted in their personal artistic visions and cultural traditions. Artists create jewellery for adornment, ceremonies, and trade. Lois Sherr Dubin writes, \"[i]n the absence of written languages, adornment became an important element of Indian [Native American] communication, conveying many levels of information.\" Later, jewellery and personal adornment \"...signaled resistance to assimilation. It remains a major statement of tribal and individual identity.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Within the Haida Nation of the Pacific Northwest, copper was used as a form of jewellery for creating bracelets.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Metalsmiths, beaders, carvers, and lapidaries combine a variety of metals, hardwoods, precious and semi-precious gemstones, beadwork, quillwork, teeth, bones, hide, vegetal fibres, and other materials to create jewellery. Contemporary Native American jewellery ranges from hand-quarried and processed stones and shells to computer-fabricated steel and titanium jewellery.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Jewellery making in the Pacific started later than in other areas because of recent human settlement. Early Pacific jewellery was made of bone, wood, and other natural materials, and thus has not survived. Most Pacific jewellery is worn above the waist, with headdresses, necklaces, hair pins, and arm and waist belts being the most common pieces.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Jewellery in the Pacific, with the exception of Australia, is worn to be a symbol of either fertility or power. Elaborate headdresses are worn by many Pacific cultures and some, such as the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea, wear certain headdresses once they have killed an enemy. Tribesman may wear boar bones through their noses.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Island jewellery is still very much primal because of the lack of communication with outside cultures. Some areas of Borneo and Papua New Guinea are yet to be explored by Western nations. However, the island nations that were flooded with Western missionaries have had drastic changes made to their jewellery designs. Missionaries saw any type of tribal jewellery as a sign of the wearer's devotion to paganism. Thus many tribal designs were lost forever in the mass conversion to Christianity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Australia is now the number one supplier of opals in the world. Opals had already been mined in Europe and South America for many years prior, but in the late 19th century, the Australian opal market became predominant. Australian opals are only mined in a few select places around the country, making it one of the most profitable stones in the Pacific.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The New Zealand Māori traditionally had a strong culture of personal adornment, most famously the hei-tiki. Hei-tikis are traditionally carved by hand from bone, nephrite, or bowenite.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Nowadays a wide range of such traditionally inspired items such as bone carved pendants based on traditional fishhooks hei matau and other greenstone jewellery are popular with young New Zealanders of all backgrounds – for whom they relate to a generalized sense of New Zealand identity. These trends have contributed towards a worldwide interest in traditional Māori culture and arts.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Other than jewellery created through Māori influence, modern jewellery in New Zealand is multicultural and varied.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Most modern commercial jewellery continues traditional forms and styles, but designers such as Georg Jensen have widened the concept of wearable art. The advent of new materials, such as plastics, Precious Metal Clay (PMC), and colouring techniques, has led to increased variety in styles. Other advances, such as the development of improved pearl harvesting by people such as Mikimoto Kōkichi and the development of improved quality artificial gemstones such as moissanite (a diamond simulant), has placed jewellery within the economic grasp of a much larger segment of the population.",
"title": "Modern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The \"jewellery as art\" movement was spearheaded by artisans such as Robert Lee Morris and continued by designers such as Gill Forsbrook in the UK. Influence from other cultural forms is also evident. One example of this is bling-bling style jewellery, popularised by hip-hop and rap artists in the early 21st century, e.g. grills, a type of jewellery worn over the teeth.",
"title": "Modern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The late 20th century saw the blending of European design with oriental techniques such as Mokume-gane. The following are innovations in the decades straddling the year 2000: \"Mokume-gane, hydraulic die forming, anti-clastic raising, fold-forming, reactive metal anodising, shell forms, PMC, photoetching, and [use of] CAD/CAM.\"",
"title": "Modern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Also, 3D printing as a production technique gains more and more importance. With a great variety of services offering this production method, jewellery design becomes accessible to a growing number of creatives. An important advantage of using 3d printing are the relatively low costs for prototypes, small batch series or unique and personalized designs. Shapes that are hard or impossible to create by hand can often be realized by 3D printing. Popular materials to print include polyamide, steel and wax (latter for further processing). Every printable material has its very own constraints that have to be considered while designing the piece of jewellery using 3D modelling software.",
"title": "Modern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Artisan jewellery continues to grow as both a hobby and a profession. With more than 17 United States periodicals about beading alone, resources, accessibility, and a low initial cost of entry continues to expand production of hand-made adornments. Some fine examples of artisan jewellery can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The increase in numbers of students choosing to study jewellery design and production in Australia has grown in the past 20 years, and Australia now has a thriving contemporary jewellery community. Many of these jewellers have embraced modern materials and techniques, as well as incorporating traditional workmanship.",
"title": "Modern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "More expansive use of metal to adorn the wearer, where the piece is larger and more elaborate than what would normally be considered jewellery, has come to be referred to by designers and fashion writers as metal couture.",
"title": "Modern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Freemasons attach jewels to their detachable collars when in Lodge to signify a Brothers Office held with the Lodge. For example, the square represents the Master of the Lodge and the dove represents the Deacon.",
"title": "Masonic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Jewellery used in body modification can be simple and plain or dramatic and extreme. The use of simple silver studs, rings, and earrings predominates. Common jewellery pieces such as earrings are a form of body modification, as they are accommodated by creating a small hole in the ear.",
"title": "Body modification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Padaung women in Myanmar place large golden rings around their necks. From as early as five years old, girls are introduced to their first neck ring. Over the years, more rings are added. In addition to the twenty-plus pounds of rings on her neck, a woman will also wear just as many rings on her calves. At their extent, some necks modified like this can reach 10–15 in (25–38 cm) long. The practice has health impacts and has in recent years declined from cultural norm to tourist curiosity. Tribes related to the Padaung, as well as other cultures throughout the world, use jewellery to stretch their earlobes or enlarge ear piercings. In the Americas, labrets have been worn since before first contact by Innu and First Nations peoples of the northwest coast. Lip plates have been worn by the African Mursi and Sara people, as well as some South American peoples.",
"title": "Body modification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In the late twentieth century, the influence of modern primitivism led to many of these practices being incorporated into western subcultures. Many of these practices rely on a combination of body modification and decorative objects, thus keeping the distinction between these two types of decoration blurred.",
"title": "Body modification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In many cultures, jewellery is used as a temporary body modifier; in some cases, with hooks or other objects being placed into the recipient's skin. Although this procedure is often carried out by tribal or semi-tribal groups, often acting under a trance during religious ceremonies, this practice has seeped into western culture. Many extreme-jewellery shops now cater to people wanting large hooks or spikes set into their skin. Most often, these hooks are used in conjunction with pulleys to hoist the recipient into the air. This practice is said to give an erotic feeling to the person and some couples have even performed their marriage ceremony whilst being suspended by hooks.",
"title": "Body modification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "According to a 2007 KPMG study, the largest jewellery market is the United States with a market share of 31%, Japan, India, China, and the Middle East each with 8–9%, and Italy with 5%. The authors of the study predicted a dramatic change in market shares by 2015, where the market share of the United States will have dropped to around 25%, and China and India will increase theirs to over 13%. The Trend of buying jewellery online is also increasing day by day, as a result the best quality jewellery can be provided at a cheaper price to any part of India via many online shops. The Middle East will remain more or less constant at 9%, whereas Europe's and Japan's market share will be halved and become less than 4% for Japan, and less than 3% for the biggest individual European countries, Italy and the UK.",
"title": "Jewellery market"
}
]
| Jewellery consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western perspective, the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal such as gold often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as glass, shells and other plant materials may be used. Jewellery is one of the oldest types of archaeological artefact – with 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells thought to be the oldest known jewellery. The basic forms of jewellery vary between cultures but are often extremely long-lived; in European cultures the most common forms of jewellery listed above have persisted since ancient times, while other forms such as adornments for the nose or ankle, important in other cultures, are much less common. Jewellery may be made from a wide range of materials. Gemstones and similar materials such as amber and coral, precious metals, beads, and shells have been widely used, and enamel has often been important. In most cultures jewellery can be understood as a status symbol, for its material properties, its patterns, or for meaningful symbols. Jewellery has been made to adorn nearly every body part, from hairpins to toe rings, and even genital jewellery. In modern European culture the amount worn by adult males is relatively low compared with other cultures and other periods in European culture. The word jewellery itself is derived from the word jewel, which was anglicised from the Old French "jouel", and beyond that, to the Latin word "jocale", meaning plaything. In British English, Indian English, New Zealand English, Hiberno-English, Australian English, and South African English it is spelled jewellery, while the spelling is jewelry in American English. Both are used in Canadian English, though jewellery prevails by a two to one margin. In French and a few other European languages the equivalent term, joaillerie, may also cover decorated metalwork in precious metal such as objets d'art and church items, not just objects worn on the person. | 2001-05-10T16:34:56Z | 2023-12-21T14:01:07Z | [
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15,740 | Jan Berglin | Jan Berglin (born March 24, 1960) is a Swedish cartoonist who made his debut in the Uppsala student newspaper Ergo in 1985. After completing his studies, Berglin has been living in Gävle where he works as a teacher of Swedish and religion. He published his early strips in the local social democratic newspaper Arbetarbladet, but became known to a wider audience in 1995, when he started to draw for the Stockholm-based but nationally distributed conservative newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. His strips have been collected and republished in several albums.
Berglin's strips, usually in four panels, tend to find their humour in a sometimes absurd mix of everyday situations and literary and philosophical references or reflections. When he was awarded the Alf Henrikson Prize in 2004, the jury's motivation spoke of his renditions of the "existence of the everyday human between ideals and matter".
In later years Berglin has acknowledged the input of his wife Maria Berglin, an artist and literary critic, within his strips by signing them "Berglins". | [
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"text": "Jan Berglin (born March 24, 1960) is a Swedish cartoonist who made his debut in the Uppsala student newspaper Ergo in 1985. After completing his studies, Berglin has been living in Gävle where he works as a teacher of Swedish and religion. He published his early strips in the local social democratic newspaper Arbetarbladet, but became known to a wider audience in 1995, when he started to draw for the Stockholm-based but nationally distributed conservative newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. His strips have been collected and republished in several albums.",
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"text": "Berglin's strips, usually in four panels, tend to find their humour in a sometimes absurd mix of everyday situations and literary and philosophical references or reflections. When he was awarded the Alf Henrikson Prize in 2004, the jury's motivation spoke of his renditions of the \"existence of the everyday human between ideals and matter\".",
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| Jan Berglin is a Swedish cartoonist who made his debut in the Uppsala student newspaper Ergo in 1985. After completing his studies, Berglin has been living in Gävle where he works as a teacher of Swedish and religion. He published his early strips in the local social democratic newspaper Arbetarbladet, but became known to a wider audience in 1995, when he started to draw for the Stockholm-based but nationally distributed conservative newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. His strips have been collected and republished in several albums. Berglin's strips, usually in four panels, tend to find their humour in a sometimes absurd mix of everyday situations and literary and philosophical references or reflections. When he was awarded the Alf Henrikson Prize in 2004, the jury's motivation spoke of his renditions of the "existence of the everyday human between ideals and matter". In later years Berglin has acknowledged the input of his wife Maria Berglin, an artist and literary critic, within his strips by signing them "Berglins". | 2023-06-02T18:20:18Z | [
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|
15,744 | Jim Jarmusch | James Robert Jarmusch (/ˈdʒɑːrməʃ/ JAR-məsh; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Paterson (2016). Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002. As a musician Jarmusch has composed music for his films and released three albums with Jozef van Wissem.
Jarmusch was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the middle of three children of middle-class suburbanites. His mother, of German and Irish descent, had been a reviewer of film and theatre for the Akron Beacon Journal before marrying his father, a businessman of Czech and German descent who worked for the B.F. Goodrich Company. She introduced Jarmusch to cinema by leaving him at a local cinema to watch matinee double features such as Attack of the Crab Monsters and Creature From the Black Lagoon while she ran errands. The first adult film he recalls seeing was the 1958 cult classic Thunder Road, the violence and darkness of which left an impression on the seven-year-old Jarmusch. Another B-movie influence from his childhood was Ghoulardi, an eccentric Cleveland television show which featured horror films.
The key, I think, to Jim, is that he went gray when he was 15... As a result, he always felt like an immigrant in the teenage world. He's been an immigrant—a benign, fascinated foreigner—ever since. And all his films are about that.
—Tom Waits, as quoted in The New York Times, 2005.
Jarmusch was an avid reader in his youth and acquired an enthusiasm for film. He had an even greater interest in literature which was encouraged by his grandmother. Though he refused to attend church with his Episcopalian parents (not liking "the idea of sitting in a stuffy room wearing a little tie"), Jarmusch credits literature with shaping his metaphysical beliefs and leading him to reconsider theology in his mid-teens.
From his peers he developed a taste for counterculture, and he and his friends would steal the records and books of their older siblings—this included works by William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and The Mothers of Invention. They made fake identity documents which allowed them to visit bars at the weekend but also the local art house cinema, which typically showed pornographic films but would occasionally feature underground films such as Robert Downey, Sr.'s Putney Swope and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls. At one point, he took an apprenticeship with a commercial photographer. He later remarked, "Growing up in Ohio was just planning to get out."
After graduating from high school in 1971, Jarmusch moved to Chicago and enrolled in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. After being asked to leave because he had neglected to take any journalism courses—Jarmusch favored literature and art history—he transferred to Columbia University the following year, with the intention of becoming a poet. At Columbia he studied English and American literature under professors including New York School avant garde poets Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro. At Columbia, he began to write short "semi-narrative abstract pieces" and edited the undergraduate literary journal The Columbia Review.
During his final year studying at Columbia, Jarmusch moved to Paris for what was initially a summer semester on an exchange program, but turned into 10 months. He worked as a delivery driver for an art gallery and spent most of his time at the Cinémathèque Française.
That's where I saw things I had only read about and heard about—films by many of the good Japanese directors, like Imamura, Ozu, Mizoguchi. Also, films by European directors like Bresson and Dreyer, and even American films, like the retrospective of Samuel Fuller's films, which I only knew from seeing a few of them on television late at night. When I came back from Paris, I was still writing, and my writing was becoming more cinematic in certain ways, more visually descriptive.
Jarmusch graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. He was broke and working as a musician in New York City after returning from Paris in 1976. He applied on a whim to the graduate film school of New York University's School of the Arts (then under the direction of Hollywood director László Benedek). Though he lacked experience in filmmaking, his submission of a collection of photographs and an essay about film secured his acceptance into the program. He studied there for four years; he met fellow students and future collaborators Sara Driver, Tom DiCillo, Howard Brookner, and Spike Lee in the process. During the late 1970s in New York City, Jarmusch and his contemporaries were part of an alternative culture scene centered on the CBGB music club.
In his final year at New York University, Jarmusch worked as an assistant to the film noir director Nicholas Ray, who was at that time teaching in the department. In an anecdote, Jarmusch recounted the formative experience of showing his mentor his first script; Ray disapproved of its lack of action, to which Jarmusch responded after meditating on the critique by reworking the script to be even less eventful. On Jarmusch's return with the revised script, Ray reacted favourably to his student's dissent, citing approvingly the young student's obstinate independence. Jarmusch was the only person Ray brought to work—as his personal assistant—on Lightning Over Water, a documentary about his dying years on which he was collaborating with Wim Wenders. Ray died in 1979 after a long fight with cancer. A few days afterwards, having been encouraged by Ray and New York underground filmmaker Amos Poe and using scholarship funds given by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation to pay for his school tuition, Jarmusch started work on a film for his final project. The university was unimpressed with Jarmusch's use of his funding as well as the project itself and refused to award him a degree.
Jarmusch's final year university project was completed in 1980 as Permanent Vacation, his first feature film. It had its premiere at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg (formerly known as Filmweek Mannheim) and won the Josef von Sternberg Award. It was made on a shoestring budget of around $12,000 in misdirected scholarship funds and shot by cinematographer Tom DiCillo on 16 mm film. The quasi-autobiographical feature follows an adolescent drifter (Chris Parker) as he wanders around downtown Manhattan.
The film was not released theatrically and did not attract the sort of adulation from critics that greeted his later work. The Washington Post staff writer Hal Hinson would disparagingly comment in an aside during a review of Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989) that in the director's debut, "the only talent he demonstrated was for collecting egregiously untalented actors". The bleak and unrefined Permanent Vacation is nevertheless one of the director's most personal films, and established many of the hallmarks he would exhibit in his later work, including derelict urban settings, chance encounters, and a wry sensibility.
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Jarmusch's first major film, Stranger Than Paradise, was produced on a budget of approximately $125,000 and released in 1984 to much critical acclaim. A deadpan comedy recounting a strange journey of three disillusioned youths from New York through Cleveland to Florida, the film broke many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking. It was awarded the Camera d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival as well as the 1985 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film, and became a landmark work in modern independent film.
Down by Law (1986)
In 1986, Jarmusch wrote and directed Down by Law, starring musicians John Lurie and Tom Waits, and Italian comic actor Roberto Benigni (his introduction to American audiences) as three convicts who escape from a New Orleans jailhouse. Shot like the director's previous efforts in black and white, this constructivist neo-noir was Jarmusch's first collaboration with Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller, who had been known for his work with Wenders.
Further films His next two films each experimented with parallel narratives: Mystery Train (1989) told three successive stories set on the same night in and around a small Memphis hotel, and Night on Earth (1991) involved five cab drivers and their passengers on rides in five different world cities, beginning at sundown in Los Angeles and ending at sunrise in Helsinki. Less bleak and somber than Jarmusch's earlier work, Mystery Train nevertheless retained the director's askance conception of America. He wrote Night on Earth in about a week, out of frustration at the collapse of the production of another film he had written and the desire to visit and collaborate with friends such as Benigni, Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, and Isaach de Bankolé.
As a result of his early work, Jarmusch became an influential representative of the trend of the American road movie. Not intended to appeal to mainstream filmgoers, these early Jarmusch films were embraced by art house audiences, gaining a small but dedicated American following and cult status in Europe and Japan. Each of the four films had its premiere at the New York Film Festival, while Mystery Train was in competition at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. Jarmusch's distinctive aesthetic and auteur status fomented a critical backlash at the close of this early period, however; though reviewers praised the charm and adroitness of Mystery Train and Night On Earth, the director was increasingly charged with repetitiveness and risk-aversion.
A film appearance in 1989 as a used car dealer in the cult comedy Leningrad Cowboys Go America further solidified his interest and participation in the road movie genre. In 1991 Jarmusch appeared as himself in Episode One of John Lurie's cult television series Fishing With John.
Dead Man (1995)
In 1995, Jarmusch released Dead Man, a period film set in the 19th century American West starring Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer. Produced at a cost of almost $9 million with a high-profile cast including John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne and, in his final role, Robert Mitchum, the film marked a significant departure for the director from his previous features. Earnest in tone in comparison to its self-consciously hip and ironic predecessors, Dead Man was thematically expansive and of an often violent and progressively more surreal character. The film was shot in black and white by Robby Müller, and features a score composed and performed by Neil Young, for whom Jarmusch subsequently filmed the tour documentary Year of the Horse, released to tepid reviews in 1997. Though ill-received by mainstream American reviewers, Dead Man found much favor internationally and among critics, many of whom lauded it as a visionary masterpiece. It has been hailed as one of the few films made by a Caucasian that presents an authentic Native American culture and character, and Jarmusch stands by it as such, though it has attracted both praise and castigation for its portrayal of the American West, violence, and especially Native Americans.
Ghost Dog (1999)
Following artistic success and critical acclaim in the American independent film community, he achieved mainstream recognition with his far-East philosophical crime film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), shot in Jersey City and starring Forest Whitaker as a young inner-city man who has found purpose for his life by unyieldingly conforming it to the Hagakure, an 18th-century philosophy text and training manual for samurai, becoming, as directed, a terrifyingly deadly hit-man for a local mob boss to whom he may owe a debt, and who then betrays him. The soundtrack was supplied by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, which blends into the director's "aesthetics of sampling". The film was unique among other things for the number of books important to and discussed by its characters, most of them listed bibliographically as part of the end credits. The film is also considered to be a homage to Le Samourai, a 1967 French New Wave film by auteur Jean-Pierre Melville, which starred renowned French actor Alain Delon in a strikingly similar role and narrative.
A five-year gap followed the release of Ghost Dog, which the director has attributed to a creative crisis he experienced in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York City. 2004 saw the eventual release of Coffee and Cigarettes, a collection of eleven short films of characters sitting around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes that had been filmed by Jarmusch over the course of the previous two decades. The first vignette, "Strange to Meet You", had been shot for and aired on Saturday Night Live in 1986, and paired Roberto Benigni with comedian Steven Wright. This had been followed three years later by "Twins", a segment featuring actors Steve Buscemi and Joie and Cinqué Lee, and then in 1993 with the Short Film Palme d'Or-winning "Somewhere in California", starring musicians Tom Waits and Iggy Pop.
Broken Flowers (2005)
He followed Coffee and Cigarettes in 2005 with Broken Flowers, which starred Bill Murray as an early retiree who goes in search of the mother of his unknown son in attempt to overcome a midlife crisis. Following the release of Broken Flowers, Jarmusch signed a deal with Fortissimo Films, whereby the distributor would fund and have "first-look" rights to the director's future films, and cover some of the overhead costs of his production company, Exoskeleton. The film premiered at the 58th Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or and received the Grand Prix. Film critic Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian described the film as "Jarmusch's most enjoyable, accessible work for some time, perhaps his most emotionally generous film...a very attractive piece of film-making, bolstered by terrific performances from an all-star cast, spearheaded by endlessly droll, seductively sensitive Bill Murray."
The Limits of Control (2009)
In 2009, Jarmusch released The Limits of Control, a sparse, meditative crime film set in Spain, it starred Isaach de Bankolé as a lone assassin with a secretive mission. A behind-the-scenes documentary, Behind Jim Jarmusch, was filmed over three days on the set of the film in Seville by director Léa Rinaldi. In October 2009, Jarmusch appeared as himself in an episode of the HBO series Bored to Death, and the following September, Jarmusch helped to curate the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in Monticello, New York.
In an August 2010 interview, Jarmusch revealed his forthcoming work schedule at that time:
I'm working on a documentary about the Stooges [Iggy Pop-fronted band]. It's going to take a few years. There's no rush on it, but it's something that Iggy asked me to do. I'm co-writing an "opera". It won't be a traditional opera, but it'll be about the inventor Nikola Tesla, with the composer Phil Klein. I have a new film project that's really foremost for me that I hope to shoot early next year with Tilda Swinton and Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, who was Alice in Wonderland in Tim Burton's film. I don't have that quite financed yet, so I'm working on that. I'm also making music and hoping to maybe score some silent films to put out. Our band will have an EP that we'll give out at ATP. We have enough music for three EPs or an album.
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Jarmusch eventually attained funding for the aforementioned film project after a protracted period and, in July 2012, Jarmusch began shooting Only Lovers Left Alive with Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston (who replaced Fassbender), Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, and John Hurt, while Jarmusch's musical project Sqürl were the main contributors to the film's soundtrack. The film screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), with Jarmusch explaining the seven-year completion time frame at the former: "The reason it took so long is that no one wanted to give us the money. It took years to put it together. Its (sic) getting more and more difficult for films that are a little unusual, or not predictable, or don't satisfy people's expectations of something." The film's budget was US$7 million and its UK release date was February 21, 2014.
Paterson (2016)
Jarmusch wrote and directed Paterson in 2016. The film follows the daily experiences of an inner-city bus driver and poet (Adam Driver) in Paterson, New Jersey, who shares the same name as the city. Paterson was inspired by objectivist American poet William Carlos Williams and his epic poem "Paterson". The film features the wry, minimalist style found in Jarmusch's other works and earned 22 award nominations for Jarmusch, Driver and Nellie, the dog featured in the film. The story focuses on Paterson's poetry writing efforts, interspersed with his observations and experiences of the residents he encounters on his bus route and in his daily life. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, writing: "A mild-mannered, almost startlingly undramatic work that offers discreet pleasures to longtime fans of the New York indie-scene veteran, who can always be counted on to go his own way." Eric Kohn, film critic of IndieWire wrote that the film was "an apt statement from Jarmusch, a filmmaker who continues to surprise and innovate while remaining true to his singular voice, and who here seems to have delivered its purest manifestation."
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Jarmusch wrote and directed his first horror film, the zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die featuring an ensemble cast which included performances from Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Carol Kane, and Selena Gomez. On June 14, 2019 the film premiered at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival and received mixed reviews. The film was distributed by Focus Features. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote of the film, "At times, the deadpan of Murray and Driver becomes, well, a bit deadening, and true wit is in short supply, even though the film remains amusing most of the way."
In April 2021, a short film titled French Water was released. Jarmusch directed and wrote the film for the Saint Laurent fashion house to celebrate the spring/summer 2021 collection. It starred Charlotte Gainsbourg and Julianne Moore among others.
In September 2021, he published his first work as a collage artist with Some Collages.
In the early 1980s, Jarmusch was part of a revolving lineup of musicians in Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day project, and later became the keyboardist and one of two vocalists for The Del-Byzanteens, a No Wave band who released the LP Lies to Live By in 1982.
Jarmusch is also featured on the album Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture (2005) in two interludes described by Sean Fennessy in a Pitchfork review of the album as both "bizarrely pretentious" and "reason alone to give it a listen". Jarmusch and Michel Gondry each contributed a remix to a limited edition release of the track "Blue Orchid" by The White Stripes in 2005.
The author of a series of essays on influential bands, Jarmusch has also had at least two poems published. He is a founding member of The Sons of Lee Marvin, a humorous "semi-secret society" of artists resembling the iconic actor, which issues communiqués and meets on occasion for the ostensible purpose of watching Marvin's films.
He released three collaborative albums with lutist Jozef van Wissem, Concerning the Entrance into Eternity (Important Records), The Mystery of Heaven (Sacred Bones Records), in 2012 and the 2019 release An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil (Sacred Bones Records).
Jarmusch is a member of the avant-garde rock band Sqürl with film associate Carter Logan and sound engineer Shane Stoneback. The band formed to create additional soundtrack for Jarmusch's film The Limits of Control, which they released together with two other songs on an EP called "Film Music from The Limits of Control" under the name Bad Rabbit. Sqürl's version of Wanda Jackson's 1961 song "Funnel of Love", featuring Madeline Follin of Cults on vocals, opens Jarmusch's 2014 film Only Lovers Left Alive. On March 8, 2023, Sqürl announced its debut album Silver Haze and released lead single "Berlin '87". The album was released on May 5 by Sacred Bones Records.
Dutch lute composer Jozef van Wissem also collaborated with Jarmusch on the soundtrack of Only Lovers Left Alive, and the pair also plays in a duo. Jarmusch first met van Wissem on a street in New York City's SoHo neighborhood in 2007, at which time the lute player handed the director a CD. Several months later, Jarmusch asked van Wissem to send his catalog of recordings and the two started playing together as part of their developing friendship. Van Wissem explained in early April 2014: "I know the way [Jarmusch] makes his films is kind of like a musician. He has music in his head when he's writing a script so it's more informed by a tonal thing than it is by anything else."
In 2014 Jarmusch shunned the "auteur theory" and likened the filmmaking process to human sexual reproduction:
I put 'A film by' as a protection of my rights, but I don't really believe it. It's important for me to have a final cut, and I do for every film. So I'm in the editing room every day, I'm the navigator of the ship, but I'm not the captain, I can't do it without everyone's equally valuable input. For me it's phases where I'm very solitary, writing, and then I'm preparing, getting the money, and then I'm with the crew and on a ship and it's amazing and exhausting and exhilarating, and then I'm alone with the editor again... I've said it before, it's like seduction, wild sex, and then pregnancy in the editing room. That's how it feels for me.
Jarmusch recorded a Q & A in 2010 for the Criterion Blu-ray release of Mystery Train. He explained at the beginning that he did this, instead of the usual practice of a director's commentary to be played over the film itself, because "I don't like looking at my films again--it's agony to me."
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don't bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from—it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch's Golden Rules – #5, 2004,
Jarmusch has been characterized as a minimalist filmmaker whose idiosyncratic films are unhurried. His films often eschew traditional narrative structure, lacking clear plot progression and focus more on mood and character development. In an interview early in his career, he stated that his goal was "to approximate real time for the audience."
His early work is marked by a brooding, contemplative tone, featuring extended silent scenes and prolonged still shots. He has experimented with a vignette format in three films that were either released, or begun around, the early 1990s: Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes. The Salt Lake Tribune critic Sean P. Means wrote that Jarmusch blends "film styles and genres with sharp wit and dark humor", while his style is also defined by a signature deadpan comedic tone.
The protagonists of Jarmusch's films are usually lone adventurers. The director's male characters have been described by critic Jennie Yabroff as "three time losers, petty thiefs and inept con men, all... eminently likeable, if not down right charming"; while novelist Paul Auster described them as "laconic, withdrawn, sorrowful mumblers".
Jarmusch has revealed that his instinct is a greater influence during the filmmaking process than any cognitive processes. He explained: "I feel like I have to listen to the film and let it tell me what it wants. Sometimes it mumbles and it isn't very clear." Films such as Dead Man and Limits of Control have polarized fans and general viewers alike, as Jarmusch's stylistic instinct is embedded in his strong sense of independence.
Though his films are predominantly set in the United States, Jarmusch has advanced the notion that he looks at America "through a foreigner's eyes", with the intention of creating a form of world cinema that synthesizes European and Japanese film with that of Hollywood. His films have often included foreign actors and characters, and (at times substantial) non-English dialogue. In his two later-nineties films, he dwelt on different cultures' experiences of violence, and on textual appropriations between cultures: a wandering Native American's love of William Blake, a black hitman's passionate devotion to the Hagakure. The interaction and syntheses between different cultures, the arbitrariness of national identity, and irreverence towards ethnocentric, patriotic or nationalistic sentiment are recurring themes in Jarmusch's work.
Jarmusch's fascination with music is another characteristic that is readily apparent in his work. Musicians appear frequently in key roles—John Lurie, Tom Waits, Gary Farmer, Youki Kudoh, RZA and Iggy Pop have featured in multiple Jarmusch films, while Joe Strummer and Screamin' Jay Hawkins appear in Mystery Train and GZA, Jack and Meg White feature in Coffee and Cigarettes. Hawkins' song "I Put a Spell on You" was central to the plot of Stranger than Paradise, while Mystery Train is inspired by and named after a song popularized by Elvis Presley, who is also the subject of a vignette in Coffee and Cigarettes. In the words of critic Vincent Canby, "Jarmusch's movies have the tempo and rhythm of blues and jazz, even in their use—or omission—of language. His films work on the senses much the way that some music does, unheard until it's too late to get it out of one's head."
During a 1989 interview Jarmusch commented on his narrative focus, "I'd rather make a movie about a guy walking his dog than about the emperor of China."
In 1980, Jarmusch's film Permanent Vacation won the Josef von Sternberg Award at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg. In 1999, he was laureate of the Douglas Sirk Preis at Filmfest Hamburg, Germany. In 1984, he won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes Film Festival for Stranger Than Paradise. In 2004, Jarmusch was honored with the "Filmmaker on the Edge Award" at the Provincetown International Film Festival. In 2005, he won the Grand Prix of the 2005 Cannes Film Festival for his film Broken Flowers.
Jarmusch is credited with having instigated the American independent film movement with Stranger Than Paradise. In her description of the film in a 2005 profile of the director for The New York Times, critic Lynn Hirschberg declared that Stranger than Paradise "permanently upended the idea of independent film as an intrinsically inaccessible avant-garde form". The success of the film accorded the director a certain iconic status within arthouse cinema, as an idiosyncratic and uncompromising auteur, exuding the aura of urban cool embodied by downtown Manhattan. Such perceptions were reinforced by the release of his subsequent features in the late 1980s, establishing him as one of the generation's most prominent and influential independent filmmakers.
New York critic and festival director Kent Jones undermined the "urban cool" association that Jarmusch has garnered and was quoted in a February 2014 media article, following the release of his eleventh feature film:
There's been an overemphasis on the hipness factor—and a lack of emphasis on his incredible attachment to the idea of celebrating poetry and culture. You can complain about the preciousness of a lot of his movies, [but] they are unapologetically standing up for poetry. [His attitude is] 'if you want to call me an elitist, go ahead, I don't care'.
Jarmusch's staunch independence has been represented by his success in retaining the negatives for all of his films, an achievement that was described by the Guardian's Jonathan Romney as "extremely rare." British producer Jeremy Thomas, who was one of the eventual financiers of Only Lovers Left Alive called Jarmusch "one of the great American independent film-makers" who is "the last of the line." Thomas believes that filmmakers like Jarmusch "are not coming through... any more."
In a 1989 review of his work, Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Jarmusch "the most adventurous and arresting film maker to surface in the American cinema in this decade". He was recognized with the "Filmmaker on the Edge" award at the 2004 Provincetown International Film Festival. A retrospective of the director's films was hosted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during February 1994, and another, "The Sad and Beautiful World of Jim Jarmusch", by the American Film Institute in August 2005.
While Swinton, who has worked with Jarmusch on numerous occasions, describes him as a "rock star", the director admits that "I don't know where I fit in. I don't feel tied to my time." Dutch lute player Jozef van Wissem, who worked on the score for Only Lovers Left Alive calls Jarmusch a "cultural sponge" who "absorbs everything."
The moving image collection of Jim Jarmusch is held at the Academy Film Archive.
Jarmusch rarely discusses his personal life in public. He divides his time between New York City and the Catskill Mountains. He stopped drinking coffee in 1986, the year of the first installment of Coffee and Cigarettes, although he continues to smoke cigarettes. He has been a vegetarian since 1987.
In a February 2014 interview Jarmusch stated that he is not interested in eternal life, as "there's something about the cycle of life that's very important, and to have that removed would be a burden".
Markings of an a indicated collaborators who acted in a film, c indicated that they composed music for the film.
Live albums
Other sources | [
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"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "James Robert Jarmusch (/ˈdʒɑːrməʃ/ JAR-məsh; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Paterson (2016). Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002. As a musician Jarmusch has composed music for his films and released three albums with Jozef van Wissem.",
"title": ""
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jarmusch was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the middle of three children of middle-class suburbanites. His mother, of German and Irish descent, had been a reviewer of film and theatre for the Akron Beacon Journal before marrying his father, a businessman of Czech and German descent who worked for the B.F. Goodrich Company. She introduced Jarmusch to cinema by leaving him at a local cinema to watch matinee double features such as Attack of the Crab Monsters and Creature From the Black Lagoon while she ran errands. The first adult film he recalls seeing was the 1958 cult classic Thunder Road, the violence and darkness of which left an impression on the seven-year-old Jarmusch. Another B-movie influence from his childhood was Ghoulardi, an eccentric Cleveland television show which featured horror films.",
"title": "Early life"
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{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The key, I think, to Jim, is that he went gray when he was 15... As a result, he always felt like an immigrant in the teenage world. He's been an immigrant—a benign, fascinated foreigner—ever since. And all his films are about that.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "—Tom Waits, as quoted in The New York Times, 2005.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Jarmusch was an avid reader in his youth and acquired an enthusiasm for film. He had an even greater interest in literature which was encouraged by his grandmother. Though he refused to attend church with his Episcopalian parents (not liking \"the idea of sitting in a stuffy room wearing a little tie\"), Jarmusch credits literature with shaping his metaphysical beliefs and leading him to reconsider theology in his mid-teens.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "From his peers he developed a taste for counterculture, and he and his friends would steal the records and books of their older siblings—this included works by William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and The Mothers of Invention. They made fake identity documents which allowed them to visit bars at the weekend but also the local art house cinema, which typically showed pornographic films but would occasionally feature underground films such as Robert Downey, Sr.'s Putney Swope and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls. At one point, he took an apprenticeship with a commercial photographer. He later remarked, \"Growing up in Ohio was just planning to get out.\"",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After graduating from high school in 1971, Jarmusch moved to Chicago and enrolled in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. After being asked to leave because he had neglected to take any journalism courses—Jarmusch favored literature and art history—he transferred to Columbia University the following year, with the intention of becoming a poet. At Columbia he studied English and American literature under professors including New York School avant garde poets Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro. At Columbia, he began to write short \"semi-narrative abstract pieces\" and edited the undergraduate literary journal The Columbia Review.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "During his final year studying at Columbia, Jarmusch moved to Paris for what was initially a summer semester on an exchange program, but turned into 10 months. He worked as a delivery driver for an art gallery and spent most of his time at the Cinémathèque Française.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "That's where I saw things I had only read about and heard about—films by many of the good Japanese directors, like Imamura, Ozu, Mizoguchi. Also, films by European directors like Bresson and Dreyer, and even American films, like the retrospective of Samuel Fuller's films, which I only knew from seeing a few of them on television late at night. When I came back from Paris, I was still writing, and my writing was becoming more cinematic in certain ways, more visually descriptive.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Jarmusch graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. He was broke and working as a musician in New York City after returning from Paris in 1976. He applied on a whim to the graduate film school of New York University's School of the Arts (then under the direction of Hollywood director László Benedek). Though he lacked experience in filmmaking, his submission of a collection of photographs and an essay about film secured his acceptance into the program. He studied there for four years; he met fellow students and future collaborators Sara Driver, Tom DiCillo, Howard Brookner, and Spike Lee in the process. During the late 1970s in New York City, Jarmusch and his contemporaries were part of an alternative culture scene centered on the CBGB music club.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In his final year at New York University, Jarmusch worked as an assistant to the film noir director Nicholas Ray, who was at that time teaching in the department. In an anecdote, Jarmusch recounted the formative experience of showing his mentor his first script; Ray disapproved of its lack of action, to which Jarmusch responded after meditating on the critique by reworking the script to be even less eventful. On Jarmusch's return with the revised script, Ray reacted favourably to his student's dissent, citing approvingly the young student's obstinate independence. Jarmusch was the only person Ray brought to work—as his personal assistant—on Lightning Over Water, a documentary about his dying years on which he was collaborating with Wim Wenders. Ray died in 1979 after a long fight with cancer. A few days afterwards, having been encouraged by Ray and New York underground filmmaker Amos Poe and using scholarship funds given by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation to pay for his school tuition, Jarmusch started work on a film for his final project. The university was unimpressed with Jarmusch's use of his funding as well as the project itself and refused to award him a degree.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jarmusch's final year university project was completed in 1980 as Permanent Vacation, his first feature film. It had its premiere at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg (formerly known as Filmweek Mannheim) and won the Josef von Sternberg Award. It was made on a shoestring budget of around $12,000 in misdirected scholarship funds and shot by cinematographer Tom DiCillo on 16 mm film. The quasi-autobiographical feature follows an adolescent drifter (Chris Parker) as he wanders around downtown Manhattan.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The film was not released theatrically and did not attract the sort of adulation from critics that greeted his later work. The Washington Post staff writer Hal Hinson would disparagingly comment in an aside during a review of Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989) that in the director's debut, \"the only talent he demonstrated was for collecting egregiously untalented actors\". The bleak and unrefined Permanent Vacation is nevertheless one of the director's most personal films, and established many of the hallmarks he would exhibit in his later work, including derelict urban settings, chance encounters, and a wry sensibility.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Stranger Than Paradise (1984)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Jarmusch's first major film, Stranger Than Paradise, was produced on a budget of approximately $125,000 and released in 1984 to much critical acclaim. A deadpan comedy recounting a strange journey of three disillusioned youths from New York through Cleveland to Florida, the film broke many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking. It was awarded the Camera d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival as well as the 1985 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film, and became a landmark work in modern independent film.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Down by Law (1986)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1986, Jarmusch wrote and directed Down by Law, starring musicians John Lurie and Tom Waits, and Italian comic actor Roberto Benigni (his introduction to American audiences) as three convicts who escape from a New Orleans jailhouse. Shot like the director's previous efforts in black and white, this constructivist neo-noir was Jarmusch's first collaboration with Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller, who had been known for his work with Wenders.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Further films His next two films each experimented with parallel narratives: Mystery Train (1989) told three successive stories set on the same night in and around a small Memphis hotel, and Night on Earth (1991) involved five cab drivers and their passengers on rides in five different world cities, beginning at sundown in Los Angeles and ending at sunrise in Helsinki. Less bleak and somber than Jarmusch's earlier work, Mystery Train nevertheless retained the director's askance conception of America. He wrote Night on Earth in about a week, out of frustration at the collapse of the production of another film he had written and the desire to visit and collaborate with friends such as Benigni, Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, and Isaach de Bankolé.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "As a result of his early work, Jarmusch became an influential representative of the trend of the American road movie. Not intended to appeal to mainstream filmgoers, these early Jarmusch films were embraced by art house audiences, gaining a small but dedicated American following and cult status in Europe and Japan. Each of the four films had its premiere at the New York Film Festival, while Mystery Train was in competition at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. Jarmusch's distinctive aesthetic and auteur status fomented a critical backlash at the close of this early period, however; though reviewers praised the charm and adroitness of Mystery Train and Night On Earth, the director was increasingly charged with repetitiveness and risk-aversion.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A film appearance in 1989 as a used car dealer in the cult comedy Leningrad Cowboys Go America further solidified his interest and participation in the road movie genre. In 1991 Jarmusch appeared as himself in Episode One of John Lurie's cult television series Fishing With John.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Dead Man (1995)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1995, Jarmusch released Dead Man, a period film set in the 19th century American West starring Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer. Produced at a cost of almost $9 million with a high-profile cast including John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne and, in his final role, Robert Mitchum, the film marked a significant departure for the director from his previous features. Earnest in tone in comparison to its self-consciously hip and ironic predecessors, Dead Man was thematically expansive and of an often violent and progressively more surreal character. The film was shot in black and white by Robby Müller, and features a score composed and performed by Neil Young, for whom Jarmusch subsequently filmed the tour documentary Year of the Horse, released to tepid reviews in 1997. Though ill-received by mainstream American reviewers, Dead Man found much favor internationally and among critics, many of whom lauded it as a visionary masterpiece. It has been hailed as one of the few films made by a Caucasian that presents an authentic Native American culture and character, and Jarmusch stands by it as such, though it has attracted both praise and castigation for its portrayal of the American West, violence, and especially Native Americans.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Ghost Dog (1999)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Following artistic success and critical acclaim in the American independent film community, he achieved mainstream recognition with his far-East philosophical crime film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), shot in Jersey City and starring Forest Whitaker as a young inner-city man who has found purpose for his life by unyieldingly conforming it to the Hagakure, an 18th-century philosophy text and training manual for samurai, becoming, as directed, a terrifyingly deadly hit-man for a local mob boss to whom he may owe a debt, and who then betrays him. The soundtrack was supplied by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, which blends into the director's \"aesthetics of sampling\". The film was unique among other things for the number of books important to and discussed by its characters, most of them listed bibliographically as part of the end credits. The film is also considered to be a homage to Le Samourai, a 1967 French New Wave film by auteur Jean-Pierre Melville, which starred renowned French actor Alain Delon in a strikingly similar role and narrative.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A five-year gap followed the release of Ghost Dog, which the director has attributed to a creative crisis he experienced in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York City. 2004 saw the eventual release of Coffee and Cigarettes, a collection of eleven short films of characters sitting around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes that had been filmed by Jarmusch over the course of the previous two decades. The first vignette, \"Strange to Meet You\", had been shot for and aired on Saturday Night Live in 1986, and paired Roberto Benigni with comedian Steven Wright. This had been followed three years later by \"Twins\", a segment featuring actors Steve Buscemi and Joie and Cinqué Lee, and then in 1993 with the Short Film Palme d'Or-winning \"Somewhere in California\", starring musicians Tom Waits and Iggy Pop.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Broken Flowers (2005)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "He followed Coffee and Cigarettes in 2005 with Broken Flowers, which starred Bill Murray as an early retiree who goes in search of the mother of his unknown son in attempt to overcome a midlife crisis. Following the release of Broken Flowers, Jarmusch signed a deal with Fortissimo Films, whereby the distributor would fund and have \"first-look\" rights to the director's future films, and cover some of the overhead costs of his production company, Exoskeleton. The film premiered at the 58th Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or and received the Grand Prix. Film critic Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian described the film as \"Jarmusch's most enjoyable, accessible work for some time, perhaps his most emotionally generous film...a very attractive piece of film-making, bolstered by terrific performances from an all-star cast, spearheaded by endlessly droll, seductively sensitive Bill Murray.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Limits of Control (2009)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 2009, Jarmusch released The Limits of Control, a sparse, meditative crime film set in Spain, it starred Isaach de Bankolé as a lone assassin with a secretive mission. A behind-the-scenes documentary, Behind Jim Jarmusch, was filmed over three days on the set of the film in Seville by director Léa Rinaldi. In October 2009, Jarmusch appeared as himself in an episode of the HBO series Bored to Death, and the following September, Jarmusch helped to curate the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in Monticello, New York.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In an August 2010 interview, Jarmusch revealed his forthcoming work schedule at that time:",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "I'm working on a documentary about the Stooges [Iggy Pop-fronted band]. It's going to take a few years. There's no rush on it, but it's something that Iggy asked me to do. I'm co-writing an \"opera\". It won't be a traditional opera, but it'll be about the inventor Nikola Tesla, with the composer Phil Klein. I have a new film project that's really foremost for me that I hope to shoot early next year with Tilda Swinton and Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, who was Alice in Wonderland in Tim Burton's film. I don't have that quite financed yet, so I'm working on that. I'm also making music and hoping to maybe score some silent films to put out. Our band will have an EP that we'll give out at ATP. We have enough music for three EPs or an album.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Jarmusch eventually attained funding for the aforementioned film project after a protracted period and, in July 2012, Jarmusch began shooting Only Lovers Left Alive with Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston (who replaced Fassbender), Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, and John Hurt, while Jarmusch's musical project Sqürl were the main contributors to the film's soundtrack. The film screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), with Jarmusch explaining the seven-year completion time frame at the former: \"The reason it took so long is that no one wanted to give us the money. It took years to put it together. Its (sic) getting more and more difficult for films that are a little unusual, or not predictable, or don't satisfy people's expectations of something.\" The film's budget was US$7 million and its UK release date was February 21, 2014.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Paterson (2016)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Jarmusch wrote and directed Paterson in 2016. The film follows the daily experiences of an inner-city bus driver and poet (Adam Driver) in Paterson, New Jersey, who shares the same name as the city. Paterson was inspired by objectivist American poet William Carlos Williams and his epic poem \"Paterson\". The film features the wry, minimalist style found in Jarmusch's other works and earned 22 award nominations for Jarmusch, Driver and Nellie, the dog featured in the film. The story focuses on Paterson's poetry writing efforts, interspersed with his observations and experiences of the residents he encounters on his bus route and in his daily life. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, writing: \"A mild-mannered, almost startlingly undramatic work that offers discreet pleasures to longtime fans of the New York indie-scene veteran, who can always be counted on to go his own way.\" Eric Kohn, film critic of IndieWire wrote that the film was \"an apt statement from Jarmusch, a filmmaker who continues to surprise and innovate while remaining true to his singular voice, and who here seems to have delivered its purest manifestation.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Dead Don't Die (2019)",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Jarmusch wrote and directed his first horror film, the zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die featuring an ensemble cast which included performances from Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Carol Kane, and Selena Gomez. On June 14, 2019 the film premiered at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival and received mixed reviews. The film was distributed by Focus Features. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote of the film, \"At times, the deadpan of Murray and Driver becomes, well, a bit deadening, and true wit is in short supply, even though the film remains amusing most of the way.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In April 2021, a short film titled French Water was released. Jarmusch directed and wrote the film for the Saint Laurent fashion house to celebrate the spring/summer 2021 collection. It starred Charlotte Gainsbourg and Julianne Moore among others.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In September 2021, he published his first work as a collage artist with Some Collages.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In the early 1980s, Jarmusch was part of a revolving lineup of musicians in Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day project, and later became the keyboardist and one of two vocalists for The Del-Byzanteens, a No Wave band who released the LP Lies to Live By in 1982.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Jarmusch is also featured on the album Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture (2005) in two interludes described by Sean Fennessy in a Pitchfork review of the album as both \"bizarrely pretentious\" and \"reason alone to give it a listen\". Jarmusch and Michel Gondry each contributed a remix to a limited edition release of the track \"Blue Orchid\" by The White Stripes in 2005.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The author of a series of essays on influential bands, Jarmusch has also had at least two poems published. He is a founding member of The Sons of Lee Marvin, a humorous \"semi-secret society\" of artists resembling the iconic actor, which issues communiqués and meets on occasion for the ostensible purpose of watching Marvin's films.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "He released three collaborative albums with lutist Jozef van Wissem, Concerning the Entrance into Eternity (Important Records), The Mystery of Heaven (Sacred Bones Records), in 2012 and the 2019 release An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil (Sacred Bones Records).",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Jarmusch is a member of the avant-garde rock band Sqürl with film associate Carter Logan and sound engineer Shane Stoneback. The band formed to create additional soundtrack for Jarmusch's film The Limits of Control, which they released together with two other songs on an EP called \"Film Music from The Limits of Control\" under the name Bad Rabbit. Sqürl's version of Wanda Jackson's 1961 song \"Funnel of Love\", featuring Madeline Follin of Cults on vocals, opens Jarmusch's 2014 film Only Lovers Left Alive. On March 8, 2023, Sqürl announced its debut album Silver Haze and released lead single \"Berlin '87\". The album was released on May 5 by Sacred Bones Records.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Dutch lute composer Jozef van Wissem also collaborated with Jarmusch on the soundtrack of Only Lovers Left Alive, and the pair also plays in a duo. Jarmusch first met van Wissem on a street in New York City's SoHo neighborhood in 2007, at which time the lute player handed the director a CD. Several months later, Jarmusch asked van Wissem to send his catalog of recordings and the two started playing together as part of their developing friendship. Van Wissem explained in early April 2014: \"I know the way [Jarmusch] makes his films is kind of like a musician. He has music in his head when he's writing a script so it's more informed by a tonal thing than it is by anything else.\"",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 2014 Jarmusch shunned the \"auteur theory\" and likened the filmmaking process to human sexual reproduction:",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "I put 'A film by' as a protection of my rights, but I don't really believe it. It's important for me to have a final cut, and I do for every film. So I'm in the editing room every day, I'm the navigator of the ship, but I'm not the captain, I can't do it without everyone's equally valuable input. For me it's phases where I'm very solitary, writing, and then I'm preparing, getting the money, and then I'm with the crew and on a ship and it's amazing and exhausting and exhilarating, and then I'm alone with the editor again... I've said it before, it's like seduction, wild sex, and then pregnancy in the editing room. That's how it feels for me.",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Jarmusch recorded a Q & A in 2010 for the Criterion Blu-ray release of Mystery Train. He explained at the beginning that he did this, instead of the usual practice of a director's commentary to be played over the film itself, because \"I don't like looking at my films again--it's agony to me.\"",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don't bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: \"It's not where you take things from—it's where you take them to.\"",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Jim Jarmusch's Golden Rules – #5, 2004,",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Jarmusch has been characterized as a minimalist filmmaker whose idiosyncratic films are unhurried. His films often eschew traditional narrative structure, lacking clear plot progression and focus more on mood and character development. In an interview early in his career, he stated that his goal was \"to approximate real time for the audience.\"",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "His early work is marked by a brooding, contemplative tone, featuring extended silent scenes and prolonged still shots. He has experimented with a vignette format in three films that were either released, or begun around, the early 1990s: Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes. The Salt Lake Tribune critic Sean P. Means wrote that Jarmusch blends \"film styles and genres with sharp wit and dark humor\", while his style is also defined by a signature deadpan comedic tone.",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The protagonists of Jarmusch's films are usually lone adventurers. The director's male characters have been described by critic Jennie Yabroff as \"three time losers, petty thiefs and inept con men, all... eminently likeable, if not down right charming\"; while novelist Paul Auster described them as \"laconic, withdrawn, sorrowful mumblers\".",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Jarmusch has revealed that his instinct is a greater influence during the filmmaking process than any cognitive processes. He explained: \"I feel like I have to listen to the film and let it tell me what it wants. Sometimes it mumbles and it isn't very clear.\" Films such as Dead Man and Limits of Control have polarized fans and general viewers alike, as Jarmusch's stylistic instinct is embedded in his strong sense of independence.",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Though his films are predominantly set in the United States, Jarmusch has advanced the notion that he looks at America \"through a foreigner's eyes\", with the intention of creating a form of world cinema that synthesizes European and Japanese film with that of Hollywood. His films have often included foreign actors and characters, and (at times substantial) non-English dialogue. In his two later-nineties films, he dwelt on different cultures' experiences of violence, and on textual appropriations between cultures: a wandering Native American's love of William Blake, a black hitman's passionate devotion to the Hagakure. The interaction and syntheses between different cultures, the arbitrariness of national identity, and irreverence towards ethnocentric, patriotic or nationalistic sentiment are recurring themes in Jarmusch's work.",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Jarmusch's fascination with music is another characteristic that is readily apparent in his work. Musicians appear frequently in key roles—John Lurie, Tom Waits, Gary Farmer, Youki Kudoh, RZA and Iggy Pop have featured in multiple Jarmusch films, while Joe Strummer and Screamin' Jay Hawkins appear in Mystery Train and GZA, Jack and Meg White feature in Coffee and Cigarettes. Hawkins' song \"I Put a Spell on You\" was central to the plot of Stranger than Paradise, while Mystery Train is inspired by and named after a song popularized by Elvis Presley, who is also the subject of a vignette in Coffee and Cigarettes. In the words of critic Vincent Canby, \"Jarmusch's movies have the tempo and rhythm of blues and jazz, even in their use—or omission—of language. His films work on the senses much the way that some music does, unheard until it's too late to get it out of one's head.\"",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "During a 1989 interview Jarmusch commented on his narrative focus, \"I'd rather make a movie about a guy walking his dog than about the emperor of China.\"",
"title": "As a filmmaker"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1980, Jarmusch's film Permanent Vacation won the Josef von Sternberg Award at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg. In 1999, he was laureate of the Douglas Sirk Preis at Filmfest Hamburg, Germany. In 1984, he won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes Film Festival for Stranger Than Paradise. In 2004, Jarmusch was honored with the \"Filmmaker on the Edge Award\" at the Provincetown International Film Festival. In 2005, he won the Grand Prix of the 2005 Cannes Film Festival for his film Broken Flowers.",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Jarmusch is credited with having instigated the American independent film movement with Stranger Than Paradise. In her description of the film in a 2005 profile of the director for The New York Times, critic Lynn Hirschberg declared that Stranger than Paradise \"permanently upended the idea of independent film as an intrinsically inaccessible avant-garde form\". The success of the film accorded the director a certain iconic status within arthouse cinema, as an idiosyncratic and uncompromising auteur, exuding the aura of urban cool embodied by downtown Manhattan. Such perceptions were reinforced by the release of his subsequent features in the late 1980s, establishing him as one of the generation's most prominent and influential independent filmmakers.",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "New York critic and festival director Kent Jones undermined the \"urban cool\" association that Jarmusch has garnered and was quoted in a February 2014 media article, following the release of his eleventh feature film:",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "There's been an overemphasis on the hipness factor—and a lack of emphasis on his incredible attachment to the idea of celebrating poetry and culture. You can complain about the preciousness of a lot of his movies, [but] they are unapologetically standing up for poetry. [His attitude is] 'if you want to call me an elitist, go ahead, I don't care'.",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Jarmusch's staunch independence has been represented by his success in retaining the negatives for all of his films, an achievement that was described by the Guardian's Jonathan Romney as \"extremely rare.\" British producer Jeremy Thomas, who was one of the eventual financiers of Only Lovers Left Alive called Jarmusch \"one of the great American independent film-makers\" who is \"the last of the line.\" Thomas believes that filmmakers like Jarmusch \"are not coming through... any more.\"",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In a 1989 review of his work, Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Jarmusch \"the most adventurous and arresting film maker to surface in the American cinema in this decade\". He was recognized with the \"Filmmaker on the Edge\" award at the 2004 Provincetown International Film Festival. A retrospective of the director's films was hosted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during February 1994, and another, \"The Sad and Beautiful World of Jim Jarmusch\", by the American Film Institute in August 2005.",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "While Swinton, who has worked with Jarmusch on numerous occasions, describes him as a \"rock star\", the director admits that \"I don't know where I fit in. I don't feel tied to my time.\" Dutch lute player Jozef van Wissem, who worked on the score for Only Lovers Left Alive calls Jarmusch a \"cultural sponge\" who \"absorbs everything.\"",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The moving image collection of Jim Jarmusch is held at the Academy Film Archive.",
"title": "Awards and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Jarmusch rarely discusses his personal life in public. He divides his time between New York City and the Catskill Mountains. He stopped drinking coffee in 1986, the year of the first installment of Coffee and Cigarettes, although he continues to smoke cigarettes. He has been a vegetarian since 1987.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In a February 2014 interview Jarmusch stated that he is not interested in eternal life, as \"there's something about the cycle of life that's very important, and to have that removed would be a burden\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Markings of an a indicated collaborators who acted in a film, c indicated that they composed music for the film.",
"title": "Frequent collaborators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Live albums",
"title": "Discography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Other sources",
"title": "References"
}
]
| James Robert Jarmusch is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Paterson (2016). Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002. As a musician Jarmusch has composed music for his films and released three albums with Jozef van Wissem. | 2001-05-13T09:24:11Z | 2023-12-27T17:28:35Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jarmusch |
15,745 | Johannes Gutenberg | Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1393–1406 – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg invented the printing press, which later spread across the world. His work led to an information revolution and the unprecedented mass-spread of literature throughout Europe. It also had a direct impact on the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, and humanist movements, as all of them have been described as "unthinkable" without Gutenberg's invention.
His many contributions to printing include the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the invention of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The alloy was a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony that melted at a relatively low temperature for faster and more economical casting, cast well, and created a durable type. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible, was the first printed version of the Bible and has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.
Described as the "man of the millennium", Gutenberg is often cited as among the most influential figures in human history. He has been commemorated around the world and is a frequent namesake. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of his birth in 1900, the Gutenberg Museum was founded in his hometown of Mainz.
Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz (in modern-day Germany), a wealthy city along the Rhine, between the 14th and 15th centuries. His exact year of birth is unknown; on the basis of a later document indicating that he came of age by 1420, scholarly estimates have ranged from 1393 to 1406. The year 1400 is commonly assigned to Gutenberg, "for the sake of convenience". Tradition also holds his birthdate to be on the feast day of Saint John the Baptist, 24 June, since children of the time were often named after their birthday's patron saint. There is no verification for this assumption, since the name "Johannes"—and variants such as "Johann", "Henne", "Hengin" and "Henchen"—was widely popular at the time. In full, Johannes Gutenberg's name was 'Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg', with "Laden" and "Gutenberg" being adopted from the family's residences in Mainz. The latter refers to the Hof zum Gutenberg, a large and now destroyed Gothic-style residence inherited by Gutenberg's father. Gutenberg probably spent his earliest years at the manor, which existed beside St. Christoph's.
His father Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden was a patrician and merchant, likely in the cloth trade. Friele later served among the "master of the accounts" for the city and was a Münzerhausgenossenschaft (lit. 'minting house cooperative'), a part of the mint's companionship. In 1386 Friele married his second wife, Else Wyrich, the daughter of a shopkeeper; Johannes was probably the youngest of the couple's three children, after his brother Friele (b. c. 1387) and sister Else (b. c. 1390–1397). Scholars commonly assume that the marriage of Friele to Else, who was not of patrician lineage, complicated Gutenberg's future. Because of his mother's commoner status, Gutenberg would never be able to succeed his father at the mint; according to the historian Ferdinand Geldner [de] this disconnect may have disillusioned him from high society and encouraged his unusual career as an inventor.
The patrician (Patrizier) class of Mainz—the Gutenbergs included—held a privileged socioeconomic status, and their efforts to preserve this put them into frequent conflict with the younger generations of guild (Zünfte) craftsmen. A particularly violent conflict arose in February 1411 amid an election dispute, and at least 117 patricians fled the conflict in August. Friele left, presumably with the Gutenberg family, and probably stayed in the nearby Eltville since Else had inhered a house on the town walls there. The archbishop mediated a peace between the rival parties, allowing the family to return to Mainz later that Autumn. The situation remained unstable and the rise of hunger riots forced the Gutenberg family to leave in January 1413 for Eltville.
No documents survive concerning Gutenberg's childhood or youth. The biographer Albert Kapr [de] remarked that "most books on Gutenberg pass over this period with the remark that not a single fact is known". As the son of a patrician, education in reading and arithmetic would have been expected. A knowledge of Latin—a prerequisite for universities—is also probable, though it is unknown whether he attended a Mainz parish school, was educated in Eltville or had a private tutor. Gutenberg may have initially pursued a religious career, as was common with the youngest sons of patricians, since the proximity of many churches and monasteries made it a safe prospect. It has been speculated that he attended the St. Victor's [de] south of Mainz (near Weisenau [de]), as he would later join their brotherhood. It was the site of a well-regarded school and his family had connections there, though his actual attendance remains speculative.
He is assumed to have studied at the University of Erfurt, where there is a record of the enrollment of a student called Johannes de Altavilla in 1418—Altavilla is the Latin form of Eltville am Rhein.
Nothing is now known of Gutenberg's life for the next fifteen years, but in March 1434, a letter by him indicates that he was living in Strasbourg, where he had some relatives on his mother's side. He also appears to have been a goldsmith member enrolled in the Strasbourg militia. In 1437, there is evidence that he was instructing a wealthy tradesman on polishing gems, but where he had acquired this knowledge is unknown. In 1436/37 his name also comes up in court in connection with a broken promise of marriage to a woman from Strasbourg, Ennelin. Whether the marriage actually took place is not recorded. Following his father's death in 1419, he is mentioned in the inheritance proceedings.
"What was written to me about that marvelous man [Gutenberg] seen at Frankfurt [sic] entirely true. I have not seen complete bibles but only a number of quires of various books [of the Bible]. The script is extremely neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow [You] would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses"
Future pope Pius II in a letter to Cardinal Carvajal, March 1455
Around 1439, Gutenberg was involved in a financial misadventure making polished metal mirrors (which were believed to capture holy light from religious relics) for sale to pilgrims to Aachen: in 1439 the city was planning to exhibit its collection of relics from Emperor Charlemagne but the event was delayed by one year due to a severe flood and the capital already spent could not be repaid.
Until at least 1444 Gutenberg lived in Strasbourg, most likely in the St. Arbogast parish. It was in Strasbourg in 1440 that he is said to have perfected and unveiled the secret of printing based on his research, mysteriously entitled Aventur und Kunst (enterprise and art). It is not clear what work he was engaged in, or whether some early trials with printing from movable type were conducted there. After this, there is a gap of four years in the record. In 1448, he was back in Mainz, where he took out a loan from his brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus, possibly for a printing press or related paraphernalia. By this date, Gutenberg may have been familiar with intaglio printing; it is claimed that he had worked on copper engravings with an artist known as the Master of Playing Cards.
By 1450, the press was in operation, and a German poem had been printed, possibly the first item to be printed there. Gutenberg was able to convince the wealthy moneylender Johann Fust for a loan of 800 guilders. Peter Schöffer, who became Fust's son-in-law, also joined the enterprise. Schöffer had worked as a scribe in Paris and is believed to have designed some of the first typefaces.
Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Humbrechthof, a property belonging to a distant relative. It is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this, he borrowed another 800 guilders from Fust, and work commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing other, more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also some speculation that there were two presses: one for the pedestrian texts and one for the Bible. One of the profit-making enterprises of the new press was the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church, documented from 1454 to 1455.
In 1455, Gutenberg completed his 42-line Bible, known as the Gutenberg Bible. About 180 copies were printed, three quarters on paper, and the rest on vellum.
Some time in 1456, there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust, in which Fust demanded his money back, and accused Gutenberg of misusing the funds. Gutenberg's two rounds of financing from Fust, totaling 1,600 guilders at 6% interest, now amounted to 2,026 guilders. Fust sued at the archbishop's court. A legal document, from November 1455, records that there was a partnership for a "project of the books," the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The court decided in favor of Fust, giving him control over the Bible printing workshop and half of all printed Bibles.
Thus, Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt, but it appears he retained (or restarted) a small printing shop and participated in the printing of a Bible in the town of Bamberg around 1459, for which he seems at least to have supplied the type. But since his printed books never carry his name or a date, it is difficult to be certain, and there is consequently a considerable scholarly debate on this subject. It is also possible that the large Catholicon dictionary, 300 copies of 754 pages, printed in Mainz in 1460, was executed in his workshop.
Meanwhile, the Fust–Schöffer shop was the first in Europe to bring out a book with the printer's name and date, the Mainz Psalter of August 1457, and while proudly proclaiming the mechanical process by which it had been produced, it made no mention of Gutenberg.
In 1462, during the devastating Mainz Diocesan Feud, Mainz was sacked by Archbishop Adolph von Nassau. On 18 January 1465, Gutenberg's achievements were recognized by Archbishop von Nassau. He was given the title Hofmann (gentleman of the court). This honor included a stipend and an annual court outfit, as well as 2,180 litres of grain and 2,000 litres of wine tax-free.
Gutenberg died in 1468 and was buried likely as a tertiary in the Franciscan church at Mainz. This church and the cemetery were later destroyed, and Gutenberg's grave is now lost.
In 1504, he was mentioned as the inventor of typography in a book by Professor Ivo Wittig. It was not until 1567 that the first portrait of Gutenberg, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction, appeared in Heinrich Pantaleon's biography of famous Germans.
Gutenberg's early printing process, and what texts he printed with movable type, are not known in great detail. His later Bibles were printed in such a way as to have required large quantities of type, some estimates suggesting as many as 100,000 individual sorts. Setting each page would take, perhaps, half a day, and considering all the work in loading the press, inking the type, pulling the impressions, hanging up the sheets, distributing the type, etc., it is thought that the Gutenberg–Fust shop might have employed as many as 25 craftsmen.
Gutenberg's technique of making movable type remains unclear. In the following decades, punches and copper matrices became standardized in the rapidly disseminating printing presses across Europe. Whether Gutenberg used this sophisticated technique or a somewhat primitive version has been the subject of considerable debate.
In the standard process of making type, a hard metal punch (made by punchcutting, with the letter carved back to front) is hammered into a softer copper bar, creating a matrix. This is then placed into a hand-held mould and a piece of type, or "sort", is cast by filling the mould with molten type-metal; this cools almost at once, and the resulting piece of type can be removed from the mould. The matrix can be reused to create hundreds, or thousands, of identical sorts so that the same character appearing anywhere within the book will appear very uniform, giving rise, over time, to the development of distinct styles of typefaces or fonts. After casting, the sorts are arranged into type cases, and used to make up pages which are inked and printed, a procedure which can be repeated hundreds, or thousands, of times. The sorts can be reused in any combination, earning the process the name of "movable type".
The invention of the making of types with punch, matrix and mold has been widely attributed to Gutenberg. However, recent evidence suggests that Gutenberg's process was somewhat different. If he used the punch and matrix approach, all his letters should have been nearly identical, with some variation due to miscasting and inking. However, the type used in Gutenberg's earliest work shows other variations.
In 2001, the physicist Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Princeton librarian Paul Needham, used digital scans of a Papal bull in the Scheide Library, Princeton, to carefully compare the same letters (types) appearing in different parts of the printed text. The irregularities in Gutenberg's type, particularly in simple characters such as the hyphen, suggested that the variations could not have come either from ink smear or from wear and damage on the pieces of metal on the types themselves. Although some identical types are clearly used on other pages, other variations, subjected to detailed image analysis, suggested that they could not have been produced from the same matrix. Transmitted light pictures of the page also appeared to reveal substructures in the type that could not arise from traditional punchcutting techniques. They hypothesized that the method involved impressing simple shapes to create alphabets in "cuneiform" style in a matrix made of some soft material, perhaps sand. Casting the type would destroy the mould, and the matrix would need to be recreated to make each additional sort. This could explain the variations in the type, as well as the substructures observed in the printed images.
Thus, they speculated that "the decisive factor for the birth of typography", the use of reusable moulds for casting type, was a more progressive process than was previously thought. They suggested that the additional step of using the punch to create a mould that could be reused many times was not taken until twenty years later, in the 1470s. Others have not accepted some or all of their suggestions, and have interpreted the evidence in other ways, and the truth of the matter remains uncertain.
A 1568 book Batavia by Hadrianus Junius from Holland claims that the idea of the movable type came to Gutenberg from Laurens Janszoon Coster via Fust, who was apprenticed to Coster in the 1430s and may have brought some of his equipment from Haarlem to Mainz. While Coster appears to have experimented with moulds and castable metal type, there is no evidence that he had actually printed anything with this technology. He was an inventor and a goldsmith. However, there is one indirect supporter of the claim that Coster might be the inventor. The author of the Cologne Chronicle of 1499 quotes Ulrich Zell, the first printer of Cologne, that printing was performed in Mainz in 1450, but that some type of printing of lower quality had previously occurred in the Netherlands. However, the chronicle does not mention the name of Coster, while it actually credits Gutenberg as the "first inventor of printing" in the very same passage (fol. 312). The first securely dated book by Dutch printers is from 1471, and the Coster connection is today regarded as a mere legend.
The 19th-century printer and typefounder Fournier Le Jeune suggested that Gutenberg was not using type cast with a reusable matrix, but wooden types that were carved individually. A similar suggestion was made by Nash in 2004. This remains possible, albeit entirely unproven.
Between 1450 and 1455, Gutenberg printed several texts, some of which remain unidentified; his texts did not bear the printer's name or date, so attribution is possible only from typographical evidence and external references. Certainly several church documents including a papal letter and two indulgences were printed, one of which was issued in Mainz. In view of the value of printing in quantity, seven editions in two styles were ordered, resulting in several thousand copies being printed. Some printed editions of Ars Minor, a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus, may have been printed by Gutenberg; these have been dated either 1451–52 or 1455.
In 1455, Gutenberg completed copies of a beautifully executed folio Bible (Biblia Sacra), with 42 lines on each page. Copies sold for 30 florins each, which was roughly three years' wages for an average clerk. Nonetheless, it was much cheaper than a manuscript Bible that could take a single scribe over a year to prepare. After printing, some copies were rubricated or hand-illuminated in the same elegant way as manuscript Bibles from the same period.
48 substantially complete copies are known to survive, including two at the British Library that can be viewed and compared online. The text lacks modern features such as page numbers, indentations, and paragraph breaks.
An undated 36-line edition of the Bible was printed, probably in Bamberg in 1458–60, possibly by Gutenberg. A large part of it was shown to have been set from a copy of Gutenberg's Bible, thus disproving earlier speculation that it was the earlier of the two.
"What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage, … for the bad that his colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been favored."
American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Gutenberg's invention had an enormous impact on subsequent human history, both on cultural and social matters. His design directly impacted the mass spread of books across Europe, causing an information revolution. As a result, Venzke describes the inauguration of the Renaissance, Reformation and humanist movement as "unthinkable" without Gutenberg's influence. Described as "one of the most recognized names in the world", a team of US journalists voted Gutenberg as the "man of the millennium" in 1999. Similarly, in 1999 the A&E Network ranked Gutenberg the No. 1 most influential person of the second millennium on their "Biographies of the Millennium" countdown, while Time–Life magazine picked Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium in 1997. The scholar of paper history, Thomas Francis Carter, drew parallels between Cai Lun, the traditional inventor of paper during the Eastern Han dynasty, and Gutenberg, calling them "spiritual father and son" respectively. In his 1978 book, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, Michael H. Hart ranked him 8th, below Cai but above figures such as Christopher Columbus, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.
The capital of printing in Europe shifted to Venice, where visionary printers like Aldus Manutius ensured widespread availability of the major Greek and Latin texts. The claims of an Italian origin for movable type have also focused on this rapid rise of Italy in movable-type printing. This may perhaps be explained by the prior eminence of Italy in the paper and printing trade. Additionally, Italy's economy was growing rapidly at the time, facilitating the spread of literacy. Christopher Columbus had a geography book (printed with movable type) bought by his father. That book is in a Spanish museum, the Biblioteca Colombina in Seville. Finally, the city of Mainz was sacked in 1462, driving many (including a number of printers and punch cutters) into exile.
Printing was also a factor in the Reformation. Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses were printed and circulated widely; subsequently he issued broadsheets outlining his anti-indulgences position (certificates of indulgences were one of the first items Gutenberg had printed). Due to this, Gutenberg would also be viewed as a proto-Protestant. The broadsheet contributed to the development of the newspaper.
There are many statues of Gutenberg in Germany, including the famous one by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1837) at Gutenbergplatz in Mainz, home to the eponymous Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and the Gutenberg Museum on the history of early printing. The latter publishes the Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, the leading periodical in the field.
In 1952, the United States Postal Service issued a five hundredth anniversary stamp commemorating Johannes Gutenberg invention of the movable-type printing press. In space, he is commemorated in the name of the asteroid 777 Gutemberga. Two operas based on Gutenberg are G, Being the Confession and Last Testament of Johannes Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, Master Printer, formerly of Strasbourg and Mainz, from 2001, with music by Gavin Bryars; and La Nuit de Gutenberg, with music by Philippe Manoury, premiered in 2011 in Strasbourg. Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library, commemorates Gutenberg's name. The Mainzer Johannisnacht commemorates the person Johannes Gutenberg in his native city since 1968. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1393–1406 – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg invented the printing press, which later spread across the world. His work led to an information revolution and the unprecedented mass-spread of literature throughout Europe. It also had a direct impact on the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, and humanist movements, as all of them have been described as \"unthinkable\" without Gutenberg's invention.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "His many contributions to printing include the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the invention of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The alloy was a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony that melted at a relatively low temperature for faster and more economical casting, cast well, and created a durable type. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible, was the first printed version of the Bible and has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Described as the \"man of the millennium\", Gutenberg is often cited as among the most influential figures in human history. He has been commemorated around the world and is a frequent namesake. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of his birth in 1900, the Gutenberg Museum was founded in his hometown of Mainz.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz (in modern-day Germany), a wealthy city along the Rhine, between the 14th and 15th centuries. His exact year of birth is unknown; on the basis of a later document indicating that he came of age by 1420, scholarly estimates have ranged from 1393 to 1406. The year 1400 is commonly assigned to Gutenberg, \"for the sake of convenience\". Tradition also holds his birthdate to be on the feast day of Saint John the Baptist, 24 June, since children of the time were often named after their birthday's patron saint. There is no verification for this assumption, since the name \"Johannes\"—and variants such as \"Johann\", \"Henne\", \"Hengin\" and \"Henchen\"—was widely popular at the time. In full, Johannes Gutenberg's name was 'Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg', with \"Laden\" and \"Gutenberg\" being adopted from the family's residences in Mainz. The latter refers to the Hof zum Gutenberg, a large and now destroyed Gothic-style residence inherited by Gutenberg's father. Gutenberg probably spent his earliest years at the manor, which existed beside St. Christoph's.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "His father Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden was a patrician and merchant, likely in the cloth trade. Friele later served among the \"master of the accounts\" for the city and was a Münzerhausgenossenschaft (lit. 'minting house cooperative'), a part of the mint's companionship. In 1386 Friele married his second wife, Else Wyrich, the daughter of a shopkeeper; Johannes was probably the youngest of the couple's three children, after his brother Friele (b. c. 1387) and sister Else (b. c. 1390–1397). Scholars commonly assume that the marriage of Friele to Else, who was not of patrician lineage, complicated Gutenberg's future. Because of his mother's commoner status, Gutenberg would never be able to succeed his father at the mint; according to the historian Ferdinand Geldner [de] this disconnect may have disillusioned him from high society and encouraged his unusual career as an inventor.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The patrician (Patrizier) class of Mainz—the Gutenbergs included—held a privileged socioeconomic status, and their efforts to preserve this put them into frequent conflict with the younger generations of guild (Zünfte) craftsmen. A particularly violent conflict arose in February 1411 amid an election dispute, and at least 117 patricians fled the conflict in August. Friele left, presumably with the Gutenberg family, and probably stayed in the nearby Eltville since Else had inhered a house on the town walls there. The archbishop mediated a peace between the rival parties, allowing the family to return to Mainz later that Autumn. The situation remained unstable and the rise of hunger riots forced the Gutenberg family to leave in January 1413 for Eltville.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "No documents survive concerning Gutenberg's childhood or youth. The biographer Albert Kapr [de] remarked that \"most books on Gutenberg pass over this period with the remark that not a single fact is known\". As the son of a patrician, education in reading and arithmetic would have been expected. A knowledge of Latin—a prerequisite for universities—is also probable, though it is unknown whether he attended a Mainz parish school, was educated in Eltville or had a private tutor. Gutenberg may have initially pursued a religious career, as was common with the youngest sons of patricians, since the proximity of many churches and monasteries made it a safe prospect. It has been speculated that he attended the St. Victor's [de] south of Mainz (near Weisenau [de]), as he would later join their brotherhood. It was the site of a well-regarded school and his family had connections there, though his actual attendance remains speculative.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "He is assumed to have studied at the University of Erfurt, where there is a record of the enrollment of a student called Johannes de Altavilla in 1418—Altavilla is the Latin form of Eltville am Rhein.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Nothing is now known of Gutenberg's life for the next fifteen years, but in March 1434, a letter by him indicates that he was living in Strasbourg, where he had some relatives on his mother's side. He also appears to have been a goldsmith member enrolled in the Strasbourg militia. In 1437, there is evidence that he was instructing a wealthy tradesman on polishing gems, but where he had acquired this knowledge is unknown. In 1436/37 his name also comes up in court in connection with a broken promise of marriage to a woman from Strasbourg, Ennelin. Whether the marriage actually took place is not recorded. Following his father's death in 1419, he is mentioned in the inheritance proceedings.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "\"What was written to me about that marvelous man [Gutenberg] seen at Frankfurt [sic] entirely true. I have not seen complete bibles but only a number of quires of various books [of the Bible]. The script is extremely neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow [You] would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses\"",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Future pope Pius II in a letter to Cardinal Carvajal, March 1455",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Around 1439, Gutenberg was involved in a financial misadventure making polished metal mirrors (which were believed to capture holy light from religious relics) for sale to pilgrims to Aachen: in 1439 the city was planning to exhibit its collection of relics from Emperor Charlemagne but the event was delayed by one year due to a severe flood and the capital already spent could not be repaid.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Until at least 1444 Gutenberg lived in Strasbourg, most likely in the St. Arbogast parish. It was in Strasbourg in 1440 that he is said to have perfected and unveiled the secret of printing based on his research, mysteriously entitled Aventur und Kunst (enterprise and art). It is not clear what work he was engaged in, or whether some early trials with printing from movable type were conducted there. After this, there is a gap of four years in the record. In 1448, he was back in Mainz, where he took out a loan from his brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus, possibly for a printing press or related paraphernalia. By this date, Gutenberg may have been familiar with intaglio printing; it is claimed that he had worked on copper engravings with an artist known as the Master of Playing Cards.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "By 1450, the press was in operation, and a German poem had been printed, possibly the first item to be printed there. Gutenberg was able to convince the wealthy moneylender Johann Fust for a loan of 800 guilders. Peter Schöffer, who became Fust's son-in-law, also joined the enterprise. Schöffer had worked as a scribe in Paris and is believed to have designed some of the first typefaces.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Humbrechthof, a property belonging to a distant relative. It is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this, he borrowed another 800 guilders from Fust, and work commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing other, more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also some speculation that there were two presses: one for the pedestrian texts and one for the Bible. One of the profit-making enterprises of the new press was the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church, documented from 1454 to 1455.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1455, Gutenberg completed his 42-line Bible, known as the Gutenberg Bible. About 180 copies were printed, three quarters on paper, and the rest on vellum.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Some time in 1456, there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust, in which Fust demanded his money back, and accused Gutenberg of misusing the funds. Gutenberg's two rounds of financing from Fust, totaling 1,600 guilders at 6% interest, now amounted to 2,026 guilders. Fust sued at the archbishop's court. A legal document, from November 1455, records that there was a partnership for a \"project of the books,\" the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The court decided in favor of Fust, giving him control over the Bible printing workshop and half of all printed Bibles.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Thus, Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt, but it appears he retained (or restarted) a small printing shop and participated in the printing of a Bible in the town of Bamberg around 1459, for which he seems at least to have supplied the type. But since his printed books never carry his name or a date, it is difficult to be certain, and there is consequently a considerable scholarly debate on this subject. It is also possible that the large Catholicon dictionary, 300 copies of 754 pages, printed in Mainz in 1460, was executed in his workshop.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Meanwhile, the Fust–Schöffer shop was the first in Europe to bring out a book with the printer's name and date, the Mainz Psalter of August 1457, and while proudly proclaiming the mechanical process by which it had been produced, it made no mention of Gutenberg.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1462, during the devastating Mainz Diocesan Feud, Mainz was sacked by Archbishop Adolph von Nassau. On 18 January 1465, Gutenberg's achievements were recognized by Archbishop von Nassau. He was given the title Hofmann (gentleman of the court). This honor included a stipend and an annual court outfit, as well as 2,180 litres of grain and 2,000 litres of wine tax-free.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Gutenberg died in 1468 and was buried likely as a tertiary in the Franciscan church at Mainz. This church and the cemetery were later destroyed, and Gutenberg's grave is now lost.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1504, he was mentioned as the inventor of typography in a book by Professor Ivo Wittig. It was not until 1567 that the first portrait of Gutenberg, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction, appeared in Heinrich Pantaleon's biography of famous Germans.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Gutenberg's early printing process, and what texts he printed with movable type, are not known in great detail. His later Bibles were printed in such a way as to have required large quantities of type, some estimates suggesting as many as 100,000 individual sorts. Setting each page would take, perhaps, half a day, and considering all the work in loading the press, inking the type, pulling the impressions, hanging up the sheets, distributing the type, etc., it is thought that the Gutenberg–Fust shop might have employed as many as 25 craftsmen.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Gutenberg's technique of making movable type remains unclear. In the following decades, punches and copper matrices became standardized in the rapidly disseminating printing presses across Europe. Whether Gutenberg used this sophisticated technique or a somewhat primitive version has been the subject of considerable debate.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the standard process of making type, a hard metal punch (made by punchcutting, with the letter carved back to front) is hammered into a softer copper bar, creating a matrix. This is then placed into a hand-held mould and a piece of type, or \"sort\", is cast by filling the mould with molten type-metal; this cools almost at once, and the resulting piece of type can be removed from the mould. The matrix can be reused to create hundreds, or thousands, of identical sorts so that the same character appearing anywhere within the book will appear very uniform, giving rise, over time, to the development of distinct styles of typefaces or fonts. After casting, the sorts are arranged into type cases, and used to make up pages which are inked and printed, a procedure which can be repeated hundreds, or thousands, of times. The sorts can be reused in any combination, earning the process the name of \"movable type\".",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The invention of the making of types with punch, matrix and mold has been widely attributed to Gutenberg. However, recent evidence suggests that Gutenberg's process was somewhat different. If he used the punch and matrix approach, all his letters should have been nearly identical, with some variation due to miscasting and inking. However, the type used in Gutenberg's earliest work shows other variations.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 2001, the physicist Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Princeton librarian Paul Needham, used digital scans of a Papal bull in the Scheide Library, Princeton, to carefully compare the same letters (types) appearing in different parts of the printed text. The irregularities in Gutenberg's type, particularly in simple characters such as the hyphen, suggested that the variations could not have come either from ink smear or from wear and damage on the pieces of metal on the types themselves. Although some identical types are clearly used on other pages, other variations, subjected to detailed image analysis, suggested that they could not have been produced from the same matrix. Transmitted light pictures of the page also appeared to reveal substructures in the type that could not arise from traditional punchcutting techniques. They hypothesized that the method involved impressing simple shapes to create alphabets in \"cuneiform\" style in a matrix made of some soft material, perhaps sand. Casting the type would destroy the mould, and the matrix would need to be recreated to make each additional sort. This could explain the variations in the type, as well as the substructures observed in the printed images.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Thus, they speculated that \"the decisive factor for the birth of typography\", the use of reusable moulds for casting type, was a more progressive process than was previously thought. They suggested that the additional step of using the punch to create a mould that could be reused many times was not taken until twenty years later, in the 1470s. Others have not accepted some or all of their suggestions, and have interpreted the evidence in other ways, and the truth of the matter remains uncertain.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A 1568 book Batavia by Hadrianus Junius from Holland claims that the idea of the movable type came to Gutenberg from Laurens Janszoon Coster via Fust, who was apprenticed to Coster in the 1430s and may have brought some of his equipment from Haarlem to Mainz. While Coster appears to have experimented with moulds and castable metal type, there is no evidence that he had actually printed anything with this technology. He was an inventor and a goldsmith. However, there is one indirect supporter of the claim that Coster might be the inventor. The author of the Cologne Chronicle of 1499 quotes Ulrich Zell, the first printer of Cologne, that printing was performed in Mainz in 1450, but that some type of printing of lower quality had previously occurred in the Netherlands. However, the chronicle does not mention the name of Coster, while it actually credits Gutenberg as the \"first inventor of printing\" in the very same passage (fol. 312). The first securely dated book by Dutch printers is from 1471, and the Coster connection is today regarded as a mere legend.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The 19th-century printer and typefounder Fournier Le Jeune suggested that Gutenberg was not using type cast with a reusable matrix, but wooden types that were carved individually. A similar suggestion was made by Nash in 2004. This remains possible, albeit entirely unproven.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Between 1450 and 1455, Gutenberg printed several texts, some of which remain unidentified; his texts did not bear the printer's name or date, so attribution is possible only from typographical evidence and external references. Certainly several church documents including a papal letter and two indulgences were printed, one of which was issued in Mainz. In view of the value of printing in quantity, seven editions in two styles were ordered, resulting in several thousand copies being printed. Some printed editions of Ars Minor, a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus, may have been printed by Gutenberg; these have been dated either 1451–52 or 1455.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 1455, Gutenberg completed copies of a beautifully executed folio Bible (Biblia Sacra), with 42 lines on each page. Copies sold for 30 florins each, which was roughly three years' wages for an average clerk. Nonetheless, it was much cheaper than a manuscript Bible that could take a single scribe over a year to prepare. After printing, some copies were rubricated or hand-illuminated in the same elegant way as manuscript Bibles from the same period.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "48 substantially complete copies are known to survive, including two at the British Library that can be viewed and compared online. The text lacks modern features such as page numbers, indentations, and paragraph breaks.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "An undated 36-line edition of the Bible was printed, probably in Bamberg in 1458–60, possibly by Gutenberg. A large part of it was shown to have been set from a copy of Gutenberg's Bible, thus disproving earlier speculation that it was the earlier of the two.",
"title": "Printing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "\"What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage, … for the bad that his colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been favored.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910)",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Gutenberg's invention had an enormous impact on subsequent human history, both on cultural and social matters. His design directly impacted the mass spread of books across Europe, causing an information revolution. As a result, Venzke describes the inauguration of the Renaissance, Reformation and humanist movement as \"unthinkable\" without Gutenberg's influence. Described as \"one of the most recognized names in the world\", a team of US journalists voted Gutenberg as the \"man of the millennium\" in 1999. Similarly, in 1999 the A&E Network ranked Gutenberg the No. 1 most influential person of the second millennium on their \"Biographies of the Millennium\" countdown, while Time–Life magazine picked Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium in 1997. The scholar of paper history, Thomas Francis Carter, drew parallels between Cai Lun, the traditional inventor of paper during the Eastern Han dynasty, and Gutenberg, calling them \"spiritual father and son\" respectively. In his 1978 book, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, Michael H. Hart ranked him 8th, below Cai but above figures such as Christopher Columbus, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The capital of printing in Europe shifted to Venice, where visionary printers like Aldus Manutius ensured widespread availability of the major Greek and Latin texts. The claims of an Italian origin for movable type have also focused on this rapid rise of Italy in movable-type printing. This may perhaps be explained by the prior eminence of Italy in the paper and printing trade. Additionally, Italy's economy was growing rapidly at the time, facilitating the spread of literacy. Christopher Columbus had a geography book (printed with movable type) bought by his father. That book is in a Spanish museum, the Biblioteca Colombina in Seville. Finally, the city of Mainz was sacked in 1462, driving many (including a number of printers and punch cutters) into exile.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Printing was also a factor in the Reformation. Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses were printed and circulated widely; subsequently he issued broadsheets outlining his anti-indulgences position (certificates of indulgences were one of the first items Gutenberg had printed). Due to this, Gutenberg would also be viewed as a proto-Protestant. The broadsheet contributed to the development of the newspaper.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "There are many statues of Gutenberg in Germany, including the famous one by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1837) at Gutenbergplatz in Mainz, home to the eponymous Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and the Gutenberg Museum on the history of early printing. The latter publishes the Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, the leading periodical in the field.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1952, the United States Postal Service issued a five hundredth anniversary stamp commemorating Johannes Gutenberg invention of the movable-type printing press. In space, he is commemorated in the name of the asteroid 777 Gutemberga. Two operas based on Gutenberg are G, Being the Confession and Last Testament of Johannes Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, Master Printer, formerly of Strasbourg and Mainz, from 2001, with music by Gavin Bryars; and La Nuit de Gutenberg, with music by Philippe Manoury, premiered in 2011 in Strasbourg. Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library, commemorates Gutenberg's name. The Mainzer Johannisnacht commemorates the person Johannes Gutenberg in his native city since 1968.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg invented the printing press, which later spread across the world. His work led to an information revolution and the unprecedented mass-spread of literature throughout Europe. It also had a direct impact on the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, and humanist movements, as all of them have been described as "unthinkable" without Gutenberg's invention. His many contributions to printing include the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the invention of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The alloy was a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony that melted at a relatively low temperature for faster and more economical casting, cast well, and created a durable type. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible, was the first printed version of the Bible and has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality. Described as the "man of the millennium", Gutenberg is often cited as among the most influential figures in human history. He has been commemorated around the world and is a frequent namesake. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of his birth in 1900, the Gutenberg Museum was founded in his hometown of Mainz. | 2001-05-14T23:57:45Z | 2023-12-18T06:40:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg |
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